Moving the enemy

Gary J. Bjorge

This extensive and detailed study of the Huai Hai Campaign addresses a doctrinal concept that is of growing importance to the US Army -- operational art. It does so by looking at a campaign that occurred over a half century ago on a relatively unsophisticated battlefield on the other side of the world. For some, that distance from the so-called modern battlefield may make this study seem almost irrelevant. I would argue that, to the contrary, it increases its relevance to the challenges we face today. This study has great relevance because in this time of expanding commitments and deployments around the world, it is more and more important that we increase our understanding of how other people think. This is important politically, socially, economically, and, of course, militarily. As Dr. Bjorge correctly points out, operational art is not about technology. It is a product of imagination and creative thought, and this is where we can learn from the Huai Hai Campaign. This campaign contains examples of commanders who were imaginative and creative. More important even, the campaign, as the author argues, shows non-Western classical Chinese military thought as an important inspiration for that creativity. Reading Sun Tzu's (Sunzi's) "The Art of War" has been in vogue in the Army for years. For too many readers, however, this book never becomes more than a collection of aphorisms -- pithy to some, trite to others, but without much applicability to their real-life challenges. This study looks at the Huai Hai Campaign from the perspective of "The Art of War" and shows that many of Sunzi's concepts and precepts were part of the campaign vision and the operations that were conducted during the campaign. By doing this, the study not only increases our understanding of the nature of operational art, it increases our understanding of the thought contained in one of China's great military classics. We commend it to you for your education and enjoyment.