From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jun 12 2001 - 11:33:22 MDT
måndagen den 11 juni 2001 11:30 Felix Ungman wrote:
> On fredag 8 juni 2001 13.49, Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> wrote:
> >fredagen den 8 juni 2001 10:56 Leonardo Gonzalez wrote:
> >> I postulate that electromagnetic / mechanical power = political /
> >> military power...
> >
> >I think that is taking analogies too far.
>
> Not quite, Carl von Clausewitz has some excellent texts on this. War is
> nothing but an extreme form of politics. That is, the super goal in war is
> always a political goal. However, sub goals are on the other hand very
> physical. Military force is indeed a mechanical force, a large scale
> version of the punching fist in hand-to-hand fighting.
Clausewitz concept is based on seeing military power as the ability to do
work fast, a fairly good analogy. But while mechanical force is involved in
warfighting, nobody would claim an army would be twice as powerful because
their guns had twice the wattage of the opponent. Personally I am much more
of a Sun Tzu person - it is information and application of it that really
matters. You need the ability to carry out your plans, but a good general can
do so with a minimum expenditure of physical energy or other valuables.
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