Svechin and Lebow are now on my list.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kautiliya-Arthasastra-Part-1/dp/8120800397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237770874&sr=8-1

Part I is the English version. Part II is in Sanskrit. I have both for the day I decide to learn an ancient Indian language.

I picked up Svechin’s Strategy on seydlitz89′s recommendation. I’ll have to look up Lebow too.

Contemplation is important, that and as Nate mentions considering On War as a whole.

This has been a lot of fun. I only wish I had had time to read the various posts more thoroughly than I did, had been able to comment more than I have.

You asked me a while back as to a book suggestion. You mentioned the Kautaliya if I recall. Can’t say since I haven’t read it, but Weber wrote that it made Machiavelli look “harmless” . . . which might argue for, or against depending on your mood at the moment.

I do recommend Svechin’s Strategy, but later.

After thinking about this, my recommendation which you can take of leave, is Richard Ned Lebow’s “The Tragic Vision of Politics” which blends analysis of Thucydides, Clausewitz and Morgenthau into a very interesting synthesis of classical realism.

A very fine coda!

Clausewitz likes bullets, but only on the battlefield. I once tried to digest Clausewitz using bullets but was unable to do so. There are too many concepts that Clausewitz places in tension with other concepts, and placing them in bullet format causes the concepts to lose their connections to one another, unless you make the bullet list so long as to be unwieldy–but that defeats the purpose of bullet! It is folly to break Clausewitz down into neat, digestible bullets. If you want to understand Clausewitz, read him, and then write about him!

And read and write we did! It was a long journey, but worth every step.

Semper Fidelis,
Nate