On the Contents of China's Ancient Military Thought that Need to be Inherited and Developed

China's ancient military thought needs to be inherited and carried forward: any military thought has the characteristics of the times, while China's ancient military thought is characterized by philosophical speculation, high generality, attention to ingenuity and relative political and psychological universality. In today's society, the diversification of war has eliminated some of its tactics, but its dialectical thinking, military spirit, rational thinking and overall situation concept are still worth inheriting and carrying forward.

Military thought is a rational understanding of war, army and national defense, and a practical understanding and theoretical arrangement of war based on the era of war itself. However, China's ancient military thought represents the ancient rational concept of war. Due to the careful thinking and grasp of the war situation, ancient military strategists wrote many military works. At present, there are about 50 famous ancient art books in China, such as Sun Tzu's Art of War, Woods, Sima Fa, Lingyin Jing, Six Towers and Three Views, Ji Xiaoxin's Book, and Shangtan Studies. Among these military books, Seven Books on Military Classics compiled in Song Dynasty is a great achievement of those who collected military books from various military strategists.

In these military books, with the evolution of arms and services in various times, the equipment is progressing and the combat methods are constantly improving. The early operational methods were refined by later generations and revised into operational principles. For example, in Liu's Tao, various forms of combat methods are discussed, but in Sun Tzu's Art of War, they are summarized as the principles of topography and military geography of nine places, and the content is expanded on this basis. The same example is that General Kelly, commander of the US Marine Corps, believes that Sun Tzu's Art of War is the basis of all sports warfare. He listed this book as the annual reading of the army and asked every marine to read it. The evolution of the so-called art of war is actually more like the growth of a tree, and outdated tactics will become the strategic principle for cultivating future tactics. For example, when Qin unified the six countries, they attacked far and near and destroyed each other; The attack from the west to the east in the unified war of the Eastern Han Dynasty was broken one by one from near to far. The extensive alliance between the Three Kingdoms, the Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties; At the end of Sui Dynasty, Li Yuan unified the whole country and took advantage of the situation to enter the customs, which was at stake and enhanced his prestige. Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan made long-distance detours in the early Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, while the Southern Song Dynasty pretended to destroy the gold. In the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Sheng's "building a high wall, accumulating a wide grain, and calling the king slow"; In the early Qing Dynasty, Nurhachi's general plan of "I will go all the way well only if I go my own way" developed China's ancient strategic thought to a certain extent. The military power put forward and implemented by the rulers of the Song Dynasty was highly centralized, the military administrative power belonged to the Privy Council, and the military command power belonged to the "three divisions" and "three generals", which restricted each other and embodied the emperor's thought of unifying the army. A set of relatively complete principles and methods of military training put forward by Qi Jiguang in Ming Dynasty added new content to China's ancient thought of running the army. The thought of "controlling the blockage with danger" in the construction of Wan Li Great Wall in Qin Dynasty: the military garrison measures were implemented in Han Dynasty; From the Sui Dynasty to the early Tang Dynasty, the whole country was divided into several military strategic zones, and the principle of troop deployment was to use the strong to bring the weak, control the outside world, and maintain China and foreign countries. The coastal defense thought of defending the ocean, attacking the offshore, consolidating the coast and defending the important town put forward in the Ming Dynasty made China's ancient national defense thought have a new development. Li Shimin's "lasting" defense and siege, two grams at a time; The viewpoint put forward by Gong Wei in Sun Tzu's Art of War is quick and lasting. After the appearance of firearms, in the Ming Dynasty, some people put forward the idea that firearms should come first and all arms and services should work together, which further enriched the guiding ideology of China's ancient operations. During the evolution of China's ancient military thought itself, speculation and rationality were embodied in all works and became a part of China's ancient military thought. On the other hand, this speculation and rationality are reflected in politics and people's hearts. China's ancient military thought confirmed to some extent that political factors had a great influence on the war. With the evolution of military thought, politics has become more and more important in Sun Tzu's Art of War. Clausewitz's 1 viewpoint that "war is just a continuation of another means of politics" has not yet been reached, but it is still an important study of the nature of war. After all, politics itself is different from the continuation of politics in different periods. In Tamia Liu and Sun Tzu's Art of War, the contribution of the country and the people to the war is also discussed. Although China was still in the stage of "royal conflict" in ancient times, it was really extraordinary to realize the influence of the people on the war. It can be seen that in any period, rational thinking and philosophical speculation are extremely important for the promotion of war thought, and it is precisely worth inheriting and carrying forward.

At the same time, the military soul is also a must in the works of military strategists. We can see from the military situation in Sun Tzu's Art of War that "teaching precepts first, strictly observing statutes" and the discussion on "selecting generals, commanding generals, generals and using troops" in Six Towers that the ancient military strategists' views on the spirit of the army itself are similar to what clausewitz said. In fact, in a war with the same equipment and number of people, the spirit of the army is the best standard to distinguish combat effectiveness. Just like the previous Middle East War, the Arab Coalition forces occupied a great military advantage in the early stage, but their internal command was uncoordinated, their leadership was chaotic, and their military morale was low, which made them lose territory one after another and eventually lost to Israel, which made Israel occupy more territory and grow up. This is the role of the military soul, but this kind of military soul is more reflected in the military collective in ancient military works, and there are few specific places to obviously teach soldiers' personal qualities. Compared with China, the Japanese have absorbed Sun Tzu's Art of War and Six Towers, and Wanchuan Jihai has similar religious dogma to restrain and educate soldiers. Clausewitz also pointed out that the performance and benefits of martial arts and individuals "deeply understand the spiritual essence of this cause, inspire, exercise and absorb the forces active in the war, apply all their talents to this cause, and enable themselves to act reliably and flexibly through training, go all out and learn from it." However, in China's ancient military thoughts, there is a general tendency to attach importance to material factors and ignore spiritual factors, so it is undoubtedly important to inherit, develop and carry forward spiritual factors. From the recent wars in China, we can see that an army with great military spiritual strength has great combat effectiveness, which is also an important reason why China Army attaches importance to the spiritual construction of the army.

Similar to the situation of military soul, the psychological activity in military action is to better reflect the general's ability. This will be a test of a general's overall concept. And this only includes strategic operations and battlefield machine changes. Compared with clausewitz's exaggeration of battlefield contingency, China's ancient military thought focused on the way to deal with it, which played an extremely important role in the overall layout of the war. Military strategists in ancient China have long realized the contribution of war logistics to the war, and the use of various strategies is also brilliant. The interweaving of strategies on the battlefield contains psychological warfare factors. Objective, stable and obvious factors, such as the strength of combat effectiveness, material preparation for war, how to make circuitous way through dispersed assembly and encirclement, how to make the enemy strong and weak in the scheduled battle site, how to win more and how to "take circuitous as a straight line" in modern war, even in commercial and political games, the overall situation and psychological warfare are indispensable links. Nowadays, all kinds of commercial books derived from Sun Tzu's Art of War and memoirs of modern battlefield commanders reflect the great impetus of psychological warfare and the overall situation in all aspects. This is enough to show that it is actually a very powerful way to apply the overall situation and psychological warfare factors embodied in China's ancient military thought to modern war and life. It is an essential way of competition to carry forward and inherit these ideas.

China's ancient military thoughts were profound. In many ways, it is not just the question of using troops, but the relationship between politics and war, and the relationship between economy and war. Then, military and strategic issues are discussed from the political and economic levels, and many political, military and economic viewpoints that are still useful today are put forward. At the same time, China's ancient art of war also involved many military science, Science of Tactics, military science, military geography and military psychology.

There are basic theoretical principles with universal regularity in military management, military talents, war essence theory and war guidance theory. In addition to these general military principles with universal significance, China's ancient military thoughts put forward important and correct ideas in the aspects of war guidance theory, operational guidance theory, army building theory, military organization discipline education, etc. These ideas are not comprehensive, but enlightening. These basic theoretical principles are of universal reference and guiding significance to China's army and China's national defense construction in the face of new military changes in the world. These precious spiritual and cultural heritages from 3000 years ago to 174 years ago are worth remembering, and their dialectical thinking, military spirit, rational thinking and overall situation concept are worth inheriting and carrying forward.