"Strategy" (conclusion) - Rachya ARZUMANYAN

Rachya Arzumanyan's article "Strategy" (conclusion) is devoted to the analysis of the goals and elements of strategy in Sun Tzu's treatise "The Art of War" and their comparison with key propositions of Western military thought — Clausewitz, Machiavelli, Liddell Hart, and Luttwak. The work concludes a series of publications begun in ANIV No. 1 (28) and No. 3 (30) of 2010.

Introduction and Methodology
The author examines strategy as the result of the interaction of two sides in military confrontation, revealing the Chinese military-philosophical tradition through the prism of paired categories and comparing it with the European classics of strategic thought.

Defense and Offense
The key thesis of this section becomes the dialectic of invincibility and the possibility of victory:
• invincibility is a consequence of perfect defense and depends only on one's own actions;
• the possibility of victory is provided by the enemy and cannot be guaranteed by one's own efforts;
• complete defense, while sufficient for self-preservation, is insufficient for achieving victory, since it does not entail offense.

The author draws a parallel with Clausewitz, who likewise recognized defense as the stronger form of war, but gave preference to offense as the form allowing one to build upon what has been achieved. It is noted that a real campaign always combines defensive and offensive elements.

The Doctrine of Fullness and Emptiness
The central place in the article is occupied by the Chinese concept of "fullness" (invulnerability) and "emptiness" (vulnerability). Victory is achieved through a strike of the "full against the empty," that is, through using the enemy's weak points with one's own strength. The highest form of the commander's art is recognized not as a spectacular victory in battle, but as a victory won even before the battle begins — "one defeats the already defeated." The author correlates this proposition with Liddell Hart's strategy of the indirect approach, in which battle is regarded merely as one of the instruments for achieving a strategic goal, not as an end in itself.

Elements of Strategy and the Concept of Form
Arzumanyan analyzes the four elements of strategy according to Sun Tzu — Self, Enemy, Heaven (time), Earth (space) — dividing them into spiritual, material, and geographical groups. Special attention is given to the concept of the "form" of an army as an integrity that determines its strength relative to the enemy, and to the concept derived from it — "power" (or potency) as a hidden potential. Emphasis is placed on the requirement of concealing one's own form while striving to discern the enemy's form, as well as on the philosophical idea of a "limit," upon reaching which form passes into its negation — the absence of form, which renders the army invulnerable to assessment and analysis by the enemy.

Conclusion
The key conclusion of the article is that the strategic thinking presented in Sun Tzu's treatise is built on the dialectical unity of opposites — defense and offense, fullness and emptiness, form and its absence — and that this unity reveals a profound kinship with the basic principles of the Western strategic tradition, despite the differences in the cultural and philosophical contexts of their formation.