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In Swinsey's opinion, the outcome of a war can be decided before it actually begins. In the first chapter of the Art of War, he listed several crucial questions for state leaders and military commanders to consider before they ride off to their favorite sports tournaments or wars. In this episode, we'll try to find out how he constructed the questions for this pre-war assessment. But before this, I'll share a story of two opposing sides working out their strategies. A prince in the state of Wei assassinated his elder brother and usurped the throne. As the new king, he was bothered by all the gossip about his regicide and decided he needed a war to change the topic of discussion and a military victory to prove his competence. He consulted his friend and advisor, and together they decided to declare war on the state of Zheng, with which they had previously had a dispute. But the state of Zheng was somewhat of a regional hegemon and an ally with the wealthy state of Qi. There was no way the tiny state of Wei could take them both on, so the advisor suggested enlisting support from the states of Song, Lu, Chen, and Cai. The king of Wei said, I can see the point of involving Chen and Cai because they're loyal to the Zhou emperor, and we all know the Zhou emperor doesn't much care for the state of Zheng, so I know Chen and Cai will gladly follow us into a war with Zheng. But why are we inviting the states of Song and Lu? The advisor said, the king of Song has the highest ranking among the vassalors. The king of Lu is the eldest member of the emperor's family. Getting them both on board would surely lend us authority. The king of Wei asked, but how do we make sure they'll answer our call? The advisor said, the king of Song has a cousin who is the son of the last king and now lives under the protection of Zheng. The king of Zheng has half a mind to attack Song and install this runaway prince, so I'm sure the current king of Song will be interested in the opportunity to attack Zheng and eliminate this competition for good. As for the state of Lu, the army command lies in the hand of a prince who, with a handsome bribe, can be persuaded to join our cause. The king of Wei agreed and set the wheels in motion. Soon the armies of the five states were rallied outside the city gate of Zheng. The king of Zheng summoned his advisors who couldn't agree on the strategy. The king of Zheng analyzed the situation. You guys obviously aren't reading the enemy's right. Let me explain it to you. The new king of Wei started all this because he stole his title by assassination and wants a victory to establish his legitimacy, and a victory we shall give him. Throughout the states of Chen and Cai, there really isn't any bad blood between us, so they won't commit to any serious fighting. As for the prince of Lu, he's here for the sake of the bribe, and since he probably dispatched the army without reporting to his king, he can't take serious casualties and he certainly can't afford to keep his troops here for too long, so we don't have to worry about him. I think the king of Song is here seeking blood, because he worries about his cousin under my protection. I shall move his target away from Zheng, and his troops will abandon the siege. The king of Zheng moved the runaway prince from Song to a small town and informed the king of Song about it. Unsurprisingly, the Song troops left the siege for the small town. On their departure, the soldiers of Chen, Cai and Lu also showed intention to leave. At this point, a general from Zheng came out the city gate to propose a duel. He fought a general from Wei and feigned defeat after a few thrashes and parries. Then the Wei soldiers looted the crops outside the city gate before their king declared victory and called off the siege. So you see, by exercising clever diplomacy and by losing the battle that mattered, the king of Zheng turned back the combined forces of five states without suffering casualties. That's an ideal victory that Sun Tzu would very much applaud, but a victory that would not have happened without a full assessment of the situation. Of course, this battle preceded the art of war, perhaps by a few hundred years, but the practice of assessing the situation and developing strategies at pre-war meetings, it's something Sun Tzu very much appreciated and developed in greater detail as part of his science of war. And since he was appealing to noblemen who were not professionally trained for wars and who treated them like sports, Sun Tzu broke down the assessment in five simple questions that they could understand, the first one being quite fashionable of his time, the question about Tao. In the spring and autumn period, the philosophers were mostly obsessed with Tao, which is a very general term in Chinese for the Wei, like the way of universe, the way of life, the way of governance, or the way of cracking boiled eggs on the larger end or the smaller end, the way of practically anything. Tao was not a strictly oriental obsession. In Athens, Socrates chose to drink poisonous hemlock, rather than change his way of chatting with young people and educating them in the Greek city-state. So Tao was really the basis of any school of thinking. In the field of military strategy and for the sake of winning wars, Sun Tzu was concerned with the Tao of politics and social governance. Does the king command the trust and support of his citizens? The last thing a general wants to see in battle is his soldiers refusing to fight for a king they deem unworthy. The new king of Wei from our earlier story, for instance, knew he couldn't quite count on his soldiers due to the way he grabbed power, which is why he was ready to take the small victory when he could. So Sun Tzu's first question was, which side had the strongest support of his people? The second and third questions were relatively more tangible, even though they addressed the issues of heaven and earth. Heaven means all things related to the movement of celestial bodies, including the clouds. In preparation for war, it is important to know if the weather is too warm or too cold. The height of winter is not usually the best time to master the forces and send them on expeditions because the soldiers could very well get sick and fall like dominoes. It is also important to be aware of the seasons for the sake of agriculture, like is it time for sowing and harvesting? Taking people away from their farms at these times of the year could seriously impact the grain supply and undermine the economy for years to come. A well-timed surprise attack in harvest season also enables the army to steal the opponent's crops and deal an economic blow. The king of Zhen did exactly that to the Zhou emperor once, resulting in an escalation of their attention. The issues of the earth include everything about the road and terrain. Obviously, expressways are good for moving forces about, while mountains and marshes could be problematic and even deadly. Why else would the Romans build roads everywhere they conquered? Also, since footmen and chariots were the mainstay of the army in the spring and autumn period, a good troop formation deployed at the optimal position in the battlefield improved the odds of winning. So it is important to calculate how long it would take for the troops to overcome the terrain and arrive. It also affects the calculation on supplies, namely how many wagons of food must be readied to travel with the troops, so they don't starve and run off, or worse, stage a mutiny. So that's the questions about the heaven and the earth. Srinze's fourth question was about the qualities of the commander, who, due to primitive communication infrastructure, was entrusted with great autonomy once he left with his soldiers for the front line. The eighth to fifth centuries before the common era were not exactly the age of orbital satellites broadband internet or 5G technology. People relayed messages by reading the smoke of burning wolf dung, by riding the horses till they spit white foam, or by dying from the first marathon in human history. So the burden of command must not be allowed to fall on somebody who would want to facetime with mom in the moment of crisis. The burden of command must go to people who could make independent decisions and could make them fast. The commanders were evaluated in terms of their intelligence, credibility, compassion, courage and authority. Intelligence means the ability to read the battlefield and adapt. Credibility means the ability to establish trust among the ranks so the soldiers know for certain what reward or penalties to expect from their actions. Compassion is the ability to sympathize and share the thickened thing of army life, which was believed to inspire loyalty. Courage is the ability to make quick decisions and being ready to accept the consequences. And finally, authority is the ability to secure compliance from the officers and the rank and file. When a general possesses all these abilities, they can be entrusted with the duty of command. Swincy's last question was about the organization of armies. How are officers appointed and promoted? How are the troops divided and trained? How's the budget managed? Is anybody watching over the supply lines and guarding them from enemy raids? In the spring and autumn period, officers were probably selected from the noble families, whose competence was not guaranteed. And this is one of the reasons why the state of Qing eventually conquered the rest, being the first to promote officers based on merit, for the number of decapitated enemy heads they brought back from battle. Bringing the head of an armored footman and you would become an upstart in nobility. The lowest title came with a piece of land, a house and a serpent. It was a crude but very effective incentive for the soldiers, hence the army of Qing state were feared as the legion of hungry tigers and wolves. By now, we should have a fairly good understanding about Swincy's science of war. Never one to charge hot-headedly to the battlefield, Swincy and others who practice his Tao his way would always analyze the situation, compare strengths and weaknesses in crucial aspects, and formulate a series of questions from whose answers a winning strategy will emerge. This practice of naming the relevant factors and analyzing them systemically is how Swincy would predict the unpredictable developments of wars and define a strategy for certain victory in the face of all the uncertainties on the battlefield. A solid pre-war assessment is vital to developing the best strategy, if not a best strategy in its own right. But as our earlier example indicates, every successful commander probably did pre-war assessments and they had been doing it at least a few hundred years before Swincy was born. Swincy's assessment was obviously more exhaustive and systematic, but what really made him outstanding was his unique way of thinking. Swincy never put all his eggs in one basket and always had something on the side. In the battlefield, he always had some troops operating independently of the main force. In his writings, he always included some extra points that seemed quite beside the main idea. Specifically, in the opening chapter of his book focused on pre-war assessment, he included a paragraph about tactics to supplement the main point. This supplementary paragraph is responsible for a lot of misunderstandings. Here Swincy talked about the role of deception and flexibility. He said, The way of war is the way of deception. A commander has to show incompetence in what he's capable of and feign inaction when he plans to take real action. When approaching his enemies, he must convince them that he's still far away. And when he decides to fall back, he should pretend to be fully engaged. He must evade when the enemy is too strong. He must wear them down when the enemy is fully rested. He must lure when the enemy is greedy. And he must attack when the enemy is in disorder. The right strategy for victory is not setting stone. A commander must be able to adapt to the development in the battlefield. Many Western readers, failing to recognize the structure of Swincy's writings, looked at this paragraph as the main point of the art of war. Look, the scheming Chinese have fooled us. They are pretending to be a poor developing country, but really they are out to get the United States and dominate the world. Unfortunately, the paragraph about deception and flexibility is merely a supplement to the discussion on pre-war meetings. The need for deception is to confuse the opponent in their assessment, and the call for flexibility is to guard against inept generals who carry out to the latter strategies made at pre-war meetings. I'm sure you know that'd be a disaster. So deception or flexibility alone does not make a winning strategy. By no means did Swincy believe a commander could cheat his way to victory when his soldiers were revolting against their king, or when he had lost more than half of his fighters from frostbite or flu or long march over hostile terrain. So if you believe deception is the secret of the art of war and the defining characteristic of the Chinese ethos, you are missing out on the true wisdom of Swincy and an accurate reading about international politics, if you ever cared about such things. Anyway, that's pretty much everything about the first chapter of the art of war. By the end of it, Swincy reiterated the importance of pre-war assessment and decided that whoever has the better assessment of the situation will have a better chance of coming out of the war victorious. In the next chapter, we shall have more evidence for Swincy's science of war, as he assumes the role of accountant and turns to the business of logistics. For more information, visit www.swincy.com