André Beaufre's concept of strategy is not purely a military one. Beaufre's ideas were shaped by his service background as a French military officer. These three books together form a triptych which set out in outline the components of a theory of total strategy.

His most important books include: An Introduction to Strategy, Deterrence and Strategy and Strategy of Action. The French military strategist General André Beaufre (1902-1975) is probably most famous for his An Introduction to Strategy (1963), translated in 1965. Finally, this writing expounds how Chinese scholarship views similarities and differences between Beaufre and Sun Tzu, and how Beaufre's total strategy might have influenced aspects of China's grand strategy. This paper commences with a brief introduction of André Beaufre and his major concepts of total strategy then it proceeds with sketching the probable value of Beaufre's An Introduction to Strategy in Chinese military science. Chinese scholarship has taken André Beaufre's An Introduction to Strategy and, based on content analysis, juxtaposed it with Sun Tzu's The Art of War. This, though, is not the case for Chinese discourse. Yet so far, based on the author's knowledge, General André Beaufre has not been subject to comparative analysis with Sun Tzu in English academic discourse. Comparing and contrasting Sun Tzu with other great military thinkers of the West has produced invaluable insights, and, as Michael Handel put it, 'allows us to better understand these works on their own terms.' Prominent comparative analyses of Sun Tzu with others include: Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Jomini Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and Machiavelli Liddell-Hart and Sun Tzu.

Jing tian biography of sun tzu