Letters 1: The Art of War

This is the first in a series of posts that I'm calling "letters," where my flatmate (Andrew Pregnall) and I are reading books together and writing about them! Hope you enjoy.

—IC

November 7, 2020, IC to AP

Dear Andrew,

This is the first letter in what I hope will be a series of exchanges moving forward, so I thought I’d begin with a rough explanation of what we’re trying to do here and then outline a few broad thoughts about our reading this week — Master Sun’s The Art of War.

Each week, both of us are reading a book, and then we’re writing letters to discuss it. At least from my perspective, I think we can get into deeper and more insightful conversations about difficult texts through writing rather than talking, and so we’re reading the books completely independently and discussing them solely through writing. (We’ll see whether this format actually ends up working!) Our book this week, as I noted earlier, is The Art of War, and we’re reading the Penguin Classics edition translated by John Minford.

The Art of War is a book about war, but, at least for Minford, it “lends itself to infinite applications” (xi). I figured we would talk about its implications for politics (although we can, of course, talk about other applications, too). My first topic for discussion then is simply: Why read a book on war to think about politics?

I don’t think the answer is self-evident. One might start by noting that a core theme from Master Sun is the importance of deceit and planned confrontation in successfully waging war. Master Sun’s form of politics is one that is deeply callous: he notes the importance of “dead spies” who are given false information to pass to the enemy (and thus are executed for their treachery) (91); he emphasizes that a general must not only be able to deceive his enemies but also “to keep his own troops in ignorance, to deceive their eyes and their ears” (77); he glorifies how “men who have faced death can achieve anything” and thus advises “throw[ing] your men” into situations “where there is no escape” (73). Politics, of course, can be confrontational and require deceit, but to translate Master Sun’s advice into a kind of deceptive, manipulistic politics seems dangerous and demeaning to the higher purposes of politics — to organize ourselves to create the conditions for each person to live a good life.

On the other hand, one might note that, for a book on war, The Art of War reads as a surprisingly anti-war piece. It opens with a simple piece of advice: war is “a grave affair of state” and “a matter to be pondered carefully” (3). The general, upon receiving orders “from his sovereign” (39, 47) prepares for war. But “if an engagement is sure to bring defeat, and yet the ruler orders it,” Master Sun admonishes, “do not fight” (66). We might hold certain stereotypes about what it means to be a good soldier or general: to be brave, to fight with zeal, to follow orders and the chain of command. Master Sun doesn’t deny any of that, since a good general in a pitched battle of course needs his troops to behave as such. But Master Sun does emphasize that battles are a last resort: “Ultimate excellence lies [...] in defeating the enemy without ever fighting” (14).

In that sense, reading The Art of War to inform our politics doesn’t require us to transplant brutal battle tactics into political conflicts. But the advice, if applied to politics by analogy, is skewed because it is premised on the fact that conflict is always possible. Master Sun’s techniques for defeating the enemy absent physical violence nevertheless assume the existence of an enemy whose defeat is the goal of our training. To translate Master Sun’s advice into politics, for example, we might tell ourselves to engage in deep introspection in order to take a “stand on invulnerable ground” (23) — to recognize our precarity, for “[i]nvulnerability rests with self” (20) — and to watch the enemy carefully so as to “let[ ] slip no chance of defeating” them (23). The point of the advice is to plan one’s actions by carefully appraising the situation (“In War, there are Five Steps: measurement, estimation, calculation, comparison, victory,” 23) and by recognizing contingent opportunities where the opponent has exposed their weakness — as Minford’s commentary notes, “It is on the basis of the other’s expectations that one has to make decisions, and surprise him with his guard down” (165).

But even in the context of war, we might say that deceit or cunning tactics aren’t the only way to avert battles; diplomacy, collaboration, trust, and law also (potentially) work. They work only insofar as it is possible for multiple actors to find common ground and to believe that their interests align. The Art of War assumes that interests do not align and thus straddles the line between coercion and cooperation: it normatively seeks to avoid battle yet does not provide advice on how to prevent broader conflict, instead presupposing the existence of such conflict. Politics, to me, is about techniques for finding interest alignment and, indeed, allowing one’s own interests to evolve in dialogue with another’s in order to find the common good. The core of politics isn’t in identifying conflict; it’s in finding ways to resolve conflict. Yet The Art of War bypasses that question completely, instead focusing on methods of succeeding in contests without resorting to pure strength and power. For that reason, I am somewhat skeptical of turning to The Art of War for political advice.

To be sure, we might read The Art of War not for its normative thrust but for a theoretical framework to situate empirical analysis, and this leads me to a second question: To what degree might we live in a world of Master Sun’s politics, and what are the implications of applying his analysis?

It seems to me that one of the crucial ideas underpinning The Art of War is the relationship between material fact and perceived reality. We think of war as comprising concrete, material things: legions of men, sharp iron weapons, powerful horses. The naive understanding of war — one that Master Sun decisively rejects — is that war is a physical contest of strength and weaponry. Instead, Master Sun says that war is about “deception” (42): feints, and bluffs, and smokescreens. War is a game of intelligence and cunning rather than force; the commentator Zhang Yu writes, “He who conquers by brute strength, skillful though he may be, is also liable on occasion to be defeated; whereas he who can look into the unseen and discern conditions that are not yet manifest will be victorious every time” (155). This philosophy is encapsulated in a story that Minford places in the introduction to the book, which is an excerpt of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (xii–xiv). In the “Ruse of the Empty City,” the general Zhuge Liang is defending the city of Xicheng with only five thousand troops, surrounded by Marshal Sima Yi’s one hundred and fifty thousand troops. Knowing he could not best Sima’s forces in a pitched battle, Zhuge orders all the city’s gates opened, hides all of his troops, and sits in plain sight in the middle of the city, playing a lute while garbed in his Taoist robes. Sima, spying the empty city and the famous Zhuge alone, thinks that there must be some ruse, since he knows Zhuge to be a famously cautious general. So Sima orders his troops to retreat, fearing a devastating ambush if he were to lay siege to the city. Theater and illusions, not blood and steel, decided the fate of Xicheng, and much of The Art of War is about strategically deploying deception in order to achieve victory.

If the upshot of The Art of War is that illusions can shape material reality, I wonder if our politics today are an extreme form of Master Sun’s politics. For it seems that little, today, is material. Polls attempt to measure public opinion, but we know they can construct it as well: a pollster might prime a respondent based on how she asks the questions, or the pollster might in bad faith attempt to portray a race as leaning in a certain direction to shape the race’s dynamics. After all, campaigns fundraise, organize, and coordinate around opinion polling. It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that polls themselves can be used strategically — and as a result, in an interesting turn, they’re now the target of the President’s claims of voter suppression. To take another example, we might have thought of the COVID-19 pandemic as the ultimate slap-in-the-face for the President and his supporters, for one cannot bluster through a pandemic. Yet that’s exactly what seems to have happened, and while the President’s handling of the pandemic probably hurt him electorally, he did manage to get more votes this time around than he did four years ago!

In The Art of War, deceptions are used to gain victory over an enemy. The goal, again, is to avoid bloodshed and yet to still triumph militarily. In our context, who is the enemy to be beaten? The obvious answer is the opposite party, but the means diverges from Master Sun’s deception. In the Ruse of the Empty City, it is Sima, not some third party, that is being deceived. In American politics, it is the people who are being deceived, not the opposite partisans, when political leaders expound falsehoods and lies. I’m not exactly sure what Master Sun would think of this example, but my gut is that he would be worried because he saw the purpose of war as to defeat the enemy, not to destroy them. Thus, for example, Master Sun writes, “Treat prisoners of war kindly, and care for them. Use victory over the enemy to enhance your own strength. In War, prize victory, not a protracted campaign” (13). I worry both that our politics are so divided that we essentially seek conflict for its own sake, and our means for doing so — deception of the third party, i.e., the people — entrenches that conflict. But I’m not totally sure how to extend the analogy or thought, so I’d love your insights!

To end this letter, I thought I’d note two other things that stood out to me about the book, and to ask for your thoughts (about either or both of them):

I was struck by how ambivalent Master Sun seems when talking about the relationship between the general and his troops. He explains that the good general ought to “regard[ ] his troops as his children, . . . as his loved ones” (261), but also notes that “[a] concern for his men” can “lead[ ] to trouble” (50) and even, as I quoted earlier, says that the general should send his troops into circumstances with no possibility of escape to motivate them to fight harder (73). It seems to me that the general must simultaneously love his troops and be willing to let them die. I am curious to get your thoughts on how someone might do that (or how that might warp such a person’s psyche).

Master Sun describes the general as “the prop of the nation” (17). I thought this idea of a militaristic underpinning of the nation to be interesting — Master Sun doesn’t, as far as I can tell, elaborate on this idea too much — but I’d be curious to think through the implications of the idea (and whether it applies to the United States).

Hopefully this letter has at least something interesting for us to talk about! I look forward to seeing your response.

Cheers,

Isaac

November 10, 2020, AP to IC

Dear Isaac,

What happened to 500 words?

Jests aside, I’m looking forward to embarking on this project with you. Despite my study of history and fascination with politics and public policy, one element of my education — or, perhaps, my person — that I find underdeveloped is my study of these classic philosophical texts. I believe I would better be able to discuss politics in a more fruitful manner if I had a greater grounding in works of ancient wisdom — to borrow a phrase from NYU Professor of Ethical Leadership Jonathan Haidt. To that end, I agree that engaging with these works in the form of an epistolary as opposed to a conversion will yield a greater understanding of the works and the lessons that I can draw from them; this is my second reason for looking forward to this project. Writing is thinking, after all. But, more importantly, it is a form of structured thinking that provides one with the opportunity to interrogate their own thoughts — and the thoughts of others — in a disciplined way. Something I think Master Sun would value greatly.

True to our prediction you both focused on different elements of The Art of War than me and took different messages from the elements that we both focused on. Turning to your first question, for instance, you note that a core theme of Master Sun’s maxims is the importance of deceit and planned confrontation. I agree with your analysis that there are callous elements to Master Sun’s politics and suggestions for the conduct of war. John Minford in his introduction to the text, for instance, recounts the story of the harem sergeant major. Accordian to historian Sima Qian, the King of Wu, He Lü, challenged Master Sun to demonstrate his techniques for drilling troops with His Majesty’s concubines. Master Sun leads the women through his exercises once only for them to laugh at him when he ultimately orders them to face right with the beat of his drum. Master Sun accepts blame for providing unclear orders to the women saying, “If my orders were unclear [...] then I, as your general, am to blame” (xviii). Master Sun then leads the women through the exercises again to make sure his commands were understood. Upon ordering the women to face left, Master Sun is again met with laughter, but this time instead of accepting blame for providing unclear orders, Master Sun lays blame at the feet of the commanding officers he designated at the start of his drills.

He then orders the concubine-commanders’ execution.

His Majesty, not wanting to lose his most beloved concubines, has an aide tell Master Sun that he does not desire for these orders to be carried out; however, Master Sun does not heed His Majesty’s wishes. “‘Please inform His Majesty,’ replied Master Sun, ‘that as his personally appointed general, I have total authority in this matter. I am unable to obey certain of His Majesty’s commands’” (xviii; emphasis added). The concubine-commanders are executed, and the rest of the women then follow Master Sun’s orders without error, marching in perfect lockstep for all to see.

Like the examples you identified this story can be viewed as callous and brutal. And it is in some senses. However, it also highlights what I identified as the primary themes of The Art of War — discipline and balance — which I think marry well with your analysis. Take, for instance, what you identify as the anti-war elements of The Art of War. If we were to reframe them slightly, we could say that one must have the discipline to only go to war only when strictly necessary, to not fight a losing battle even when their sovereign orders it, and to defeat the enemy without ever fighting. We engage in these practices because war is, normatively, a bad thing — a “grave affair of the state” (3) — yet this moral judgement strikes me as too simplistic. World War Two is, after all, referred to by some historians as ‘The Good War,’ which is to say that the just nature of the Allies’ cause ultimately outweighed the horrific costs sustained by the world.

Setting aside whether you buy this interpretation of World War Two, I would identify it as embodying an element of the balance theme found in Master Sun’s text. Specifically, Master Sun would neither judge war as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as we conceive of it in a Christian metaphysical sense but rather as a means to only be engaged in when (1) our disciplined use of other methods has failed and (2) its benefits outweigh its costs. I think Master Sun would argue these are largely overlapping circles (i.e., benefits outweigh costs precisely when other methods have failed); however, if we find this to be an unsatisfactory answer to the question, then Master Sun would likely identify processes like deep introspection and the Five Steps to ascertain when to engage in war. The difficulty is that these processes ultimately rely on normative judgements that makes the answer open to a much wider range of interpretations. It’s at this point that I believe The Art of War becomes less fruitful for our consideration of politics, for we would likely approach these questions through Judeo-Christian lenses that do not square easily with the yin-and-yang philosophy of Master Sun which does not seek to classify actions as sinful or virtuous.

Bringing this back into the realm of politics, we might say that we must have the discipline to engage in diplomacy, collaboration, coalition building, and legal processes — as you identified — but to not fear to engage in ‘deceptive, manipulistic politics’ if our prior efforts fail and these tactics allow us to ‘organize ourselves to create the conditions for each person to live a good life.’ (This does not mean, though, that we revel in using deceptive, manipulistic politics; Master Sun and the commentators on his work make clear that this is a grave error.) Overall, I don’t know that I’m comfortable with this conclusion, for I would like to believe that we can create such a state without deception and manipulation. And, yet, I am skeptical about that assertion too.

As you point out, The Art of War presupposes the existence of conflict, and while I hate to use absolute terms like always and never, conflict has always existed in human history. It’s a triumph of the liberal international order that the post-World War Two era has been a time of such relative peace. This said, conflict has still persisted in the past seven decades: take, for instance, the Cold War. You identify the core of politics as ‘finding ways to resolve conflict.’ I agree with this, but I think we should expand this definition to include two steps: prevention and resolution. We have not resolved the issues of nuclear armament that arose in the post-World War Two era, but through the long ark of the Cold War, we have found a meaningful way — thus far — to prevent nuclear war.

If we can find ways to succeed in contests without resorting to pure strength and power, I think that too is a worthy goal. Resolution of the conflict comes next, yes, and for that I would not expect to turn to Master Sun for my primary advice. After all, the treatise is billed as The Art of War not The Art of Diplomacy. We would be expecting too much of our military (leaders) if we told them to excel at both winning wars and engaging in diplomacy, state building, and conflict resolution. Thus, I am comfortable with The Art of War bypassing questions of conflict resolution entirely and focusing on other methodologies, and I am comfortable taking political advice from it. I just don’t think we should solely take political advice from it.

If, however, one does not find these readings of Master Sun’s treatise compelling, we may also provide a simpler answer to your question: We read a book about war to think about politics because war is a fundamental issue with pervasive effects that nations have dealt with for generations. To borrow but a few examples from the past century: The First and Second World Wars shook the European psyche to its core and gave rise to the liberal international order that we live in today. The Vietnam War had a similar effect on the American psyche in the 1960s and 1970s, and in our lifetimes, the United States has been engaged in a seventeen year, multi-trillion dollar war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan following the tragedy on 9/11.

As you know, I’m currently reading The Price of Peace: Money, Politics, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter. During the First World War, the British Government asked John Maynard Keynes to manage the British financial system so that it could support the war effort. After averting near-term disaster, Keynes grappled with problems in the British economy like inflation — authoring two memoranda on the subject and urging British citizens to cut back on their expenditures. As the war dragged on, however, Keynes' focus shifted to an even more pressing issue: the British government no longer being able to finance its war effort. Keynes had to turn to private American capital — predominantly in the form of loans from J.P. Morgan — until he eventually borrowed several times the entire amount of the British national debt. But he did not do so happily. Concerned about the geopolitical consequences his necessary actions, Keynes wrote a memo to the Foreign Office that “‘It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in a few months time the American executive and the American public will be in a position to dictate to this country on matters that affect us more nearly than them’” (Carter 51). Sure enough, the end of the First World War saw the United States skyrocket to heights of economic and political power it had never seen before.

So, why do we care? Well, Master Sun might have predicted these problems. Inflation came about because

“Where an army is close at hand, prices rise; when prices rise, the common people spend all they have; when they spend all, they feel the pinch of taxes and levies” (11). American political and economic dominance came about because “Protracted campaigns strain the public treasury. If men are tired, morale low, strength exhausted, treasure spent; then the feudal lords [i.e., the United States] will exploit the disarray and attack.” After all, “No nation has even benefited / From a protracted war” (10). Perhaps then we read The Art of War because knowing something about the tactics and effects of war allows us to be better politicians and citizens during times of conflict, for we are better able to anticipate and adapt to what the future holds. The Commander in Chief of the United States Military is a civilian by constitutional design; it is probably better for them to know something about the consequences and conduct of war than nothing at all. The Art of War might then earn a spot on a list of foundational texts for the President to learn from.

Now, I’d like to briefly turn to your second question on the extent to which we live in a world of Master Sun’s politics. You’ve landed on a really insightful piece of analysis here, and I fear that I do not have much to add. For one, I am hoping you can expound upon what you mean by ‘little, today, is material.’ You provided many examples of what you define as not material, but my understanding would be aided by a positive example. Then, I could respond more in-depth to this analysis. Beyond that, I will say that we can identify a core of populist critiques as saying that the people are being deceived by political leaders, business interests, and cultural elites (depending on your particular political orientation) who expound falsehood and lies. If we were to carefully analyze the texts of speeches from, say, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Josh Hawley, and Donald Trump, we would likely find elements of the text very much in line with your prediction. Like you, though, I’m not sure how to extend this thought. Did you have a particular realm or issue that you wanted to extend it to? Perhaps that would help us ground this analysis and lead this discussion in a fruitful direction.

Finally, I’d like to end my letter with a few questions of my own. First, we have discussed The Art of War at length as it applies to the realm of politics; however, The Art of War is also a popular text in the realm of business. As people who are more academically-oriented than business-oriented, I think it’s important that we consider its implications in that realm, for private industries play an important role in our world (and in our politics.) Would we draw any different lessons from the text if we transplant it to a business realm instead of a political realm? One guess I have is that we would be much less concerned about implementing brutal and callous tactics since a business’s goal is to maximize its profits and outcompete its competitors. I am also wondering if you drew any different meaning from the text when you read it with commentary as opposed to without commentary. If so, why do you think that was? Do you think that experience should change how we — and others — interact with the text?

I look forward to your response!

Sincerely,

Andrew

P.S. I am begrudgingly aware that my response is longer than yours.

November 12, 2020, IC to AP

Dear Andrew,

Thanks for your insightful response. It’s certainly making me think much more deeply about Master Sun’s work, as well as my previous letter.

Let me begin by noting how you draw attention to “discipline and balance” as the primary themes in Master Sun’s work. These themes are very helpful, and I don’t think I thought about them enough in my reading of The Art of War or in my first letter. Let me try to caveat your comments with a few other themes, though.

I like your emphasis on Master Sun’s statement: “I am unable to obey certain of His Majesty’s commands.” To me, this statement — like the evidence I cited in my first letter about the general refusing to listen to a ruler — suggests a need for independent judgment arising in a given moment. In a sense, this is a kind of discipline: the ability, as you suggest, to ensure that war is only fought “when strictly necessary” or “to not fight a losing battle even when [the general’s] sovereign orders it” is only possible with careful, deep, and structured thinking. But discipline in the more hierarchical sense — the more militaristic sense — it is not. For it vests the general with the prerogative to transcend the orders of the sovereign. Reading the story of the harem sergeant major solely through the lens of discipline would be deeply ironic: Master Sun himself refuses to obey certain commands (a kind of refusal to be disciplined), yet he requires the execution of a concubine-commander for being insufficiently disciplined.

The second theme you point to — that of balance — can help us here. Master Sun notes on discipline: “Discipline troops before they are loyal, and they will be refractory and hard to put to good use. Let loyal troops go undisciplined, and they will be altogether useless” (59). The troops must be “rall[ied]” with “martial discipline” but also “[c]ommand[ed] [...] with civility” (60). Discipline on its own is not enough; it must be harmonized with civility, and loyalty, and consistency, and fairness.

While I think you are right to argue that the process of knowing when to go to war requires discipline, I think Master Sun’s work reveals two other relevant themes: the need for contingent judgment and acting with propriety (what one might also call “justice,” but without the societal connotations of that term). Among the most intriguing chapters of The Art of War, in my opinion, were Chapters Five and Six, where Master Sun discusses the concept of shi, which our copy translates variously as “potential,” “positional,” or “situational energy” (xxv). The concept directs our attention to those moments where a situation enables cascading effects. Master Sun uses the analogy of logs and boulders, which lie still on level ground but roll on inclined surfaces: “Skillfully deployed soldiers are like round boulders rolling down a mighty mountainside” (30). Leveraging those moments enables one to let loose “[a] rushing torrent” that “carries boulders on its flood; such is the energy of its momentum” (27). This energy, rightly harnessed, is not chaotic; it is “[o]rderly disorder” (28), the exercise of force that is not only robust but precise. “The Skillful Warrior’s energy is devastating; his timing, taut. His energy is like a drawn crossbow, his timing like the release of a trigger” (28). The commentator Du Mu sums it up: it is important to “rely[ ] on the energy of the situation itself, using speed and sudden attack. In this way, a great deal can be achieved with little expenditure of force” (175).

In the process of waging war, discipline might dictate that a general do battle according to set maxims, and, indeed, Master Sun gives us many of those (see, e.g., Chapter Ten’s discussion of different kinds of terrain). But it would be wrong to read him as attempting to instill a kind of mechanical logic in his readers. The commentator Jia Lin writes, the general must “adapt to change when face-to-face with the potential of the situation [...] There is no constant model” (219). In the commentaries’ example of the general Han Xin fighting the Zhao army in the Jingxing pass (298–99), Han Xin orders his men to fight with their backs to the river, and he hides his cavalry. The Zhao army, believing this maneuver to be tactically absurd — “the whole army of Zhao broke into loud laughter” — rushes out to engage with the Han army. The cavalry then rush to the Zhao army’s deserted camp and replace the Zhao flags with Han flags; the Zhao men, seeing those flags, think their king had been overpowered and begin to panic, leading to a devastating defeat. Officers in the Han army ask Han Xin: “In The Art of War we are told to have a hill or tumulus on the right rear, and a river or marsh on the left front. [...] You, on the contrary, ordered us to draw up our troops with a river at our back. Under these conditions, how did we manage to gain the victory?” Han Xin’s response is telling: “I fear you gentlemen have not studied The Art of War with sufficient care. Is it not written there, ‘Plunge your men into death ground, and they will live; throw them into perilous ground, and they will survive’?”

Thinking through The Art of War in terms of the interlocking themes of discipline, balance, contingent judgment, and propriety helps us understand what Master Sun means when he says: “Victorious campaigns are unrepeatable. They take form in response to the infinite varieties of circumstance” (37). His precepts can sharpen our mind and enable us to see certain patterns (hence Chapter Ten’s discussion on terrain), and we need discipline to make those observations and to think them through carefully. But those principles must be balanced with an understanding of situational energy, those momentary opportunities that enable smooth victory. Such moments reveal themselves only in contingent circumstances, which is why the general must always be reasoning and observing, and the general’s response must be proper and proportionate to those circumstances. That notion of propriety is aligned, I think, with your argument that we ought “not fear to engage in ‘deceptive, manipulistic politics,’” for the question becomes whether the means are fit to the necessary ends — not whether those means are good or right.

We might, in this moment, loop back to your first discussion of Master Sun disciplining the concubines. When the women do not initially respond to his commands, Master Sun states, “I, as your general, am to blame” (xviii). It is proper and just for him to shoulder the responsibility for failures to communicate clearly and effectively. But when the concubines fail again to follow his orders, Master Sun lays the blame on the concubine-commanders’ soon-to-be-headless shoulders. This is commentary not only about the importance of discipline but also about Master Sun’s understanding of propriety — an assessment of who is blameworthy and how to correct for such blame. In redressing harm, we can imagine two principles: a punishment ought to be proportionate or a punishment ought to accord with certain moral standards. In other words, we might focus on the means-ends relationship (the former) or on placing boundaries on the means themselves (the latter). You write, I think rightly, that Master Sun focuses on war in terms of whether “its benefits outweigh its costs”; you note that Master Sun encourages, when necessary, the use of deceit in war. I read this story, and these arguments, to suggest that Master Sun thinks almost exclusively in the means-ends relationship; he has no absolute limitation on the means (hence, beheading concubines for purely symbolic reasons). In my view, even if we try to focus on Master Sun’s broader themes beyond the brutality of some of his tactics, we are invariably brought back to a model of politics that privileges ends over means and thus enables the worst impulses in politics (and in war — this is why we have international humanitarian law!).

You note that it is helpful to read a book about war to think about politics in part because war is something that states have to deal with. I think this is a fair argument, but I don’t think it is fully persuasive. While you point out examples of where Master Sun’s assessment could have predicted problems that the United States and Britain have confronted, I think there are examples that are less accurate. Consider Master Sun’s statement: “The wise general is a Lord of Destiny; he holds the nation’s peace or peril in his hands” (13). In some ways, I think our central problem — why we have continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere — is that that statement is no longer true.

For America, war is not a savage experience. It is not a nation-wide effort. We aren’t told to keep calm and carry on precisely because we already do keep calm and carry on. For war is hidden today. I certainly don’t know all of the places the American military is engaging in warfare, nor, I think, do most Americans. The military increasingly has privatized its combat operations, contracting out security operations to corporations that enable it to evade scrutiny under good-governance laws. And indeed, maybe the brooding nature of war in American society — how we always seem to be both ‘at war’ and yet are never ‘at war’ — leads us to think about many other issues in terms of war: the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Terror, the War on Christmas. The spectre of war haunts us precisely because it is no longer true that war is a cataclysmic event; the general no longer “holds the nation’s peace or peril in his hands.” I think war has morphed so that it is ever-present yet never consciously noticed. And perhaps that morphing is something Master Sun would have been worried about — he certainly didn’t want war to be prolonged, as you noted — but it’s not something that, I think, his piece gives us insights about. You note a question at the bottom about how reading the commentary changed my reading of the original text. To be honest, I think I read the original text as more metaphorical and abstract, but the commentary set in stone how much the text is actually, and quite literally, about the waging of war. If that’s true, and if it’s also true that the nature of war in American society is very different than it ever was for Master Sun, then I am skeptical that The Art of War shows that much promise for guiding our Commanders in Chief.

On the topic of the extent to which we live in a world of Master Sun’s politics, I think I should be open in saying that I’m still not fully sure about whether my original question is helpful or misguided. But let me try to expand a bit on my original division between material fact and perceived reality. When people go into the streets, their actions, I think, are properly understood as symbolic, not material. They seek, through the raw energy of a mass of people, to effect change by convincing others — whether observers or those who hold political power — of a perceived reality. But, at least with non-violent protest, there is no material force employed. In contrast, when a police officer kneels on a man’s neck and suffocates him, or when the military uses tear gas to clear out protestors, or when a truck bulldozes through a mass of people, the theater of politics is cast aside; the underlying raw coercion is revealed. Politics always runs the risk of coinciding with coercion and violence; Weber thought that the definition of the modern state had to do with its capacity to claim a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. But violence isn’t the only thing that I think of as ‘material.’ Certainly resources count. So, too, I think, do settled institutions — those rules of the game that are ‘concrete’ and thereby shape the realm of the possible.

Master Sun’s treatise recognizes the interplay between material and perception. We might think of war as the raw contest of physical force, but he suggests perception, illusion, and deceit can overcome even those material imbalances. On the one hand, it seems like modern democracy is the triumph of Master Sun’s politics: the symbol of the vote triumphs over the physicality of the revolver.

How, then, does Trumpist politics fall in this framework? It seems that Trumpism is both/and. It employs the material, raw violence of the state while it also takes a sledgehammer to those settled, seemingly concrete norms — and it is perceptual manipulation that enables those raw exercise of material power. We might think about the Administration’s lies, early on, about the size of the Inaugural crowd or the television ratings for the Inauguration. In a sense, the lies were harmless, absurdities in the face of the material realities that the Presidency can shape through executive actions exercising the coercive power of the state. But their baldness — the ease with which any reasonable person can verify that those statements were lies — undergirds their true danger: that they degrade an expectation of a truthful President and a truthful politics. And in breaking that norm, he destroyed a material constraint on our politics, enabling a web of deceit and lies to reshape people’s reality until even the material exercise of power to put down democratic activism — ‘send in the troops’ against protestors — begins to seem not merely justified, but democratically sanctioned. This kind of rope-a-dope is also, I think, apparent in your nod toward populism — how populism thrives in the discourse of attacking lies yet is performed through lying. ‘Democracy’ used against democracy; lies used against ‘lies.’ Perceptions of reality are manipulated to enable the use of material force, reversing what we might’ve thought was the trend: a modern state where violence has become submerged in favor of symbolic politics. Does that make sense? I’m still not sure I’m convinced, and I might be incoherent. I am curious to hear your thoughts.

On your question about business: I think you’re right that we may find Master Sun’s advice about deceit or callous tactics more palatable in the rough-and-tumble realm of business. I also think that the very fact that The Art of War is popular in business realms enables businesspersons who rely on the book to throw up an illusion of sagacity and thus intimidate rivals. That is to say, I suspect working knowledge of The Art of War is helpful not because of its per se principles but because it is seen as a source of wisdom. (We might compare the way that casual allusions to Tocqueville or Madison, Foucault or Marx, make people sound smart depending on the circles they run in.) My sense is that a lot of business is about negotiation, which in turn depends a lot on assessments of others’ will, capabilities, ethics, and so on. The Art of War helps people understand both how to assess others but also how to show themselves off in certain ways — and in circles where the book might be popular, having the book on your shelf might, itself, be a way to demonstrate one’s capabilities.

Thanks for your helpful and incisive letter. I think if we’re sticking to a book a week, we will likely have to finish with Master Sun soon, so I expect that this will be my last letter on The Art of War. I am excited to see your responses and conclusions about the book, as well as your thoughts on our next piece — Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.

Cheers,

Isaac

P.S. My apologies for the length of this response!

November 16, 2020, AP to IC

Dear Isaac,

Thank you for picking up on my emphasis on Master Sun’s refusal to obey the Emperor which I admittedly forgot to return to as a point of discussion. I found this to be one of the most interesting parts of The Art of War. You point out that this is not a manifestation of hierarchical, militaristic discipline, which I do not think is an incorrect reading of the text. However, I would like to provide an alternative interpretation before looping back to your insightful analysis based on your claim that Master Sun’s ignoring of orders is not a manifestation of militaristic discipline.

Emperors are oft thought to be ordained by gods // goddesses // Heaven with the sacred right to rule over their people. So to suggest, then, that there are situations in which the General can overrule the Sovereign seems — at first — blasphemous lest we remember the first part of Master Sun’s response to His Majesty He Lu: “As his personally appointed general, I have total authority in this matter” (xviii). The takeaway here — I think — is that after the Sovereign appoints them, the General is vested with the power and legitimacy of Heaven when it comes to matters of war. Master Sun’s contemporaries expound on this point. Du Mu, for instance, provides that “When an army is on the march, authority must rest with the general [...] That is why the sage ruler, the enlightened monarch, ‘kneels and pushes the chariot wheel’ [...] acknowledging that affairs beyond the confines of the court are the absolute responsibility of the general.” Or as Zhang Yu more pithily provides: “The decrees of the Son of Heaven are not heard in the military camp” (260). The word absolute is key here, for it seems that one would need to be vested with nothing less than the blessing of Heaven to have total authority over anything. In all, we can interpret this system as an early form of checks and balances wherein the General checks the worst impulses of the Sovereign by disobeying foolish orders, and the Sovereign checks the General through their selection process.*

Of course, we might argue that this type of checks-and-balances vests too much power in the General, and this is where your analysis of the contingent judgement and propriety themes in The Art of War comes in handy. We expect the General to be creative and dynamic such that they can make contingent judgements yet disciplined so that they do not make foolish, emotional errors. We expect them to have a sense of propriety so that they have a sense of when deception, manipulation, and battle are warranted. These qualities of the General are supposed to serve as internalized checks against humanity’s worst impulses, yet these internalized checks are not foolproof and can be cast aside if the General prioritizes ends over means. On all of these fronts I agree with you. I am skeptical of your analysis, however, that Master Sun himself “thinks almost exclusively in the means-end relationship,” for he consistently places limits on the most significant topic of all when it comes to his treatise: the conduct of war itself.

For instance, Master Sun advises “In war, better take a state intact than destroy it. Better take an army, a regiment, a detachment, a company, intact than destroy them,” and that “The lowest form of war is to attack cities. Siege warfare is a last resort” (14 and 15). Religious ethics scholar Ping-Cheung Lo argues this bounding of warfare conduct into better-worse and highest-lowest dichotomies represents a “distinctive moral perspective” in The Art of War which prizes “committing as little violence and carnage to the enemy as possible” (114, 118, and 121). This does not strike me as the worldview of a man with “no absolute limitation on the means.” He surely would not advocate for the wanton slaughter of an enemy state in order to subjugate it: As Ping-Cheung Lo elucidates, Master Sun’s text arose during a period of Chinese history when the State of Qin “adopted a policy of mass slaughter” for precisely this purpose, wherein “one criterion for promotion was the number of heads of slain enemies turned in” (Ping-Cheung 119). “Better take an army [...] intact than destroy them” stands in direct contrast to this way of conducting war (Sun 14). Ultimately, I think our uncomfortability with Master Sun stems from the fact that (1) he recognizes many more means are ultimately acceptable than we would like to admit and (2) that conflicting ends we place absolute importance on might require us to violate the absolute limits we place on means (or vice-versa). Master Sun, in other words, is not deluded about the moral cleanliness of the world, and he is not afraid to act accordingly.

Overall, this discussion reminds me of the scholarship of neuroscientist Molly Crocket. When looking at issues of sacrificial dilemmas (i.e., the trolley problem), Crocket has found — generally — that when we are looking for a life partner we prefer deontologists, and that we are distrustful of consequentialists. The exception is politics where people prefer the consequentialist especially when it comes to impartial beneficence dilemmas. Master Sun is that consequentialist. We should interrogate what it means for our conception of morality that we want other people to make those types of decisions on our behalf but not make them ourselves. I think it suggests that what we hold as absolute truths may not be absolute truths.

Next, I’d like to turn to your response that you find my argument about reading The Art of War because states deal with war as “fair” but not “fully persuasive.” That’s okay. I don’t want you to find it fully persuasive — which is something I’ll come back to — but first I would like (perhaps ironically) to defend this argument a little more. I think a point-by-point breakdown of your critique would be helpful here. The main thrust of your critique is that the general no longer “holds the nation’s peace or peril in his hands” (13), for “war is hidden today.” Like you, most Americans and I do not know most places where the American military is engaged in operations. However, this information is not entirely unknowable. According to a 2010 report by the Washington Post, the U.S. Special Operations forces are active in 75 countries including the Philippines, Colombia, Yemen, and Somalia, and from this same report, we can less specifically pinpoint U.S. activity to several regions including the Middle East, Africa (very helpful, I know), and Central Asia. A more recent 2014 report by The Nation placed the number of countries Special Operations carried at a whopping 134 and provided several more specific countries and the operations carried out in them.

In addition, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars still occupy a distinct place in The Discourse: Writers of many different ideological ilks critiqued President Obama’s usage of drone strikes. Questions of foreign policy judgement came up in the Democratic primary debates in both 2016 and 2020 over Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden’s decision to vote for the war. Robert Draper recently published a book on how the Bush administration decided to deploy American troops in Iraq. So, yes, in most ways, we do keep calm and carry on. But not because war is hidden. But because it is omnipresent, and we have grown accustomed to it.

This brings me to your second point. I appreciate your insightful comment about how we conceive of so many issues in terms of war because of the “brooding nature of war in American society.” This is in-line with my above conclusion that war is omnipresent. This said, I am not convinced of your assertion we conceive of so many issues in terms of war because war is no longer a cataclysmic event. From a periodization perspective, the War on Poverty emerged just two decades after the conclusion of World War Two and one decade after the Korean War while the War on Drugs emerged after the Vietnam War. Each of these wars were certainly cataclysmic events, and they happened before the modern warfare developments you cited.

With regards to more recent developments, I think the American populace still understands that war either is cataclysmic or has the potential to be a cataclysmic. To the first point, I remember the news being saturated with images from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars during the aughts. These images were broadcasted alongside an increasing counter of the number of men and women who sacrificed their lives for our country. These were not hidden wars. These were visceral, in your face wars. Ones that provoked (and provoke) serious debates of when we are going to remove our troops from these foreign nations.

With regards to potential, I remember two distinct events in the past four years when the prospect of total war took over the American psyche: First, in late 2017 and early 2018, we found ourselves in a series of escalating events that led some to speculate that the United States was on the brink of war with North Korea as well as the publication of several articles // tweets on what war with North Korea would look like (the universal consensus was: not good.) This prospect was not helped by the fickle nature of President Trump. Second, I remember when President Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani at the beginning of this year. (And as I just finished typing the end of that sentence, I realize that was just this year. Fuck. It’s been a long one.) Like with North Korea, there was a distinct fear in the air that the United States was about to enter full-scale war with Iran, and there was much discussion about what said war would look like as well as the effects it could have on our nation. Although neither war transpired, in both instances our Commander in Chief held “the nation’s peace or peril in his hands” (13), and the fear present in the discourse is emblematic of the notion that we understand war has the potential to be cataclysmic.

Again, the fact that questions of U.S. involvement in foreign nations are still so active in The Discourse as well as the fact that our media is saturated with fictionalized images // stories of total war — whether it be the latest World War One and World War Two blockbusters like 1917 and Dunkirk or the newest Call of Duty game — explains why this fear is present. In other words, because war is so omnipresent in our society we understand that it can easily devolve into something total and all-consuming. Because of this, it remains unclear to me that war has transcended into something “very different than it ever was for Master Sun” such that our Commanders in Chief could not learn something from reading his treatise.

On another — more practical — note, I would contend that the Commander in Chief could learn something from reading The Art of War because so many of his military subordinates and enemies will have read it and engaged with its philosophy. As Ping-Cheung Lo notes, The Art of War is ready widely in both Chinese and American military academies as part of courses on strategic theory (114). And it seems to resonate: General David Petreaus published an op-ed in the Irish Times entitled “The Art of War: As relevant now as when it was written.” It means something that one of the largest public officials involved in the Iraq War // the commander of the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan says that The Art of War is as relevant today as when Master Sun wrote it. So, again, for a President who knows little about the consequences and conduct of war, The Art of War might not be a bad place to start.

This brings me to my next topic of discussion: Why I don’t want my argument to be fully persuasive. To put it succinctly, I think there is danger when it comes to these questions of politics, ethics, and morality to find any one argument or theory as fully persuasive // explanatory. By extension, I think there is danger in the Commander in Chief solely reading The Art of War to understand military tactics, their generals, or their adversaries. Looping back to the ethics component of our conversation, it is less about finding a ‘right’ answer than trying to find an answer to begin with. In this process we should ask ourselves — among other things — whether arguments // theories are consistent, whether they have utility in explaining part of our world, and whether we can apply some part of them to our own lives. I hope you’ve found what I’ve written to meet these criteria, either in part or (ideally!) in whole. I’m excited to continue these letters because it enables me to try to find an answer to begin with and to strive for my writing and thoughts to meet the criteria I’ve outlined.

Finally, I’d like to turn back to our material versus perception conversation. I fear, again, I do not have much to add here. I might be getting too caught up in the distinctions between the material and the perceived to have a productive conversation around this issue. To provide two examples: You say that when people go into the streets their actions are understood as symbolic, that with non-violent protest, there is no material force employed. It seems to me, however, that there is a material force in shutting down entire city blocks because a mass of people are moving through them, in preventing a restaurant from operating normally because you refuse to leave the lunch counter. On the other hand, you say that Donald Trump’s lies destroyed a material constraint on our politics — the expectation of a truthful President and a truthful politics. In this case, it seems to be that Trump shattered the perception that Presidents had to be constrained by truthfulness. After all, this was a norm (and a good one!), but there is no law that says Presidents have to be truthful with material consequences like jail time or fines for violating it. I’ll leave this material-versus-perception conversation here for now, but I have a suspicion these themes will come up in our subsequents discussions of political texts, including Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Till then!

Sincerely,

Andrew

* Presumably, we could say that the Sovereign would also have legitimate processes to remove the General in both times of peace and times of war. However, this is mere speculation as there are no textual elements in The Art of War that allow us to answer this question as Master Sun would. Any answer we provide would be based solely on what we deem a reasonable system.