The Supreme Art of War Is to Subdue the Enemy Without Fighting

In October 1962 the United States found Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, ninety miles from Florida. Several advisers pressed President Kennedy to bomb the sites and invade. Kennedy chose instead a naval quarantine of the island, careful talks with Moscow and a private promise to remove American missiles from Turkey. The crisis ended in thirteen days without a shot fired between the two powers. Historians still describe it as the closest the world has come to nuclear war, and they also describe it as a success of the very principle in the topic, which comes from The Art of War and holds that the supreme excellence is to break the enemy's resistance without fighting.

Sun Tzu's reasoning was practical and not moral. War, he said, is costly. It drains the treasury, kills the farmers who feed the army and invites other states to attack an exhausted victor. The best commander therefore attacks the enemy's plans first, then his alliances, then his armies, and storms walled cities only when there is no other choice. A victory that wins the territory intact is worth more than one that leaves it in ruins, since the conqueror inherits what he has destroyed. The Chinese military tradition also prized deception, because a plan that makes the enemy fight against shadows is cheaper than a plan that makes him fight against soldiers.

Indian statecraft reached a similar conclusion by a different road. Kautilya's Arthashastra lists four methods of dealing with a rival, which are conciliation, gifts, sowing dissension and force. They are given in rising order of cost, and force comes last. The emperor Ashoka went further after the carnage at Kalinga around 261 BCE, when he turned from conquest by arms to what his edicts call conquest by dhamma, a victory won by moral example and good government. Whatever one concludes about his motives, the text of his edicts records a ruler who had decided that a battle won was a battle that should have been avoided.

The modern world has developed new instruments for the old purpose. Nuclear deterrence is the starkest. The great powers have not fought a direct war since 1945, and many strategists credit the fear of mutual destruction. Economic pressure through sanctions, trade rules and control of technology can change an opponent's behaviour at a fraction of the human cost of invasion. Alliances multiply the weight of a smaller state, and diplomacy offers a rival a way to retreat without humiliation. Each of these tools subdues without fighting, and each works only when the other side believes that fighting would be worse.

Each of these tools subdues without fighting, and each works only when the other side believes that fighting would be worse.

That condition is the hidden core of the maxim. The art of winning without battle is not the art of avoiding battle, since a state that is known to be unwilling to fight can be bullied without limit. The Munich agreement of 1938, in which Britain and France allowed Germany to take the Sudetenland in the hope of avoiding war, is the standard example of a bloodless policy that failed. Hitler had judged correctly that the democracies would not resist, and he moved on to more demands. The Romans put the same idea in a proverb, that anyone who wants peace should prepare for war. Strength that is credible and never used is the foundation of the strategy. Credibility also needs patience and care, since a threat carried out too quickly stops being a threat, and a threat that is never carried out eventually stops being believed.

The Berlin airlift of 1948 and 1949 is a clear illustration of the method working in the open. When the Soviet Union blocked road and rail access to the western sectors of the city, the Western powers did not send an armoured column down the highway. They flew in food and fuel for almost a year, delivering well over two million tonnes of supplies, and the blockade was lifted in May 1949 without a battle. The Soviet leadership had been defeated by logistics and patience, and it had been given a way to end the blockade without admitting defeat. The Iran nuclear agreement of 2015 shows a more fragile version, in which negotiated limits replaced the threat of a strike, and its later weakening after the United States withdrew in 2018 shows how easily such arrangements can be undone.

Critics also note that bloodless methods are not always gentle. The sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s are widely blamed for severe hardship among civilians, including shortages of medicine and food, while the government they were meant to pressure remained in power. A siege that starves a city has subdued an enemy without fighting in the narrowest sense. The objection is serious and it narrows the maxim. The topic praises the victory that spares lives, and a policy that merely moves the suffering out of sight does not meet that test.

There is a further difficulty that concerns the evidence. A war that did not happen leaves no record. Historians can describe the Cuban missile crisis because it came close to disaster, but they cannot count the crises that ended earlier because deterrence worked or a diplomat found a form of words. Success is silent, and failure is loud. This produces a distortion in public memory, in which the soldier who wins a battle is honoured and the official who prevented a war is forgotten, and in which budgets for diplomacy are cut because their results cannot be seen.

The result is that the supreme art may also be the least recognised. A commander who conquers without fighting will have no monument and no medal, and he will be accused by some of having been weak. Sun Tzu seems to have known this, since he wrote that the skilful strategist who wins before the battle receives no reputation for wisdom and no credit for courage. It remains unclear whether the world has ever been spared a war by this art or only appeared to be, and the rulers who prevented those wars cannot prove it.