SUN TZU NEWS ARCHIVE
The Art of War in the News

• Timely plea misrepresents the facts (Financial Times, 7/22/03) Saying that Prof Porter "asserts that to make good profits a company must . . . compete with its suppliers, customers, regulators" and "profits come from restricting or distorting competition" distorts and oversimplifies the subtlety of Prof Porter's position. Indeed Prof Porter was one of the first (after Sun-Tzu) to argue that often the best way to compete is by avoiding competition.
  
  
• War Dividends (Sierra Times, 7/7/03) Sun Tzu, a Chinese general of antiquity, shaped the coalition's strategy in Iraq. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, who masterminded the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein, listed him among their favorite philosophers and quoted him lavishly.
  
  
• Hearst Ranch Seeks Public-Private Balance (New York Times, 7/3/03) As Stephen T. Hearst maneuvered his Chevrolet Suburban up the steep switchbacks of the Hearst Ranch, here in the shadow of his great-grandfather's storied castle, his elbow glanced off the console, which holds his books on tape. On top was Sun Tzu's "Art of War." Mr. Hearst laughed off a suggestion that although he was negotiating the sale of the development rights to his family's 82,000-acre property, which is five times the size of Manhattan, he had been studying this classic of military strategy.
  
  
• Best Poker Book Written 2,600 Years Ago (PokerMag, 7/2/03) Forget Sklansky; dump Doyle. No criticism intended as they have a lot going for them. But the ideal bedtime reading for the aspiring poker player is not even about the game itself but the attitude towards it. And the book is "The Art of War".
  
  
• Decatur police chief working to build ties (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6/20/03) He keeps a copy of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," a treatise on warfare written 2,500 years ago, on an office bookshelf, incongruously placed next to William Bratton's "Turnaround," a 1998 book that details how the former New York City police commissioner dramatically lowered crime rates through "community policing." He said Tzu's book is not there for what it says about crushing enemies. Rather, he likes its insights into caring for and training one's own troops.
  
  
• General Tommy Franks discusses conducting the war in Iraq (KnightRidder, 6/19/03) "Sun Tzu (the famous Chinese military strategist) had it right when he said you need to know your enemy and you need to know yourself. I think we knew ourselves better in this case better than any point in our history... I remember when my spirits sank… There's one characteristic of war - you get the big answer here - that I think has not changed in 2,500 years since Sun Tzu worked for the Emperor Wu and trained the palace guard. That is the human dimension."
  
  
• JD Edwards Sues; PeopleSoft Spurns Oracle (InternetNews, 6/12/03) "At a 6 percent premium and with plans to shelve PeopleSoft's business, Oracle's initial announcement was clearly unacceptable," Derome told internetnews.com. "But I don't think this is the end of the story. Oracle has the incentive and the resources to put a more acceptable offer on the table. Larry shocked PeopleSoft and the market with his initial statements. He can use the advantage he's gained to negotiate better terms if he's serious about the acquisition. His moves read like a page from the Art of War, a reported favorite for Mr. Ellison."
  
  
• Larry Ellison and the Art of War (Forbes, 6/10/03) Says longtime Ellison protégé Marc Benioff, who now, having studied at the master's feet, deftly feeds the press bon mots about his own enterprise software company, Salesforce.com: "Larry's the Sun Tzu of the software industry. He's all about the software war. This is a typical Larry Ellison Sun Tzu move. This could be real, it could not be real, but it is clearly defocusing for PeopleSoft."
  
  
• Ellison hones his 'Art of War' tactics (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/10/03) Swashbuckling CEO of Oracle draws early blood in his ruthless attempt to take over PeopleSoft. "It's important to realize Larry Ellison is the master of the art of the software world in the tradition of Sun Tzu and 'The Art of War,' " said Marc Benioff, a former Oracle sales executive who is CEO of San Francisco's Salesforce.com. Ellison is a major investor in Salesforce and formerly served on its board. Benioff thinks Ellison has won Round 1 by getting under Conway's skin. He said, "You're seeing highly emotional and probably inappropriate comments from Craig."

• Congressman offers summer reading list; forget about light fiction (Kansas City Star, 6/9/03) The books range from ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu's Art of War to modern tomes on great leaders (David McCullough's Truman) and great battles (Richard Frank's Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle). The list is heavy on biographies, including a two-volume study of one of Missouri's most famous sons: Frank Everson Vandive's Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing. "The best place to learn history is from biographies," Skelton said. "From people who have actually been there."
  
  
• And still only at base camp (Wisden Cricket Monthly, 6/2/03) Before the final I used a quote from Sun Tzu. "Invincibility comes from defence; attack gives you the opportunity for success." Young's work with us, together with our planning strategies and player skills, gave us additional confidence in our ability to contain teams with the ball or defend totals. Our attack through our top four batsmen gave us the opportunity for success. It was then left to our defence to seal the World Cup.
  
  
• The art of investment (Asia Times, 5/31/03) Author Curtis Montgomery, though, has tried to find something new for investors from the Sun: ancient Chinese General Sun Tzu. Around the time Athenians were creating their democracy and Confucius was speaking wisely, Sun Tzu wrote a military guidebook that we now know as The Art of War.
  
  
• China’s Air-Power Puzzle (Policy Review, 5/29/03) Practical political wisdom and Taoist sensitivity to harmony with nature commingle in another contemporarily relevant compendium, the ancient military classics, which are still used in Chinese military academies. The most famous, Sun Tzu’s Art of War (Sun tzu bingfa –– “bing” means “war,” and “fa” means “habits” or “rules”), belongs to a collection of military manuals dating back to the 200-year Warring States period before China’s unification under the Qin Dynasty (221-206 bc). Two thousand years later, Mao adopted Sun Tzu in his struggle against the Nationalist forces, and references to the ancient classics recur in contemporary statements of strategy, including air power doctrine.

• Gen Franks, 'wise warrior' of two campaigns, retires (The Guardian, 5/23/03) Franks, 57, who liked to quote Sun Tzu's saying that "precise knowledge of self and precise knowledge of the threat leads to victory," will have no shortage of offers in the private sector. The war in Iraq has given him a high media profile in the US and could, if he wanted, enter the lucrative lecture circuit. He is also likely to be approached by publishers for his war memoirs.
  
  
• Into the nightmare (Mail&Guardian, 5/14/03) American and British military tacticians rarely tire of invoking the name of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher of war, credited with laying the groundwork for everything from “decapitation strikes” to the policy of “shock and awe”. But as coalition troops push north for an assault on Baghdad, through stubborn opposition from the most highly trained of President Saddam Hussein’s fighters, it is another aphorism of Sun Tzu’s that may be ringing in the ears of their commanders. “The worst policy,” he wrote, brooking no argument, “is to attack cities.”
  
  
• China, Japan, and General Xiong (The Asia Times, 5/10/03) There could be an interesting three-way entente in the making, with China emerging as the guarantor of security in the region while the US and Japan maintain their security alliance, but mainly as a bilateral affair without larger regional complications. As for Xiong, if he can help bring this about, he would celebrated as a master strategist in the Sun Tzu mold.
  
  
• The Fed girds for war (CNN, 5/8/03) In the market's mind, Alan Greenspan is busy putting a fine edge on his machete, daubing camouflage paint on his face, catching up on his Sun Tzu. The fight to resurrect the economy has intensified and increasingly it looks like the Federal Reserve may resort to guerilla tactics.

• Endangered Species vs. Oil & Gas (The Sierra Times, 5/7/03) In The Art of War, Sun Tzu instructed his students centuries ago that the superior warrior may be defined as the one who is able to defeat his enemy before an actual battle is ever required to be fought. Actual combat should be engaged in only when resolution of the problem can’t be achieved by other means. In this case, that would infer that an anticipated environmentalist onslaught against one’s industry would best be turned aside before ever having to enter the battlefield of litigation, if at all possible.

• Pushing all the right buttons (Chicago Sun-Times, 5/6/03) "My job is not to think for you,'' [Dusty] Baker said. "My job is to [turn on] the pilot light in your brain. My job is to make everyone feel important on the team. Like in 'The Art of War,' the small is equal to the big. One is not more important than the other. If it is, then your circle is not complete.''
  
  
• How to Avoid Bear Traps (Smart Money, 5/5/03) As Sun Tzu observed, the battle is won or lost before the fighting even begins. If you trade for money, let me assure you that the undercapitalized trader is trapped...no, absolutely doomed, from the start. It's not that the game is rigged against the little guy, but rather that there's an inherent cost to trading. If you have no savings, hold high-interest debt or possess only a few hundred dollars to your name, my advice would be to invest nothing. If you can't pay, you can't play.

• Early Election Errors – Political Season (Daily Nation Barbados, 5/4/03) I would like to recommend to Arthur that he reads The Art Of War by Sun Tzu a Chinese philosopher. It is a book written 2 500 years ago by a remarkable man. It should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in leadership, be it the military, business or politics.
  
  
• Back to basics (US News, 5/3/03) Old is new again, as publishers (and book stores) push the classics. Last week, Barnes & Noble booksellers launched its own line of revamped classics to replace the cheap versions it sold near the checkout line, while Penguin is spending half a million dollars to repackage the 1,300 books in its distinguished series. "People read Jane Austen as if she were Danielle Steel," says George Stade, consulting editorial director for Barnes & Noble Classics and a retired Columbia English professor. "Businessmen read [Sun Tzu's] The Art of War to know how to deal with their competitors. These are permanent bestsellers."
  
  
• Of Lessons Learned In Sweet Fall Evenings (American Daily, 5/1/03) Why Iraq first? Because terrorist hotbeds Syria, Iran, and the West Bank are now geographically divided. There's a new sheriff in town, bringing the rule of law, freedom, human rights, and democracy, the most feared weapons of mass destruction to the remaining tyrannical and theocratic states. Bush's vision of clear goals using precise power with minimal civilian casualties verified the brilliant Sun Tzu paradox that extreme violence tempered with benevolence creates the perfect victory. Korea, Vietnam and Somalia memories are exorcised. Iraq is free.
  
  
• A "Moral" Foreign Policy That Ignores International Law? (FindLaw, 5/1/03) The idea that foreign affairs should be conducted according to some set of moral principles is an ancient one. Some 2500 years ago, the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu advocated a set of rules for the appropriate conduct of war. In western culture, Saint Augustine argued that all wars need a "just cause." Later, the thinking of various Europeans ripened into the Hague and Geneva Conventions, which set out laws of war, in an effort to limit the cruelty and collateral suffering that war inevitably entails.

• The Spin Doctors (The Hill Times, 4/28/03) "It may not be in Sun Tzu's 'Art of War,' but it could be: when in a political party's leadership campaign, shoot at the guy you want to beat. Not the gal who you may need to win. Here endeth the lesson."
  
  
• The Shadow Warriors (St. Petersburg Times, 4/28/03) The concept of special operations is not new. The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote: "When all troops are encamped together, the general selects from every camp its high-spirited and valiant officers who are distinguished by agility and strength and whose martial accomplishments are above the ordinary." In the United States, special operations date to the Revolutionary War, and played vital roles in World War II and Vietnam.

• Fly away home: 12 Langley pilots return to families (Hampton Roads Daily Press, 4/25/03) A dozen Langley pilots returned from the war in Iraq on Thursday - an advance party of a much larger contingent due Saturday - their war stories the same: no enemy spotted, none shot down, no one lost. In this case, no news was triumphant news as the United States won the air war by just showing up. "Sun Tzu said that if you can defeat your enemy without firing a shot, you've done a good job," Lt. Col. Chris Nowland, operations officer for the "Ironmen" of the 71st Fighter Squadron, said, paraphrasing a famous Chinese strategist.
  
  
• Shock, Awe--And Your Competitors (Forbes, 4/23/03) Boyd's proudest achievement was a theory called OODA, for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act. Developed largely from his study of the ancient Chinese theoretician Sun Tzu and Prussian military reformers of the 19th century, the theory explains how a combatant can defeat the enemy on the mental battlefield, before the real shooting starts.
  
  
• VIEWPOINT: Here are four great nonsales books for salespeople (Kansas City Star, 4/22/03) The Art of War by Sun Tzu. This book is brilliant in every sense of the word. The Art of War reveals timeless secrets about how to convince the opposition to surrender and join you without a shot being fired. If battle is necessary, the book teaches how to increase the probability of victory. While war is far more serious than sales, winning the hearts and minds of people, learning how your competitors and customers work, and understanding the "terrain" are still the same.
  
  
• They fought by the book, and it was Sun Tzu wot won it (London Times, 4/12/03) The White House has fought this war by the book: specifically, a book written by a Chinese military strategist who died some 25 centuries ago. The Art of War, the manual combining common sense with uncommon perception written by the warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu, has been repeatedly cited by American commanders during the Iraq conflict. It is required reading at top US military colleges, and its tenets have been adapted into the fighting doctrines of both the US Army and the Marines. General Tommy Franks can recite much of Sun Tzu by heart, and he deploys his aphorisms at every opportunity. Sun’s treatise has even been distributed to GIs in a new Services paperback edition.
  
  
• 'Shock and awe' misunderstood (USA Today, 4/8/03) By Harlan Ullman. Tokyo could understand a thousand plane raids killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens. But one plane, one bomb and one city gone? That was incomprehensible — both shocking and awesome. Although our shock-and-awe concept does not envision that sort of last-resort action, its aim is to have the ability to force the enemy to surrender with the lowest level of force and damage. To paraphrase the great Chinese general Sun Tzu, who lived 2,500 years ago, the theoretical aim is to win without recourse to the first battle.

• Strategic analysis: There is a point in every war when the tide turns (The Independent, 4/7/03) On Saturday, after 16 days of continuous military operations, the dam of Iraqi resistance burst. Both sides in this latest conflict could be likened to water, as Sun Tzu said of armies in the 4th century BC: avoiding the heights and hastening to the shallows – or into the cracks. The Iraqi attempts to counter US and British military power by drawing them into urban jungles may have diverted the first trickles of the flood a little, but the message is clear. The weight of water is overwhelming. And at the weekend, it broke through. Après moi, le déluge.
  
  
• Did US troops get ‘bogged down’ in Iraq? (Pakistan Daily Times, 4/6/03) In his famed book “The Art of War,” Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago: “War is all deceit. If you can do something, make the enemy believe you cannot; if you are close, pretend you are far away.” Last week in Iraq both sides were playing Sun Tzu to the limit: The allies faked weakness and disarray, the Iraqis faked strength and confidence...If one pierces through the many lies both sides have circulated, the true picture looks like this: The allies have never been truly bogged down. The supply crunch and the reported lack of sufficient troops were grossly exaggerated. And the “Iraqi resistance” was more an annoyance than a real strategic problem.
  

• Plan B -- for Baghdad (The Washington Post, 4/3/03) Plan A for the war was a quick and devastating attack that would cause a collapse of the regime and lead to the ultimate military outcome -- the Sun Tzu ideal of victory with barely a shot fired...The regime did not collapse overnight. Hence Plan B, an adapted version of the original war plan. It involves real fighting and real losses. Plan A, in contrast, while always plausible, was a hope for the miraculous. It was a kind of anti-war plan, as it would not have required any real battles at all. The miracle having not happened, we are now fighting a conventional war. And winning -- thanks to the Franks plan and its flexibility, and despite the carping of those who, in conflict after conflict, see Vietnam in anything short of immediate immaculate victory.

• Pentagon plans for worst nightmare (The Guardian, 4/3/03) American and British military tacticians rarely tire of invoking the name of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher of war, credited with laying the groundwork for everything from "decapitation strikes" to the policy of "shock and awe". But as coalition troops push north for an assault on Baghdad, through stubborn opposition from the most highly trained of Saddam Hussein's fighters, it is another aphorism of Sun Tzu's that may be ringing in the ears of their commanders. "The worst policy," he wrote, brooking no argument, "is to attack cities."
  
  
• U.S. Forces May Face Baghdad Street Fight (The Mercury News, 4/2/03) U.S. plans for the battle of Baghdad are a closely held secret, but training before the war included drills in mock urban neighborhoods in Kuwait. And it's a nightmare scenario fraught with special perils for any army attempting to capture a large, populated area. Some experts say an army fighting in the streets should expect to lose about a third of its force in killed, wounded and missing. "Attack cities only when there is no alternative," Sun Tzu cautioned in his classic 5th century BC treatise, "The Art of War."
  
  
• Child guerillas among the dangers (The Age, 4/2/03) Urban warfare, as the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu concluded, is the lowest form of warfare. The kind of fighting coalition forces are likely to face in Baghdad involves complicated command-and-control challenges and presents soldiers and commanders with unparalleled tactical and ethical dilemmas. One such challenge is the Iraqis' use of children as urban guerilla fighters.

• Perilous urban fight in Baghdad looming (Miami Herald, 4/2/03) As American and British forces close in on Baghdad, they are facing a challenge that has confronted armies for millenniums: Of all the places to pick a battle, a city is one of the most dangerous. ''If troops are attacking cities, their strength will be exhausted,'' the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote about 2,500 years ago. ``The worst policy is to attack cities. Attack cities only when there is no alternative.'' In urban areas, buildings obscure sight lines. Curtained windows hide sniper nests. Alleyways present a confusing maze to outsiders but give cover to hometown fighters for hit-and-run strikes. It can be maddeningly difficult to distinguish civilians from enemy combatants. Invaders' superior firepower and technology diminish when faced with the enemy's guerrilla tactics.
  
  
• Sun Tzu: The real father of 'shock and awe' (The Asia Times, 4/1/03) The stiff resistance mounted by Iraqi soldiers in the key towns along the road to Baghdad reflects this reality. Furthermore, the US forces have suffered early casualties, with more than 30 deaths and seven prisoners of war, according to media reports. Yet Sun enthusiasts disagree. They argue that the obstacles US-led troops have run into - from the failure of forcing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime to collapse after a steady barrage of missiles and bombs, to the stiff resistance mounted by Iraqi troops - do not mean that Sun's strategy has failed. "Much has yet to be seen before making any conclusions," writes an analyst for Sonshi.com, a website dedicated to Sun's The Art of War. "Based on what we have seen, and despite criticism so far, [US military planners] are applying Sun Tzu's principles surprisingly well, adds the analyst, who did not want to be identified. "There is little doubt the Iraqi forces are overwhelmed at this point. It is just a matter of time before things start to collapse."
  
  
• Wait ends, war begins for 4th Infantry (The Oregonian, 4/1/03) The ability to see your own forces and the enemy's simultaneously helps eliminate friendly-fire casualties and makes the division more responsive. The technology helps U.S. commanders tilt the odds. They are not interested in a fair fight; rather, they want to outmaneuver and overwhelm the enemy. With four brigades wielding a deadly mix of heavy armor, mechanized infantry and air assault helicopters, the digital edge gives the 4th's leadership a chance to decide the battle before it begins. "It's like what Sun Tzu, the Chinese military genius, said about 400 B.C.," said Paine, a West Point graduate. "Every battle is won before it is ever fought."

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