essay art of war

8/8/2019 Essay Art of War

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Universidad EAFIT

School Of Management

Conflict Management

Book Review

Presented to

Beatriz Eugenia Yepes

By

Sebastian Posada

August 15 2008

MedellinColombia


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INTRODUCTION

Through History the human being has always been in a constant conflict, with

other humans, with nature, or within him, and for that the human race has also

been looking for ways to resolve conflicts in a pacific and easy way, always

trying to avoid escalation of conflicts and avoiding the greatest conflict of all, the

war. But unfortunately war has been present all around the history, since

ancient times to our days, maybe the greatest of all the conflicts have happened

in the last century, with the World War I and World War II, which were

completely berserk wars, filled with slaughter, pain and suffering, leading, off

course to great economic crisis. As said before conflict will always be present in

many shapes, be it a conflict of two persons who arguing which car is better or

be it a conflict of two countries that could probably end in an escalation, and

finally in a war; the clear fact is that conflict is going to be present until the end

of times, and humanity must look for a way to solve these with civilized and

pacific methods. These methods can be many, but theres one that probably is

the best, and is the management of psychology in conflict, this way of solving

conflicts will be argued in the following pages.


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War has clearly been present in the twentieth century, with the 2 greatest wars

of the history under his arm. These wars had a particular and very strong

psychological component to guide the soldiers to war, and to moralize or

demoralize them, it made soldiers to stand against the enemy fiercely or

probably to go back and run like chickens, psychological factors clearly affected

these two wars, and was implemented by the greatest generals of the century,

unfortunately the psycho factor wasnt enough because it was implemented

later on in the conflict, but a well applied psychological war can win it before

leading any army to battlefield, in fact, it can be said that psychological war is

the best tool for side to win a war, or probably lets you win a war without going

to the battlefield, as Sun Tzu said in his book, The Art Of War, the supreme

art of war is to submit the enemy without fighting 1, and that is true, he who

defeats the enemy without fighting is clearly managing in a perfect way the

psycho factors.

Having and adequate management of psychological factors is very helpful in a

war, and can lead an army to victory if used correctly, in the WWII the United

States army used a magazine called LIFE 2 to show information to soldiers and

to moralize them with good news about the war, and that clearly made the

soldiers strike harder and dont get demoralized so easily by the enemy,

because with that magazine they knew they were fighting for something, for a

country counting on them to win the war; this is a clear example of the

importance of psychology in the war.

WWII is an example of the way that psycho works in the mind of a soldier, its a

pity it had fights, which means we cant truly say that psycho won this war, but

still was a very good ally to any of the armies who used it.

Another, and perhaps the greatest example of the importance of info-war (another way to say psychological war) was the renown and famous operation

Quicksilver 3, implemented by the allies in WWII, it consisted of six false

operations, in which the allies created a fictitious army which was going to

land in Pais-De-Calais in France; it was an asset of dummies, radio messages

and all kind of intelligence reports that made the Germans believe that in fact

1 Taken from Sun Tzus Book The Art Of War 2 Taken from the book Our Finest Hour, The Triumphant spirit of Americas World War II generation arecompilation of information made by LIFEs magazine.3 Taken from the book Great Chronic of World War 2.


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there was an army landing in Pais-De-Calais when in fact it was a lie, and the

great operation was happening in Normandy in the D-day, this provided the

allies an excellent opportunity to strike without too much resistance in the

beaches of Normandy; this is a perfect example of one Sun Tzus greatest

quotes, The Art Of War Is Based On Deceive 4, and in fact operation Quicksilver

is a perfect example.

The PSYWAR as defined by U.S. Department Of Defense is "The planned use

of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of

influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign

groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives. "5

This definition is a clear argument of what modern armies do in modern wars,

generally they throw leaflets from planes, to civilians, enemies or own soldiers,

to encourage or demoralize; leaflets were also used in the WWII to demoralize

the enemy, German soldiers often received leaflets like this "You are living in

bull's-eyes. Again and again German soldiers are being encircled on all

frontsOnly as prisoners of war can you escape annihilation." 6 This facts

obviously affected the soldiers, and plus the fact, that they were being defeated

on the battlefield, the Germans moral dropped dramatically. According to

historian James Erdmann, American military officials believed that tactical

delivery of leaflets was "the most satisfying and effective" method of affecting

enemy morale. As leaflet drop operations gradually evolved to include more

immediate tactical support (and as Allied bombardments outstripped leaflet

operations in German cities), the messages printed on the leaflets shortened

from lengthy, fact-based diatribes to simpler, visually-based messages

containing a cartoon or picture and one or a few simple phrases. 7 These

arguments confirm the point of the importance of psychology in a war, not onlymorale, but the entire psychology and understandment of the war is a vital key

to win it, and to effectively defeat and enemy. Certainly defeating an enemy

psychologically is nearly winning the entire war, as Sun Tzu said, a clever

general only attacks a demoralized enemy 8

4 Taken from Sun Tzus Book The Art Of War5 USA Department of Defense Website http://www.defenselink.mil/ 6 http://www.psywar.org/tracy.php 7 http://www.psywar.org/tracy.php 8 Sun Tzus book The Art Of War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagandahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychologicalhttp://www.defenselink.mil/http://www.psywar.org/tracy.phphttp://www.psywar.org/tracy.phphttp://www.psywar.org/tracy.phphttp://www.psywar.org/tracy.phphttp://www.psywar.org/tracy.phphttp://www.psywar.org/tracy.phphttp://www.defenselink.mil/http://www.psywar.org/tracy.phphttp://www.psywar.org/tracy.phphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagandahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological


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essay art of war

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