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CHINESE MILITARY THOUGHT
'Handling spies requires the
wisdom of a sage'; an
eighteenth-century painting
of Confucius (on the right).
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THE ART OF WAR
34
handling those valuable but difficult creatures, the spie's themselves. 'There are no
areas in which one does not employ spies.'
Correctly and systematically employed, espionage will endow the
commander with a thorough understanding of the enemy, including, above
all, his strengths and weaknesses. The art of war demands that the former be
avoided and the latter exploited; in other words, that the enemy's qualities
be made to mesh, or synchronize, with one's own. Thus knowing oneself is
no less, and may be more, of a requirement than understanding the enemy.
According to Ta'i Kung, "'Know them and know yourself" is the great essence of
military strategy. Contemporary generals, even if they do not know the enemy,
ought to be able to know themselves, so how could they lose the advantage?' Said
Sun Tzu: 'Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never
be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances
of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself,
you are certain in every battle to be in peril.' To which the commentator Li
Chu'an added: 'Such people are called "mad bandits". What can they expect if
not defeat?'
In spite of their antiquarian bent, which leads to the discussion of out-of-date
weapons and sometimes gives the whole a quaint air, for sheer sophistication
Chinese military writings have never been equalled. In them high seriousness
alternates with play, pungent sayings with relaxed discussion, abstract analysis
with an abundance of concrete examples taken from the annals of the warring
states and more often than not associated with the names of famous generals;
yet seldom do they descend to the kind of technical trivia which, as we shall
presently see, mark much of classical Western military thought. An underlying
humanity pervades all: '[Virtue is] sparing the people from death, eliminating
the hardships of the people, relieving the misfortunes of the people, and
sustaining the people in their extremities' (Ta'i Kung). This is combined with a
readiness to ignore personal considerations concerning love and hate, take the
most drastic measures (including such as we should consider underhand or
immoral), and inflict the harshest punishments; all as may be dictated by
necessity which knows no bounds. Above all, no clear line is drawn between
military affairs and the rest of life. On the contrary, it is a question of achieving
Tao in the military field also.
As in the rest of life, the best way to achieve Tao is not to depart from it in the
first place. To paraphrase, the best war is that which is never fought. The second
best is that which is avoided, the third that which is won without bloodshed, the
fourth that which involves heavy loss of life, and the fifth that which has to be
repeated time after time. As in Plato's Republic, which was written at
approximately the same time and where the state is made to stand as a metaphor
for the human soul, all five ways of behaviour apply not just to the ruler but to
the prIvate individual too. The first marks the way of the commander-in-chief
who is also a sage; the last, that of the man who is both brutal and stupid. Yet
-:::...
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Thebans
Philip attacks, then falls back
CD
followed by the Athenians and
Greek allies
allies, leaving a gap in the centre
of the Greek line