In China, 527 BCE, Zhonghang Wu, a general in the state of Jin, was tasked with conquering the city of Gu. While leading his army toward its objective, a resident of Gu approached, offering to betray the city and surreptitiously allow Jin forces to bypass its fortifications unimpeded. Zhonghang Wu not only rejected the man’s offer, but forcibly returned him to the city so its leaders could execute him as a traitor. Mystified, Zhonghang Wu’s advisors beseeched their commander: “The city could be taken without any exertion on the part of our troops. Why not do it?”[3] Zhonghang Wu, however, was thinking beyond the immediate gratification of a quick and deceptive military victory. Since his mission was to permanently annex the city, if his first act was to reward a traitor for his disloyalty, this would set a new standard of acceptable conduct. One day soon, the citizens of Gu would have no reservations about betraying their new rulers. “We should not associate ourselves with evildoing out of a desire to take the city,” he cautioned. “What we would lose by such an action would be greater by far than what we would gain.”[4]
"The Battle of Zhuxian County" inside the Long Corridor on the grounds of the Summer Palace, constructed during the Qing Dynasty, in Beijing, China. (Wikimedia)
Zhonghang Wu and his army settled in for a long siege. After three months, the leaders of Gu offered to surrender. Zhonghang Wu, however, declined the capitulation, noting: “You still have the appearance of people who are eating well. For now, repair your walls.”[5] His staff again protested, exclaiming, “You have won the city, but you do not take it. You are exhausting your people and blunting your weapons. How is this a service to the ruler?”[6] Zhonghang Wu replied, “With this we do serve the ruler. If in winning one city we teach the people laziness, then it would be far better to maintain the status quo. No good can come from purchasing laziness, and there is nothing auspicious about throwing away the status quo.”[7] After the city’s food supplies were drained and its populace exhausted, Zhonghang Wu finally completed his mission. “Overcoming Gu and returning,” the ancient texts tell us, “he did not put to death a single person.”[8]
Zhonghang Wu’s methods, although ultimately deemed successful, would have been roundly rejected by another contemporaneous general also named Wu. Sun Wu, known later by his more famous moniker, Sun Tzu, promoted a wildly divergent notion of war’s ideal conduct. “All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu declared, implying that a reliance on the traitor’s perfidy would be enthusiastically welcomed under his suzerainty.[9] Siege warfare, due to its difficulty and potential for protraction, was to be avoided at all costs. “War is such that the supreme consideration is speed,” his text asserted, adding: “No country has ever profited from protracted warfare.”[10] Echoing the misgivings of Zhonghang Wu’s staff, Sun Tzu issued a pointed corrective: “In joining battle, seek the quick victory. If battle is protracted, your weapons will be blunted and your troops demoralized. If you lay siege to a walled city, you exhaust your strength.”[11]
…STUDENTS ARE GIVEN THE IMPRESSION THAT ONLY SUN TZU’S IDEAS FORM THE FOUNDATION OF CHINESE MILITARY THOUGHT.
Today, no war college or strategic studies course debates the merits or deficiencies found in both generals’ views on warfare. Instead, students are given the impression that only Sun Tzu’s ideas form the foundation of Chinese military thought. This oversimplification, though, masks a more complex and nuanced assessment of the actual evolution of strategic thinking during this transformative period in China. The contrast between these competing visions of generalship mirrored an ongoing debate about the conduct of war known as the Wen/Wu problem. And, far from being definitively resolved with the appearance of Sun Tzu’s text, this same debate continues today.
Derived from the Chinese characters for both the “civil” (wen 文) and the “martial” (wu 武), the origins of the Wen/Wu debate trace back to a belief that the co-founders of the Zhou state, Kings Wen and Wu, successfully deployed an ideal mix of hard and soft power while laying the foundation for their long-lasting dynastic system (1045—256 BCE). According to the Book of Rites (Liji): “King Wen used the civil [wen] to bring order, and King Wu used martial accomplishments [wu] to expel the calamities of the people.”[12] The Huainanzi, a second century BCE text on governance, further explicates the distinction between these two rulers’ techniques:
King Wen hoped that by means of humility and softness, he would retain the powerful and violent and thereby rid the world of brutality and cleanse it of tyranny and plundering to establish the Kingly Way…When King Wen’s work was left unfinished, King Wu continued his efforts. Employing the strategies of the Grand Duke, he mobilized a small contingent of troops and personally donned battle armor and helmet to chastise the impious and punish the unjust. He vanquished the enemy troops at Muye and thereby ascended to the position of Son of Heaven.[13]
This delicately balanced calibration of the civil and martial levers of power proved ephemeral. As Zhou rule precipitously declined beginning in the eighth century BCE, Chinese intellectuals living through the ensuing chaos and internecine warfare struggled to find a path back to order and harmony. According to Angus Graham’s classic study of Chinese philosophers of this period, “The crucial question for all of them is not the Western philosopher’s ‘What is the truth?’ but ‘Where is the Way?’, the way to order the state and conduct personal life.”[14] For the military writers of this period, this means they were less interested in examining the theoretical underpinnings of war’s unique nature, and more concerned with providing a concrete military guide to restoring political and social order in their own time. The contemporary strategist can undoubtedly derive insight into the nature of war through these writings, but not practicably through the examination of only one individual text, and certainly not without a deep understanding of the historical context in which they were originally written and promulgated.[15]
To give a brief example of how these debates played out at the time, consider an iconic story from the Battle of Chengpu discussed in at least four extant texts from the Warring States and early Han dynasty periods. In 632 BCE, on the eve of the clash between the armies of Jin and Chu, Duke Wen of Jin sought advice from two of his advisors on the best method to conduct battle. The first advisor, Jiu Fan, argued he should rely on a strategy of deception to defeat the Chu army. Duke Wen then summoned Yong Ji, who replied, “If you burn the forest and go hunting, you will temporarily have much game, but there will be no more animals left afterwards. If you adopt the measure of deception in dealing with people, you may have the advantage for a time, but the same measure can never be repeated afterwards.”[16] Duke Wen relied on Jiu Fan’s deceptive methods to defeat the Chu army, but afterwards rewarded Yong Ji for his service over that of Jiu Fan. When his officials asked why he snubbed Jiu Fan when he clearly preferred his advice over Yong Ji’s during the battle, Duke Wen replied, “This is not what you, gentlemen, understand. To be sure, what Jiu Fan suggested was a temporary expediency; whereas what Yong Ji advised was an everlasting advantage.”[17]
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Han Feizi (Wikimedia)
According to one of the texts, Confucius agreed with Duke Wen’s decision, noting: “To use deception in the face of difficulty is a fit way to repel an enemy. To return from battle and honor the worthy is a fit way to recompense virtue.”[18] The Legalist philosopher Han Feizi criticized Duke Wen for rewarding Yong Ji at all, claiming Jiu Fan’s promotion of deception was the true “everlasting advantage.”[19] Han Feizi’s former teacher, Xunzi, disagreed with both of these arguments and highlighted deception’s disadvantages in war. Beyond the moral argument, Xunzi pushed back on the assumption that a reliance on quick victories based on duplicity would necessarily be more efficient in the long-term: “To capture and take over others is something that is easy to be capable of doing,” Xunzi warned, “but it is solidifying and consolidating one’s grip on them that is the hard part.”[20]
Today, though, we approach The Art of War as if these debates never occurred, or if they did, Sun Tzu’s virtuosity closed the door on any alternate viewpoints. This often leads to questionable contemporary analysis, in which one improbably claims that by simply following Sun Tzu’s teachings, positive strategic outcomes inevitably materialize. No less a luminary than Henry Kissinger promotes this canard. In On China he writes, “One could argue that the disregard of [Sun Tzu’s] precepts was importantly responsible for America’s frustration in its Asian wars.”[21] If correct, one should also consider how the Korean War might have ended if General MacArthur took to heart Sun Tzu’s precepts of civil-military relations:
“He whose generals are able and not interfered with by the sovereign will be victorious…There are occasions when the commands of the sovereign need not be obeyed…If the situation is one of victory but the sovereign has issued orders not to engage, the general may decide to fight.”[22]
The issues debated by these ancient Chinese thinkers are ones we still grapple with. The 2003 Iraq War began with a campaign known as “shock and awe,” a plan believed by its own proponents to be inspired by Sun Tzu and designed to achieve quick and total victory via “Hiroshima levels of [strategic effect] but through far more selective and informed targeting.”[23] In hindsight, however, one could argue the war did not truly end until fourteen grueling years later, with the slow and brutal siege of Mosul. When the U.S. first toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan, it did so with speed, surprise, a small military footprint, and minimal casualties. Sun Wu himself might have expressed approval. Yet almost two decades later with hostilities dragging on, mounting fatalities, squandered resources, the installation of a feckless government, and a resurgent Taliban poised to reclaim control, perhaps Zhonghang Wu’s counsel would have provided a useful counterpoint to consider during the planning phases of these two conflicts. His appeal to carefully calibrate the military response with the desired long-term strategic goal—including an acceptance of risk to one’s own forces—or else cherish the status quo, remains an apt concern. The benefit of studying these ancient texts lies not in any answers they provide, but rather in the questions they posed.
It is time to break Sun Tzu’s stranglehold over the study of ancient Chinese strategic thought and military theory in general. Our fixation with this lone text deafens us to the other voices in a great debate that first raged millennia ago and continues unabated. As two scholars of this formative period in China helpfully remind us, “The ancient texts were not talking to us, they were arguing with each other.”[24] It would be helpful, therefore, to put more effort into understanding the contours of these arguments. Sun Tzu’s contemporary relevance can only be properly assessed by first comparing and contrasting him with other military thinkers of his own age, rather than racing to pit his writings against those of a nineteenth century Prussian.
We should strive to broaden our comprehension of other less well-known works of history and philosophy from this period and rethink our assumption that Sun Tzu emerged as the clear doyen of all Chinese strategic thinking. Contemporary works such as A.C. Graham’s Disputers of the Tao, Mark Edward Lewis’s Sanctioned Violence in Early China, Robin McNeal’s Conquer and Govern, and Christopher Rand’s Military Thought in Early China are all excellent primers on these ancient debates and helpful in expanding the scope of our inquiries far beyond The Art of War.
Steven Metz, a professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, once opined that “it is time to hold a wake so that strategists can pay their respects to Clausewitz and then move on, leaving him to rest among the historians.”[25] While a similar sepulture for Sun Tzu is premature, an intervention is long overdue. Sober reflection on the text reveals it to be neither as singularly unique as we assume, as strategic in focus as we claim, nor as relevant to modern warfare as we hope. Over the last century, though, the lionizers of Sun Tzu in the West have constructed a formidable barrier designed to prevent questioning his preeminent position as the fount of all strategic and military thinking.[26] For those willing to topple this false edifice, then, settle in. This will be a long siege.
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