Search Results for: Victor Davis Hanson

Strategy as a Way of Life: Universality in the “Book of Five Rings”

May 19, 2022

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.

Kissinger and China

Patrick J. Garrity +

April 17, 2021

Ten years after publication of Kissinger's On China, the reader is invited to assess Kissinger’s judgment in light of such events as the unwinding of the global financial crisis and increased Chinese assertiveness, the shift in American foreign policy towards a great power competition framework, and Covid-19. His book appeared shortly before Graham Allison’s influential and controversial work on the Thucydides trap. I extrapolated from his argument at the time — perhaps inaccurately, but worthy of consideration — that Kissinger concluded the rise of China towards its historic position as the Middle Kingdom, if accommodated properly to a globalized world, is more or less inevitable and, rightly understood, desirable.

Book: Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome

Victor Davis Hanson

February 27, 2021

Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, edited by Victor Davis Hanson (Princeton University Press, 2010), is billed as something of a prequel to Edward Meade Earl's classic edited collection of essays on Makers of Modern Strategy (1943), beginning with Machiavelli. (Peter Paret, Gordon Craig, and Felix

Julius Caesar, Commentarii de bello Gallico (mid-1st Century BC)

Stephen Sims

August 10, 2015

There is some disagreement as to the character of De bello Gallico. Consisting of seven books by Caesar himself, it is completed in an eighth book by one of his generals, Aulus Hirtius. It has been suggested that they are something like battle-reports given to the Senate. Others have claimed that the books are nothing other than Caesar’s attempt to increase his popularity with the people.

Xenophon, The Persian Expedition

Patrick J. Garrity +

March 06, 2009

To encourage fidgety school boys to pay attention to their Greek lessons, English and American headmasters would frequently assign Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus (The Ascent of Cyrus, sometimes rendered as “The March Up-Country” and popularly titled “The Persian Expedition”). Xenophon told the thrilling story of what became known as the Ten Thousand, a Greek mercenary contingent engaged during the summer of 401 B.C. by a Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger, to support his campaign to claim the throne from his brother, Artaxerxes II. These events took place shortly after the Spartan-led coalition, with aid from Persia, had defeated Athens and its allies in the decades-long Peloponnesian War.

Plato, Laches (Fourth Century BC)

Stephen Sims

October 07, 2015

One might wonder what someone as supposedly “abstract” or “metaphysical” as Plato could offer by way of strategic insight. Why should practical men, not philosophers, read Plato? Although one could point to a number of examples showing both the speculative and practical worth of the Platonic corpus, the Laches stands out for two reasons. The first is that it is a dialogue on courage, or more literally “manliness,” which seems a quality above all necessary for the successful conduct of warfare.