Except when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or "the people," constitute the great majority of those affected. |
As history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide. |
Sun Tzu does not need my praise. His work has lived for over two thousand years, and will surely live for another two thousand without any help from me. |
If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. |
The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. |
Assuming China does not become destabilized and continues to grow, it will no doubt develop a military program in proportion to its resources. |
It is simply not true that war is solely a means to an end, nor do people necessarily fight in order to obtain this objective or that. In fact, the opposite is true: people very often take up one objective or another precisely in order that they may fight. |
The enemy resembles us. Therefore, he needs to be approached not as an assembly of 'targets' to be destroyed one by one; but as a living, intelligent entity capable of acting and reacting. |
In the future as in the past, both Clausewitz and Sun Tzu will undoubtedly have a lot to offer. |