Art of War (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (24 page)

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Authors: Sunzi

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3. By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy to approach of his own accord; or, by inflicting damage, he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near.
 
In the first case, he will entice him with a bait; in the second, he will strike at some important point which the enemy will have to defend.
4. If the enemy is taking his ease, he can harass him; if well supplied with food, he can starve him out; if quietly encamped, he can force him to move.
The king who is endowed with personality and the material constituents of sovereignty and on whom all right policy rests is called the conqueror. That which encircles him on all sides and prevails in the territory immediately adjacent to his is . . . known as the enemy. . . . A neighboring prince having the fullest measure of antagonism is an enemy. When he is in difficulty, he should be attacked; when he is without support or has weak support, he should be exterminated. In contrary circumstances [when he is strong or has strong support], he should be harassed or weakened.
Kautilya,
Artha Sastra
(fourth or third century B.C.)
5. Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.
6. An army may march great distances without distress, if it marches through country where the enemy is not.
 
Ts’ao Kung sums up very well: “Emerge from the void, strike at vulnerable points, shun places that are defended, attack in unexpected quarters.”
7. You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.
 
Wang Hsi rightly explains [“undefended”] as “weak points; that is to say, where the general is lacking in capacity, or the soldiers in spirit; where the walls are not strong enough, or the precautions not strict enough; where relief comes too late, or provisions are too scanty, or the defenders are [at] variance amongst themselves.”
You can ensure the safety of your defence if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.
 
I.e
., where there are none of the weak points mentioned above. . . . Chang Yü [says]: “He who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven, making it impossible for the enemy to guard against him. This being so, the places that I shall attack are precisely those that the enemy cannot defend . . . He who is skilled in defence hides in the most secret recesses of the earth, making it impossible for the enemy to estimate his whereabouts. This being so, the places that I shall hold are precisely those that the enemy cannot attack.”
Viewers of films such as Ang Lee’s
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(2000) or the kung-fu films of Jackie Chan will recognize the imagery. It is also strongly present, of course, in martial arts disciplines such as tai chi. DG
8. Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defence whose opponent does not know what to attack.
 
An aphorism which puts the whole art of war into a nutshell.
9. O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.
It was an extraordinary achievement of modern warfare: between 12 and 25 October, 1950, the intelligence staffs of MacArthur’s armies failed to discern the slightest evidence of the movement of 130,000 soldiers and porters. A combination of superb fieldcraft and camouflage by the Chinese, with their lack of use of any of the conventional means of detecting modern military movement—wireless traffic, mechanised activity, supply dumps—blinded the U.N. High Command to what was taking place on its front.
Max Hastings,
The Korean War
, 1987
10. You may advance and be absolutely irresistible, if you make for the enemy’s weak points; you may retire and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapid than those of the enemy.
Mao is the surgeon, exploring the wound, insisting above everything else on the delicate probing, the discovery of the enemy’s weakened nerve, the dangerous point where weakness is balanced by strength: at this point, he will order attack.
Robert Payne,
Mao Tse-tung
(1969)
11. If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is to attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.
 
Tu Mu says: “If the enemy is the invading party, we can cut his line of communications and occupy the roads by which he will have to return; if we are the invaders, we may direct our attack against the sovereign himself.” It is clear that Sun Tzu, unlike certain generals in the late Boer war, was no believer in frontal attacks.

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