Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Offensive Strategy - Sun Tzu's Art of War #3 - Revisited" video.

  1. I think the battle of Königgrätz is almost close to Sun Tzu's ideal of a total victory without losses. The Prussians crushed an equally strong Austrian force of 220.000 men with only 1900 men in losses of their own.
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  2. A battle never goes as planned. The political situation might change, the weather was not as planned, the supposed enemy positioning and strenght was incorrect due to insuffiecent information from the intellegence... the factors that can go wrong are endless. A plan is obsolete after the first arrow has fallen. Planning for the perfect battle is a western idea, and Europeans have studied battle like Cannae endlessly and tried to immitate it. While Asians realized that we don't live in a perfect world and that war is caos, so the rules of war should be written in this context instead. And the German and israeli successful use of mission type tactics, shows that warfare not only needs much planning, but even more importantly so it also needs a high degree of improvisation and adoptation to the constantly changing circumstances on the battlefield.
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  3. West got 3 weaknesses: 1. They look at war as just mathematic game, without realizing that not everything could be measured. 2. The wars in the middle east have been colonial wars, and real existential threats. But now the line has become blurry after hostile muslim populations have settled in large numbers in Europe. 3. The low birthrates have meant that fewer men can be send away from the economy to serve in the military, and not everyone is keen on sacrificing their only son in a war when they only got one or two childs. So with less lazy military doctrinal thinking, huge concription armies and modern weaponary, and with good motivation for a just war, then I think the western Armies would be superior in a world war against China, middle-east, Africa and Russia. Saddam had basicly the same crappy equipment as China, but the Iraqi army was slightly better upgraded, and their soliders were battle experienced after the war with Iran. And the numbers was also quite impressive. But the USA led coalition would anyways easily crushed Saddams army like a bug under boot during the 1991 war. So I don't put much faith in the corrupt Chinease army consisting of poorly equiped beggars. The Russian military is impressive, but the country is hardly a superpower. Its GDP is smaller than Spains and its population is not large enough to play around and taking massive losses like in the past days of glory.
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  4. In the German Army doctrine of World war II, capturing cities was not only important, but the main goal of their strategy. Cities are economical centers and transportation hubs and have a larger political importance now than during the agricultural societies of the middle ages since more people live there and the most economically productive areas in an economy is the cities.
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