WAS SUN TZU AN INEPT STRATEGIST?

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.  

—Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs

One of the enduring appeals of Sun Tzu’s Art of War is the belief that its author was not only a talented theorist of war, but also a highly successful practitioner. His writings, therefore, were validated in the uncompromising crucible of combat. His crowning achievement of military and strategic prowess, according to conventional wisdom, is found in his brilliant victory at the Battle of Boju, fought in 506 BCE between the forces of Wu and Chu. In Deciphering Sun Tzu, Derek Yuen claims that the battle was one “in which Sun Tzu played a major planning and commanding role, eventually winning a stunning victory against his state’s (Wu) arch-enemy, the state of Chu, [marking] the pinnacle of military operations in the Spring and Autumn Period and represent[ing] Sun Tzu’s greatest military achievement.”

How valid is this claim and what is it ultimately based on? Yuen, like many others who invoke this battle as incontrovertible proof of Sun Tzu’s strategic acumen, provides frustratingly little historical evidence to substantiate assertions of tactical and strategic mastery. This is surprising, because not only the Boju campaign, but the broader century-long Wu-Chu rivalry in which it was fought is documented in extensive detail in China’s oldest historical narrative, the Zuozhuan. Comparing the Zuozhuan’s wider context and detailed account of the campaign with its sensationalized popular version, however, paints a starkly different picture. Wu’s campaign against Chu was a risky gamble, not a masterclass in strategic execution, and Wu lacked a viable plan for how to exploit its early battlefield success. Despite its initial serendipitous victory at Boju, Wu’s territorial gains were quickly erased. Understanding why the state of Wu ultimately failed to achieve its strategic objectives, rather than blindly lauding its Pyrrhic tactical victory, will provide modern strategists more useful historical lessons.

Good Television, Bad History?

What constitutes our conventional interpretation of this campaign? In the History Channel’s documentary on Sun Tzu, it relies heavily on a popularized, loosely sourced version of the Boju campaign as a narrative vehicle to sharply contrast with Western strategic failures, such as the U.S. war in Vietnam. It will be instructive to summarize its recreation of the campaign here. According to the program, Wu is a small and relatively peaceful state on the verge of extinction at the hands of its aggressive and powerful neighbor, Chu. The dilettante ruler of Wu, King Helu, hires the itinerant general Sun Tzu in desperation after first reading his text and then observing a sly demonstration of his unconventional training techniques successfully applied to his harem of concubines. As newly appointed supreme commander, Sun Tzu quickly transforms Wu’s pitiable armed forces into a small but highly disciplined fighting force.

Turning the tables on Chu, Wu ceaselessly harasses Chu’s border forces, launching lightning attacks followed by quick withdrawals, thereby exhausting the large and cumbersome enemy army. When the demoralized and desperate Chu kingdom attempts to punish a recalcitrant ally, the state of Cai, Wu suddenly strikes decisively. Dispatching a decoy force designed to convince Chu that its objective is to help break the siege of Cai, Sun Tzu’s main force instead conducts a mad dash towards Chu’s undefended capital, racing nearly 600 miles through the inhospitable terrain of the Yangtze River valley—a mind-boggling display of command and logistical mastery in a historical era not known for long-range military deployments.

The Chu commander, although leading a force ten times the size of Sun Tzu’s and fighting on his own terrain, is completely surprised by this brilliant maneuver. As the Chu force races back to defend its suddenly exposed capital, Sun Tzu closes the trap, annihilating the massive Chu army in a deliberate envelopment at Boju. With the Chu army destroyed, Sun Tzu occupies its capital city, Ying, thereby annihilating its greatest rival and saving the fledgling Wu state. Total victory has been achieved with Sun Tzu’s strategic acumen firmly secured for posterity.

An Alternate, More Historically Grounded Version

Almost none of this, though, is validated in the Zuozhuan account, which constitutes our earliest and most detailed description of both the Boju campaign and the broader strategic backdrop in which it was fought. According to this account (which is outlined and linked to the primary source, here), Wu’s campaign against Chu was never a war of necessity. It was an invasion by choice and a risky gambit driven by the Wu court’s impetuous desire for power, glory, and revenge. The Wu army never launched a long-range invasion through the treacherous Yangtze River valley, instead transporting its army via river craft along the more reliable and secure Huai River to the much closer state of Cai, which was not, at the time, undergoing a siege by Chu forces. From the starting point of Cai—now close to the Chu capital but perilously distant from Wu’s own logistical base—Wu jointly launched its invasion via a direct route to Ying. The defending Chu army, meanwhile, was not caught flat-footed. It deliberately waited for the Wu-Cai army to reach its initial defense line along the Han River, which blocked the invader’s route to its capital.

The Battle of Boju was not won through tactical brilliance but through sheer luck, as Chu’s commander intentionally sabotaged his military advisor’s shrewd counter-attack plan for petty personal reasons. Moreover, the capture of Ying was far from the final act of the campaign and Wu’s good fortune quickly ran out. Wu never had a viable strategy for what it wanted to accomplish beyond the capture of Chu’s capital city. Its invading force was too small to effectively control the massive Chu state, it failed to either capture the deposed king or prevent Chu forces from regrouping, and it never gained support from the local population. Most fatally, Wu grossly miscalculated how other neighboring states would react to Chu’s defeat. Its inability to anticipate how the powerful state of Qin would respond to a newly established Wu presence on its immediate border remains an inexplicable intelligence failure. Prior to the invasion, Qin relied on Chu as a vital strategic counterweight to its own primary geopolitical rival, the state of Jin. Wu’s conquest of Chu upset this balance, and Qin’s eventual military intervention to restore the Chu king to the throne ensured Wu’s quick military collapse in Chu.

Less than a year after its unexpected victory at Boju, the entire Wu army was humiliatingly ejected from Chu territory by the combined forces of Chu and Qin. As a result, Chu’s leadership, military, and government entities were fully reconstituted, while Wu was left in a weakened state culminating in its complete annihilation within three decades. Conversely, Chu would survive for nearly another three centuries as a major power within the existing Zhou system. By any objective historical measure, the Boju campaign was a catastrophic strategic failure for Wu.

Why Sun Tzu Would Have Also Struggled in Afghanistan

We should not, however, lament the demise of this long-standing myth. Rather than measuring ourselves against a fictionalized vision of strategic perfection, studying the Zuozhuan’s more believable and historically reliable campaign narrative reminds us that even talented commanders can stumble in their strategic planning and execution. Many of the miscalculations made by Sun Tzu in his plan for defeating Chu are very similar to ones the U.S. recently made in Afghanistan.

Much like Wu, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan with enough forces to secure initial military victory, but not nearly enough to effectively control or pacify an entire country. While the U.S. never truly understood the complex tribal loyalties within Afghanistan, Wu remained similarly baffled by the complex Chu clan system. Wu’s efforts to apprehend the deposed king were thwarted by the determination of these various clan leaders to hide and protect the unpopular king from the even more unpopular and unwelcome foreign interlopers. Finally, much like Sun Tzu failed to anticipate Qin’s determination that Chu’s defeat constituted a direct threat to its own strategic interests, U.S. military leaders failed to fully grasp the scope and scale of Pakistan’s misgivings over replacing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Conclusion

The problem in the West is that we too easily rely on a flawed belief that Sun Tzu’s slim treatise is the only reference work necessary to gain sufficient understanding of Chinese military and strategic thinking. Much like mastering Clausewitz does not render the study of Thucydides redundant or superfluous, familiarization with Sun Tzu does not absolve us of the need to study the larger corpus of historical and military texts from the Chinese strategic canon. Moreover, our hyper focus on Sun Tzu’s Art of War at the expense of other ancient Chinese works leaves us blind to the fact that even Sun Tzu’s own near contemporaries occasionally questioned his strategic acumen. At the conclusion of the second century BCE biographical sketch on Sun Tzu (and two other famous military theorists) prepared by the renowned historian Sima Qian, he both recognizes the Art of War’s popularity while simultaneously slighting Sun Tzu’s actual military accomplishments using an ancient parallel to our modern pejorative phrase, “those who can’t do, teach”:

“When the common people of our time refer to armies and brigades they all speak of the thirteen chapters of Sun Tzu and Wu Qi’s Art of War. Many in our times possess these; thus, I have not discussed them [but instead] discussed the accomplishments of their actions. A saying goes: “Those who can do it cannot necessarily speak of it, and those who can speak of it cannot necessarily do it.” … How sad!”

In the eponymous text attributed to the third century BCE Confucian scholar, Xunzi, a lengthy chapter is dedicated to dispelling the view that adopting Sun Tzu’s military advice is conducive to long-term strategic success. While the chapter does not specifically mention the Boju campaign, it is difficult to not see in Xuzi’s critique a condemnation of its disastrous result: “To capture and take over others is something that it is easy to be capable of doing, but it is solidifying and consolidating one’s grip on them that is the hard part.”  In another third century BCE text, The Annals of Lü Buwei, one verse perfectly captures the fatal flaw in the planning and execution of the Boju campaign, even though it never references it directly. As we prepare for the inevitability of future campaigns and conflicts, it is worth searing this ancient warning into our own collective memory: “Victors who do not know how to build on their victories are no different from losers.”

These pointed critiques by Sun Tzu’s own contemporaries remind us that reliable historical context is a necessary component in properly assessing his influence. As Thucydides aptly noted, “most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.” While the History Channel’s problematic version of the Boju campaign will likely continue to be the first story most people hear, let’s make sure it’s not the last.

John F. Sullivan is a former U.S. Army China Foreign Area Officer. He is currently working on an historical commentary to the Sunzi Bingfa, grounding its interpretation in the wider body of contemporaneous military, philosophical, and historical texts from the Warring States era. His other works can be found at Academia.edu

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

Photo Description: Statue Of Sun Tzu at the Military Museum Of The Chinese People`s Revolution

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Matthew Stinson via flickr