It's not just generals and soldiers who keep the The Art of War in print. Businessmen, coaches, and lawyers all seem to get something out of Sun Tzu's 6th century military tome — memorizing and repeating passages that speak to the tactics and strategy of success, whether that's on Wall Street or in a war zone.

But for all its long-lasting cultural influence, the book is limited by its lack of specifics. "Know your enemy" and "win without fighting" are all well and good, but such axioms don't really help today's GI prepare to deploy with a robotic squadmate or decide what information to place on a digital head's-up display. Modern warriors, surrounded by sophisticated gear and nuanced rules of engagement, need to meditate on the balance between technology and soldier, man and machine, civilian and veteran. For that kind of wisdom, they must go to military science fiction — and one great book in particular.

Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, published in 1959, is aging remarkably well. The tome chronicles the early military career of Johnnie Rico, who fights alien arachnids while clad in a heavily armed exoskeleton. The troopers drop from orbit one by one to wreak havoc on whatever target the Sky Marshal deems worthy of the attention. It's a cool adventure novel with a soldier's eye view that doubles a treatise on modern warrior culture, the limits of military technology, and the awful glories of fighting infantry. There's a reason military academies like West Point recommend cadets read the book.

Like Sun Tzu's masterpiece, Heinlein's abounds with quotable axioms. You may not hear overly intense car salesman quoting from Starship Troopers anytime soon, but here are six reasons why the book is a practical guide to 21st century warfare.

1) What is war good for?

"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst."

-- Mr. Dubois, Johnnie's history and moral philosophy teacher.

People have been conditioned to think that war is only wasteful and tragic. Often it is both, to be sure. But the "what is it good for? Absolutely nothing" line is entirely too simplistic. War is a tool that can be applied to many situations: to roll back aggression and deter aggressors, to end dictatorships, to stop genocide, or to protect the supply of commodities central to the nation's interest. You don't blame a screwdriver when someone uses it to break into a car — you blame the car thief. Likewise, war is an extension of governmental policy — the better the policy, the better the war's outcome. Invading France to conquer it was a Nazi crime. Invading France to liberate it was an Allied triumph.

Despite our best wishes and peaceful intentions, someone else with a gun can shape the future. A coalition of the willing can build schools in Afghanistan, but a couple of jerks with rifles and a can of gasoline can reduce it to ashes. Sometimes, meeting violence with more effective violence is what it takes to give peace a chance. Consider the recent example of eliminating Columbian FARC rebels with precision airstrikes. This is a smart use of force — a way to use violence to set conditions of a diplomatic solution. Instead of starting a cycle of violence, a smart war can end one.

Sun Tzu says: "In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact. To shatter and destroy it is not so good."

2) Mobility is essential

"An infantryman can fight only if someone else delivers him to his zone; in a way I suppose pilots are just as essential as we are." -- Johnnie Rico

"You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended."

Sun Tzu put a lot of importance of getting to the fight first. "You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended," he writes. He didn't go into specifics of how to get there; he was thinking of carts and horses, not tilt-rotor aircraft and ship-to-shore Marine Corps hovercraft. But as Rico's quote here shows, Heinlein saw the future of expeditionary warfare.

Mobility is crucial to war fighting, so much so that even the ultimate infantryman, Johnnie Rico, grudgingly acknowledges it. Ever wonder why the Pentagon spent so much time, money, and lives developing the V-22 Osprey for Special Operations and the Marine Corps? It's because all the things that machine can do — take off and land like a helicopter, then swivel its rotors so it can fly fast and far like an airplane — makes the military more mobile. The Osprey's capabilities extend the range, increase the speed, and expand the flexibility of the troops that ride in it. The role it plays in winning a war is to bring troops and artillery to places where the enemy won't expect them. Infantry is most successful when hitting opponents from directions the enemy didn't plan on.

Future plans for things like flying cars and orbital transportation systems may seem like wasteful blue-sky research at the Pentagon, but smart tacticians always consider the logistics of mobility. Transportation will remain a crucial enabler of successful modern war. Heinlein, seeing the rise of helicopters on battlefields in Korea in the 1950s, correctly predicted the growing interdependence between pilots and passengers.

3) Focus and automation

"If you load a mudfoot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, someone a lot more simply equipped — say with a stone ax — will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier" — Johnnie Rico

Heinlein cleverly touches on two points here. The first has to do with controlling information. Remote cameras, digital maps, satellite radio comms, and digital targeting can be battlefield assets — or, they can create a flood of data that can overwhelm a pilot, driver, or foot soldier. (Consider the real-life Land Warrior, an attempt to wire every foot soldier with tech. It didn't go over so well.) Only the most pertinent information should be provided to front-line warriors, leaving them to concentrate on the tactical situation around them.

The second has to do with the rise of military robots. They may be the ultimate gadgets, but the key to maximizing their potential is by automating them, a critical goal of the Pentagon's robotic programs such as this robotic mule for the Marine corps, which can navigate on its own or follow a human leader without direct control. If a Marine is too busy controlling a bot with a joystick, he or she is not watching for (or shooting at) the enemy.

If a Marine is too busy controlling a bot with a joystick, he or she is not watching for the enemy

4) There are no dangerous weapons, just dangerous people

"Maybe they'll do without us someday. Maybe some mad genius with myopia, a bulging forehead and a cybernetic mind will devise a weapon that can go down a hole, pick out the opposition and force it to surrender or die — without killing the gang of your own people they have imprisoned inside. In the meantime, until they do, my mates can handle the job."

-- Johnnie Rico

With robots and other remotely controlled systems becoming more capable all the time, there's a lot of talk about replacing front-line troops with machines. As the United Nations holds hand-wringing meetings about killer robots the Defense Department runs competitions with androids and the Navy lands autonomous jets on aircraft carriers. In fact, the rise of the machines is not so much replacing people but about figuring out ways to help robots and humans work together in combat.

Why not replace the humans? Because even the most advanced machines are still no match for the human brain. Consider hostage rescue, the most demanding mission the military can take on. It requires a mix of stealth, overwhelming force, and target discrimination that is hard to get right. Could a robot enter a room, scan each face, match them against a database, separate hostage from target, and fire its weapon? One day, probably. But when it does, the computation probably won't happen as quickly as a well-trained human. More importantly, the results won't be as reliable.

Even the most advanced machines are still no match for the human brain

Infantry will remain critical to future wars and military missions that require nuance, flexibility, and a deft but lethal touch. Even in an era of drone strikes, long-range missiles, and robots, there will still be a need to put boots on the ground. Don't forget that war is a "you break it, you buy it" situation, too, one that leads to armed nation building. In an even broader sense, putting people into harm's way is a clear sign of a government's commitment. Shooting at a distance and using only unmanned systems can indicate the opposite.

What Starship Troopers preaches is that, despite all the technology, human beings are the heart of a winning military. "There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people," a drill sergeant says in the book.

5) A war by any other name can still kill you

"Everything up to then and still later were 'incidents,' 'patrols' or 'police actions.' However, you are just as dead if you buy the farm in an 'incident' as if you buy it in a declared war." — Johnnie Rico

Suits in Washington D.C. and the Hague are fixated on terminology. There are as many ways these days to intercede militarily than ever before. But The distinction between dying during a humanitarian mission in Somalia or as an advisor in Iraq or as a coalition member in Afghanistan is purely academic. Being out in harm's way is no less frightening—and may indeed be worse—when the government sending you there is not fully committed to calling it a war. It's a good idea of policymakers to remember that as they balance diplomacy with military action.

The problem comes when the terminology becomes built into the rules of engagement, limiting what the troops can do when they are on the ground. Sun Tzu put it this way: "No leader should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen."

Writing in the years after the so-called police action in Korea became a pitched battle between China and the United Nations, Heinlein saw how language was influencing the way leaders sent troops to war, but he recognized that for the soldiers on the ground, the risks were the same no matter what name you use.

6) True professionals control violence

"The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence." — Johnnie Rico

The range and power of modern weapons makes it easy to flatten entire cities using even conventional weapons. But there are few times when such overwhelming firepower is really useful, especially in the era of modern global media, when reports of atrocities and overkill spread around the world in moments. Besides, enemies can also blunt air power by seeking refuge in urban areas and by using decoys.

This is a golden era of shooting exactly what you want to destroy

The solution is precision, and this is a golden era of shooting exactly what you want to destroy. Advanced sensors, air/land/sea vehicles that can stay on alert for extended periods of time, and immediate battle damage assessment have changed the rules of warfare — as well as what is considered acceptable collateral damage.

All these factors make it easier to control violence. But it's up to the politicians to tell the military what purpose the violence serves, and that hasn't gotten any easier. Sun Tzu himself warned about it, saying, "He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign." However, Sun Tzu never had to deal with satellite communications, a 24-hour news cycle, or a pesky thing called democracy.

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