再Strategy1/2, November 2nd 2013 P80 (書評「戦略」)
Everyone, it seems, is in need of a strategy. Governments have lots of them：strategies for health care, energy, housing, and so on. Each area of policy is made to seem more purposeful if there is a strategy behind it. Similarly, no company these days would dare to admit it lacks one. If things are going badly it will often be put down to the lack of good strategy. People even talk about using it to improve their lives - from coping with stress to losing weight or just making other people like them more. Over time, the word ゛strategy゛has been drained of meaning by ubiquity and overuse. Sir Lawrence Freedman's aim in his magisterial new book, ゛Strategy：A History゛, is to find a workable definition of what strategy is and to show how it has evolved and applied in war, politics and business. Above all, he argues, it is about employing whatever resources are available to achieve the best outcome in situations that are both dynamic and contested：゛It is getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest. It is the art of creating power.゛ Sir Lawrence, who for more than 30 years has been one of Britain's foremost historians of military strategy, examines how the origins of the word can be found in Greek mythology and Bible. A recurrent theme emerges：the dichotomy between strategies based on the application of superior force (personified by the heroic Achilles) and those base on the application of guile (personified by the crafty Odysseus, who came up with the idea of the Trojan horse). Guile is more seductive because it offers the possibility of cleverness defeating brute power. A few hundred years after Homer's ゛Iliad゛, Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, was writing ゛The Art of War゛, book that celebrates cunning by arguing that the way to win is by always doing the opposite of what your opponent expects. Sun Tzu gave birth to a long tradition that believed strategic goals could often best be achieved by avoiding the destructive uncertainty of pitched battle. It was preferable to use ゛stratagem and finesse゛to defeat an enemy - famine was a favourite tactic of Sun Tzu's - than to expose yourself to ゛the chance of arms゛. His teachings are still used in business schools and military academies today. No one is more associated with strategies founded on deceit and psychological manipulation than Niccolo Machiavelli, who is also still studied. However, as Sir Lawrence argues, guile alone can be overrated, particularly against enemies that are clever as well as strong. Machiavelli believed that his prince needed both the cunning of the fox and the strength of the lion to keep power. If David's slingshot had missed the gap in Goliath's helmet, which unaided by God it might well have done, things would have gone badly for him. It is, however, not really until the late 18th century, partly as a consequence of the Enlightenment and partly through the impact on military and political thinking of the Napoleonic wars, that the concept of strategy as it is usually understood today made it appearance. It was seen as a way of uniting operational art in military sphere with political objectives. As Carl von Clausewitz, a great Prussian strategist, put：゛War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means.゛ The other great strategist of that era was the more narrowly prescriptive Antoine-Henri Jomini. But the two men agreed on one thing that was distinct from their predecessors and which became central to strategic thinkers that came after them. They believe in the centrality of the decisive victory which compels an opponent to submit to one's will.
