"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message ...

You are ignoring his point--once the rulers have decided to wage war, they
should let the warriors plan and execute the campaigns without undue
interference.

No, I understand his point but I disagree with his total refusal of
interference. I guess the real matter is the one you've defined
farther in your post : the drawing of the line between the tactic and
strategic parts of military operations (Clemenceau's statement,
refering to "War" in general, was undoubtedly about the later). IMO,
only the politicians, the civilian authorities, have the global view
and knowledge to draw that line, a very moving line that changes all
the time. Especially nowadays in our democracies with free, inquiring
and "embedded" media, lobbies, national and foreign public opinions
weighing on foreign and domestic policies, military operations taking
place among civilian populations, etc... It's no longer a chess play
and a single individual's acts can have tremendous repercussions. The
military members must accept that a civilian authority be on their
neck almost constantly to tell them on what side of the line they
stand. Now the difficulty is to draw that line so that neither party's
feelings and efficiency get hurt.

snip

And I find Sun Tzu still to be rather appropriate, despite the lapse of
time
since he constructed his tenets. IIRC he described the theory behind
"blitzkreig" well before the German's formulated that operational/tactical
system, for example. From what I recall of reading Mao's "On Guerrella
War"
a couple of decades ago, it owed heavily to the writings of Sun Tzu as
well.
I have about three different translations of his work, but find Griffin's
to
remain the best in terms of applicability to military matters.

Like I said, most of his strictly military theories may still be
accurate but some others are sometimes too... theoretical and
disregard way too much today's political and social environments (but
I guess we can't blame him for that :-))

snip

ArVa