Today’s installment goes beyond business and looks at some of the craziness in the world today.
Sun Tzu opens chapter 4, on “Dispositions,” by warning the reader that truly skilled warriers first make themselves invincible, and then await an enemy’s vulnerability.
This one sentence—which remember, is held by many people in many quarters to be part of the most sage collection of military wisdom ever documented—completely undermines the strategic underpinning of Amercia’s current War on Terror.
The War on Terror is an offensive strategy against armies. When talking about offensive strategies, Sun Tzu warned that fighting was actually the third thing to try… after attacking strategies and disrupting alliances. Meanwhile, it leaves us exposed at the strategic and alliance level. To wit:
- If India attacks Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks, it does nothing to thwart the terrorists’ abilities. It only erodes those nations’ abilities to protect themselves.
- When the USA dismantled Iraq, al Queda moved in. They showed us exactly how they would exploit our nation v. nation approach to this battle, and we have learned—dearly—how much it would cost to even just partially undo their work.
- When we rattle our saber at N. Korea and Iran (remember the Axis of Evil?), they rattle back. Great. Now what? Now we have terrorism AND multiple nuclear threats.
- Even at the military level, our flanks are exposed: they don’t wear uniforms, making the PR war a lost cause: we shoot at a guy in a gun, they take away the gun and say we killed a civilian. They shoot at us from a house, we clear out the house and children die as a result. This is not a battle that can be won with bullets. This is the kind of fight that doesn’t end until someone scorches the earth.
- When we fortify one area, they move the attack. They went after planes, now airports are “secure.” So they pick up AK-47s and grenades and walk into hotels. Remember the siege at the theater in Russia? The disco attacks in Europe? The Achille Lauro? 9/11? Are you listening to the warnings about our food supply? Energy grid? Water supply? We can’t guard everything.
If we’re going to win, we need to step back from the direct attacks which leave our flanks, alliances, and strategies vulnerable, and make ourselves invincible. That begins with the recognition that this is a battle of ideologies that are bigger than nationalism, political parties, and heritage. If an alien spacecraft attacked earth, I’m guessing we’d stop being east/west PDQ in order to come together to put down a common enemy. Well folks, the spacecraft is here, and it’s filled with people from the past who want to return the world to the Dark Ages, complete with religious intolerance, imposed ignorance, and the subjugation of women.
Not acceptable.
They are going after our mindset, so we need to make our mindset invincible. That starts by learning how to trust. Literally learning how to vet someone, to vet information, to make friends, to communicate, to validate and disconfirm what we hear. That’s how we remove fear, and it’s how we build meaningful alliances. From a foundation of trust, we can begin to work to take the enemy whole, without a fight.
Yes, that means “working with our enemy” and it sounds as disgusting to me at the present moment as it probably does to you. But look around: when fighting someone who’s goal is not to take away one thing of yours, but to make you suffer, you cannot win by fighting over stuff or space or even people. You have to work at a conceptual level, and that requires communication… which requires trust. (And let me be clear: trust sometimes means nothing more than “predictability,” as in, “I trust you will lie in this circumstance.” I don’t expect Kumbaya anytime soon.)
Do we put down our weapons? No way.
But we get out of the mountains and we stop chasing them onto their turf. We need to bring the battle back to a place we can win, which is in the halls of power. We need to communicate in order to make this a battle for money, economic opportunity, and legitimacy. That’s a fight the world can more likely win…
That’s how we make ourselves invincible, and that’s the first step toward victory.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 
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This is probably my favorite chapter.
Sun Tzu is telling us that victory in war is not the product of brute force, but of perception and insight – we sometimes call this “timing”.
You cannot make your opponent vulnerable, only he can and you have to wait for him to do it. Patience. Not only do you have to wait for him to make a mistake, you have to have the apparatus to detect this and the intelligence to recognize it.
He goes on to say that winning easy fights is not impressive, any more than seeing the sun or hearing thunder.
The great ones do not focus on the obvious, but tune into the subtle. They are on a totally different channel than most people.
There is a lot of discussion and disagreement over what he means by “The Way”. I think it is partly about a highly developed intuition but I do think he left it intentionally undefined so that those who really wanted it would continually seek it.
wow- I get that Jason you were frustrated and experiencing tension- perhaps guilt- when you made that.
Here’s on one anger:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtRC7UIebKo
and here’s one on guilt and so forth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tajFaVYaI