Lessons in the Art of War. Martina Sprague
enemy—as stated by Sun Tzu, “When ten to the enemy’s one, surround him. When five times his strength, attack him. If double his strength, divide him”24—a revealing example of the unpredictability of battle as seen in the Ultimate Fighting Championship I, might be sumo wrestler Teila Tuli losing a tooth and getting cut by the eye a mere twenty-three seconds into the fight despite the fact that he carried a significant weight advantage over his opponent. Moreover, war cannot be bloodless precisely because it cannot be reduced to an exact science. The fact that the Ultimate Fighting Championship quickly became a blood bath because nobody knew what to expect from anyone else further demonstrates the unscientific nature of combat, and also spurred the development of rules in future tournaments, including mandatory gloves and a ban on kicking or kneeing the head of a downed opponent.
Does the fact that combat is unpredictable mean that everything you have learned according to prescribed patterns of training in the martial arts is useless? The answer is an unequivocal no. Since the purpose of theory is to cast light on events, recognize relationships, eliminate ignorance, and separate the important from the unimportant, studying the many possibilities in advance coupled with extensive practice allows the martial artist to narrow the risk that something will go significantly wrong. In short, a good theoretical base alongside sensible practical training allows one to execute sound judgment when danger strikes and determine the scope of the battle before taking action. The victory is thus prepared in the planning, and herein lies the importance of Clausewitz’s suggestion that one should not take the first step without considering what might be the last. Clausewitz and Sun Tzu were in agreement that one should engage the enemy only after one has studied his strengths and weaknesses and determined that the chances of victory are reasonably good. Thus, the victorious fighter realizes the conditions for victory before engaging in battle.
In contrast to ideal war, in real war the moves cannot be fully predicted. Actions must therefore be modified upon passing from theory to reality. Real war is waged for the purpose of achieving minor advantages for their own sake without necessarily considering them direct steps toward victory. While ideal war focuses on the constant and determined movement toward the destruction of the enemy’s forces (or fighting ability), real war consists of a number of separate battles and includes pauses or standstills in action. Victory can also be achieved through peace negotiations rather than direct attack. The defining characteristic of real war is what Clausewitz called “friction.” Friction can take the form of physical frictions such as difficulties with the environment or weapons, or mental frictions such as fatigue or loss of morale. All action in war is based on probability. Although you may know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, at best you can only make an educated guess about the cards your opponent is holding.
Sun Tzu acknowledged the effects of friction and the many possible forms that battle can take when he said that “[t]here are no more than five musical notes, yet the variations in the five notes cannot all be heard.”25 As noted previously, he recognized that armies of overwhelming numerical superiority or strength should not be fought. However, heeding this advice may not be possible in a street fight, mugging, rape, or robbery because it assumes that you are the instigator of battle and alone decide whether or not to proceed. A weakness of Sun Tzu’s Art of War is that it fails to consider the fact that you do not have monopoly on initiative, deception, flexibility, or concentration of force at the decisive point, and that the enemy may resort to the same tactics. Friction, or the uncertainty of conflict, applies to all parties. To Sun Tzu’s credit, however, he appears to have recognized this weakness when he said, “It follows that those skilled in war can make themselves invincible but cannot cause an enemy to be certainly vulnerable. Therefore, it can be said that, one may know how to win, but cannot necessarily do so.”26
Although how to proceed in combat at any given moment often proves to be a gamble and friction can sabotage the best-laid plans, a consolation might be that chance does not strike one belligerent exclusively but can also create opportunities that can be exploited for personal gain. For example, you might face a very aggressive opponent in a kickboxing match and come through the first round feeling lucky if you merely prevent him from knocking you out in subsequent rounds. Halfway through the second round, your opponent unexpectedly loses steam perhaps as a result of having failed to attain proper cardiovascular conditioning. It is this friction, this unexpected occurrence that allows you to land a strong blow to his jaw, knock him out, and win the match.
In their definitions of war, both Sun Tzu and Clausewitz included the surrounding conditions and circumstances: the geography and technology, the social and political climate, and one’s passions and ambitions. An important point to consider is that Sun Tzu did not write about battles between states, but about conflict within his own culture where the enemy would likely resort to predictable tactics. His ideas would be quite applicable, for example, to the Ultimate Fighting Championship the way it was originally intended, for the purpose of exposing weaknesses within particular fighting arts. An aikidoist was expected to use only techniques applicable to aikido; a taekwondoist would rely only on techniques he would normally practice in the dojang; a kickboxer was expected to use only techniques he would resort to in a sanctioned match between two kickboxers, thereby making combat predictable and suggesting that it is possible to officially declare “superiority” of one art over another. As discussed previously, the event quickly “deteriorated” into mixed martial arts, where a fighter could use any techniques or blend thereof he chose regardless of his background or training.
The objective of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, fought inside the octagon, was initially to pit one style of martial art against another to determine which style was superior. This is an unjust way of evaluating the martial arts, because it fails to consider the historical context under which they were developed. (Image source: Lee Brimelov, Wikimedia Commons)
Furthermore, part of the difficulty associated with reconciling Sun Tzu and Clausewitz and their respective views on warfare lies in the particular era and culture in which they lived. Deception, for example, although strongly emphasized by Sun Tzu and promoted as a useful tactic in traditional martial arts and street defense alike, was difficult to use during Clausewitz’s time in the midst of the industrial revolution when warfare was waged by mass armies. Moreover, our tendency to view the martial arts within the framework of certain common trends and generalizations commonly bring misunderstandings both to traditional approaches to combat and the “newer” mixed martial arts. A traditionalist, for example, might hold the view that a mixed martial artist is a brawler who lacks insight and depth, while a mixed martial arts practitioner might sneer at the traditionalist, claiming that he would be ineffective in a “real” fight. One might thus ask: Does a martial art express the culture of its country of origin? Or does it merely express the needs to meet the political situation that existed at the time of its development? Which arts are applicable to modern combat, which are timeless, and which are merely anachronistic recreations of a particular culture and historical time frame?
History will attest that most countries of the world have integrated military systems. For example, even though infantry might dominate warfare, cavalry has historically proven more effective for scouting and breaking up enemy formations, or for meeting certain forces that did not rely on foot soldiering such as the Mongolian invasions of China in the thirteenth century CE. The martial arts are likewise integrated systems of fighting. A successful fight conducted outside of established conventions seldom relies exclusively on stand-up or ground combat, empty hands or weapons. By blending several principles typically found in karate, judo, and aikido, the Korean martial art of hapkido has managed to fuse physical and mental power, the cheng and the ch’i. It offers a good example of a traditional martial art operating as an integrated system of fighting by drawing power from karate, leverage from judo, and flow or the principle of diverting the opponent’s motion from aikido.27
Medieval European swordsmanship was an integrated system of fighting that used kicks and grabbing maneuvers to achieve the objective. Note the front kick displayed in this medieval sword fighting manual. (Image source: Francesco Novati, Wikimedia Commons)
Similarly,