The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect
their cultural and historical traditions and deeply
rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic
culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond
what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions.
In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United
States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed
battle in an open area, where superior American weapons
would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight
World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against
an enemy with no intention of doing so.
Some British military historians describe the Asian
way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal
attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces
back to Asian history and geography: the great distances
and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute
the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain
and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different
strategic tradition arose in Asia.
The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way
of war. By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon.
Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does
not necessitate immediate physical contact with the
enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions.
When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to
come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The
tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the
classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000
years' worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes
the most subtle writings on the subject in any language.
Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic
theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose
Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier.
In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement
of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting.
He wrote: ""To win one hundred victories in one hundred
battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy
without fighting is the supreme excellence."" Actual
combat is just one among many means towards the goal
of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises
to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses,
as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted
effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the
United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese
found out after Pearl Harbor.
Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu
advocated war only after the most thorough preparations.
Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the
army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to
an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale,
and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been
seen as masters of -subtlety who take measured actions
to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The
dividing line between war and peace can be obscure.
Low level violence often is the backdrop to a larger
strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on
the day-to-day events, never realizes what's happening
to him until it's too late. History holds many examples.
The Viet Cong lured French and U.S. infantry deep into
the jungle, weakening their morale over several years.
The mobile army of the United States was designed to
fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly
move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle
did more than make quick movement impossible; broken
down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases,
US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and
protection that ordinarily comes from being part of
a big army.
The isolation of U.S. troops in Vietnam was not just
a logistical 'detail, something that could be overcome
by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter.
In a big army reinforcements are readily available.
It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects
on morale that come from being part of a larger formation.
Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier's fear and
increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated
bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation
slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult
to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their
own.
More important, by altering the way the war was fought,
the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief
in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the
French before them. Morale was high when these armies
first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating
and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive
attacks, at Dienbienphu in 1954 and against Saigon in
1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to
victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle
guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire
army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese
into collapse. This final battle, with the enemy's army
all in one place, was the one that the United States
had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did
come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already
withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of
re-intervention.
The Japanese early in World War 11 used a modem form
of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and
surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbor, in the Philippines,
and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained
by sailing under radio silence so that the navy's movements
could not be tracked. Moving troops aboard ships into
Southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army
was also ""invisible."" Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore
seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come
from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese
attack was even faster than the German blitz against
France in the West.
The greatest military surprises in American history
have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going
on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of
detecting enemy movements. Pearl Harbor, the Chinese
intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam
all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth.
U.S. technical intelligence – the location of enemy
units and their movements was greatly improved after
each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in
the American ability to foresee or prepare what would
happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just
a technical one. Even when it was possible to track
an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded
Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise
was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraq's
attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures
of Iraqi troops massing at the border.
The exception that proves the point that cultural differences
obscure the West's understanding of Asian behavior was
the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This
was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There
was no surprise because the United States understood
Moscow's world view and thinking. It could anticipate
Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves,
because the Soviet Union was really a Western country.
The difference between the Eastern and the Western way
of war is striking. The West's great strategic writer,
Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu.
Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over
to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz
wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose
is through destruction of the enemy's army. After observing
Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to
bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932)
that combat is the continuation of politics by violent
means. Morale and unity are important, but they should
be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern
way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical
Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward,
seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the
blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all.
In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and
occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three
acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end,
the final scene, decides the issue for good.
When things don't work out quite this way, the Western
military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu's
great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected
in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception
to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But
in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and
devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong
guerrilla did not fight fairly. He should have come
out into the open and fought like a man, instead of
hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat
in the night.
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1. According to the author,
the main reason for the U.S. losing the Vietnam war
was
the
Vietnamese understood the local terrain better.
the
lack of support for the war from the American people.
the
failure of the U.S. to mobilize its military strength.
their
inability to fight a war on terms other than those they
understood well.
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2. Which of the following statements
does not describe the 'Asian' way of war?
Indirect
attacks without frontal attacks.
The
swordsman charging forward to obliterate the enemy once
and for all.
Manipulation
of an adversary without his knowledge.
Subduing
an enemy without fighting.
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this question
3. Which of the following is
not one of Sun-tzu's ideas?
Actual
combat is the principal means of subduing an adversary.
War
should be undertaken only after thorough preparation.
War
is linked to politics.
War
should not be left to the generals alone.
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4. The difference in the concepts
of war of Clausewitz and Sun-tzu is best characterized
by
Clausewitz's
support for militarism as against Sun-tzu's opposition
to it.
their
relative degrees of sophistication.
their
attitude to guerrilla warfare.
their
differing conceptions of the structure, time and sequence
of a war.
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5. To the Americans, the approach
of the Viet Cong seemed devious because
the
Viet Cong did not fight like men out in the open.
the
Viet Cong allied with America's enemies.
the
Viet Cong took strategic advice from Mao Zedong.
the
Viet Cong used bows and arrows rather than conventional
weapons.
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this question
6. According to the author,
the greatest military surprises in American history
have been in Asia because
The
Americans failed to implement their military strategies
many miles away from their own country.
The
Americans were unable to use their technologies like
intelligence satellites effectively to detect enemy
movements.
The
Americans failed to understand the Asian culture of
war that was based on stealth and surprise.
Clausewitz
is inferior to Sun-tzu.
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this question
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7. His mother made great sacrifices
to educate him, moving house on three occasions, and
severing the thread on her loom's shuttle whenever
Mencius neglected his lessons to make him understand
the need to persevere.
severing
the thread on her loom's shuttle whenever Mencius neglected
his lessons to make him understand the need to persevere.
severed
the thread on her loom's shuttle whenever Mencius neglected
his lessons to make him understand the need to persevere.
severed
the thread on her loom's shuttle whenever Mencius neglected
his lessons to make him understand the need for persevering.
severing
the thread on her loom's shuttle whenever Mencius neglected
his lessons, to make them understand the need to persevere.
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8. If you are on a three-month
software design project and, in two weeks, you've
put together a programme that solves part of the problem,
show it to your boss without delay.
and,
you've put together a programme that solves part of
the problem in two weeks
and,
in two weeks, you've put together a programme that solves
part of the problem
and,
you've put together a programme that has solved part
of the problem in two weeks
and,
in two weeks you put together a programme that solved
only part of the problem
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9. Many of these environmentalists
proclaim to save nothing less than the planet
itself.
to save
nothing lesser than
that
they are saving nothing lesser than
to save
nothing less than
that
they save nothing less than
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10. Bacon believes that the
medical profession should be permitted to ease and quicken
death where the end would otherwise only delay for
a few days and at the cost of great pain.
be
delayed for a few days
be
delayed for a few days and
be
otherwise only delayed for a few days and
otherwise
only delay for a few days and
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this question
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