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It’s all Napoleon’s fault. The French Emperor left such an indelible impression upon the Occidental military imagination that he remains a strategic influence into the 21st century. It

helped that he led an army animated by the doctrines of revolution and soldiers upon whom he could lavish wealth, fame and title in reward for excellence on the battlefield. But the

revolution in military affairs over which he presided was the result of a unique, innate genius, combined with the restless energy and intellectual curiosity that would dominate Europe

militarily, transform the civil governance of France and dip in and out of a range of interests in the arts, sciences and humanities that few in history could rival: it was all about him. If

there is a core to his strategic legacy it is that the overwhelming concentration of force at the decisive point of the battle is the guarantor of victory, and examples like the breaking of

the allied centre at Austerlitz, or the ruthless pursuit of the Prussians at Jena, can still provoke lyrical rapture among military professionals and historians alike. It sounds pretty

simple, but required the complete reorganisation of the Grand Armee, so that it could march as individual corps capable of independent action and only concentrate at the last minute, at the

vital point and under the unified command of the only man capable of comprehending the dynamics of conflict on the newly massed battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars. The process had method

but was reliant upon the intuition of an exceptional mind, and so strategy has always since taken the identity of an art in the Western imagination; if it was just a matter of applying

formulae, any fool could do it. Napoleon was fortunate in having Carl von Clausewitz as his personal PR manager. _On War_ remains the one universal and timeless text that best captures the

nature of war and is a eulogy to Napoleon. As a Prussian, Clausewitz’s influence pervaded the emerging Prussian General Staff and what would become the Prusso-German school of military

strategy that cut such a vivid path through the World Wars of the 20th century and remains the basis of Anglo-American military doctrines right through the present day. For 200 years,

Western military thought has been dominated by the role of individual agency, the idea of strategy as an art, the central role of decisive manoeuvre and the qualities of élan, speed and

alacrity illuminating the battlefield. What the Western canon sometimes forgets, however, is that Napoleon and the Prusso-Germans ended up on the losing side. There is no equivalent to

Napoleon in the Eastern – essentially Chinese – experience. In searching to capture the essence of Oriental strategy the danger is to lapse into clichéd allusions to Sun Tzu and the

superiority of _Go_ over chess as an intellectual construct to inform strategy. Indeed, the nostrum that _defeating the enemy without fighting is the acme of war _makes as much sense now as

it did 2,500 years ago when Sun Tzu was writing _The Art of War, _but that’s not the point. The point is that everything within the Confucian tradition, including the contemporary variant of

_Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, _recognizes the supremacy of the state over society and of society over the individual. In this context, no matter the brilliance of Sun Tzu’s

insights, it could never be all about him. Rather than the single intuitive act that transforms the battlefield or delivers the campaign, Oriental strategy has always been about the

accretion of marginal advantage accumulated over time that eventually represents an overwhelming superiority against an enemy that may not even recognize he has been decisively engaged,

until it is too late. Its method is formulaic and repeatable and resembles science more closely than art; it doesn’t take a genius to apply it but then it would be a failure of the central

tenet of the strategy for it to depend on anything so capricious as individual agency. In the place of the brilliant stroke on a single battlefield, or the culminating battle in a campaign

that dominates the Western view of strategy, the Chinese will seek a tactical advantage here and a minor concession there, each insignificant in itself but irresistible when taken in

aggregate. Which brings us neatly to the One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR). The New Silk Road may be many things: a gesture of largesse by a benevolent Chinese nation; a project of a

scale and ambition appropriate to the rise of a new superpower; or, an exercise in predatory international finance where unlimited credit is offered to selected Chinese companies which then

drive a coach and horses through the Western concept of fair and open markets. Whatever its essential nature, nations from Sri Lanka to Italy are buying the deal and none more so than the

wounded of the international community. Is it a coincidence that the largest recipients of OBOR investment have been indebted nations like Pakistan, Nigeria and Argentina which can be

isolated from the international herd and developed into Chinese clients? The principle also applies nearer to home where Greece, Portugal and Italy have been assiduously courted by OBOR

investment. A tactical advantage here and a minor concession there – the consistent and enduring nature of Chinese strategy is revealing itself in plain sight and has even been the subject

of a (leaked) discussion by the British National Security Council, but few have yet joined the dots to see an initiative that sits firmly in a strategic tradition that has served China well

for millennia. OBOR is not only about securing long-term strategic advantage, it is also about mitigating short-term vulnerability. Currently, half the world’s merchant tonnage of shipping

passes through what China claims as territorial waters on a daily basis. The Chinese economic miracle is wholly dependent upon sea lines of communication (SLOCs) and its most likely enemy

possesses – in the US Navy – the most potent instrument of naval power ever to put to sea. So what is the Chinese response? Typically, it is not to seek conflict; rather, and under the aegis

of OBOR, it is the massive development of road and rail communications across continental Asia. At the same time, investment in existing ports or the creation of entirely new facilities

from Malacca in Malaysia, through Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Gwadar in Pakistan to Djibouti, is creating basing facilities for the fast developing People’s Liberation Army Navy that will

allow it to operate through the full length of Chinese SLOCs to the Gulf and beyond. Finally, internal reforms within the Chinese military have seen a significant switch in investment away

from land forces and to the navy, along with an entirely new emphasis on joint operations (i.e. land, sea and air forces in combination) which is the prerequisite for operations in the 21st

century. All global empires eventually grasp the utility of maritime power, as Britain did after Trafalgar in 1815 and America after Midway in 1942. Napoleon never did and that’s why his

ambitions were confined to a single continent; China will not make the same mistake. Finally, if it did come to a fight in the Western Pacific how would the two sides match up? The Americans

continue to rely on small numbers of large, expensive, heavily manned and hard to replace systems typified by the aircraft carriers that have been the capital platforms of the USN since

Pearl Harbor. It’s a navy designed to place overwhelming force at the decisive point of the future battle and sits firmly within the Western tradition. In the future, it will confront a

force that will benefit from massive Chinese investment in artificial intelligence, producing large numbers of small, inexpensive, expendable and highly autonomous systems that will seek

localised tactical advantage. It’s a joint force that will build multiple minor engagements into a strategic outcome and sits firmly in the Eastern tradition. East vs West: who does strategy

best? Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.