Notes from a Sun Tzu Skeptic (2019)

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2019/9/24/notes-from-a-sun-tzu-skeptic

by codetrotter • 3 years ago

169 198 3 years ago

thestrategybridge.org

smitty1e• 3 years ago

Sun Tzu's chief virtue, and weakness, is brevity.

Compared to Clausweitz, Sun Tzu would have been a Twitter guru, inviting the question: So, what?

deafpolygon• 3 years ago

I can see it now: Sun Tzu's The Tweets of War

wolpoli• 3 years ago

And if Sun Tzu is alive today, he would be offering paid access to exclusive podcasts, videos, and more.

lostlogin• 3 years ago

zigman1• 3 years ago

War is inevitable but I see 99% of generals doing it wrong.

Here is 10 tips how to win in every battle

abudabi123• 3 years ago

You mean to see: Sun Tzu's The T_eets of War

[new management is whitewashing the W in the logo/banner name of T_itter]

FredPret• 3 years ago

Clausewitz would be a podcaster who never shuts up compared to Sun Tzu’s Tweets

eimrine• 3 years ago

For me Sun Tzu is the first man who told something atheistic. He told that no god can predict or help in the combat. Very impressive as for 500 b.c.

soulofmischief• 3 years ago

And a touch of chaos theory, turbulence and all the ideas that itself builds upon. He recognized that sufficiently complex dynamic systems are impossible to fully predict due to physical constraints.

zakki• 3 years ago

I think he meant god with lowercase G not God with uppercase G.

Cthulhu_3• 3 years ago

That doesn't refute the comment you're replying to though.

melagonster• 3 years ago

old china have their God with uppercase G. the ruler of Zhou dynasty is the kid of heaven in text.

TheBigSalad• 3 years ago

What do you mean?

layer8• 3 years ago

Atheistic thinking also came up in India and Europe 500-600 BC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_atheism

badrabbit5• 3 years ago

From what little I know Sun Tzu has a lot of "good rule od thumb" wisdom but you shouldn't stick to what he says as if he is infallible.

For example:

The greatest victory is that which requires no battle

He says a lot of stuff like that but this is only true if your aim is peace in the near term and appearances of victory. The carnage of war, the worse it is the more it avoids even more war. If you win without battle then others will keep starting more battles because why not? But if you defear your enemy well and in the most horrific way then it becomes unthinkable to willingly start a battle or war with you. Even in the middle of war, a great and terrible victory demoralizes the enemy but a victory with no bloodshed only delays when the next battle will happen since you only won a battle and not the whole war.

I could pick many examples from WW2 and the ensuing peace we enjoy to this day (relative to before that time). Or how the US sabotages and enables regime changes all over without actual (at least acknowledged) conflict but time and time again it only delayed and worsened the threat.

My philosophy is that you should never start a war except as retaliation of an actual attack or immediate and impending attack (NK firing missiles not Iraq is about to get missiles). But if you start a war it is your duty to finish it fast and without witholding your aggression so long as that aggression contributes to preventing even more aggression from your enemies and resentment from your people (US and country building/preserving in a time of war in vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq comes to mind).

Happy to be corrected and educated on this. My point is that if you are not careful you can interpret that one teaching of his to mean you should avoid battle as much as possible. And a few others I have thought about are also like this. Surprising your enemy or deceiving them is not always the best idea either, what is more terrible to your enemy than telling them you will cause enormous damage at a specific date and time and doing exactly that despite their desperate attempts to counteract that, it crush their spirits and allow you to decieve them later on more effectively.

labster2• 3 years ago

I think that quote is just a corollary to this one:

"War is the continuation of policy with other means." — Carl von Clausewitz

A foreign policy that achieves your aims is better than a foreign war; a functional domestic policy is better than a civil war. But sometimes people won’t compromise and the only policy left is war.

badrabbit5• 3 years ago

And I don't agree with that point in general except when someone starts being violent against you, a peaceful resolution is not desirable for long term peace.

Similar to a school bully or when you get in prison and you start getting picked on. Resolving things peacefully with that bully only lets other bullies come after you later on. But harming that one bully effectively ensures your safety long term.

jltsiren• 3 years ago

The main point of that quote is that a battle is a negative-sum game. Reaching the same ultimate outcome without a battle is better than fighting for it, because both sides will suffer losses in the battle.

Trying to achieve a lasting peace through a decisive victory rarely works, because people don't work like that. In a more likely outcome, you are simultaneously not aggressive enough to prevent future conflicts and too aggressive, creating enemies motivated by revenge. Revenge is a dangerous motive, because it can turn battles into positive-sum games. Any enemy losses – both combatant and civilian – become victories, while your losses only matter by reducing your ability to kill more enemies.

csydas• 3 years ago

Agreed, and to add, I never understood that the old "war texts" were supposed to be detailed workflows for war and more just stating in plain language from people who've fought wars knew for the general public to understand. I've not read the old war texts since I was forced to in High School, but my takeaway from books like Art of War and The Prince was the authors trying to shatter the concept of Romantic wars with the boring reality of everything that comes with war.

That is, I understood that the point of the books was more to get governments and people to engage with understanding the practical elements of war, like:

- Wars are very very very expensive

- They're expensive even when you're not at war

- Your troops probably don't want to be fighting cause it means they probably will get hurt or die

- No one likes being conquered, so don't assume that the war is done once you've killed enough soldiers

- It's really expensive to supply an army

- Seriously, do you know how much a horse eats? How about a thousand horses?

My takeaway from the books was first teenage disappointment that the books weren't super deep or evil like I had been led to believe, and second that the books really seemed to try to deglamorize war by talking about all the stuff involved with it besides the killing/conquering, and showing how expensive and exhausting it really is.

badrabbit5• 3 years ago

All of that depends on your goals and priorities. And keep in mind, not everyone fights a battle for defensive reasons. Peace isn't always the desired outcome of war.

He also implies that diplomacy and posturing is actually part of battle which isn't the case but I am sure diplomats and politicians consider themselves warriors.

Often wars are started to avenge a wrong, significant losses in your side were accepted when you declared war. If you win a battle without accomplishing your objectives then what was the point?

But I think I do agree with you on his intent and that is sort if my point, his wisdom is neither absolute nor infallible. I would consider it a guidance to help you decide not hard set commandments to follow.

mrbungie• 3 years ago

Sabotage and propaganda are examples of making war without direct combat. I've always interpreted that as what Sun Tzu was referring to.

I'm also sure that said position is not absolute, but rather just the idea that one should not look into prolonging battles (except when you're consciously participating in a war of attrition, obviously) and to hopefully evade them altogether as they at least reduce morale and exhaust resources.

samus4• 3 years ago

The counterarguments to the "total war" doctrine are nuclear deterrence and asymmetric warfare. Total war is the correct way to win a symmetric war against an opponent you can actually defeat. But nuclear deterrence creates big incentives to not ever bother. Everybody loses from unrestricted warfare between nuclear powers.

Asymmetric warfare is destined to outlast the will of the attacker to maintain totally war, and to continue long after the attacker has started to become war-weary. IMHO, winning an asymmetric war against a sufficiently motivated opponent is only possible by engaging in genocide and large scale population relocations.

badrabbit5• 3 years ago

Using nuclear deterrence as an example. Yes, it is effective at avoiding battle but if you get nuked you must effectively wipe the aggressor's country off the map so it can continue to deter future aggressors and MAD can continue to be relevant. You can't hold back because of the enormous civilian casualties. The only thing important is to make sure that will be the last nuclear war and that no one thinks about using nukes against you. This is entirely possible for example with US vs NK or maybe even China (or if they ever achieve effective icbm interception...anyone)

dale_glass• 3 years ago

There was an argument made that this is a misunderstanding:

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

TL;DR Sun Tzu doesn't mean "Try to win without having a fight", but "Try to win without having a formal 1-on-1 engagement".

"Battle" shouldn't be understood as generic violent conflict, but a specific formal affair in which two armies gather up and clash with each other.

So for rather than reading this as "Try to solve things non-violently", this post suggests the meaning is more like "Try not to be forced into an engagement on even terms. If you can just poison them all, or starve them, that'd be much better".

lelanthran2• 3 years ago

Everything is "it depends".

For every truism from Sun Tzu, there is a data point providing a counter argument.

For the truism you are presenting, to whit:

The carnage of war, the worse it is the more it avoids even more war. If you win without battle then others will keep starting more battles because why not? But if you defear your enemy well and in the most horrific way then it becomes unthinkable to willingly start a battle or war with you.

The counterpoint is WW2, which was a result of how horrifically Germany was defeated in WW1.

So, no, it's not always true.

badrabbit5• 3 years ago

how horrifically Germany was defeated in WW1.

I'd argue not horrifically enough. I mean their defeat eas decisive and the toll on their morale was huge but their idea of greatness through war and appettite for war in general was obviously not resolved.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the other hand swiftly resolved Japan's appetite for violence (not that I neccesarily agree).

WW1 and Germany to me are good examples of how not to finish a war. I ask why Germany was allowed to continue to be a free state? Why not divide up Germany as a foreign territory or colony between victors? Why not make sure no military or hostile government ever rises up again like the US did with Japan (still has no offensive military!).

If you want to see how effective what I am saying is, look at Genghis Khan. Any sign of resistance and your entire town or village was burned and erased out if existance. Many of his enemies surrender long before he ever arrives there.

You cannot take half-measures with an aggressor. Victory can't be partial for it to last.

If you merely wound your enemy he will regain strength and come back at you many times stronger or at least keep coming back until you surrender (Taliban). You must do what it takes to kill off your enemy fully even after victory.

denton-scratch7• 3 years ago

Germany wasn't defeated in WW1 on the Eastern Front, I think; and I believe that Hitler's attack on Europe in WW2 was incidental to his true goal, which was to occupy Poland and Ukraine. He didn't want to start a punch-up with the British Empire, and he initially thought Britain and Germany could be buddies.

PostOnce4• 3 years ago

There is a reason people still read Sun Tzu 2500 years later, and it's not because he's been on a press tour promoting his book. The man was a consummate master of his art, if he was indeed one man.

My favorite reading of The Art of War, because Baldermort has an awesome voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDlW3WqXisM

rippercushions• 3 years ago

The article notes that Sun Tzu's celebrated victory over the Chu was very short-lived, since the Chu remnants promptly allied with the Qin and the Yue to roll them back within two years, and his Wu clan was entirely exterminated within three decades.

PostOnce4• 3 years ago

I think this is like applying the "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" logic to war; it's a multifaceted thing, you can do everything right and still lose.

It wouldn't still be mandatory reading at war colleges the world over if it didn't still have merit, or if it had no merit to begin with.

atoav• 3 years ago

Without being familiar with the details this sounds as if they bit off more than they could chew (or invaded more than they could hold). Holding territory is way, way harder than winning it in the first place.

If your actions led to your own clan's erradication 30 years after the fact then tour actions might not have been the smartest (unless e.g. your clan was going to be erradicated either way and you managed to buy them time).

est2• 3 years ago

and his Wu clan was entirely exterminated within three decades

Literally said in Chap. 3 from the Art of War:

supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.

sofixa5• 3 years ago

And the articles notes there were multiple reasons for that, including an invasion by a third party and a coup attempt. Even the best military strategy won't survive first contact with the enemy, especially multiple ones from different directions.

cjohnson318• 3 years ago

People still read Sun Tzu 2500 years later because its (1) not protected by copyright (2) easy to read and (3) free marketing since it's titled "The Art of War". At the very minimum, 10% of teenage boys of every generation are going to buy this thing. The reality is that most of it has a very "buy low, sell high" quality: generally obvious, but difficult to apply.

JackFr• 3 years ago

There is a reason people still read Sun Tzu 2500 years later

Because publishers are profit seeking and have marketing departments.

ChancyChance• 3 years ago

I find the type of person that is into Sun Tzu is a fairly narrow demographic. I don't know why that it is.

cjbgkagh• 3 years ago

Genetics

bruce511• 3 years ago

As with all advice, context matters. It is good to know the rules, the best practices, the proven strategies. But it is also good to understand the context of those strategies to understand when the context has changed.

SQL is clearly the right way to store large quantities of data (some would say the only way.) Until some folk realised their context was different, and NoSql was born.

Strategy is hard because it plays out in the long term. Two roads diverge in a wood,and you have to pick one. But the consequences if that decision may be felt 20 years later, or next week, or never.

Advice from those who went before is valuable. But care must be taken to understand the context of that advice.

HopenHeyHi• 3 years ago

So: "Sun Tzu, Mayhaps dude had a point, ymmv ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

hackernewds• 3 years ago

I do not understand the NoSQL example. Would you mind please elaborating?

knodi1233• 3 years ago

Around the time NoSQL took off, the default choice for any kind of data storage scenario was a traditional relational database. Choosing anything else would have raised eyebrows. But once the concept of NoSQL spread, it became an acceptable alternative and no longer a big deal.

And sure, while the basic concept of NoSQL for data storage is not new, the core concepts were not widely known until the 2010s.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=n...

jerf• 3 years ago

This reminds me of people complaining about how terrible Agile is, because Scrum is terrible. Not that Agile is immune to criticism any more than Sun Tzu is, but complaining that a philosophy built around deep understanding of a problem and flowing like water around it is bad because this sword isn't sharp is basically a category error. Sun Tzu has specific examples but it is not his examples that have kept his work alive for thousands of years. The examples became useless centuries ago. It is the principles that have kept it alive. It is not Sun Tzu's fault if a commander pays so much attention to a specific manifestation that he loses track of the underlying principles.

lordnacho• 3 years ago

Finally. I remember reading Sun Tzu and thinking "hmm all this stuff is either very specific to ancient China, or unsubstantiated". As in, everyone sounded like distilled wisdom, but it smelled. The thing that was missing I think was that normally when you read a text about something that's trying to make a general point, it cites a whole bunch of historical precedents. "Always drive deep into enemy territory, like X, Y, and Z times where they won decisively" would work better than just a bunch of "do this, do that".

hzay• 3 years ago

This is a modern way of thinking. Ancient wisdom never comes with citations. But I'm happy to be proved wrong.

samus4• 3 years ago

Philosophy often goes through cycles of distillation, where authors try to extract and condense the main points of a field, and then commentaries where seasoned practicioners of the field expound on texts that have become canonical, and contibute their own experience and points of view. For example, Cao Cao (the most powerful warlord in the Three Kingdoms period) has written extensive war journals where he also commented on Sun Tzu's works.

est2• 3 years ago

Ancient wisdom never comes with citations

Because writing in the past is really expensive and a heavy-duty work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bamboo_book_-_binding_-_U...

samus4• 3 years ago

Of course, 2500 years later it can be a bit difficult to put these things into context. But isn't Sun Tzu actually frequently referring to other events in the Spring&Autumn period to illustrate his points?

Cthulhu_3• 3 years ago

It was a primer aimed at first-time commanders (e.g. coddled nobility with zero experience), not an in-depth thing. That would take a more formal education.

It's like the popular science blogs of its age.

Ekaros• 3 years ago

Also, in that context does it exist in vacuum. Or is there a teacher that could explain the things and attach suitable context.

mcv12• 3 years ago

Well, it's a fairly brief text. I've got a copy of Art of War here, but most of it is commentary by others. Sun Tzu's own text is not a lot. He throws out some principles without explanation or examples, and that's limiting it's practical applicability quite a bit.

I suspect much of his more questionable advice is stuff that happened to work once for him in specific circumstances, and it'd be great if he told a bit more about those circumstances. But it won't necessarily work in other circumstances.

For example, his advice to live off the enemy's supplies instead of bringing your own (which would be very expensive and cause economic problems that he surprisingly addresses). This is good advice in many cases, and has been done throughout history, but it can also go very wrong. Consider Napoleon's invasion of Russia where Russia just burned down everything in the path of the French army in order to deny them supplies, then harassed French supply lines, and defeated the French army without a single fight. Also very Sun Tzu, incidentally.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, depending on circumstances. Which Sun Tzu rarely goes into.

brazzy2• 3 years ago

For example, his advice to live off the enemy's supplies instead of bringing your own (which would be very expensive and cause economic problems that he surprisingly addresses). This is good advice in many cases, and has been done throughout history, but it can also go very wrong. Consider Napoleon's invasion of Russia where Russia just burned down everything in the path of the French army in order to deny them supplies

It's not "good advice in many cases", it was (prior to the availability of first railroads and then trucks, and with the very notable exception of all-cavalry armies operating on grass steppe) an extremely basic fact on how an army works. Bringing your own supplies was, over long distances, not just bad advice, nor just hard to do, it was logistically impossible. Napoleon did not (yet) have the choice to do it any other way, the alternative was not to invade Russia, or to do it piecemeal while consolidating and developing conquered parts before moving on, which would have taken decades.

tianqi2• 3 years ago

As a descendant of Sun Tzu, I'm surprised to see a discussion about him at HN:)

ARandomerDude• 3 years ago

As a descendant of somebody other than Sun Tzu, I’m not surprised to see it here. HN is pretty eclectic.

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

I would certainly like to hear more about your inheritance of the family tradition and how discussions about it read to you.

tianqi2• 3 years ago

I apologize if this comment isn't as informative as it should be. In fact, since Sun Wu lived as long ago as ~2500 years, we don't have any recognizable family heritage about him now. I did read his book, but I don't consider myself an expert on this topic. So I didn't share more thoughts. Again, I apologize for the uninformative comment.

runlaszlorun6• 3 years ago

As both a former army officer as well as someone who appreciates historical Chinese, it pains me to say that I found it underwhelming. I’m not saying that any one on here is like this, but in my experience it def attracts a certain type who, among other things, have a zero sum, “business is war” mindset that’s a tad creepy. Unlike everyone I know who has actually served .

UweSchmidt• 3 years ago

Modern militaries don't seem to enjoy the freedom to act and maneuver that a classic general enjoyed in the field (for good reasons). Modern requirements for transparency and democracy, and the interest of the military industrial complex don't help when you try to "appear weak when you are strong" or to "disguise a plan". For a mid-level army officer these things are probably even less applicable.

I still think there is huge potential for an overarching, creative strategy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the difficulties of Soviet/US forces in Afghanistan were not an accident, but sun-tzu'd in some way.

mantas• 3 years ago

On the other hand, Russians employed „appear strong when you're weak“ very well leading up to Ukraine war. Everybody believed the myth of the 2nd army of the world. However, they ate their own propaganda...

mcv12• 3 years ago

Modern militaries don't seem to enjoy the freedom to act and maneuver that a classic general enjoyed in the field (for good reasons). Modern requirements for transparency and democracy

I think modern democracies do a much better job of separating military and civilian leadership than dictatorships do. Putin seems to be too personally involved in micromanaging his war, insisting on conquests that are simply not possible (like Bakhmut and some other places). Hitler similarly interfered with his generals and hampered his war effort that way.

Zelensky is of course involved with the war, but he listens to his generals.

"appear weak when you are strong"

That only seems useful if you want to lure the enemy into an attack in order to ambush him, but with our modern day sensibilities about the value of life, we prefer to have no attack at all. More applicable to us is "appear strong when you are weak", although such secrets never last long, so we prefer to appear strong when strong, in order to discourage any attack.

Also, Russia appeared strong while weak, and that didn't exactly work out well when Putin called his own bluff. Turns out he incorrectly believed the strong appearance of his own army. And he believed the West to be weak (or at least divided and disorganised), so he attacked.

It's not that these concerns are irrelevant, but they're a lot more complex than Sun Tzu makes them out to be, and it's possible to fall for your own disguise. Or maybe the civilian leadership can fall for the military's disguise.

gjvc• 3 years ago

plenty of people on here are like this!

Cthulhu_3• 3 years ago

Sun Tzu's work was aimed at nobled who had zero experience and knowledge in warfare; a lot of it is low-hanging fruit, but you have to build up the basis for these things like "make sure your soldiers have food" and "don't tell your opponent what you're up to" in these people.

It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.

shakow2• 3 years ago

the president is also the top military commander

It's also true in quite some other countries, and it is to ensure that the military remains subordinated to the civil government, after the many examples of military coups in History.

tialaramex• 3 years ago

It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander.

Somebody has to be in charge of the military. If that person is just someone promoted from within, you're never more than one person's decision from a coup d'etat, "A republic, if you can keep it". So, an elected leader it is.

Of the three branches of the US government, only one is intended to provide an executive function, to decide, in an instant where necessary, without deliberation and compromise. The President. So that's the right person for the job of ultimate military commander, and it's one of the few things about that job which the voters seem to actually have some idea about.

Both the US and UK systems are under-staffed. The UK shares the job of executive leader and legislative leader (very different skill sets) under one role "Prime Minister" - while the US shares the job of executive leader and head of state (a figurehead) which also require totally different skill sets under the role of "President". This would make sense with a very small population, but it's crazy to imagine these huge countries couldn't find two people to do these very different jobs even a little better than one man (and in the US it has always been a man somehow) can do both.

mountainb• 3 years ago

They're not, really. The way that you advise the president on military issues is you give them prepackaged "decisions" that are limited variations on the same choice. The president's authority over the military is a legal fiction much like many other legal fictions that keep the system going.

detourdog2• 3 years ago

A civilian leads the country and soldiers lead armies.

AnimalMuppet3• 3 years ago

"Commander", yes, but they command very little. During World War II, President Roosevelt gave exactly two direct commands to the military - that they had to divert 50 long-range bombers to help protect Atlantic convoys, and that North Africa be invaded in 1942. In a four-year-long war, he gave two commands. Contrast that with Hitler, who micromanaged his military, and did them no good by doing so.

So, yes, he does have final command (subject to "legal orders" and similar restrictions). But he's not commanding in the normal sense of a military commander.

jcranmer2• 3 years ago

It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.

War is ultimately a political endeavor; the goal of a war is to compel, by use of military force, some sort of political objective. It only makes sense then that the person in charge of directing when and where that military force is used is also the person who is empowered to carry out the political policy of the entire country.

For people who rise to the top of the military from within, every political problem becomes a nail in want of the military hammer for a solution, and thus the default answer to every crisis tends to become war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was defused without a war because both Kennedy and Khrushchev couldn't bring themselves to push the button marked nuclear war, while virtually the entire military establishment was convinced, and forcefully arguing, that the only way out of the situation was to be the first to push that button.

indymike5• 3 years ago

It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander.

Simple: the founders of the US thought it would protect our democracy to ensure that a elected civilian was in charge of the military. It's mostly worked.

version_five• 3 years ago

  It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.

Because technocracy is an awful form of government. In s democracy the buck has to stop with a politician, otherwise its tyranny.

abdulhaq• 3 years ago

Most HNers, and sadly I include myself in this, couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. We read Sun Tzu because it is recommended reading in the intelligentsia's mindset. It seems cool to learn battle technique from an ancient Chinese text. If I wanted to learn how to really fight a battle I'd go to Sandhurst or West Point.

pseudostem• 3 years ago

Origins according to a many-times-over gilded comment on reddit (I forget which sub) went something like this -

subservient office culture in Japan where the big boss was reading it, so it spread to the entire organisation from where it spread to other organisations. It got to a point where no one knew why they were reading it, just that they had to. Around the same time it caught imagination of the Americans because of the Japanese (who were actually pretty efficient at their jobs).

Will look for the comment and post if it takes me less than 15 mins.

Edit: forgot how bad reddit search was. While I did not find what I was looking for, this [0] is one high quality answer you may be interested in. Only top comments are heavily moderated on that sub.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j37co/when_...

rramadass3• 3 years ago

While you are correct that these sort of books can be taken too far (i.e. they are not an answer to everything) there is much value in studying these sorts of books (Chinese/Japanese/Indian etc.) since they are a repository of various stratagems/techniques/aphorisms/quotes which can be adapted to context (not necessarily explicit Warfare) to derive value. Human Nature has not changed much over the years though its external manifestations have. I also do not believe that you have to have served in the defense forces (which mainly focus on the mechanisms of Warfare) to understand them since they deal with general ideas/concepts/stratagems which are independent of a specific domain.

As an example, the quote Cast a Brick to Attract Jade from The 36 stratagems of War (https://changingminds.org/disciplines/warfare/36_strategems/...) is eminently usable in design/development/product plan meetings i.e. you present a simple and concrete idea as a starting point and then leave it to the attendees to build/modify/change it and come up with a best and final solution.

detourdog2• 3 years ago

My interest in ancient cultures is how those people coped with life. Gilgamesh, torah, Aesop's fables, 1001 Arabian nights are interesting to me for how each culture dealt with and documented the human condition and social interactions.

To me Sun Tzu writings and all the ancient writings are about preparing one's "mind" for an attitude that can be used to cope. The commonality of story to a culture strengthens the social structure. The commonality is used to apply old wisdom to seemingly new and complex events. These writings become the common thread.

fedeb95• 3 years ago

I have no military background, but I like Sun Tzu's Art of War for some ideas about one's stance when engaging in "battle": I know it is more of a poetic liking than actual military advice.

RajT88• 3 years ago

but in my experience it def attracts a certain type who, among other things, have a zero sum, “business is war” mindset that’s a tad creepy

Now, I haven't come across people quoting Sun Tzu in my career, but I know the type of person you're talking about.

They are the type to either stick around short-term as execs, just a couple years, or to escape with a golden parachute when things start to turn. Un-surprisingly, their accomplishments are often enough detrimental to the customers, the business or both. They are aggressive, but don't really have much skin in the game.

Kranar• 3 years ago

I feel like this is the Seinfeld is Unfunny effect, where something that's been woven into the very fabric of a certain field is then found to be underwhelming or cliche, because it's been copied and iterated upon so many times. But 3000 years ago The Art of War was absolutely groundbreaking.

Furthermore, as someone who like you has served in the armed forces, I agree amongst those who serve we do not think of "war is business", those in charge do absolutely think of "war as business".

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

This is a weirdly specific complaint that imho makes far too much of the 'death ground' thing. Sun Tzu certainly talks about this on several occasions, but he doesn't present it as an ideal; it's for when you don't have other good tactical or strategic choices and you have to go all in. The western equivalent is 'burning you boats' to emphasize (to your own and perhaps to opposing forces) that you are fully committed.

The first chapter of AoW is about estimates; of your capabilities, of your situation, of the terrain. Of course you're supposed to pick the good terrain if you arrive there first. There's a story in the Samuel Griffith translation (imho by far the best), about Sun Pin, a descendant of Sun Tzu. Pursued by Pang Chüan, a rival general with a superior army and a long-standing grudge, Sun Pin arrived in a forested valley late in the day and ordered a large tree chopped down to block the road. To this, he affixed a scroll reading 'Pang Chuan dies here'. Pang Chuan arrived with his vanguard a few hours after the sun had set and found the road blocked. On being informed that there was a scroll, Pang Chüan ordered a torch lit so he could read it. Moments later his army was hit by arrows from all sides, aiming at the bright light. Realizing that Sun Pin had successfully baited him, Pang Chüan killed himself with his own sword in rage, leaving his army in disarray.

There's no use of 'death ground' here; the emphasis is on speed and a cultivated ability to recognize favorable terrain and understand how to exploit it, and to strike at the opposing force's command structure rather than engaging in a wasteful battle of attrition. I like Clausewitz, but his line about the destruction of the opposing force being the ideal outcome has been taken far too literally in many conflicts. Clausewitz's military experience was in the Napoleonic wars and while he has much wisdom to share on strategy - choosing the time, place, and general shape of battle - his view of battle itself basically a slugfest in which size of force x intensity of violence gives you the answer. This was distilled some decades later into Lanchester's laws, a set of differential equations that provide surprisingly good insight into how a conflict of attrition will go. But Clausewitz and Lanchester are (imho) not great at addressing how to get an opponent to play themselves. Sun Tzu is very much about defeating the opponent's command structure, without which the army won't function.

Sun Tzu is hard to read because of the flowery language and the epigrammatic style, vs the more popular military style of discursive and specific examples (in both Asian and western military traditions). The Art of War at first feels like a collection of super-obvious truisms and annoyingly vague aphorisms with some specific instructions here and there, causing many readers to fixate on the latter. If you read it this way you'll certainly end up like the arrogant and unfortunate Ma Su. But the book is not an argument, it is a drill. You have to go through it over and over. The boring and shallow-seeming parts are foundational and they don't give up their value straight away. The way Ive got value out of it is to read some new stuff or writings about a specific conflict or aspect of conflict, then go back and read Sun Tzu again. Read more, read Sun Tzu again. Problems tying things together? Read Liddell Hart again, then read Sun Tzu again. Instead of pulling it apart looking for hidden meanings or some better translation from classical Chinese, let it function like a framework for organizing military knowledge.

Incidentally, my (outsider) experience of a lot of essays like this is that they are only partly about their nominal subject, and really about philosophical arguments within the defense establishment to shape doctrine, procurement, and long-term strategies. There are factions of strategic thought within the military bureaucracy that are constantly maneuvering for position, such that the peacetime defense establishment could be said to be engaged in the conduct of internal warfare by other means.

bambax2• 3 years ago

Clausewitz's military experience was in the Napoleonic wars and while he has much wisdom to share on strategy - choosing the time, place, and general shape of battle - his view of battle itself basically a slugfest in which size of force x intensity of violence gives you the answer.

Many of Napoleon's most famous victories were won with a significant numerical disadvantage. If you had tried to determine the outcome of a battle at the time by simply comparing the number of men on each side, you would have failed often.

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

That's why intensity matters as well. Napoleon was keenly aware of this, writing that the moral factor was equivalent to about 3x the physical. But he also organized his armies to move faster and lighter, using cover and concealment to find ways to flank his enemy or attack in the rear rather than seeking an open plain for a head-on clash. Later in his career, when he developed a taste for pure mass over maneuver and position, he suffered several defeats similar to those he had inflicted on others.

What I meant in my comment above, though, is not that Napoleon didn't care about such topics, but that Clausewitz doesn't always do a good job of writing about them on the tactical level. I absolutely think he's worth reading, but he's the opposite of Sun Tzu - a mass of dense, heavy, and often abstract text. There are multiple poor or incomplete translations of his famous On War which don't help. His smaller works like Principles of War and Tactics are much better starting points.

yyyk• 3 years ago

This is a weirdly specific complaint that imho makes far too much of the 'death ground' thing.

True that, but there has been plenty of more substantive critique. e.g. https://scholars-stage.org/not-everyone-likes-sunzi/

runlaszlorun6• 3 years ago

Lidell Hart. That’s the name I was reaching for a second ago. Admittedly, I read his stuff decades ago.

chaostheory3• 3 years ago

I’m not sure how Sun Tzu is complete garbage when his strategies were vague and often not specific, so you can adapt them according to the situation

To me the problem is that the study of war, like the study of economics or any other social study; isn’t a real science. There is no repeatable theoretical model, including The Art of War. There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations.

eru7• 3 years ago

There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations.

You could still apply statistics. That's what people who breed animals or plants do. Every organism is different and individual, too.

chaostheory3• 3 years ago

I was referring to social studies. Biology on the other hand is a real science. A science has laws.

mcv12• 3 years ago

There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations.

There are some. An army marches on its stomach. For war, you need three things: money, money and money. Except in a guerilla war maybe. Maybe you're right after all.

t435622• 3 years ago

Guerillas need money too. Weapons are not free and guerillas need to eat too.

sofixa5• 3 years ago

For war, you need three things: money, money and money. Except in a guerilla war maybe. Maybe you're right after all.

This seems to imply that money will win you wars, which is not the case. You don't need "money" to get foreign military aid, nor to manufacture small arms in your own factories, especially if you use slaves for that (like the Nazis did).

_0ffh7• 3 years ago

like the study of economics [...] There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations

I've got great news for you! There are universal economic laws that always hold true in all situations.

For example, "man acts". You can't deny that, because denying it would be an act in itself, leading to a (performative) contradiction. From this law, and just a few others of a similar kind, you can build a whole structure of logically provable theorems that have profound implications for economics and the social sciences in general.

jones6ofMont• 3 years ago

You take 1000 economists and ask them for opinions on a certain problems, you will get hundreds if not thousand different solutions. If you do math say a million mathematicians/physicists, you will almost always get a few if not 1 solution to the problem. By the way, Nobel for economics isnt even part of original Nobel. It basically force fed into it and tag with Nobel label. Economics is essentially just common sense applicable at the specific time...at other times it will fail.

snapcaster2• 3 years ago

Like what? can you name one? If this is true, how come the people that study this aren't rich?

AnimalMuppet3• 3 years ago

Got a list of these laws, and the logically proven theorems that come from them?

misja111• 3 years ago

Since OP didn't provide any, I looked up some sources for the "man acts" economic axiom. I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology, which is used by the so called Austrian Economic school. Actually the axiom is "man acts purposefully". There is also quite some criticism on it, which can be found on the wiki page as well.

maxiepoo• 3 years ago

Austrian economics is truly indistinguishable from parody

davidgerard• 3 years ago

this is how you get praxeology, right? Which works so well that it literally eschews the concept of testing one's ideas.

jrm43• 3 years ago

Is this satire? I'm sorry, I legitimately cannot tell anymore.

Anyway, if it isn't -- no, there are no universal economic laws, for the very simple reason that "humans are not always rational" and economics is fundamentally about human behavior, in groups, no less.

chaostheory3• 3 years ago

If you can’t disprove something with quantifiable data, then it’s not really a theory in terms of science.

jesterson• 3 years ago

There are no universal laws that always hold true in all situations

As many people pointed out, there are plenty. Humans don't change over course of centuries.

karatinversion• 3 years ago

Indeed, many of these are present in Sun Tzu, eg.

- soldiers need to be fed

- attacks on undefended locations are more likely to succeed

- if you can set your enemy on fire, do so, people really don’t like being on fire

bambax2• 3 years ago

Xunzi suggests that adherence to the military counsel of Sun Tzu is so detrimental to one’s own self-interest, that it would be equivalent to “using one’s finger to stir a boiling pot.”

This had me laughing out loud. Very visual and effective image. It almost hurts.

mcv12• 3 years ago

I read Sun Tzu ages ago because it was this legendary book by an undefeated general, but I found it underwhelming. It's not that it's wrong; a lot of it is vital core strategic stuff. But a lot is tautological, a lot is obvious, a lot is very circumstantial, and quite a lot is vague nonsense.

I honestly don't see how you can possibly apply just Sun Tzu is battle. Much of it is vague or superficial. And that may be why it endures: the details of with change constantly, with every new technology and every new idea. But you can't fight a war with just basic principles; you've got to understand the weapons, the soldiers and the terrain and other circumstances you're fighting with.

In a sense, Sun Tzu even addresses that: you've got to know yourself and your enemy. So in a sense, the example that the article starts with, where Ma Su got to lead an army based just on his knowledge of Sun Tzu, was completely counter to Sun Tzu's advice: Ma Su may have known Sun Tzu, but he didn't know his own army or that of the enemy. That's what experience is for.

So it's not that Sun Tzu is nonsense; it's that it's not enough. And it's old. It's valuable because it was the first major treatise on strategy and war, but it has been improved upon for thousands of years. It doesn't trump anything that was written later. Later books address the same issues and more, but in a more appropriate context. It's not that Sun Tzu is bad, it's that more recent works are better, more up to date, more relevant, and more applicable.

That said, I recognise a lot of Sun Tzu's principles in the war in Ukraine. A blatant one: all over the summer they were talking about the battle for Kherson, and I thought: is it wise to announce that? That way Russia can prepare for it. And Russia did. And then Ukraine took a large swathe of land east of Kharkiv, on the complete opposite end of the frontline. "When you are going to attack nearby, make it look as if you are going to go a long way; when you are going to attack far away, make it look as if you are going just a short distance."

Later they did take Kherson, but only after Russia had withdrawn from it, because Ukraine had made it impossible for Russia to continue defending it. "Attack where there is no defense." Of course to accomplish that, they used long-range artillery that Sun Tzu couldn't even dream of.

lelanthran2• 3 years ago

I much prefer General Tacticus' quotes.

After all, even the word "tactics" came fro his name[1].

https://wiki.lspace.org/Callus_Tacticus

[1] Please don't believe this; read the Discworld books instead; Jingo is the one with General Tacticus quotes.

cubefox• 3 years ago

People who are interested in famous historic works on warfare strategy may be better served with "On War" by Clausewitz, a Prussian general.

aubanel• 3 years ago

+1: This one has great contributions, including the well-known quote "War is a continuation of politics by other means". Some things that are very relevant and not in Sun Tzu:

- Importance of reserves: troops that enter fight instantly become an order of magnitude more complicated to manoeuver. Thus it's important to keep ~half your forces in reserve. This one was forgotten by French general Gamelin at the beginning of WWII => thus when the German attack through Sedan pierced the French front unexpectedly fast, only weak troops were left to stop them in front of Paris.

- How to use terrain to your advantage: for instance put non-crossable obstacles behind you, or difficult terrains / slopes in front of you so that enemies waste effort and organization in crossing through while your troops are rested waiting for them when they emerge.

- How to place troops in classical battles: why cavalry often goes on the sides.

- Importance of pre and post-battle actions, for instance pursuit after routing the enemy.

profeaturo• 3 years ago

Just like in any complex game, there are certain rules of thumb you need to know in order to play well, but the moment you play against anyone good the meta game becomes far more complex than any collection of simple heuristics could convey. It’s still important to know those basic heuristics, though.

jrm43• 3 years ago

Seems like all of this is just "heuristics are not hard-and-fast bulletproof rules?"

owenmarshall• 3 years ago

"Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics." – Omar Bradley (attributed, but who knows who really said it)

"Get there first with the most men." – Nathan Bedford Forrest.

These have served me well in my career. Business problem? Solve it, placing less of an emphasis on how and more on solving it fast and building a pipeline to iterate on it even faster.

scottLobster• 3 years ago

This reads less like a critique of Sun Tzu and more a critique of people who read Sun Tzu.

One thing that hasn't changed about human nature, everyone is looking for a quick solution that's guaranteed to work. If you can market yourself as an authority many people will listen to you whether you actually are an authority or not. Engaging with reality directly is difficult, painful, uncertain, and often unfulfilling, so people demand proxies to do it for them. In many cases these proxies are necessary, the world is too complex for everyone to know everything in perfect detail. But if you're going to devote 40 hours/week or more to something, it's probably best that you minimize your proxies for that thing.

Using Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, or any strategic work as an all-encompassing ground truth is to deny reality for the sake of comfort. Denying reality for the sake of comfort is not a competitive trait.

jamesgill• 3 years ago

This seems more of a critique of the recent pop culture adaptations of the work, rather than the work itself. Sun Tzu didn’t write a business book—he wrote a treatise on waging war (it’s not a manual).

Notes from a Sun Tzu Skeptic (2019)

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