Learning from Sun Tzu

Douglas M. McCready

Sun Tzu's The Art of War is, of course, a classic. At least six English translations can be found in most large bookstores on bookshelves next to another much cited but little read military favorite, Carl von Clausewitz's On War (Knopf, New York, 1993).(1) Translator Roger Ames describes The Art of War as "the world's foremost classic on military strategy."(2)

During the Vietnam war, it was popular for Army officers to be seen carrying copies of the works of Sun Tzu and Man Tse-tung. It is unlikely that many who carried the books read them, and few who read them understood them.

Sun Tzu was a Chinese military leader and philosopher Little is certain regarding his life, including when he lived. The biography in Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Historical Records (Oxford University Press, New York, 1994), dating from the early 1st century B.C., describes Sun Tzu as a contemporary of Confucius (551 -479 B.C.) born in what is now Shandung Province. Translator Samuel B. Griffith suggest that Sun Tzu probably lived during the Warring States period 453-221 B.C.) because the military details of The Art of War fit that time better than they do the earlier Spring and Autumn period.(3)

The Warring States period began with eight major states whose shifting alliances and slow consolidation resulted in the first unification of China under the short lived Qin Empire. Sun Tzu, apparently a military leader for one of the warring states, determined to record his strategic and tactical record for later generations. His work has continued to influence Chinese military writing.

Mao Tse-tung applied Sun Tun's ideas to his own military writings of the Chinese civil war of the 1930s and 1940s. North Vietnamese commanders Ha Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap also drew on Sun Tzu's wisdom, using his ideas first against the French, then against the United States.

This modern history leads many to consider The Art of War to be a text for the underdog. In light of the current discussion about asymmetrical warfare, this is an important consideration but Sun Tzu's ideas are also available to stronger states. In either case, political and military leaders of stronger states (such as the United States) should become familiar with Sun Tzu because if they will not be using his ideas, they must be ready to protect themselves against others who will.

Griffith, a World War II veteran, devotes an appendix to detailing how the Japanese applied Sun Tzu's axioms. He says Japan produced more than 100 editions of The Art of War and applied Sun Tzu's wisdom to virtually every aspect of Japanese life, including business. Twenty-first century Americans are less likely to be surprised by business appropriating military strategy than was Griffith in 1963.

Sun Tzu and Clausewitz exemplify two contrasting concepts of war. For Clausewitz, war is the continuation of politics by other means. For Sun Tzu, war is one among many political tools national leaders can use to accomplish their ends. While this distinction appears minimal, it translates into the difference between U.S. and North Vietnamese strategy in the Vietnam war. It also explains why the United States lost that war.

In his analysts of the Vietnam war, Harry Summers recounts a conversation between a U. S. Army colonel and his North Vietnamese counterpart in Hanoi after the war The American said North Vietnam had never defeated the United States on the battlefield The North Vietnamese conceded the point but added that it was irrelevant--the war was not about battlefield victories.(4)

Using Clausewitz, Summers details the flaws he believes led to the American defeat in Vietnam; he never mentions Sun Tzu. Many of his points are correct but in the end they are irrelevant to the U.S. effort in Vietnam because neither Summers nor the strategic decisionmakers who planned the Vietnam war fully understood the nature of the war they were fighting.

North Vietnam and Western Philosophy

The warm reception Summers' book received at the Army's highest level shows that the U.S. military still does not understand what happened in Vietnam. North Vietnamese strategy, like that of other East Asian nations, resembled much more the military philosophy of Sun Tzu than it did the thinking of Clausewitz or other Western strategists. The reported surprise of U.S., military leaders that a small number of Special Forces soldiers could motivate Afghanistan's Northern Alliance army to defeat the Taliban regime without the infusion of large numbers of U.S. ground troops shows that Sun Tzu's lessons still are not understood or accepted by senior leaders.

During the lengthy Indochina War, French and American commanders sought repeatedly and generally unsuccessfully to entice their Viet Minh. Viet Cong, and North Vietnamese Army adversaries to engage them under conditions where superior Western firepower, maneuver, and logistics would predetermine the outcome. The French got their set-piece battle at Dien Bien Phu. The United States got its major opportunity at Khe Sanh. The French defeat was not major in military terms, but it was decisive psychologically and led quickly to a French withdrawal from Indochina.

At Khe Sanh, U.S. forces were decoyed to a border region in terrain only slightly better than at Dien Bien Phu while the Viet Cong mounted a major offensive in the urban areas. American forces held at Khe Sanh, and American and South Vietnamese forces won militarily in the cities; however, the surprise Viet Cong attack had a psychological effect on the U.S. population similar to that of Dien Bien Phu on the French electorate. The United States won the battles, but it lost the war because it did not realize it was not fighting the same war as its adversary. Sun Tzu warns that when we know ourselves but not our enemy, our chance of victory is only about half.

This different understanding of the nature of war characterizes the approach toward warfare that many of the United States' potential opponents have. This approach emphasizes stratagem and maneuver over firepower and seeks to set the terms of conflict even before the opponent is aware conflict exists. More important, this approach recognizes that the decisive battlefield is rarely the one on which troops are deployed. Instead, the battlefield lies in the political will of the opponent, the hearts and minds of its citizens.

Unconventional Warfare

So it is important not only for U.S. generals to understand Sun Tzu's approach to warfare, it is important for their civilian masters, who make the strategic decisions, to understand because their thinking is a key target of the enemy. Changing how we think will not be easy, as it goes against the groin of what has been called the American way of war.

Much of what Sun Tzu teaches falls in the category of what Americans call unconventional warfare. Historically, this has been consigned to a supporting role to the main, conventional effort. While it is true that Sun Tzu's approach is unconventional, he does discuss how large, regular armies should operate against opponents. Conventional warriors can learn from Sun Tzu as readily as can guerillas. Conventional and unconventional are in the eye of the beholder, and no one should assume his definitions are normative.

Sun Tzu says defeating the enemy without battle requires greater skill than winning on the battlefield. In saying this, he is stressing maneuver over firepower--that maneuver might involve politics and diplomacy or combat formations. Yet, while Sun Tzu prefers that the military leader defeat his opponent without having to resort to combat, he recognizes this is frequently impossible.

Sun Tzu develops in two ways his idea of victory without combat. The first is to so order the political and diplomatic context that one's opponent has obviously lost before be he has even begun to recognize the futility of fighting. The second is to deploy one's own forces in a way that neutralizes the enemy's strategy. His advice that "the best military policy is to attack strategies, next to attack alliances, the next to attack soldiers, and the worst to assault walled cities," shows he prefers diplomatic initiative.(5)

Elsewhere, Sun Tzu says the use of military force is a drain on the treasury no matter how great the victory. American doctrine advocates getting inside the enemy's decision cycle during battle; Sun Tzu says we should seek to get inside the enemy's diplomatic decision cycle so we can avoid battle altogether. Best of all is to get inside the enemy's mind. This way we not only maintain the initiative, but we can control the enemy's response, If we cannot do either of these, we should seek to get inside the enemy's strategic decisionmaking cycle. Doing any of these, however, requires good intelligence, and not the kind of intelligence the United States is best able to collect. Sun Tzu's advice has the greatest possibility of succeeding when the enemy's leadership has been penetrated by human agents; signals and photographic intelligence are much less effective.

One difference between Sun Tzu's approach and the American way of war can be seen as the difference between the Asian game often and the Western game of chess. In go, the opponents place their pieces so as to maximize their control and restrict their opponent's options The enemy loses pieces and the game by being outmaneuvered, not through direct attack. In chess, the goal is to capture the opponent's key piece, the king. This requires territorial control, but one gains that control by capturing enemy pieces so they cannot threaten one's own king and so that they cannot protect their own king.

For military professionals, Sun Tzu notes that the down side of his proposal is that commanders who win without having to resort to battle do not gain a reputation for wisdom or credit for bravery.(6) The kind of victory Sun Tzu recommends happens without publicity or the usual trappings of military success. I believe a major factor in success is the absence of publicity and parades. Publicity would require the enemy to respond in ways that silence does not.

Sun Tzu offers a way for weaker forces to defeat those more powerful. Because no state or nonstate actor more powerful than the United States currently exists, the approaches Sun Tzu recommends are among those U.S. political and military leaders will face in the coming decades.

Israel's Failure to Heed

Israel's difficulties during its spring 2002 counterterrorist operations reflect a failure to apply Sun Tzu's lessons. As the undisputed military leader in the Middle East, Israel faced the same asymmetrical strategy the United States can expect to face from future opponents. Despite its reputation for the indirect approach and deception operations, Israel massed conventional forces to urban areas suspected of harboring Palestinian terrorists. The result of the Israeli offensive was heavy Israeli military casualties, accusations of heavy Palestinian civilian deaths, a Palestinian propaganda victory, and loss of much international sympathy and support. Among both Israelis and Palestinians, this reinforced the arguments of hard-line leaders and made a nonmilitary solution of the situation even more unlikely.

One crucial Israeli error was its belief that Palestinian fighters in urban camps would offer only token resistance.(7) A second was its inattention to the propaganda battle. Israel won the military battle of the urban refugee camps, but in doing so created a new pool of suicide bombers; put its major international ally, the United States, in an awkward diplomatic position in the Middle East; allowed itself to be portrayed as an oppressive bully; and turned Yassar Arafat into a hero. A better approach might have been to discredit Arafat and separate him from his Palestinian base, to minimize the use of conventional military force, and to use a propaganda offensive to emphasize Israeli civilian casualties and the Arab states' abandonment of the Palestinians. Israeli won the urban battle, but it lost the propaganda and psychological wars.

Sun Tzu said, "All warfare is based on deception.... A military leader of wisdom and ability lays deep plans for what other people do not figure on."(8) U.S. doctrine recognizes the importance of deception in U.S. operations and stresses the importance of intelligence, but Americans have proven much better at planning their own deception actions than recognizing those of their enemies. The 1968 Tet offensive is an excellent example of this. While Tet was a U.S. and South Vietnamese military victory, it was a political and propaganda disaster and became the turning point that led to U.S. withdrawal from the war. While Sun Tzu's ideas about using deception are mostly common sense, they are most often tools for the weak to use against the strong. With overwhelming U.S. military power a key factor in the modern world, Sun Tzu's comments on deception operations should be a warning to strategic planners.

Sun Tzu Everywhere and Nowhere

The sort of deception Sun Tzu talks about does not come from studying manuals. It is a way of thinking and being, a way that is alien to Western intellectual and cultural traditions. Sun Tzu describes it thus:

   So veiled and subtle,
   To the point of having
     no form;
   So mysterious and
     miraculous,
   To the point of
     making no sound.
   Therefore he can be
     arbiter of the
     enemy's fate.(9)

Sun Tzu's army is everywhere and yet nowhere. Griffith translates the beginning of the verse as "Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace."(10)This is the epitome of the indirect approach. There are no heavy battalions or massed batteries in this picture. They come into view only if the strategy of indirection and deception fails or is left untried.

Linked with deception is an emphasis on psychological warfare directed against enemy soldiers to destroy their morale and against enemy leaders to overstress them and create tension between them. The goal is to defeat the enemy before the battle so the outcome of the battle is a forgone conclusion or so the enemy cannot appear on the battlefield. Sun Tzu's counsel is most effective where leaders feel the need to make every significant decision, ignoring battle rhythm and sleep plans. The U.S. military, particularly its Reserve Components, is weak at this point.

Of the 13 chapters in The Art of War, one is devoted entirely to examining the role of intelligence in wartime. The other 12 include intelligence where appropriate to their subject. Sun Tzu's strategy of deception and maneuver depends much more on good intelligence than does a strategy emphasizing large armies, firepower, and decisive battles. The chapter titled "Using Spies" exemplifies an approach to intelligence markedly different from the modern American emphasis on high-tech surveillance and signals interception. These have their own great value, but neither offers insight into enemy leaders' thinking in the way human intelligence does. Sun Tzu says "intelligence is of the essence in warfare--it is what the armies depend pon in their every move."(11)

As Chinese commentators on Sun Tzu make clear, the intelligence essential to this approach to war includes the names of key enemy personnel, as well as their personalities and character. A leader will then know his enemies' strengths and weaknesses and also their preferred behavior, and their susceptibility to deception operations. While signal intelligence might provide some of this knowledge, most of it can only come through human agents who know personally the enemy leaders. During the American Civil War, commanders on both sides were successful in deception operations because they had known and worked with their opposite numbers for many years before the war. This long-term personal contact was itself good intelligence and was supplemented by the use of spies. Increasingly sophisticated counters to technical intelligence-collection require a return to the use of human agents agents.

Many Western and Chinese scholars have concluded Sun Tzu believed noncombat victories are usually possible. He certainly believed them preferable, but the fact that the overwhelming majority of The Art of War is about how to fight seems to show he considered noncombat victory an ideal rarely realized.

Sun Tzu also believed political rulers should leave strategy and tactics entirely to their generals. He even says generals should ignore their civilian leaders when the military situation requires.(12) While this might work in authoritarian societies, it is incompatible with modern democratic societies because it denies civilian control of the military. It also seems to be inconsistent with Sun Tzu's understanding of war as one aspect of a multifaceted approach to interstate relations. Such an understanding seems to require overall control of every part of the approach by the political ruler. While it is true that ignorant civilian leadership is harmful to the military effort, the solution is not civilian uninvolvement, but informed civilian involvement.

Both Sun Tzu and his ancient Chinese commentators say success in battle sometimes depends on placing soldiers in positions where they must fight or die. This is not part of the American way of war. Nonetheless, we should recognize that for other cultures this is standard procedure, and it will affect the tactics of U.S. units facing such enemies.

Modern international relations specialists in the Realist tradition, such as Robert Kaplan, claim Sun Tzu as one of their own. A careful reading of The Art of War calls this claim into question. Sun Tzu writes, "The expert in using the military builds upon the way (tao) and holds fast to military regulations, and thus is able to be the arbiter of victory and defeat."(13) Tu Mu's commentary on this passage says, "The Tao is the way of humanity and justice .... Those who excel in war first cultivate their own humanity and justice and maintain their laws and institutions."(14) Tu Mu's Sun Tzu is concerned about the character of the military leader because good character is essential to victory.

Know Your Enemy or Lose Half the Battles

Sun Tzu's military thinking is not the last word in strategy, but it is a source from which Western military and political leaders can learn much. It represents an approach to conflict against which the United States has enjoyed tactical success at the cost of strategic defeat. Seriously considering a strategic approach that influences East and Southeast Asian political and military strategy (especially that of China) will richly repay the effort. As Sun Tzu himself wrote:

   He who knows the enemy
     and himself
   Will never in a hundred
     battles be at risk;
   He who does not know the
     enemy but not knows himself
   Will sometimes win and
     sometimes lose;
   He who knows neither the
     enemy nor himself
   Will be at risk in every
     battle.(15)

Too often, American knowledge of its foes has been limited to easily measurable economic and military data, and it has overlooked the much more important cultural, historical, and psychological elements. The way to minimize casualties has been to employ massive doses of firepower rather than using a strategy that seeks to defeat the enemy before he can muster his forces on the field of battle.

In the coming decades, with the United States remaining the world's dominant military force, employing Sun Tzu's strategic lessons will be more important than ever. The United States might not incorporate all of Sun Tzu's lessons into its offensive strategy, but it will face opponents who use these lessons, or similar lessons, against the United States. Opponents recognize that direct confrontation with the United States can only result in their defeat.

MR

NOTES

(1.) I use the recent translation of Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Translated and edited by Roger Ames (New York Ballentine, 1993). The book includes material discovered after Samuel B. Griffith's well-known translation of Sun Tzu, The Art of War (New York: Oxford) was published in 1971. Many specialists consider Ames a more accurate translation.

(2.) Ames, 35

(3.) Griffith challenges the traditional earlier Chinese dating of Sun Tzu and argues that the political and military situation Sun Tzu describes did not exist before the Warring States period. Although Griffith is unsure whether Sun Tzu was an actual historical figure, he believes the text is from the 4th century B.C.

(4.) Harry G. Summers, Jr., On Strategy: A Critical Analysis Of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982),1.

(5.) Ames, 111.

(6.) Ibid., 116.

(7.) James Bennett and David Rohde, "In Rubble of Refugee Camp, Bitter Lessons for 2 Enemies, "The New York Times, 21 April 2002, 1.

(8.) Griffith, 17.

(9.) Ames, 171.

(10.) Griffith, 97.

(11.) Ames, 171.

(12.) In Obeying Orders: Atrocity, Military Discipline & the Law of War (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1999), Mark J. Osiel offers a more symphatic reading of Sun Tzu's counsel That military leaders should disobey their civilian superiors Under certain circumstances (317). I think, however, that Sun Tzu approaches the subject with an understanding of civil-military Relations that Osiel would consider unacceptable.

(13.) Ames, 116.

(14.) Griffith, 88.

(15.) Ames, 113.

Chaplain (Colonel) Douglas M. McCready, U.S. Army Reserve, is the Installation Management Agency Chaplain, U.S. Training and Doctrine Command Chaplain 's Office. Fort Monroe, Virginia. He received a B.A. and an M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania a Ph.D. from Temple University, and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. His assignments as chaplain include 2-111 Infantry Battalion, 28th Division Artillery, assistant division chaplain, and 28th Infantry Division (Mechanized), Pennsylvania National Guard Military Academy. and State Chaplain for the Pennsylvania National Guard.

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