Anglophone discussions on the art of war are usually circling around either dead authors or around anglophone authors.
The anglophone world makes up only a small part of the world, though - we are certainly missing a lot if we ignore the rest of the world!?
I myself had huge difficulties to spot art of war talent that does not publish in English. Right now I could think only of one who's alive, and he ceased to write about the art of war more than two decades ago.
Thus a call for names:
Do you know talented authors/ thinkers on the art of war who do not publish in English?
(Post-Cold War activity is preferred.)
(Post-Cold War activity is preferred.)
Leave a comment!
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A veteran of World War II and retired officer of the Finnish Defence Forces, Pekka Kantakoski has written a book, published in 2006, called 'National Defence or Strategic Mistakes: Finland's Defence in the 21st century'. I own a copy in Finnish, doubt it has been translated. I can't tell how he measures up in the eyes of a wiser man, but to me his pro-armor and pro-operational art views seem very reasonable.
ReplyDeleteHey, now that you mention it, there was a document written by a couple of PLA colonels, called unrestricted warfare. It caused the yanks some unrest.
ReplyDeleteI know UW and read parts of it, but (a) it was published in English IIRC and gained quasi-anglophone attention, (b) it wasn't really a display of talent.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably sick of me mentioning it, but there are a bunch of Swedish blogs which write about this sort of stuff, most of them written by currently serving Officers. Some are anonymous, some are not.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more prolific is "Chefsingenjören" (The Chief Engineer). The writer is named Björn and is a former air force pilot. Lots of posts on all manner of topics.
http://chefsingenjoren.blogspot.com/
Then there's the blog by the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences which is pretty good.
http://krigskonster.blogspot.com/
Then there are two official blogs written by the heads of the airforce and the army. These two are fairly recent, and have been surprisingly informative so far.
http://armebloggen.se/
http://flygvapenbloggen.se/
Another very interesting blog called "The Observation Post" is completely dedicated to documenting the Russian military and its kit.
http://oplatsen.wordpress.com/
I'm not sick of you mentioning it - I asked for it.
ReplyDeleteThere's nevertheless the issue that I can only read about 20% of the Swedish language and that won't improve any time soon.
What's really needed is a Western think tank for these topics which is multinational enough to penetrate all relevant language barriers to be aware of all published advances.
I remember perusing essays written by a Chinese national whom they claim is the first proponent of Information Warfare.
ReplyDeleteI believe The Spiegel did an interview with him.
His name is Shen Wei Guang (沈偉光).