Study On Military Strategy Of Early Liao Dynasty

Liao Dynasty (AD.907-AD.1125)， established by Khitan， is one of thefrontierminority regimes of China.Throughout the history of Liao Dynasty， it iseasy to find the fact that “Liao governs the country with military force”.So the studyon various aspects of the military of Liao Dynasty， has become an importantcomponent of the research on Military History.It is worth noting that， whileweighing the powerful military force of Liao Dynasty， we can’t ignore exploratingLiao’s military strategy because of its identity of frontier minority regime.The papertries to introduce the concept and method of the Science of Strategy to investigate themilitary strategy of Emperor Taizu and Emperor Taizong，which are important periodof Liao’s military strategy’s formation and change，in order to restruct historicalexperience of early Liao’s military action.The article has four chapters.The first chapter mainly introduces the historical background of early Liao’smilitary strategy.The writer traces the origin of early Liao’s military strategy throughanalyzing it’s historical background， and then finds that the military strategy ofearly Liao is jointly restricted by the factors of strategic environment and traditionalculture.Strategic environment includes geographical environment，the development ofeconomic and the surrounding situation.The traditional strategic culture of Khitanincludes its values and customs.The second chapter mainly discusses the military strategy during the period ofEmperor Taizu of Liao Dynasty.This chapter starts with Taizu’s external expansionstrategy--attack the outside territory after attack the inside territory，and summarizethe character of strategy of this period through analyzing its military action.The third chapter mainly discusses the military strategy during the period of theEmperor Taizong of Liao Dynasty.This chapter summarizes the character of strategy of this period through analysing Taizong’s strategy action of supporting the forces ofbuffer region，conquering the Later Tang Dynasty and Later Jin Dynasty， andinvading the Central Plains.It can be found that，during the period of Taizong’sgovern，the attack to Central Plains is continuous and bold，which is the inheritanceand development of "Hunting" Strategy and "Using the Hans to attack Hans" Strategy.The forth chapter mainly discusses the change and influence of early Liao’smilitary strategy.On the one hand，this chapter analyses the inheritance，change andthe reason of its change；on the other hand，this chapter summarizes the influence toLiao Dynasty in all directons caused by the change of strategy.This kind ofinfluencecovers the aspects of politics， economics and military.In the aspect ofpolitics，Liao establishes the policy of "Rule according to customs"；in the aspect ofeconomics，Liao terms is to increases the proportion of agricultural economics；and inthe aspect of military，Liao establishes the strategy of "Elastic defense".