Patterns of Conflict
| The works of |
| Works of John Boyd |
|---|
OODA WIKI Edition
Quantico Transcription
Okay. With that in mind, let’s start stepping forward here in time. So here we have some early commanders: Alexander, roughly around 300 BC, Hannibal around 200, Belisarius around 500 AD, Chingis Khan around 1200, Tamerlane around 1400. [unintelligible] The key thing I’m trying to bring up with all these people, seemed whether they read Sun Tzu or not, were consistent with his ideas, they were very extraordinary commanders. However there was a difference: the western commanders were more directly concerned with winning the battle, while the eastern commanders were closer to Sun Tzu, in that they wanted to have their adversary shattered even prior to the battle so they came totally unglued.
You have to understand Chingis Khan and Tamerlane had access to Sun Tzu’s ideas, remember they conquered the Chinese empire state which had access to him, so it’s not surprising. And all of them, whether they knew this term or not, were playing a cheng/chi game. So you tend to see that kind of thing. Okay?