King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty three thousand years ago and Alexander the Great over two thousand years ago definitely would not have known what a cocktail was, and yet they were both masters of mixing \u201ccocktails\u201d on the battlefield. This is because, like mixing a cocktail, they were adept at ingeniously combining two or more battlefield factors together, throwing them into battle, and gaining victories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
General Schwarzkopf, who created the miracle of a major battle in which only over one hundred soldiers were lost cannot be considered to be on the great master level.<\/p>
For him, the key to driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, restoring the lifeline of oil to the West, and regenerating America\u2019s influence in the Middle East, depended on how to ingenuously use the alliance, manipulate the media, use economic blockades, and other methods, along with developing and bringing together various armed services of the army, navy, air force, space, electronics, etc., comprised by the militaries of over 30 nations, and thus jointly becoming an iron fist to pound Saddam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
if the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nation being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets, then after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent\u2019s computer system in advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Military Trans-military Non-military<\/p>
\u2022 Atomic warfare
\u2022 Diplomatic warfare
\u2022 Financial warfare
\u2022 Conventional warfare
\u2022 Network warfare
\u2022 Trade warfare
\u2022 Biochemical warfare
\u2022 Intelligence warfare
\u2022 Resources warfare
\u2022 Ecological warfare
\u2022 Psychological warfare
\u2022 Economic aid warfare
\u2022 Space warfare
\u2022 Tactical warfare
\u2022 Regulatory warfare
\u2022 Electronic warfare
\u2022 Smuggling warfare
\u2022 Sanction warfare
\u2022 Guerrilla warfare
\u2022 Drug warfare
\u2022 Media warfare
\u2022 Terrorist warfare
\u2022 Virtual warfare (deterrence)
\u2022 Ideological warfare<\/p>
Any of the above types of methods of operation can be combined with another of the above methods of operation to form a completely new method of operation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEverything is a matter of numbers.\u201d Along this line of thought, the ancient sage Pythagoras unexpectedly encountered a set of mysterious digits: 0.618. As a result, he found the rule of the golden section!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
People had long marveled at the beauty of the Parthenon Temple of ancient Greece, suspecting it to be the creation of a god. With measurement and calculation, it was found that the relationship between its vertical lines and horizontal lines were entirely in accord with the 1:0.618 ratio.<\/p>
Without looking afar, you will see examples of conforming to this rule everywhere in the military realm. The shadow of 0.618 can be seen in such things ranging from the arc of the cavalry sword to the apex of the flying trajectory of a bullet, shell, or ballistic missile and from the optimum bomb-release altitude and distance for an aircraft in the dive bombing mode to the relationship between the length of the supply line and the turning point in a war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
When viewed in isolation, they do look like accidents happening one after another. But the Creator never does anything without a reason. If too many accidents demonstrate the same phenomenon, can you still calmly view them as accidents? No, at this moment, you have to admit at there is a rule here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Under conditions of modern technology, dominant weapons are no longer individual weapons, but \u201csystems of weapons,\u201d which are also components of larger systems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
As the arena of war has expanded, encompassing the political, economic, diplomatic, cultural, and psychological spheres, in addition to the land, sea, air, space, and electronics spheres, the interactions among all factors have made it difficult for the military sphere to serve as the automatic dominant sphere in every war. War will be conducted in non-war spheres.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
War is the most difficult to explain and understand. It needs support from technology, but technology cannot substitute for morale and stratagem; it needs artistic inspiration, but rejects romanticism and sentimentalism; it needs mathematical precision, but precision can sometimes render it mechanical and rigid; it needs philosophical abstraction, but pure thinking does not help to seize short-lived opportunities amid iron and fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Pythagoras was a philosopher and mathematician of ancient Greece whose famous axiom was \u201cEverything is a matter of numbers.\u201d That is, all existing things can be viewed, in the final analysis, as relationships of numbers. In Pythagoras\u2019 theory, things rational and things non-rational were mixed, but his theory still exerted profound influences on the development of ancient Greek philosophy and Medieval European thought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The book How Great Generals Win, written by Bevin Alexander (U.S.), depicts the battle of Cannae vividly with the support of illustrations, and can help to understand the \u201cside principal rule\u201d that we have discussed; see Tongshuai Juesheng Zhi Dao (How Great Generals Win – Xinhua Press, 1996), pp. 11-13.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Today\u2019s wars will affect the price of gasoline in pipelines, the price of food in supermarkets, and the price of securities on the stock exchange. They will also disrupt the ecological balance, and push their way into every one of our homes by way of the television screen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The necessary new method is to create a complete military Machiavelli. Achieve objectives by fair means or foul, that is the most important spiritual legacy of this Italian political thinker of the Renaissance.1 In the Middle Ages, this represented a breakthrough against romantic chivalry and the declining tradition of knighthood. It meant using means, some possibly comprehensive, without restraint to achieve an objective; this holds for warfare also. Even though Machiavelli was not the earliest source of \u201can ideology of going beyond limits\u201d (China\u2019s Han Feizi preceded him, he was its clearest exponent.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Only a fool like Saddam Hussein would seek to fulfill his own wild ambition by outright territorial occupation. Facts make it clear that acting in this way in the closing years of the 20th century is clearly behind the times, and will certainly lead to defeat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
What people sense as a closely guarded secret is the attitude and methods of the Americans in dealing with the Asian financial crisis. When the storm erupted, the United States immediately opposed a Japanese proposal to set up an Asian monetary fund. Instead, the United States advocated the implementation of a rescue plan, with strings attached, by way of the International Monetary Fund, of which it is a major shareholder. The implication was that Asian countries should be forced to accept the economic liberalization policy promoted by the United States. For example, when the IMF extended a $57 billion loan to South Korea, it was with the condition that Korea must open up its markets completely and allow American capital the opportunity to buy up Korean enterprises at unreasonably low prices. A demand such as this is armed robbery. It gives the developed countries, with the United States as their leader, the opportunity to gain unrestricted access to another country\u2019s markets, or to get in and clear out some space there. It is little different from a disguised form of economic occupation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The great fusion of technologies is impelling the domains of politics, economics, the military, culture, diplomacy, and religion to overlap each other. The connection points are ready, and the trend towards the merging of the various domains is very clear. Add to this the influence of the high tide of human rights consciousness on the morality of warfare. All of these things are rendering more and more obsolete the idea of confining warfare to the military domain and of using the number of casualties as a means of the intensity of a war. Warfare is now escaping from the boundaries of bloody massacre, and exhibiting a trend towards low casualties, or even none at all, and yet high intensity. This is information warfare, financial warfare, trade warfare, and other entirely new forms of war, new areas opened up in the domain of warfare.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Even a quasiworld power like China already has the power to jolt the world economy just by changing its own economic policies. If China were a selfish country, and had gone back on its word in 1998 and let the Renminbi lose value, no doubt this would have added to the misfortunes of the economies of Asia. It would also have induced a cataclysm in the world\u2019s capital markets, with the result that even the world\u2019s number one debtor nation, a country which relies on the inflow of foreign capital to support its economic prosperity, the United States, would definitely have suffered heavy economic losses. Such an outcome would certainly be better than a military strike.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Born during the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.), Han Feizi was the great product of the Legalist school of thought. In speech and actions, he emphasized the actual effect, as in \u201cthe target at which words and deeds are aimed is results.\u201d There were no other objectives or constraints.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In Brzezinski\u2019s view, a number of groups of countries will appear in the 21st century, such as a North American group, a European group, an East Asian group, a South Asian group, a Moslem group, and an Eastern European group. The struggle among these groups will dominate conflict in the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The legislatures of countries with representative forms of government cannot evade encirclement by lobbying groups. For example, America\u2019s Jewish organizations and its National Rifle Association have well-known lobbying groups. Actually, this practice was to be seen long ago in ancient China. In the war between the Chu and the Han at the end of the Qin Dynasty (209-202 B.C.), Liu Bang gave Chen Ping a great deal of money in order to defeat Xiang Yu off the battlefield. (Rebel general Liu Bang ousted Xiang Yu, who had won the fight to succeed the Qin Dynasty).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Spaces in nature including the ground, the seas, the air, and outer space are battlefields, but social spaces such as the military, politics, economics, culture, and the psyche are also battlefields.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
When setting objectives, give full consideration to the feasibility of accomplishing them. Do not pursue objectives which are unrestricted in time and space. Only with limits can they be explicit and practical, and only with limits can there be functionality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Sherman\u2019s advance toward Savanna in the American war between the north and south was not in search of combat, it was to burn and plunder all along the way. It was a measure used to destroy the economy in the southern army\u2019s rear area, to make the southern populace and the southern army lose the ability to resist, thus accomplishing the north\u2019s war objective. This is an example of the successful use of unlimited measures to achieve a limited objective.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The Verdun campaign is called by war historians a meat grinder, because both sides waged a senseless war of attrition. By contrast, the reason Germany was able to sweep away the joint British-French force after crossing the Maginot Line was because it combined the shortest length of time, the optimum route, and the most powerful weapons in a blitzkrieg. So it can be seen that the key to truly achieving \u201cminimal consumption\u201d is to find a combat method which makes rational use of combat resources.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The five principles which Fuller summarized from the Napoleonic wars are attack, maneuver, surprise, concentration, and support. Besides this, following the views of Clausewitz, Fuller also induced seven principles similar to those of the Napoleonic wars: maintain the objective, security of action, mobile action, exhaust the enemy\u2019s offensive capability, conserve forces, concentrate forces, and surprise. These principles became the foundation of modern military principles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
An example is the U.S. Army\u2019s nine main military principles: objective, offensive, concentration, economy of force, mobility, security, surprise, simplicity, and unity (of command). These are very similar to the principles of war of the Napoleonic era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Any of the political, economic, or diplomatic means now has sufficient strength to supplant military means. However, mankind has no reason at all to be gratified by this, because what we have done is nothing more than substitute bloodless warfare for bloody warfare as much as possible.4 As a result, while constricting the battlespace in the narrow sense , at the same time we have turned the entire world into a battlefield in the broad sense. On this battlefield, people still fight, plunder, and kill each other as before, but the weapons are more advanced and the means more sophisticated, so while it is somewhat less bloody, it is still just as brutal. Given this reality, mankind\u2019s dream of peace is still as elusive as ever.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Clemenceau stated that \u201cwar is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Legend has it that after Alexander the Great led his army into the interior of Asia Minor, he went to worship in the temple of Zeus in the city of Gordium. In the temple there was a wagon which had formerly belonged to Midas, king of Phrygia. It was secured very tightly by a jumbled cord, and it was said that no one had been able to untie it. Faced with this, Alexander pondered for a moment, then suddenly pulled out his sword and severed it at one stroke. From this, \u201cGordian knot\u201d has come to be another term for intractable and complex problems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These highlights are from the Kindle version of Unrestricted Warfare: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15162,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"yoast_head":"\n
"Unrestricted Warfare" Highlights<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n