When faced with an insurgency, how do we learn about it? Soldiers and officers need practical advice, and often show close interest in past practices which clearly succeeded or clearly failed. On the other hand, historians and cultural specialists have a bent for insisting on the uniqueness of a thing. Questions and challenges come with any recommendation
Musashi’s main contention in the Book of Five Rings is that the secrets of the ultimate style of successful samurai swordsmanship contain the secrets to success in warfare itself. Therefore, a revelation of such secrets is as important to the front-line combatant on the ground, as it is to the commander and to the planner(s). My argument is, in turn, that Musashi’s equation of perfection in the Way of combat strategy, to perfection in any Way (tradecraft, art, or profession) means that Musashi’s manuscript was intended to transcend its immediate reception. If such an argument were to be accepted as a premise, one may partially begin to comprehend how Musashi’s work has ended up being read by students of any competitive discipline, indeed utterly transcending the time and the space which gave birth to it. Miyamoto Musashi (1582-1645) is considered Japan’s greatest swordsman—and perhaps one of the most famous swordsmen anywhere. He was born in Harima’s Yonedamura Village as the second son of Tabaru Iesada. At some point in the late 1580s, Miyamoto Munisai of Mimasaka adopted the young Musashi. Musashi lived a considerably long life, becoming supremely accomplished in all aspects of the world of a bushi or warrior. In 1643, he began writing the manuscripts of the Five Rings. He died on the nineteenth day of the fifth month of the very year in which he passed the aforementioned manuscripts to his student Terao Magonojo. With both folklore and popular culture elevating his story to legend status, Musashi epitomizes the ideal of the warrior-scholar of late feudal, pre-modern Japan.
If statesmanship or the political art is synonymous with the art of war or the art of acquisition on the grandest scale, then mastery of geography becomes "the first part" of the statesman's arsenal. "[H]e should learn the nature of sites, and recognize how mountains rise, how valleys open up, how plains lie, and understand the nature of rivers and marshes—and in this invest the greatest care.… And the prince who lacks this skill lacks the first part of what a captain must have." If the "desire to acquire" or the "lust for power" is inherently unlimited and is the governing principle of politics, then the primary concern of politics with geography, the concern with acquisition of territory, in principle knows no bounds. The concern of politics with geography, at a certain point in history, expanded its scope, not just in principle but in fact, to encompass the world.
It is precisely during the historical lulls, the quiet backwaters, that the most thinking about strategy should be done—by officers and by political leaders, both serving or aspiring to service. Nor are democracy's other citizens free to ignore defense and foreign affairs; they too might attend to Kipling's poem of warning. Thinking about strategy in peacetime is even more vital than material preparation, though both are vital. Because when war comes, it may be too late. During war, it may be too difficult. In defeat, it will be of no use.
Two general schools of thought regarding Crowe and his famous Memorandum have emerged. Some scholars paint Crowe as a latter-day Cassandra who foresaw the structural trends that were hurling the two powers toward confrontation and articulated the necessary course of action, which his government failed to undertake until it was too late. Harvard’s Graham Allison compares the Crowe Memorandum to the writings of Thucydides, whose History of the Peloponnesian War identified the dilemma that a dominant power faces when it must either accede to the rise of a challenger or risk eventual war with it. The other school of thought argues that Crowe delivered only self-fulfilling prophecies by helping to institutionalize an attitude of anti-German animus. One prominent German historian even dubbed Crowe the “evil spirit of the Foreign Office.” With these two schools of thought forming in play, the bulk of the literature on Crowe has accordingly sought to determine the precise extent and manner of his influence on British-German relations both before and after the First World War.