Do we have a western equivalent to Sun Tzu? Need to know for a setting I'm making

Know how I can tell you never even glimpsed at Clausewitz?

>Clausewitz and Machiavelli probably come the closest.
Probably the right answer. There have been many, many military thinkers whose ideas are well-recorded, of course. If you really want to dig in to that subject, the reading lists for military academies are usually a good starting point.

>There's not a singular source of bellic wisdom in the west, I think.
There really isn't in the east either... Sun Tzu is just the most popular example of the type.

Nah, the greatest strategists existed in China and Japan. Sun Tzu, Zhuge Liang, Nobunaga Oda.

>"I heard about some things in school and now I am pulling stuff straight from my ass" the post

UNLESS IT'S A FARM

Machiavelli was a political thinker tho.

>you never even glimpsed at
Know how I know you know I know you never even paid attention in English class?

Which is effectively the place sun tzu occupies in Western thought

Isn't Art of War a must in military academies?

youtube.com/watch?v=4Z4IuOHGAFU

English translations of Sun Tzu were named after Machiavelli's own Art of War

Machiavelli actually wrote a book called Art of War. It was based on his experience as head of a local militia, he mostly talks about why mercenaries suck.

>There's not a singular source of bellic wisdom in the west, I think.

Same for China, really. They got around five or six military classics.

Wen talking about publicly know figures, needing more profound knowledge to find proper figures wouldn't kinda disprove the point being made?

What's more likely, that I am a particularly uncultured outlier, or that the proper relevant western individuals are more obscure than sun tzu is?

isn't machiavelli's version more specific towards his geography and time period? Part of the success of Sun tzu's art of war, seems to be it's general applicability.

What's frightening about The Art of War is that nothing in it is, to a modern reader, particularly innovative. All of it basically boils down to three principles.

1) Don't go to war. Seriously, just don't. It's not worth it. It's never worth it. If you ignore everything else in this book, don't ignore this. Don't go to war. You'll bankrupt yourself and all your men will die of sickness and starvation.

2) Having failed to listen to (1) like the moron you are, strike with overwhelming numbers as fast as possible where your enemy is weakest. Never engage your enemy in a direct battle unless literally everything (terrain, numbers, training, etc.) is on your side. Never, EVER conduct a siege if that siege is going to take longer than maybe one week. EVER.

3) Don't fight in swamps. Just don't. If you find yourself stuck in a swamp and can't escape, just surrender, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle.

4) There is no situation that fire cannot make better. There is, coincidentally, no situation that fire cannot make worse. And there is no real way to predict which way fire will go. So don't use fire.

5) Use spies and assassins. Like, all the time. Fighting honorably is for schmucks.

6) But seriously, don't go to war.

The frightening thing is that almost all of The Art of War is basically just common sense, but at the time it was seen as hugely innovative. Because Sun Tzu and his contemporaries and predecessors just didn't have the depth of experience and history fighting wars that we do behind them, the extra several millennia that makes what we know now common sense.

Wars use to be just awful.

Sun Tzus success is due to the fact it's easily quotable and actually quite vague. If you have success using it as your only guide you're either a master military strategist anyway or your opponent is even worse.

>three principles

Six principles. Sorry, I initially had three and then thought of more and forgot to edit this. Mea culpa. I swear I can count.

More or less. Machiavelli wasn't trying to tell some Swede living in Sweden how to win a war, he was trying to tell Italians how to win a war. He was a pragmatist first and foremost, before he was anything else.

Hence why I don't buy into the whole "the prince is satire" shtick - first because he never mentions or implies it being satire despite bringing it up in a letter to a friend of his; and second because Machiavelli was just too damn pragmatic and wanted back into the Florentine court too badly. In that letter I mentioned he despairs at how his talents and skills as a statesman are wasting away in exile and how desperate he is to get back into politics.

This is the correct answer.

As an aside, Thucydides has been often taught in staff colleges, post-Vietnam. But it doesn't have the wider familiarity that the other two do.

You mean super-impactful, but overblown military treaties?
Vom Kriege by Clausewitz comes to mind from more "recent" works.
Art of War by Machiavelli might work if you are running early early modern period setting

And how to organise a pretty competent army, if you get past the initial two chapters bitching how and why mercs are shit (he's more than right in his reasoning). In fact, most national armies that popped out between Louis XIV and end of Napoleonic period are the direct representation of what Machiavelli wrote about.

Not at all. It's even more adaptable than Sun Tzu. Seriously, as long as you are content with having conscript-based (or rather - volunteer-based) army, Machiavelli is still valid. Sun Tzu is good if you are fine with running partisant war.

t. Teenager

Let's just quote some names off these Roots of Strategy books I have kicking around, since they're all relevant. Going to ignore Machiavelli and Clausewitz, since they have been amply covered already.

Vegetius (De Re Militari)
De Saxe (Reveries on the Art of War)
Frederick the Great (Military Instructions to his Generals / General Principles of War)
Napoleon (Military Maxims)
Jomini (Art of War)
du Picq (Battle Studies)
Rommel (Infantry Attacks)
Hart (Strategy)
Guderian (Achtung Panzer)
Mahan (Influence of Sea Power Upon History)
Corbett (Principles of Maritime Strategy)
Douhet (Command of the Air)

Themistocles, Scipio the African or Julius Caesar come to mind. You've got Caesar's "Gallic Wars", if you need a book on war, tactics and stuff. There are documentaries around about them, too (just ignore cinema).

>The frightening thing is that almost all of The Art of War is basically just common sense
Even more frightening is the fact that morons unnumbered in the West read to Sun Tzu just because he was Chinese because muh Orientalism, not because content. Orientalism fucked us nice and fine.

>Unironically listing Jomini
>And Achtunt Panzer

>The frightening thing is that almost all of The Art of War is basically just common sense, but at the time it was seen as hugely innovative.

It was written as a quick primer for a retarded, inexperienced prince and the important parts were largely the commentary written by later generals in how hte basic principles of Sun Tzu applied to their particular situations.

Jominian thought was huge in the 19th century. And Achtung Panzer is more of a cheerleading work, but it is still an important historical document outlining late industrial mobile warfare. Could fairly list some work by Fuller in there, though. Or Tukhachevsky.

The true irony of Sun Tzu popularity in the West is that he became a sudden meme in the 80s (from complete fucking obscurity) thanks to...
... 80s Japanophobia and Japanophilia. You know, nothing like reading Chinese military treaty to be more in tune with Great and Glorious Nippon. And this is also from where the meme to apply Sun Tzu to corporate business came from, since it was mostly yuppies of the 80s reading it.

So it's less of the orientalism as such and more of simple retardation of the 80s.

>literally nobody has mentioned De Re Militari
It was the number one military primer of medieval times. The third book, like Art of War, is source of many quotes including the famous "let he who wants peace prepare for war". It only fell from favor because of renaissance luddites denigrating all medieval academia.

Clausewitz is not analogous to Art of War because he lived in (comparatively) very modern times, and no other name even comes close.

If Achtung Panzer is a cheerleading work, then Tukhachevsky's writings are pure meme. His doctrine makes absolutely no fucking sense, but for whatever reason is compared with blitzkrieg.

And Jomini might be big, but it won't make him good. He's even more at fault than Clausewitz for how fucking bloody all 19th century wars (and WW1) were, with his extremely retarded focus on crushing morale and the importance of top-down command that completely paralizes warfare and decission-making

>literally nobody has mentioned De Re Militari

>literally nobody has mentioned De Re Militari

Read the thread.

>literally nobody has mentioned De Re Militari
Learn to read. Or using Ctrl F

What about Infanterie Greift An, by a certain magnificent bastard?

I'm not listing people by how "good" their doctrines are - if I was, Douhet would be in the dumpster where he belongs. I'm going by historical impact & "awareness". West Point taught entirely off of Jomini until the American Civil War, for example. And Tukhachevsky still underpins a great deal of (ex-)Warsaw Pact military doctrine.

Oh, one person mentioned it in a list and said nothing about it. Same thing, from a functional perspective.

>And Tukhachevsky still underpins a great deal of (ex-)Warsaw Pact military doctrine.
No, he doesn't. He's literally a meme up here.

>Let's shift goalposts
How about no?

Being a meme means he is important, though.

>no goalpost shifting!
So you prefer that people just argue the same point indefinitely even if it's demonstrated to be wrong?

>You know, nothing like reading Chinese military treaty to be more in tune with Great and Glorious Nippon.

Well, legend at the time had it that it as big in Japanese boardrooms, and so it was obviously their secret weapon that they were using to take over the business world.
Sadly, their economy crashed and the cultural fallout from that meant we stopped getting mountains of cool futuristic sci-fi anime and got a wave of depressing shit before they settled on girl cartoons forever.

>not the greatest rule, the biggest tactician is the one who subdues the enemy without fighting

Jomini and Clausewitz have been collectively referred to as "the Gunner's disciples" (referencing Napoleon).

I think Clausewitz had the better perspective for it, though.

You don't get me. He's meme in a sense "this joke of a strategist" not "this guy who is important, so we bring him".
Simply put - if you want to say something is stupid in military, you compare it/him to Tukhachevsky. That's how he's a meme

Want non-meme Soviet tactician? Try Rokossovsky

>4) There is no situation that fire cannot make better. There is, coincidentally, no situation that fire cannot make worse. And there is no real way to predict which way fire will go. So don't use fire.
Wut? Fire traps were a chinese staple.
t. Three Kingdoms avid reader

>All I know about China is meme-tier epic
There is something deeply disturbing with how much people take that work at face value.

>And how to organise a pretty competent army, if you get past the initial two chapters bitching how and why mercs are shit (he's more than right in his reasoning).
Why are mercs shit?
>mercs win
>you pay them and your enemy is dead
>mercs lose
>well you don't have to pay them anymore

Didn't Napoleon like lose a very winnable war?

I don't mean just Romance, I read basically a lot about this time period. Entire armies were annihilated by fire.

Cao Cao's entire fleet was wasted by a devastating fire attack.

>You enemy has more money than you
>The mercs switch sides
>Admittedly this doesn't happen very often (mercenaries who switch sides simply because someone can pay them more don't get a lot of contracts), but it only has to happen once to you.

>You run out of money
>The mercs just pack up and leave

>The mercs decide the money isn't worth it
>The mercs just pack up and leave

>The enemy has a different set of mercs that comprise his primary army
>Merc contracts forbid mercs fighting mercs to the death
>The two merc forces decide to determine the outcome of the "battle" and whether or not your city gets ass-raped via a game of rock-paper-scissors.
>Yes, this more-or-less happened in Italian Renaissance warfare.

And the list goes on and on and on...

>ablooblooblooo
t.brainlet trying to act tough

So basically the problem is money. But if you use mercs you will have money.

Those seem like very rare cases to dismiss an important tool. It's better to hire other people to die so you can spare your own levies.

...

>Those seem like very rare cases

t. doesn't know a single thing about Italian history

Well, I'm talking about general medieval history. I guess you are right, it didn't go well in Italy.

Napoleon, clausewitz, machiavelly, Patton, rommel, Caesar, Hannibal, Adolphus, Alexander etc

I'm sure most of those guys wrote books or kept memoirs. Washington gets notable mention for his use of guerilla tactics

Napoleon got jewed by the Rothschilds. Before you tell me to go back to /pol/ just look it up for yourself

Napoleon fucked up more than a few times, but he's still a towering figure in military thought because he did so much more *right* than he did wrong.

I mean, when you have a run as long and sweeping as he did, naturally there are gonna be some botches along the way.

I always felt the relationship there was Jomini did a good job of capturing the form of Napoleonic warfare, but Clausewitz had a better sense of the underpinning sensibilities. There are reasons why Jomini got tossed to the curb by the mid-late 19th century while Clausewitz continues to be a cornerstone of strategic thought.

Jan Zizka and Genghis Khan are on the phone

You can get a larger army of your own people for a lower cost via overt nationalism.

Yes, but if your people die they can't be tax cattle.

>It's better to hire other people to die
except mercenaries don't die, Machievelli's point was that mercenaries don't care about the people or land they're fighting for and don't risk themselves to protect it, they're there to win as many fights as they safely think they can so they can get paid, and you can't afford that kind of unreliability

Falling for the russian oldest trick on the book isn't just a botch.

Well it went very bad in italian history mostly because other parts of the world avoided the overuse of mercs to begin with.

If they die taking over new territory, you have new tax cattle.

And if you do your job right as a tactician, it will be a net gain.

His handling of the Peninsular War was impressively underwhelming, too. As I said, multiple fuckups.

Own Cattle > Conquered Cattle

The most important resource is your own cultural population.

If ya want meme works, check out those cheerleading on air power

>WE WUZ WIN DA WAR WITH BOMBS EVERYWHERE BOMBS BOMBS BOMBS
>PROBLEMS? DROP BOMBS ON IT.
>NO PROBLEMS? BUY MORE AIRCRAFTS FOR BOMBS
>BOMBS WILL CREATE GLOBAL PEACE AS EVERYBODY WILL FEAR THE BOMBS THAT SPLITTER 10.0000 TIMES INTO 10.000 PIECES

Nobunaga is entirely over rated. He's basic Roman general tier, just used surprise tactics to his advantage

Carl von Clausewitz but he was rather late so may not be a real equivalent to Sun Tzu.

The the to keep in is that large military manuals is some thing the Chinese rather liked when compared to other cultures. Sun Tzu does in fact have a number of Chinese equivalents. Western writer for the most part would make summary of their campaigns with pointed remarks on a few key elements. They did not really theorycraft that much, nor try to lay out "the rules of war". Their was a bit of a fear that doing as such would possibly cut back on later generals creatively and leave then with a over narrow understanding of war. Not to say that did not have a rich military lit tradition, just writing "tactic & strategy 101" was not a topic of interest for them.

Byzantines are the only medieval Europeans that I know of to go against that.

Check the "The Officer's Professional Reading Guide" for west point, the art of war nor any guide on Chinese military classics is on there. I just checked.

>pick a small clan that was inferior to all big shots
>makes entire Japan his bitch
Nah.

>This thread
>Clausewitz is almost just background noise as naming goes

Fuck you Veeky Forums.

>he mostly talks about why mercenaries suck
Believable, since I'm positive he mentions that in The Prince as well.

I will forever hate Clausewitz because Paradox shitty engine.

>Dies like a moron because obvious baldie traitor burned him alive
>At least he dies with sweet trap waifu

machiavelli's version also was just less useful period. His issue with mercenaries being on reliable had EVERYTHING to do with central Italian cities-state not paying for services. Like even road builders, not just mercenaries. North Italian states had zero issue when using the same groups of mercenaries.

It'd be either Sherman or Patton. McArthur is well known but those were both wars we lost in 3rd world asian shitholes.

no, we are pointing out that you are literally wrong about .

whether it is discussed is irrelevant to it being mentioned, which is the point of op's question anyway.

>first mention of Sherman in the thread

its not that bad, is it?

Sun Tzu just wrote those proverbs based on the game of Go, which was the strategical pinnacle of that time as a past time

That's why they sound like bullshit, but if you play go they make complete sense

>unbelievable lag in like every late game
>all because engine doesn't know how to take advantage of modern hardware
It is.

>McArthur is well known

Please don't ever fucking use that retard as an example of military wisdom ever again. Like ever.

Like the documentary that kept talking about the supremacy of Go vs Chess?

McArthur won WW2 for the USA.

That's bullshit, Chess and Go strategy just applies to the games themselves

Actually the only thing you could apply to real world is that to be good at something you need to develop your instincts by drilling the fundamentals over and over again before trying to understand high level concepts

That documental is really shitty because Chess also has the efficiency motif in the sacs and zugzwang that you can do, it's just they appear at really high level, and most people just try to win through material

It's like in Go at low levels looks like a territory contest but at high levels it's a full blown war between several groups trying to capture each other

If you read the proverbs Sun Tzu uses it's clearly Go strategies used that would completely fail in real life

Daily reminder that historical Cao Cao was the good guy in the bunch and only then got memed due to Romance into some sort of crafty bastard, then into villain and now into a meme so blown out of any proportions its not funny at all if you know about the real guy.

Clausewitz and his on war

... which is not an issue if everyone is Italian, you stupid piece of shit.
Seriously, are you dense or something? Mercenaries are shit for countles of basic reason everyone knows: they are expensive, they are unreliable, they are unwilling to follow all the orders, they are unruly, easily rebel and worst thing possible, they have no stake in it. At all. All they care is money they are paid plus the loot they can take. That's literally it. It means the moment they decide they had enough, they are going just leave you, because in the end, it wasn't their war, really.
Hence why it was so damn revolutionary, especially in the context of Italian clusterfuck, to start to rely on your own troops that have no way of getting out of this mess other than winning. Because if they fuck up, then they are dead, their wives raped and their homes sacked. Thus they have an extra motivation to never let that happen, unlike a merc company that will just shrug, because they are literally on a field trip in this part of the continent, currently providing service to the highest bidder, but why should they care about this or that place getting burned down?

>1) Don't go to war.

Literally the first thing he says is that war is necessary for the survival of the state.

hanfags will always cry about muh 400 years, don't mistake that for a sentiment shared by everyone

He was the most incompetant high graded military leader in the whole damn thing on par with Montgommery he litterally couldn't lose even if he wanted too due to the enormous means surrounding him.

Forget about that last sentence he actually did in the Philipinnes by being a complete and abject failure. If his families had no ties he would have never made it that far.

>First time this trick is being pulled
>Lmao, he felt for this!
The real problem was Napoleon's very stupid assumption that Moscow matters, cause muh culture. It had NO meaning for Russians and he let (barely defended) St. Petersburg, along with tsar, unmolested.

>Can't utilise 64x architecture
>At all
It's fucking horrible.