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Journey to the West: The ‘ Theory Migrant ’ In The Age Of China Rising. Yih-Jye Hwang Senior Lecturer of International Relations Leiden University. Research Questions.
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Journey to the West: The ‘Theory Migrant’ In The Age Of China Rising Yih-Jye Hwang Senior Lecturer of International Relations Leiden University
Research Questions • How is Sunzi Bingfa gradually becoming more popular in the field of Strategic Studies of the contemporary Anglo-American world （孫子兵法在英美世界的流行）? • What does the Sunzi Bingfa mean to the contemporary Anglo-American world?
Four plausible ways in which theory travels from the East to the West: • as knowledge governed by outdated conventions (過時的知識) • as a useful resource (有用的資源) • as a culturally specific artefact (文化特殊物) • as knowledge with universal value (具普世性的價值)
This critical examination of the reception of Sunzi Bingfa would enable us to see the basic contours of the field of Strategic Studies （戰略研究） and its problematic more clearly; that the academic field of Strategic Studies is rooted in self-other dynamics （自我他者的關係） on the one hand, and characterized by an extreme parochialism on the other （本位主義）.
Presentation Outline • Introduce the basic contours of the field of Strategic Studies and its problematic • Elaborates each of the four most likely routes that Sunzi binfa might take from the East to the West. • Examine various translations and applications of Sunzi Bingfa over the last hundred years, in order to see to which route they belong and what that tells us about the study of Sunzi Bingfa in the Anglo-American world.
Strategic Studies: A sub-fields in the study of IR • Emerged in the mid-1950s in the face of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union （美蘇競爭）, accompanied by the growing threat and fear of nuclear wars （核武的恐懼）. • It is concerned with the intellectual and policy questions associated with the use the force and other means to achieve political ends in international relations （為政治目的的武力使用）. • This field of study is multi-disciplinary, involving various academic disciplinary specialisms such as politics, technology, history, diplomacy, economics, and psychology （跨領域學科）.
The ‘golden age’ of the Strategic Studies • From the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s • During this period of time strategic studies were institutionalized in the Anglo-American world. • US: The US Army established a Strategic Studies research group in the mid-1950s, which during the 1970s became the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the US Army War College. • UK: The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) was founded in London in 1958’
In the post–cold war era （安全取代戰略） • Strategic Studies has received a great deal of criticism • Outdated in the post-cold war era • An existential crisis? • Obsessed with war and the use of force （對戰爭的迷戀） • a distorted view of the world • State-centric approach to world politics • Other important security issues are ignored
Miller’s defence of Strategic Studies • ‘never purely Cold War-centric’. • Strategic Studies have been concerned about ‘the political uses of organized violence’. • During the cold war: • the superpower competition and on the nuclear threat • In the post cold war: • terrorist attacks, failed states, humanitarian intervention, etc.
Strategic Studies remains a valuable field of academic enquiry • As long as war – either in the form of inter-state or intra-state conflict – does not become obsolete, Strategic Studies will remain a valuable field of academic enquiry and should exist in its own right. • Nevertheless, many aspects of the problematic of Strategic Studies continue to be underexplored: • Self-Other relations
The Eurocentric features of Strategic Studies • ‘IR is an American social science’? • IR teaching, especially in the area of theory, revolves largely around US-authored approaches. • Textbooks written mainly by American (and British) authors • Publishing patterns in specialized IR journals • The United States and Europe are normally at the core of world politics.
Parochialism • Strategic studies as a field ofstudy reflecting the identity and interests of the United States encourages its scholars to exclude (or include) systems of thought that do not (or do) contribute to the identity or serve the interests of the United States.
Western ‘orientalism’ in the study of strategy • Assumes an ‘absolute and systematic difference’ between the West and the Orient: the West being ‘rational, developed, humane, superior’ and the Orient being ‘aberrant, undeveloped, inferior’ (Said 1978, 3000). • A set of prejudiced stereotypes about Asia’s strategic culture
Self-other relations vis-a-vis Core-periphery relations • The objective of the Strategic Studies is to position the Orient/Others (e.g. China, the Islamic world) in the periphery to the discipline’s core (mainly US, West), and to find the ways in which Others are kept at bay. • Topic that merits special attention are: • China, Russia, Terrorism, North Korea, Iran • Why not US, UK, or NATO?
In sum • The field of Strategic Studies is characterized by American dominance of ‘rationalist’ modes of thought (quantitative, rational choice, etc.). • This approach marginalizes the non-European from the outset. • Even when those who work on strategic culture of the ‘non-West’, the objective of including studies of the strategic culture of the ‘Others’ is still to keep those ‘Others’ at bay.
Introduction • The Self-Other relations discussed above indicate the most plausible routes in which the strategic thinking of the ‘Orient’ (i.e. Sunzi Bingfa) might travel to the Anglo-American world. • Sun Tzu’s thinking in the Anglo-American IR discipline may take on the status of: • a useless resource or outmoded form of thinking • a useful resource • a culturally-bound knowledge • a body of wisdom with universal value
(1) A useless resource or outmoded form of thinking (過時或無用的知識) • Scholars in the mainstream Strategic Studies are not too bothered about non-Western strategic thinking. • Two possible explanations for the absence of non-Western strategic thought: • The self-identity of the West • No common language shared by different traditions and time periods.
(a) The self-identity of the West • Why should ‘we’ (as American or Europeans) care about Chinese strategic thinking? Chinese strategic thinking has nothing to do with us. It does not make part of ‘our’ own political thought.
(b) Anachronism • Texts can be used anachronistically in two ways. • 用現在的理論來分析過去 • One analyses the wars of the late Roman Empire according to the 19th century theory of Clausewitz’s On War. • 用過去的理論來理解現代 • One analyses the current War on Terror according to the theory of Clausewitz. • The idea is that it is simply wrong to use On War for that matter, because by reason of their age, these texts must be outdated and obsolete.
(2) Sunzi Bingfa as a useful resource (有用的資源) • This route suggests that the approach to strategy that solely relies on Western strategic thinking ignores some genuinely important strategic insights into the nature of war and politics. We would be failing to properly study war and strategy if we do not take non-Western theories into account.
Suntzi Bingfa as one of the most translated and published works of Chinese antiquity • Some doubts: Alastair Iain Johnston (1999) • Thesketchy way in which Sun Tzu was exposed and taught • Introduced from the Western perspective
(3) Sunzi Bingfa as a Cultural Specific (文化特殊物) • ‘Srategic culture’ （戰略文化） • Each country (or culture) should have developed different strategic thinking. Strategic choice is determined by values or assumptions with roots deep in a state's ideational history. There are some strategic ideas outside of Europe that are very different from those of Europe.
China appears to be behaving according to unfamiliar rules. • Chinese behaviour therefore demands a new theoretical perspective. There is a need to study the Chinese strategic thinking that explains China’s foreign behaviour, which, they argue, cannot be comprehended with reference to ‘Western’ thinking. • Within this route, Sun Zi Bingfa might represent a typically Chinese form of warfare, which is unique to Chinese approaches to strategy.
Problematic • It essentialises the ‘China’ as an object which did not exist in the first place. • It might reinforce negative and even racist Western stereotypes about China. • the image of Sun Tzu as a cruel and cunning general appeals to the Western imagination. • This route is still not a call for us to take Chinese strategic thinking seriously. Instead, it suggests that we should look for explanation within the national-historical boundaries of China itself in order to deal with China problem – in effect, a strategy for keeping it at bay. • This would simply reinforce the inferiority of studies of Chinese strategic thinking in the mainstream of the Strategic Studies, which would involve empirical description rather than theory-building, answering to the ‘local’ instead of the ‘universal’.
(4) Universal Value (具普世性的價值) • The rationale of this route is the logic of war is universal. （戰爭邏輯的普世性） • We therefore need to use non-Western strategic thinking to question the accepted methodology and rationale of the strategic thoughts in the West. • As such, this line of argument is intended to incorporate non-Western strategic thinking into the idea of a dialogic, world-historical standpoint.
Michael Handel’s Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought (1992) • ‘When first comparing the works of Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, I assumed that these two great theorists of war represented what scholars have traditionally held to be the radically different Eastern and Western approaches to the art of war. Yet, after a careful study of these two ‘opposing paradigms’, I concluded that the basic logic of strategy, like that of political behaviour, is universal’.
Sunzi Bingfa in this vein does not only represent a typical Chinese form of warfare; its lessons are universal. • The least Eurocentric approach to Sunzi Bingfa • Possible criticism: Whose ‘universality’?
In short • Each of these routes, to different degree, runs the risk of being accused of orientalism. • This article does not suggest that universalism is ethically better than, say a culturalist approach because universalism is the least Eurocentric. Nor do I dismiss the idea of ‘strategic culture’. • Yet, we should be more attentive about the dangers of ‘orientalising’ non-Western strategic thought.
Part 3: THE TRANSLATION AND RECEPTION OF THE ART OF WAR IN THE WEST
Lionel Giles • British sinologist • The first complete translation of the Sunzi Bingfa was published in 1910
Arthur Sadler • Japanologist • Published a translation of the Sunzi Bingfa in his Three Military Classics of China (1944).
Samuel Griffith • Griffith was a retired U.S. Marine general at the time he translated Sun Tzu. • Published in 1963 and reprinted over the past decades.
Roger Ames (1993) • A philosophy professor at the University of Hawaii Ralph
Ralph Sawyer (1994) • Sawyer’s version focuses heavily on the operational side of the text
Alastair Johnston’s Cultural Realism (1995) • This book attempts an extensive study of the grand strategy and strategic preferences of China during the Ming Dynasty. • Johnston tries to answer two research questions: • Is there something that can be identified as a consistent and substantive Chinese strategic culture? • To what extent did this strategic culture influence China's security strategies?
Part I charts the ‘Seven Military Classics’to determine whether a specific strategic preference can be found in the texts • Part II turns his study to the actual practiced strategy of the Ming Dynasty, its military policy makers, and the empirical evidence of conflicts on the northern border with the Mongols.
Three phenomena of Chinese strategic thinking • A Chinese grand strategic culture indeed, most probably exists, in the form of a parabellum paradigm, paralleling the realpolitik we generally associate with former European foreign policy. • There is a second Chinese strategic culture, the more renowned Confusian-Mencian paradigm, which serves as a symbolic strategic culture, reinforcing the authority and credibility of the military elite. • Chinese strategic culture is build upon a strong belief in ultimate flexibility (quan bian), resorting to defensive strategies when conditions are unfavourable while using offensive strategies if circumstances allow for it.
Johnston apparently sees Sunzi Bingfa, or pre-modern Chinese strategic thinking in general, as a useful resource. • His approach be further categorised as a mixture of culturalist and universal approaches. • Culturalism: in a sense that Johnston recognises that China has indeed developed a unique strategic culture determined by its ideational history. • Universalism: in the sense that the policy outcome of Chinese strategic culture (i.e. the parabellum paradigm) is identical to the West.
CONCLUSION: MOVING TOWARDS STUDIES OF COMPARATIVE STRATEGIC THINKING
Strategic scholars in the Anglo-American world • While promoting their field of study in a way that does not seriously engage with alternative conceptions risks widening misunderstanding and setting the stage for hostility, resulting in the deterioration of the legitimacy of the field. • The study of war and strategy ought to be flexible enough to fully accommodate alternative conceptualisations of strategy in order to realise its essential purpose: to understand the nature of war. This requires cross-cultural communication.
Strategic scholars in the ‘non-West’ • We should not take the current agenda and approach in Strategic Studies for granted. • The Western experience of ‘the rest’, ‘the Orient’, or China, is a catalyst for theoretical innovation within the history of Western strategic thinking, rather than necessarily a call to take Chinese strategic thinkers seriously.
