Opinions On The Value of Military Deception
The value of military deception is subject to a difference of opinions among military pundits. For example, the two books that are usually considered the most famous classics on warfare Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Clausewitz' On War seem to have diametrically opposed views on the matter. Sun Tzu greatly emphasizes military deception and considers it the key to victory. Clausewitz on the other hand argues that a commander has a foggy idea of what is going on anyway and that creating some sort of false appearance, particularly on a large scale, is costly and can only be acceptable from a cost-benefit-analysis point of view under special circumstances.
As a more modern example, the British military writer John Keegan seems to come close to Clausewitz' opinion in this particular matter, despite normally being highly critical of Clausewitz. In his book Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda he gives several historical examples of situations where one side held a great information advantage over his opponent and argues that in none of these cases was this decisive in and of itself for the outcome.
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