The Useless Tree

Sun Tzu is not a Taoist

I keep an eye out for American popular cultural references to ancient Chinese philosophy.  So, imagine my surprise when I chanced upon this story from ESPN: "Amare Stoudemire, Taoist?"

It seems that the Phoenix Suns basketball player has gotten into a classical text - only it's not a Taoist book, but Sun Tzu:

"They call me 'Sun Tzu,' " Stoudemire said. "That's what they call me nowadays. The methods I use from the ancient general, Sun Tzu, is the leadership method. I feel like using that will help my leadership and help us to get over the hump. I'm going to apply those tactics and those rules to how we're going to approach battle and win."

It's not clear why the writer then links Sun to Taoism.  True, the notion of "winning without fighting" does have Taoist-like subtlety to it.  But Sun Tzu is a man of action, a man who tells us we must engage in exhaustive planning and preparation before we enter battle.  Wu wei - doing nothing -  is decidedly not his way of thinking.  Sun Tzu, I think it is safe to say, is not a Taoist.

OK, maybe I should not expect an ESPN writer to get these distinctions.  But I think the journalist he cites goes too far when she crticizes Stoudemire's invocation of Sun Tzu.  Apparently, the star player is suggesting that he might leave the team after this season, and the journalist comments:

Surely somewhere in the Chinese general's book, The Art of War, is a chapter that says conjecture about your possible departure a month removed from Suns training camp is not the right approach to unifying a team, let alone a fan base.

Sigh. Stoudemire has done it again, irking some with his comments Tuesday that the 2009-2010 season "might be my farewell tour." Poor timing? You bet. Worthy of an uproar? Hardly...

... So although the Sun Tzu bit might seem contrived to some, it's Stoudemire trying to flex his leadership muscles and, sure, maybe trying to market himself a little bit. This is the NBA, after all.

But maybe Stoudemire really does know Sun Tzu.   Maybe he takes to heart The Art of War's injunction that "war is deception."  Perhaps he is just saying that this might be his last season with the Suns in order to create a media commotion, to draw attention to himself and take the pressure off of his teammates....

Or maybe I reading way too much into this....

Sun Tzu will out

Just saw this post by Stephen Walt:

Today we learned that the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan are now spearheading a major effort at (drum roll) ... prison reform. We've figured out that the brutal treatment that even petty criminals face while in jail is facilitating Taliban recruitment in the prisons, and so the United States is going to build some new facilities and try to get the Afghan government to change its incarceration practices. Your tax dollars at work.

Walt goes on to note the irony of all of this.

Remember what Sun Tzu said (something that had been rejected by the Bush administration):

Treat captives well, and care for them

Chang Yu: All soldiers taken must be cared for with magnanimity and sincerity so that they may be used by us.

This is called "winning a battle and becoming stronger."
(2.19,20)

Dick Cheney, call your office....

Davids, Goliaths and Sun Tzu

I missed this last week but let me comment on it now.

Malcolm Gladwell's piece in The New Yorker, "How David Beats Goliath," has a Sun Tzu tone to it.  He basically argues that creativity and effort can overcome material disadvantages in a wide range of strategic situations, from girl's basketball to war-gaming.  One of his examples is Lawrence of Arabia:

Consider the way T. E. Lawrence (or, as he is better known, Lawrence of Arabia) led the revolt against the Ottoman Army occupying Arabia near the end of the First World War. The British were helping the Arabs in their uprising, and the initial focus was Medina, the city at the end of a long railroad that the Turks had built, running south from Damascus and down through the Hejaz desert. The Turks had amassed a large force in Medina, and the British leadership wanted Lawrence to gather the Arabs and destroy the Turkish garrison there, before the Turks could threaten the entire region.

But when Lawrence looked at his ragtag band of Bedouin fighters he realized that a direct attack on Medina would never succeed. And why did taking the city matter, anyway? The Turks sat in Medina “on the defensive, immobile.” There were so many of them, consuming so much food and fuel and water, that they could hardly make a major move across the desert. Instead of attacking the Turks at their point of strength, Lawrence reasoned, he ought to attack them where they were weak—along the vast, largely unguarded length of railway line that was their connection to Damascus. Instead of focussing his attention on Medina, he should wage war over the broadest territory possible.

Gladwell goes on to describe the battle of Aqaba, where Lawrence's men surprise and defeat the Turks by coming at them from the desert, where they were least expected. This is, of course, straight out of Sun Tzu, which Lawrence may have known but which Gladwell does not cite.  Here are some relevant passages:

Generally, he who occupies the field of battle first and awaits his enemy is at ease; he who comes later to the scene and rushes into the fight is weary.

And therefore those skilled in war bring the enemy to he field of battle and are not brought there by him.

One able to make the enemy come of his own accord does so by offering him some advantage.  And one able to prevent him from coming does so by hurting him.

When the enemy is at ease, be able to weary him; when well fed, to starve him; when at rest; to make him move.

Appear at places to which he must hasten; move swiftly where he does not expect you.

That you may march a thousand li without wearying yourself is because you travel where there is no enemy.

To be certain to take what you attack, is to attack a place the enemy does not protect.  To be certain to hold what you defend is to defend a place the enemy does not attack.

Therefore, against those skilled in attack, an enemy does not know where to defend; against the experts in defense, the enemy does not know where to attack.

Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace; divinely mysterious, he is inaudible.  Thus he is the master of the enemy's fate. (6.1-9)

Fight on the ground of you choosing, set the terms of the battle, control the pace of the interaction, and you will prevail...even in girl's basketball.

That's What Sun Tzu Said

I noticed this paragraph, in a blog post by Christopher Orr at TNR (HT Sullivan):

The humane treatment of surrendered captives, therefore, is a crucial--arguably the crucial--understanding between adversaries if their conflict is to end in any way other than with the wholesale slaughter of the losers. It's worth noting, too, that it is not merely the lives of the losers that are preserved. If they do not surrender, it may be that they are all killed; but it is very likely that, in the process, they will also kill some, perhaps even many, of the eventual victors.

And that is pretty much what Sun Tzu (II.19,20) says:

Treat the captives well, and care for them

This is called "winning a battle and becoming stronger."

And just for emphasis, one ancient Chinese commentator on this passage, Chang Yu, adds:

All the soldiers taken must be cared for with magnanimity and sincerity so that they may be used by us.

You can't gain good intelligence from captives if you brutalize and torture them.  Too bad Bush and Cheney failed to heed Sun Tzu...

Sun Tzu on the American Exit from Iraq

One of the benefits of teaching is the new ideas that are generated in conversation with students.  That happened the other day.  My class was discussing Sun Tzu and the impending US withdrawal from Iraq, focusing on a recent report from the Center for American Progress. In the course of the exchange one student came up with a novel point, one that I think goes to one of the key assertions of the report.

The CAP report argues that the US military presence in Iraq creates a disincentive for domestic policy-makers to make the hard choices that genuine political reconciliation requires:

The U.S. military presence in Iraq is not politically neutral. It creates a distinct set of incentives for political actors that directly work against the reconciliation that U.S. diplomats try to promote. U.S. military dominance and support absolves the major political actors from having to make the tough decisions necessary to achieve a power-sharing equilibrium.

Thus, they argue, an American withdrawal is more likely to facilitate an ultimate political settlements, something that the "surge" has failed to achieve.

One student in my class argued that Sun Tzu would likely agree with this.  The obvious Art of War idea to support that sort of claim would be the various statements that tell commanders to avoid protracted warfare, which raises economic costs and saps political support for a campaign, outcomes that are manifest in Iraq.  But the student brought in another idea, referring to passage 11.5 (Griffith translation):

Set the troops to their tasks without imparting your designs; use them to gain advantage without revealing the dangers involved.   Throw them into a perilous situation and they survive; put them in death ground and they will live.  For when the army is placed in such a situation it can snatch victory from defeat.

Sun Tzu is here talking about the psychological dynamics of commanding one's own troops.  He is saying that a commander should consciously place his men in difficult circumstances, even "death ground" (i.e. places where there is no way out except to fight like hell), because their natural instinct to live will spur them on to greater effort and achievement.   This passage can also be applied to the political situation in Iraq: when the US leaves, Iraqi political leaders will be on their own, in a more "perilous situation," perhaps even "death ground," and thus will be forced to work toward some sort of political settlement.  As long as the US remains, those Iraqi leaders do not have to face the difficulties and can put off the day of political reckoning.

Of course what matters is which sort of political settlement is pursued.  It is possible, maybe likely, that some Iraqi leaders, especially those now in power, will use violent means against their political rivals.  Indeed, there would seem to be a high probability of an increase in violence when the US leaves.  But that is the nature of the situation.  The civil war(s) have been suspended for a time while various factions wait for what they know is the inevitable US withdrawal.  They avoid political agreements that might create institutions or practices that could limit their power, in favor of a fight in the not so distant future that could yield them a better political position. There is a chance that a stable political settlement could emerge without high levels of fighting.  Yet if some groups, Sunnis for example, feel that they are being shut out, that they are on "death ground," the violence could be quite bad.

Given the overall situation, however, I think the student is right.  The high costs of the war and the strategic disadvantage it has created for the US (producing a regional context in which Iranian power is very much magnified) would lead Sun Tzu to agree with disengagement.  And if the hope is for stabilization of Iraqi politics,  Sun Tzu would also likely agree that a US exit, by placing Iraqi leaders in a more "perilous situation," would serve that end.

One Last Time with Gusto: Bush Lost the War!

With the impending inauguration of Obama, a lot of revisionism about the Bush years is streaming forth from various sources.  But as far as Iraq is concerned, I'm sticking with my old friend the Aardvark, who is now blogging under his real name: Marc Lynch.  He writes:

I have a hard time imagining anything as tedious as rehashing those tired debates from the campaign about the "surge" -- perhaps we could have another round of arguments as to whether the surge brigades arriving in the spring of 2007 caused the Sunni turn against al-Qaeda in the fall of 2006?

The change in approach (was it strategy or tactics?) that has come to be known as the "surge" has contributed to a reduction in violence, and that's a good thing.  Fewer people are being killed.  But this does not constitute military "victory."  Marc, in another piece, gets right to the point:

...beneath the superficial veneer of improved security upon which most Americans have focused, Iraq continues to be torn apart by deep divides over ethnicity and religion and by escalating battles between political insiders and popular forces. Despite some promising developments, little political reconciliation has taken place since the "surge" began.

I am a bit concerned about the politics here.  When Obama comes in on Tuesday, Bush-backers will say that the war has been won; thus, as the conflict continues, reignited by any of several flash points (provincial elections, the Basra situation, the Kirkuk impasse, etc.) they will then turn on Obama and complain that he has lost the war.  But his is not true.  Bush lost the war and he has never overcome that defeat by re-constructing a politically viable Iraq. As long as Iraq remains a broken state, the central government unable to control its own territory and riven by deep internal divides, it will continue to be a strategic problem for the US.  Bush created that problem by breaking the Iraqi state, and he has not solved it.

We can think about this in terms of Sun Tzu (because that is what I am reading now with students).  In Chapter Three of The Art of War, he writes:

Generally, in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this. To capture the enemy's entire army is better than to destroy it; to take intact a regiment, a company, or a squad is better than to destroy them.

In Iraq, the US initially took that state intact.  American forces, following the Sun Tzu idea that speed in execution is of the utmost importance, very quickly fought their way north from Kuwait, taking Baghdad faster than anyone really thought possible.  It was what happened next that lost the war. The US did not impose internal order (remember all the looting?); the US did not create an effective government; and, perhaps worst of all, the US disbanded the Iraqi army, shattering the coercive power of the central state apparatus.  Essentially, the country has never fully recovered from that destruction.  The US had won the war, in a sense, only to lose it shortly thereafter.  That, in any event, might be what Sun Tzu would say.

So, let's remember, when the Bush dead-enders come out of the woodwork to blame Obama for the continuing Iraq mess:

Bush Lost the War!

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan is on to the same issue....

Mencius and Sun Tzu on Gaza

It is apparent that the Israeli attack on Gaza fails on both moral and strategic grounds.

The wide-scale killing of innocents and disproportionality of the Israeli violence make it an unjust war.  And, even though he did not argue in quite these same terms, Mencius would agree:

Mencius said: "There were no just wars in The Spring and Autumn Annals.  Some were better than others, but that's all.  A sovereign may discipline his august lords by attacking them.  But one country should never discipline another in such a way." (14.2)

As I mentioned in other posts, Mencius takes a fairly hard line against killing innocents, and he is generally skeptical of war, though perhaps not quite as absolutely so as suggested in passage 14.2.  But the attack on Gaza would not be a hard case for him.  It is clear that many, many civilians are being killed, and Israel, even though it was hit first with rockets, must bear the moral cost of that.   And if the US was true to the principles it espouses it would press Israel to call off the attacks.

From a different perspective, Sun Tzu, who was obviously more willing to condone the use of force than was Mencius, would also find faulty with the Israeli attack.  The whole point of using military power, for Sun Tzu, is to secure some sort of strategic goal:

...the best military policy is to attack strategies; the next is to attack alliances; the next is to attack soldiers; and the worst is to assault walled cities. (chapter 3)

The attack on densely populated Gaza is equivalent to an assault on a walled city. I

Sun Tzu understood the horrors of war and he sought to avoid violence as much as possible, and to use violence with as much economy as possible when it was necessary.  But there must be some kind of goal, tactical or strategic, that must be achieved, and must be achievable, to make war sensible for Sun Tzu.  And this seems to be missing in this sad re-iteration of failed Israeli policy toward Palestine.   My former colleague, and now high-flying Foreign Policy Magazine blogger, Abu Aardvark has pointed out, Israel appears to have no real strategy in this fight.  Indeed, in another post he points out that the most likely outcome of the assault is an advancement of the interests al-Qaeda.  An attack that secures you nothing and stengthens your enemy: an obvious loser from a Sun Tzu point of view.  

The Israeli attack on Gaza: morally backrupt and strategically worthless.

Stop the killing.

Republican Party Maoism

So Sarah Palin is attempting to mobilize the "pro-American" parts of the US against the rest, presumably the anti-American parts of America (think about that for a moment...). In seeking to clarify precisely what she meant by this distinction, she said:

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation."

    This, for me, resonates with Mao Zedong's guerrilla strategy of surrounding or encircling the cities from the countryside.  The concept is perhaps most fully developed by Lin Biao:

To rely on the peasants, build rural base areas and use the countryside to encircle and finally capture the cities — such was the way to victory in the Chinese revolution.

        That seems to be the Republican Party strategy these days.  The Moderate Voice sees this as a loser, as does  Steve Chapman:

One of these days, the 80 percent of Americans who live in more populated areas may tire of being obliquely insulted. Most urbanites and suburbanites don't think they're any better than their country cousins. But Palin might want to think twice before telling them they're worse.

   That 80 percent number is interesting.  When Mao developed his strategy of "people's war," drawing on Sun Tzu, he was working pragmatically from the circumstances that surrounded him.  He was, as Sun might have advised him, creating a battle plan based on the "ground" or "terrain" or, we might say, realities that confronted him.  It just so happened that something like 80 percent of the Chinese population then lived in the countryside.  Pretty smart that Mao: mobilize the 80 percent against the 20 percent!  

    The contemporary Republican Party Maoism seems doomed to failure, however.  Somebody in the McCain campaign should read Sun Tzu.  They then might realize that they must create a political strategy that conforms to the "ground" or realities of present day America.  And one of the most brute of those realities is that the vast majority of American voters - Chapman's 80 percent - do not live in small towns.  

   Then again, as an Obama guy, I should just keep quiet.  Don't let McCain and Palin in on Sun Tzu (maybe it was one of the books McCain did not read during his rambunctious days at the Naval Academy!).  Don't point out the obvious demographic flaw in their small town strategy.  Rather put out a slogan that urges them on:

     Long Live the Victory of the Republican Party People's War!

Remember: Bush Lost the War

There is a lot of talk these days about how the "surge" in Iraq has worked and that "victory" is at hand.  Rubbish.  While it is true that the "surge" was one of several elements (the others being internal Iraqi political shifts beyond the control of US policy) that contributed to a reduction in violence, it has not produced a political settlement.  And without a political settlement, Iraq remains a lost war.

    I was reminded of Bush's fundamental failure in Iraq when I heard this morning of the flight of Iraqi Christians from Mosul. From yesterday's NYT:

Violence has continued in the area despite months of concerted effort by American forces and the Iraqi government to root out violent actors there.

     I've noticed more reports of violence in recent weeks.  It is not at all clear that the reduction in the number of attacks associated with the "surge" will last.  

    My friend, Abu Aardvark, tells us that political reconciliation has not yet occurred and is likely not to occur until US forces are drawn down:

The problem lies in the fundamentally flawed belief that providing more security is the key to achieving political compromise. Restoring basic levels of security from the low point of 2006 was indeed essential. But now, contrary to what the authors argue, improved security is making the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki less likely to make meaningful compromises, since Maliki currently sees little downside to not doing so. The Iraqi government simply does not share American assessments of the negative consequences that would result from failing to achieve reconciliation. And as long as the U.S. military protects Iraqi leaders from the consequences of their choices, they are probably correct.

    The "authors" to which he refers include Stephen Biddle, who gave a talk here last week.  It was well informed and insightful but, ultimately, untimely.  His bottom line is that US forces must stay at least two more years, and perhaps longer, in order to assure political accord.  Abu Aardvark is arguing the opposite - Iraqi political actors have no real incentive to come to political terms with one another until they know they must bear responsibility for their own security upon the removal of US troops - and I agree with him.  We have had too many promises, too many disruptions and crises, to trust that the various Iraqi factions.  They now have the economic means to support themselves; let them do so.

    Indeed, listening to Biddle, I couldn't help but think: "this is a great talk....for 2004 or so."  Americans have moved beyond the war.  I cannot imagine much political support for an open-ended commitment, or even for a presence of two more years with no guarantee of withdrawal.  And when we add in the inevitable domestic effects of the current economic crisis, most Americans will oppose spending money on the Iraq war.  It's just too late for all that.

    To put it in Sun Tzu terms, whoever is the next president - which seems most likely to be Obama - he will face a domestic political situation in which pursuing war in Iraq will be out of keeping with the Way (Tao), the very first of Sun Tzu's "fundamental factors" of warfare.

By moral influence (tao) I mean that which causes people to be in harmony with their leaders, so that they will accompany them in life and unto death without fear of mortal peril. 1.4

     Iraq, it is safe to say, is not in the American Way.  

     Bush lost the war.

McCain's Pathetic Campaign Gimmick

Here's a line (hat tip Western Confucian) from Guardian blogger Oliver Burkeman that pretty much sums up my first impression of McCain's call to suspend his campaign and postpone tomorrow's debate:

this is actually the most absurd, impetuous and nakedly disingenuous suggestion that has ever been made in the history of politics, including Ancient Greece and the rudimentary organisational systems archeologists have identified in the lives of early man.

    Amen brother.

    Juan Cole also has an apt metaphor: McCain now realizes that he cannot win by conventional means and has gone totally over to guerrilla campaign strategy:

Mao Zedong announced the adage by which John McCain is clearly living now: "The enemy advances, we retreat. / The enemy camps, we harass. / The enemy tires, we attack." Mao was describing not a conventional but a guerrilla war, and McCain is now unexpectedly playing the Filipino insurgents of 1899 to Obama's America. Guerrilla wars are waged by the weak but wily. McCain has all but announced that his conventional campaign has crashed and burned. We do not know if the prepping for the debate was a disaster, or it turns out you really can't let Palin be interviewed freely by normal people, or whether terror set in that a second great depression will turn the country starkly to the left for the foreseeable future....
...
McCain thus threw off his stiff officer's uniform and donned the silky black pyjamas of the guerrilla, beating a hasty retreat before the Obama surge. The retreat was dressed up as a "suspension" of the campaign and a "postponement" of the debate (a debate that would have been McCain's Waterloo. Forced to debate a charismatic policy wonk on top of economic issues on the very week of the financial meltdown, the economically challenged McCain would have gone down flaming to decisive defeat.

Thus McCain's Long March back to Washington and his suspension of a campaign he cannot win by conventional means.

     So let's think about this move strategically.  If it is a shift away from conventional to guerrilla campaign maneuvers, will it work?  Sun Tzu would say "probably not" because it seems like McCain, in his constant floundering of late, has given up completely on conventional campaign strategy and is employing only guerrilla-like tactics.  Sun Tzu suggests that "extraordinary" forces (read here: guerrilla) must always work in tandem with "normal" forces:

That the army is certain to sustain the enemy's attack without suffering defeat is due to operations of the extraordinary and the normal forces...

Generally, in battle, use the normal forces to engage; use the extraordinary to win. (5.3,5)

McCain is not engaging with the normal; he has thrown the normal aside and is completely improvising.  Relying solely on the extraordinary suggests a certain rashness.  He thus is violating another of Sun's tenets:

Therefore, the enlightened ruler is prudent and the good general is warned against rash action... (12.19).

It is hard to see how McCain wins this battle of the first debate.