Bing Stanley - Sun Tzu was a sissy: conquer your enemies, promote your friends, and wage the real art of war

The art of war is of vital importance to
the state. It is a matter of life or
death, a road either to safety or to ruin.
One ignores it at ones peril.

Sun Tzu

Of course you knowthis means war!

Bugs Bunny,
to Elmer Fudd

Sun Tzu,
a Sissy for Our Times

Therefore, one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Subduing the others military without battle is the most skillful.

Sun Tzu

War is not nice.

Barbara Bush

S everal thousand years ago in China, or what was then destined to be China, there lived a guy named Sun Tzu. Like Nicolo Machiavelli and Walt Rostow and Paul Wolfowitz, he didnt run the world, he just advised those who did. Presumably, those he advised did better than those he didnt, even though because theyre dead now thats hard to ascertain.

And so his legend grew from one generation of murderous warlords to the next, until he became more famous than they did, possibly because his name was easier to remember, but also because in general writers have the last word.

Sun Tzu wrote about War. How to make it. How to win it. How to get others to die in it instead of you. This last was particularly popular with warlords back then, and remains so to this day with their contemporary counterparts in both the military and the executive suites.

Sun Tzu wrote a bunch of extremely poetic and deep stuff that somebody must have understood, because it was handed lovingly down over the years to those who kill people for a living, and is now taught at West Point and sold, in one form or another, in airport bookstores to people in charge of marketing and advertising and even Human Resources.

Why Sun Tzu is appealing to people is a mystery, because his stuff is about as easy to understand as one of those instruction manuals they give you when you buy any product from eastern Europe. Let me give you an example:

When the enemy is near and still, he is relying on the steep. When the enemy is far and provokes battle, he wishes the other to advancehe is occupying the level and advantageous.

Theres a lot of stuff like this throughout the book thats come to be known as The Art of War, but it all adds up to the fact that whatever Emperor Sun Tzu must have worked for, its quite likely he had no clothes. But then, thats true of a lot of emperors. And no matter how shockingly naked the local warlord is, he probably still needs to defend himself.

It isnt that Sun Tzu was wrong, exactly. But theres no business like Tzu business, not today. His approach might have been darned good when the job was to tramp a bunch of guys in bamboo ponchos up and down the mountainside, waiting for the optimal time to swoop down and acquire the most advantageous position for the next round of fighting. I dont know about you, but I havent come up against that situation since the late 1990s.

I fight in the real world as, Im sure, do you. We dont really have armies, per se. Like, we have people we fight with, but armies? Sadly, no. We dont have terrain as such, either, unless you define terrain quite differently. We can do that, but Sun Tzu didnt, not really. Because he was a sissy.

I know that perhaps sounds a bit harsh. I dont mean it to be. Its quite possible that all of the Tztuff he talks about, the mincing dependence on hyperstrategy and deep philosophical musings, the delicate calibration of where, when, and how to strike, the weeny-hierarchical hagiographic view of ultrasenior managementused to work.

But we dont really live in a world where the following statement is of any particular use:

The shuai-jan is a snake of the Chung mountains.

Strike at its head and you will be attacked by its tail.

Strike its tail and you will be attacked by its head.

Strike its midsection and you will be attacked by head and tail both.

Know what? Thats just too inscrutable for me. When Im thinking about War, I dont want to prance around the maypole. I want to be rolling up my sleeves and wrapping my tie around my head. I know my adversary is probably doing the same. If hes not, he should be. Because Im coming.

To be Tzure, the Master did have many important things to say about War that we can listen to and take into account. Its better not to fight, for instance, unless you absolutely know for sure that youre going to win. Thats one of his big points. Who could deny that? Except the thing is, a lot of the time when I have to fight, I dont know if Im going to win. I meantheres that.

Then theres the whole idea that the real military genius is the one who can win without firing a shot. Like, the general is so strategic that the other guy just falls down from sheer lack of strategic advantage. Ive never actually seen that happen, but theres no question at all that if youre going to have any chance at winning, youve got to have a very nice strategy going forward. Its the overreliance on strategy, however, that makes Sun Tzu such a limp biscuit at this particular point in the history of the world. Our world, at any rate. Im sure that back when there were only half a billion Chinese he was known far and wide as a fearsome enemy and terrifying opponent. But now? No.

We can do better. We need to.

Finally, Sun Tzu talks a lot about Tao and other spiritual kinds of material like that, which, frankly, I find kind of offensive in a discussion about war, and killing, and fighting. As far as Im concerned, lets have the good taste to leave Tao out of it, huh? Blood? Guts? Raw, animal hatred? Sure. But Tao? Come on.

Anyone who has ever seen a guy lose twenty years of expense account plastic in one afternoon will tell you theres nothing even slightly Tao about the whole business. When the check comes, he has to go to the Mens Room to avoid the possibility of kicking in his share. Thats defeat by any standard.

Bottom line? The real Art of War does not come from the East anymore anyhow. Not anymore. It comes from the greatest nation in the world, the last superpower on the planet.

War is violent, scary, and the quickest way to gain and keep territory and, hopefully, your life, over time. Those wise and sage and full of Sun Tzu enough not to fight are generally fetching beverages for those who are willing to poke out somebody elses eye if need be. And Tao schmow. Wars are about hate. You dont go to war unless you want to kill the other guy.

This is neither the way things should be nor the way we wish them to be. It is simply what is. Those who want to prevail in these perilous times had better know how to wage war to win, getting deep down into the field of battle with the stink of sweat and Diet Coke in your nostrils and the tears of big, bald men all over your shoes.

This book will attempt to transcend all that Eastern goo and teach you, feisty westerner, how to make war and enjoy the subsequent booty. All of this will have to take place in the real world, which is to say not on the military playing field, or on the gridiron, or the links. The battle we wage takes place in the toughest trench of all: where we work.