Nov 10 2006
Waste of Past Wisdom
Sun Zi (or Sun Tsu) said, “What is more fundamental to a state than rituals and wars?” Rituals generates and reaffirms symbols and meanings (again, Geertz), therefore, it is the core of nation building before nationalism. But why war is as important? Carl von Clausewitz almost footnotes Sun: War is merely a continuation of politics.
How does this footnote help us today? If Sun and Clausewitz are correct, that war is a different form of politics, then one may deduce that, if a goal/strategy works in a war, it should work in the politics accompanying the war.
If the above statement is true, logic dictates the following being true too: if a strategy fails in politics, it shall fail in the related war too.
So what was the U.S.’ political strategy prior to the 2003 Iraq War? It is almost a joke to say there was a political strategy: the engagement was never really political and there was little strategy in that engagement either.
If there wasn’t any political strategy to ouster Sadam and to build a new Iraqi nation, how can there be a military one–given both Sun and Clausewitz are right? No wonder we are in such deep shit today.