What Does the Art of War Say About Fighting for a Cause

For good generals do not assault in open boxing where the danger is common, just do information technology always from a hidden position, so as to kill or at least terrorize the enemy while their own men are unharmed as far as possible.
—Vegetius, De Re Militari[ane]

Colin Gray, the late doyen of strategy scholars, branded one of his maxims of war and strategy as: "If Thucydides, Sun-tzu, and Clausewitz Did Not Say It, Information technology Probably Is Not Worth Saying."[two] The acceptance of these three texts equally a strategic canon, though, poses a challenge for the contemporary strategist. None of these works was originally written in English, and all of them were compiled in an age far removed from our ain frames of reference. Thus, we must rely on others to accurately translate the words of the original text for us, and we concurrently need some insight into the historical context in which they were written to verify our interpretations of their pregnant. Only then can we accurately approximate their modern relevance. For Clausewitz, we are assisted profoundly in this try by his dogged decision to conspicuously define his terms. And, although Thucydides' Greek is renowned for its translation difficulties, his lengthy explanations of historical factors—including the documentation of contemporaneous speeches and debates—aids the student in wrestling with the varied meanings of the text.

Sun Tzu's The Art of State of war presents a far more daunting obstruction. Its brevity, terse fashion, cabalistic language, and lack of historical tethers frustrate our efforts to gain clear insight. Within the text, both private characters and entire verses stubbornly defy any scholarly consensus. No 1 truly translates Sun Tzu; they but strive to translate him for the modern reader. Moreover, our general lack of knowledge near the historical factors that shaped Sun Tzu'south thinking hampers our ability to independently assess the various scholarly interpretations. At the war college level, near approach Thucydides with at least a vague notion of the disharmonize between Athens and Sparta, and Clausewitz'southward Napoleonic era is far from alien. Conversely, very few will approach Dominicus Tzu with whatever comparable understanding of what collection the animosity betwixt the states of Wu and Yue—the original text'due south only pregnant historical reference.

Sword of Goujian. Goujian was the male monarch of the Kingdom of Yue (present-solar day northern Zhejiang) most the end of the Spring and Autumn period. (Wikimedia)

These twin problems of ambiguous translation and lack of historical context combine to create an environment ripe for distortion. Nowhere is this trouble more prevalent than in our amorphous belief that Sun Tzu emphasized non-vehement competition through the iconic goal of winning without fighting. A close exam of the actual terminology used in The Art of War, coupled with an examination of the historical record supporting the text'south pregnant, suggests that while engaging in pitched battles was certainly discouraged, killing the enemy in combat was far from a disfavored practise.

Does Sunday Tzu Truly Prioritize a Bloodless Victory?

Statue of Dominicus Tzu in Yurihama, Tottori prefecture, Nihon (Wikimedia)

Many today view winning without fighting as the cornerstone of Lord's day Tzu's overall war machine philosophy. Michael Handel'south Masters of War highlights its significance to his entire understanding of conflict: "Dominicus Tzu, who concentrates on the highest political and strategic levels and is interested in achieving a anemic victory before the outbreak of war, assigns a higher priority on the apply of not-military means."[iii] Linking Sunday Tzu with modernistic thinking, General David Petraeus adds: "For Sun Tzu, and for whatever strategist, of course, the best strategy is the one that delivers victory without fighting."[4]

The source of this theory of strategic victory through non-violent measures is not in dispute. It derives from the translation of the second verse of the third chapter in The Fine art of War: "For to win one hundred victories in i hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."[five] While this translation is not incorrect per se, information technology fails to convey crucial differences between ancient Chinese terminology and its modernistic variants. What is ordinarily rendered in English as "to subdue the enemy without fighting" is shown in its original Chinese script below, with a rough direct translation of each private character:

First, notation the stated object of one's effort to subdue is not the enemy's state, leadership, general population, or even its regular army writ large, but rather the private soldiers that make up its ranks. This implies that we might exist overreaching in our supposition that Sun Tzu here is making a suggestion of conflict avoidance at the level of thou strategy or even military strategy, rather than simply a tactical ploy for advantage over an opposing force one might presently expect to appoint.

From a contemporary Western perspective, though, interpreting non battle (不戰) as without fighting is a perfectly logical translation choice. If you aren't battling, you aren't fighting, and if you aren't fighting, you most likely aren't warring in a traditional sense. Just did the ancient Chinese concur this same perspective of their own written language? Does non battle truly equal not fighting at the strategic level in the context of Chinese warfare during this menstruum? I can argue that information technology does not, and the term non battle fails to convey a concurrent meaning of non-kinetic methods to subdue the enemy'southward forces prior to conflict commencing. Lord's day Tzu is not seeking avoidance of fighting in toto; he is but looking to avoid existence forced into fighting a pitched battle.

Defining the Terms: What Did Battle Hateful In Sun Tzu'south Era?

Since aboriginal Chinese writing lacked a precise graphic symbol to express war or fighting as an abstruse concept, nosotros demand to carefully parse the exact terminology used in each situation.[6] To get a sense of what the term battle meant in Sun Tzu's fourth dimension, other contemporaneous texts from that era must be analyzed. One of the most revealing sources is the Zuozhuan, the oldest historical narrative of the Spring and Autumn era (722 - 468 BCE). In 519 BCE, the land of Wu invaded the border region of its more than powerful neighbour, Chu. Chu responded by dispatching its ain army along with an brotherhood of iii vassal states to expel the intruders. 1 of the Wu commanders recommended offset attacking the weaker alliance partners:

Chu can be defeated. If we dissever our army and offset assault Hu, Shen, and Chen, they are certain to flee first. When these 3 domains have been defeated, the armies of the princes will be shaken in their purpose. When the princes are divided and disorderly, Chu is sure to turn in wholesale flight.[seven]

Wu follows this advice, defeats the three vassal armies in gainsay, and causes Chu to flee earlier their own army even attempts to engage the Wu forcefulness. The Zuozhuan, nonetheless, emphasizes the official courtroom record volition deny labelling this action every bit a boxing: "The text does not speak of 'doing boxing' [戰] because Chu had not yet prepare upward its formation [陳]."[8]

This noticeably diverges from our modern agreement of the term battle, in which we make no substantive stardom between whether or non both sides established formations before the fighting starts. Conversely, a symbiotic human relationship between the terms battle (戰) and germination (陳) is well documented in military writings from Sun Tzu'southward period. In an earlier exegetical passage, the Zuozhuan reiterates: "In all cases apropos troops, if the enemy was not yet in proper formation [陳], the text says that 'such and such troops were defeated.' When all were in proper formation, the text says, 'did battle' [戰]."[ix] The indicate is that in ancient Chinese writing, battle did not necessarily convey a pregnant of generic fighting, but instead represented a specific subset of fighting—that in which both sides were afforded the opportunity to organize their ranks before kinetic operations commenced.

The Wuzi—another military text thought to be written by a famous full general of this era, Wu Qi, and afterwards codified along with The Art of War into the Seven War machine Classics of Ancient China—describes the relationship betwixt formation and battle through a description of the "4 discords" of military operations:

If there is discord in the state, then you cannot deploy the army;
If there is discord in the army, then you cannot organize your formations [陳];
If in that location is discord in your formations, then you lot cannot join battle [戰];
If there is discord in boxing, then you cannot accomplish victory.[10]

Establishing formations, though, was inappreciably a prerequisite necessary to fight and kill the enemy. In a later verse the Wuzi notes that if the enemy's "formations [陳] are not nonetheless settled...assail them without any doubts."[11] What the Zuozhuan and Wuzi both point to is a narrow definition of  doing boxing, composed of 3 sequential steps that must be completed before one can formally allocate a military action as a boxing:

• Stride ane: Deploy the army

• Step 2: Form orderly ranks (陳)

• Step iii: Engage the enemy (戰)

Only if each side has an opportunity to class orderly ranks can one state that a battle has technically occurred. The ample catalogue of armed forces actions documented in the Zuozhuan supports this restrictive definition. Of the 584 examples of inter-state conflict recorded in the text, only 31 are classified as battles (戰). The vast majority of military actions, despite as well involving soldiers slaughtering other soldiers in armed combat, are alternatively categorized as: attacks (伐), surprise attacks (擊), invasions (侵), sieges (圍), annihilations (滅), annexations (取), forced entries (入), or defeats (敗). The historical record implies that Sun Tzu'due south military machine predecessors also appeared to disfavor pitched battles, preferring alternate methods of fighting instead.

Given this view of aboriginal Chinese warfare and the language information technology employed, information technology becomes easier to envision a more limited interpretation of what Sun Tzu sought to attain through his frequently-quoted verse. When Sun Tzu recommends that one strive to subdue the enemy without doing battle (不戰), he is non advocating non-kinetic measures undertaken prior to reaching the first step (deploy the army), such every bit diplomatic or psychological operations to convince the enemy to forgo resistance and immediately submit to its political will. This is a thoroughly modern estimation of battle avoidance.[12]

Instead, Sun Tzu assumes that both sides have already gone to state of war and deployed their forces, but that one side should leverage the seam between steps one and two, and therefore launch an attack prior to the enemy having time to organize its ranks in grooming to receive the blow. If ane side denies the other an opportunity to mount an effective tactical defence, military machine victory will be much easier to accomplish. What Sun Tzu is trying to avoid, if at all possible, is beingness forced into fighting a set piece battle in which he might have an equal to or greater than hazard of losing.

The logic behind the conventional estimation of "winning without fighting" is further eroded later in the third chapter, where Sun Tzu discusses force ratios and argues that when 1 is five times the enemy's strength, attack. If winning without fighting is the preferred option, why wouldn't a five-fold numerical advantage permit one to achieve submission without ever resorting to an assail? Furthermore, Lord's day Tzu concludes the chapter with his famous adage that if one knows oneself and the enemy, "in a hundred battles [戰] y'all will never be in peril."[thirteen] If conflict avoidance is the strategic priority, why wouldn't this information authorization let ane to profitably avoid engaging in battles birthday? Sun Tzu is certainly non hesitant about engaging in warfare when he possesses a clearly superior advantage; what he is doing is rejecting the traditional ideal of offering the enemy a fair fight.

Does Historical Evidence Support This Interpretation of Battle?

The Zuozhuan provides several illuminating examples of this traditional view of boxing, as well every bit the skeptical opinion taken by astute war machine practitioners eager to upend the deference given to this increasingly risky norm. In 638 BCE the Duke of Vocal went to war with the country of Chu, deployed his regular army, and so organized its ranks on a river bank to look the advancing Chu forces:

The men of Song had already formed their ranks, but the men of Chu had not yet finished crossing the river. The supervisor of the armed forces [Ziyu] said, "They are numerous, and we are few. Permit us attack them before they accept completed the crossing." The duke said, "That won't practise." When the Chu army had completed the crossing simply had not notwithstanding formed their ranks, the supervisor of the military again notified him. Simply the knuckles said, "That will not do." Only later the Chu army was properly marshaled [陳] did he attack them. The Song troops were completely defeated.[14]

Following Song's defeat, Ziyu excoriates the Knuckles for his failure to set on the Chu ground forces while disarrayed and criticizes him for his inability to "understand warfare."[15] Just a decade subsequently, Chu found himself once more in a similar situation. At war against the state of Jin, it marched its army to the edge of some other river where the enemy forces awaited on the reverse depository financial institution. After a protracted delay, a representative of the Jin side approached with a proposal to intermission the stalemate:

I have heard: "In ritual matters one does not avoid enemies." If y'all desire to join in battle [戰], then I volition retreat ane twenty-four hour period'southward march. Yous cross the river and array your troops in formations [陳]. Then whether you filibuster or make haste to fight is entirely up to you. If you exercise not do this, and then evidence the aforementioned liberality to me. To wear out our troops past keeping them in the field for a long time and to waste resource does not profit anyone.[sixteen]

The Chu commander, perchance recalling the naïve chivalry of the erstwhile Knuckles of Song, suggests crossing immediately. His armed services counselor, though, suspects Jin will not laurels its pledge and will attack them every bit they ford. He convinces the Chu commander to have the offer to retreat one solar day'southward march start and thereby hogtie the Jin army to come to their side of the river. Although the Chu army temporarily withdraws, the Jin commander just declares that Chu has abandoned its try, proclaims victory, and marches his army home.[17] The Chu commander also returns abode and is executed by his king for his failure to engage the enemy force.

All the same Jin's subsequent refusal to cross the river themselves subsequently Chu withdrew first suggests that the military advisor near probable made a shrewd conclusion not to trust Jin's abstinence. Merely eight years later, Jin debated whether to engage in pitched battle with an approaching ground forces from Qin. The Jin commander, Zhao Dun, explained his decision to launch a surprise assault instead:

"'To preempt the enemy is to rob him of his will' is proficient military strategy. 'To pursue the enemy as if one were chasing men in flight' is good military leadership." They [Jin] instructed the soldiers, sharpened their weapons, fed the horses, and ate in abundance. Forming the ranks of the troops in secret, they set out at nighttime [and] defeated the Qin troops.[18]

The traditional pillars of ritualized and award-jump modes of combat were rapidly eroding during this era.[xix] This breakdown of martial norms ushered in centuries of internecine warfare that paused merely temporarily with the Qin state'south vicious military machine annihilation of all potential contenders by 221 BCE.

5 Hegemons of the Bound and Fall Period (Absolute Chine)

It is under these circumstances that Sun Tzu eventually collected the thoughts later compiled into The Art of War. Nearly likely, the concept of not contesting never reflected a complex matrix of g strategies, diplomatic negotiations, economical statecraft, and long-term psychological operations designed to compel the enemy'south submission prior to hostilities being alleged. Instead, it was an operational or tactical ruse, conducted later a determination to fight was already made, and designed to violently strike at the enemy'due south military machine while they were still in their well-nigh vulnerable and unprepared state.

Decision

Based on this assay, a more than appropriate translation of the second verse of the third chapter is:

Achieving victory in every [pitched] battle is not the height of excellence. Routing the enemy's soldiers [before they have an opportunity to form orderly ranks] is the height of excellence.

This puts Sun Tzu's thinking in agreement with the fourth/5th century Roman military machine writer Vegetius, who argued that while engaging in pitched battle was potentially decisive, the take chances of suffering catastrophic defeat necessitated acute commanders to likewise consider less direct methods of attack.[20] This is simply i more reason to abandon the popular but erroneous notion that Lord's day Tzu represents a uniquely Chinese view of warfare, ane which was left unexamined by military practitioners in the West.

This suggested revision might even aid shed light on contemporary military analyses. Sunday Tzu devotees seeking to explain recent Chinese military actions such every bit its invasions of Tibet and Korea in 1950, the Get-go and 2nd Taiwan Crises (1954-58), the Sino-Indian War of 1962, the Soviet edge clashes of 1969, the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, or its burdensome of peaceful protestors in 1989, struggle to concoct the tortured logic necessary to square these clearly offensive attacks with the supposed cultural preference of winning without fighting.[21] This proposed interpretation provides a more straightforward justification. In each of these cases, Mainland china simply chose to attack an opponent that had not yet formed its ranks in defense prior to the starting time of kinetic operations. Odds are that in its next military conflict, Communist china will once over again seek to follow this venerable blueprint. For those tasked with safeguarding their nation against any potential adversary, ane piece of Sun Tzu's unambiguous advice remains just every bit relevant today as it was millennia ago: "Practise not depend on the enemy not coming; depend rather on being ready for him."[22]

John F. Sullivan is a former U.S. Army Red china Foreign Surface area Officer. He is currently a JD candidate at the University of Hawaii'south William S. Richardson School of Law.

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Header Image: "The Four Seasons," a 15th-century manus scroll with a horizontal length of virtually 36 feet, past an unidentified artist (The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art)

Notes:

[1] Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De Re Militari: Epitome of Military Scientific discipline, trans. Northward.P. Milner (Liverpool: Liverpool University Printing, 2001), 83-4. Vegetius was a Roman writer living in the belatedly 4th to early 5th century CE.

[ii] Colin S. Gray, Fighting Talk: Xl Maxims on State of war, Peace, and Strategy (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), 58. Gray subsequently acknowledged that while this sentiment is somewhat hyperbolic, these texts continue to represent a useful distillation of traditional  strategic idea.

[iii] Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, (London: Routledge, 2007), 62 (emphasis in original).

[iv] David H. Petraeus, "Foreword" to Sunday Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Peter Harris (New York: Everyman'due south Library, 2018), 7.

[5] Dominicus Tzu, The Fine art of State of war, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 77.

[6] My appreciation to Hein Drop for raising this betoken in an earlier draft.

[7] Zuozhuan: Commentary on the "Spring and Autumn Annals," trans. Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li and David Schaberg (Seattle: University of Washington Printing, 2016), 1621.

[8] Ibid, (Lord Xi, Year 22), 1623.

[nine] Ibid, (Lord Zhuang, Year 11), 165.

[ten] Author's translation. The original Chinese text reads: 有四不和：不和於國，不可以出軍；不和於軍，不可以出陳；不和於陳，不可以進戰；不和於戰，不可以決勝。

[11] Wu Qi, "Wu-Tzu" in The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, trans. Ralph D. Sawyer (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 212.

[12] For example, Michael Handel just infers a wide range of non-vehement methods Sun Tzu supposedly prefers fifty-fifty though he cannot provide supporting passages from the original text: "Sun Tzu devotes considerable attention to concerns that precede war, discussing in detail the advantages of various diplomatic strategies. For him, diplomacy is the best means of attaining his ideal of victory without bloodshed. When advising that the enemy'due south plans should be attacked at their inception, Dominicus Tzu is presumably referring to diplomatic and political bargaining, negotiations, and deception, although he offers no farther explanation." Masters of War, 33. For an alternate interpretation of what Sun Tzu meant by "the enemy's plans should be attacked at their inception," see "Who Was Sun Tzu'south Napoleon?"

[13] Sun Tzu, 84.

[14] Zuozhuan, (Lord Eleven, Year 22), 357.

[15] Ibid, 359.

[sixteen] Ibid, (Lord Xi, Year 33), 455.

[17] Although one could argue that in this example Jin actually accomplished the goal of "subduing the enemy without boxing," the historical tape shows that information technology only provided a temporary respite. Jin and Chu would engage in nigh continuous warfare over the side by side two centuries. The strain of this constant fighting along with internal unrest would cause Jin to pause-upwards into separate entities in 453 BCE. The partition of Jin would exist the goad for the transition into the Warring States era (403 - 221 BCE).

[xviii] Ibid, (Lord Wen, Twelvemonth 7), 501.

[19] The translators of the Zuozhuan aptly summarize the zeitgeist of the terminal few decades of the era equally documented in the text: "The Leap and Fall era draws to a close in gathering gloom and exercises of petty Realpolitik. The old powers of ritual propriety are little more than than a retentiveness. Warfare dominates the narrative. Succession crises and rebellions divide domains against themselves and depict neighboring domains into protracted proxy wars. Rulers and chief noblemen are murdered or driven into exile. Ii ancient domains are destroyed. Wu completes its swift ascent to power and promptly falls. Confucius dies, the Register end, and Zuozhuan carries on for several years more, following a few tales of internecine strife to their dismal conclusions. The few men who win celebrity in these years earn it for acts of military bravery or diplomatic savvy, deeds that frequently show futile." Durrant, Li, and Schaberg, 1827.

[xx] Vegetius, 83. Run across also the quote highlighted in the epigram, higher up.

[21] Chinese People's Liberation Army Colonel Liu Mingfu sums up the fanciful idea, also prevalent in official Chinese authorities rhetoric, that the Chinese people possess a cultural aversion to aggressive actions: "But in the thousands of years of China's history, it'south hard to observe even one example of Communist china attacking a country or people without beingness attacked commencement." Liu Mingfu, The Prc Dream: Corking Ability Thinking & Strategic Posture in the Postal service American Era (New York: CN Times Books, Inc., 2015), 98.

[22] Lord's day Tzu, Sun Tzu: The Art of Warfare, trans. Roger T. Ames, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 136.

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Source: https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2020/6/15/sun-tzus-fighting-words

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