How do we achieve change in the world? In the Western approach, we think in terms of subjects. The individual should have clear goals, resolute will, conceptual clarity and a touch of heroism to persevere. The Chinese approach, Jullien argues, focuses on the situation. What is its propensity? What can be exploited? And ideally, how might imperceptible, resistance-less changes have been made far upstream, so as to ensure the situation faced unerringly serves our interests?
This is book is a stunning work of conceptual analysis. Jullien seeks to use ancient Chinese thought as a mirror to reflect back the 'un-thought thoughts' of western mindsets. By exploring and comparing a very different approach, he helps show how western concepts of strategy (political and military) operate within intellectual boundaries that even the most astute observes, such as Machiavelli and Clausewitz, may at best recognise but do not break free of. In order to shine that mirror, he offers a compelling, challenging, thought-provoking analysis of Chinese strategic thought.
What struck me almost immediately in reading this, are the overlaps between Chinese texts such as the Tao Te Ching (which features heavily in Jullien's account), and contemporary western ideas such as Complexity Science. There's echos as well of Iain McGilchrist's brilliant 'Master and his Emissary', with modern western thought dominated by its left hemisphere (emphasizing possessive, abstract, rule-bound action), against the right-hemisphere led mindset of these early Chinese authors, seeing relationships instead of things, transitions and processes instead of actions, and forever emphasizing the bounded situation, the all-encompassing environment, rather than isolating concept and world.
I first learned about this book in an off-hand reference from Andrew Marshall, the great American strategist, who led the Office of Net Assessment for half a century. I can see why Marshall (who had an entire seperate apartment just for his books) thought highly enough to raise this. There is a remarkable degree of overlap between the emphasis on analyzing the situation, getting to grips with the problem, and looking for enduring advantages to exploit. It also helps explain why the Chinese regarded Marshall as a sage, trying to collect everything he wrote. The affinity is remarkable, and both of these avenues, of Chinese thought along lines of Complexity and Net Assessments suggest rich avenues for future research.
As a discipline, Strategy is often classed as an offspring of Military History and of Political Science. I have long thought a third parent should be added: Philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once described philosophy as concerned with 'The sort of ideas we attend to, and the sort of ideas which we push into the negligible background govern our hopes, our fears, our control of behaviour. As we think, we live'. That to me is what strategy also encompass. How do we understand the world, especially our relationships with others and our attempts to change it.
In 'A Treatise on Efficacy' Francois Jullien offers a profound examination of strategy, Western and Chinese philosophy and their core ideas of how we think about change, and in turn how we engage the world. This book does take some work to chew through, but for anyone interested in strategy, whether military, political, diplomatic, or simply in obtaining a very different way of viewing the world and its nature, this is a brilliant book.
Strongly recommended.