Lessons in the Art of War. Martina Sprague
of the critical point. Sun Tzu believed that the enemy’s center of gravity was his strategy or his plans, and foiling his plans would end the battle before it had begun (thus, winning without fighting). Attacking his strategy could also disrupt his focus by sabotaging his momentum. Clausewitz, by contrast, believed that the enemy’s center of gravity was his physical strength, and thus the destruction of his forces the primary objective on the grounds that an army that is physically destroyed cannot continue the fight.
Note that although Clausewitz recognized the power of offensive action in breaking the enemy’s will to resist by destroying his means to resist, he did not conceive of wars as just or unjust and therefore did not bother to discuss the morality of brutal offense. Since a nation has the right to fight for survival, he viewed all national wars as just. Likewise, when a person’s life is endangered or he risks serious bodily harm, fighting, even to the death, is justified. When morals are mixed with combat theories, rules dissolve into vague ideas. The conduct of war and the morality of war must therefore be discussed separately.
Sun Tzu and Clausewitz further recognized the constantly changing conditions of war; Sun Tzu by prescribing unorthodox tactics and the use of deceptive practices, and Clausewitz through the element of chance which can strike either belligerent and requires an ability to adapt. Sun Tzu took an abstract tack by comparing war to water: “And as water has no constant form there are in war no constant conditions.”27 Like water, which takes the path of least resistance, the fighter should adapt to the terrain and circumstances and plan his strategy accordingly. Those skilled at using unorthodox strategy can provide a ceaseless number of surprises and become as “inexhaustible as the great rivers.”28 Two millennia later, the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi compared combat to the elements of nature: ground, water, fire, wind, and void, and noted that, “[w]ater adopts the shape of a receptacle. It is sometime a trickle and sometimes a wild sea.”29 It is from the water principle that formlessness is derived, or the idea that an army that has no set form cannot be defeated.
Since the nature of water dictates a downhill flow from high to low, from full to empty, a skillful military strategist preserves energy by going with the flow of the attack, countering to that which is “empty,” such as an opening in the opponent’s defense or a weakness in his stance, with conquest of the adversary coming by way of yielding to his power. Unlike Western boxing or wrestling which pits strength against strength and where physical size is a virtue, yielding to the opponent’s power allows a smaller or weaker person to defeat a bigger adversary, and is one of the core principles that makes the martial arts effective for men and women of inferior strength. Examples of the water principle can be observed in aikido, where the practitioner avoids frontal assault and blends with the opponent’s motion, redirecting his momentum, and taking advantage of his energy. Aikido also teaches mental flow. The purpose of mushin, or no mind (also the absence of thought), is to facilitate natural flow of body movements in order to speed up reflexes and reaction times.30 Once the martial artist has redirected the opponent’s attack, his mind is ready to manage the next threat by avoiding prolonged fixation on the initial attacker. Judo, the art of throwing an opponent, likewise relies on blending the physical body with the flow of motion, joining one’s center of gravity with the opponent’s and thus combining both fighters in single motion.
Although aikido and judo fall under the category of “soft” arts, many martial arts in Asia were developed to break bones and end the fight as quickly as possible. They were not about humiliating the adversary or teaching him a lesson while letting him walk away physically unscathed. Flow, or taking the path of least resistance, is found in the brutal joint lock techniques of hapkido. The greater an adversary’s struggle against the lock, the greater is his pain. Every joint lock has a counter, yet a skilled martial artist can flow with the opponent’s motion and guide the “offending” limb into an excruciatingly painful position. A person well-versed in joint locks can almost always find an opportunity for transforming one lock into another as the need arises, using the opponent’s motion to tighten the lock and ultimately ending the encounter with a break or dislocation of the joint.
The water principle as used in hapkido also relates to relentless determination. Like the persistence of dripping water, which will eventually bore a hole in stone, the hapkido practitioner penetrates the opponent’s defenses while avoiding the direct power of his attacks. As described by hapkido grandmaster Bong Soo Han (1933-2007 CE), “There is an old saying: ‘To catch a tiger, you must go to the tiger’s lair.’ So in defense, to be effective, you must flow with the opponent. You must read his force—this will let you know what force you must apply as the appropriate counter.”31 Yielding to the force further relates to the Confucian and Daoist concept of yin and yang. Strong techniques are received gently, and gentle techniques are countered with powerful strikes. Crude techniques and strong contact result in clashing energies and create “double-weightedness, a condition that... violates the yin and yang... because both weapons [or fighters] are exerting yang force simultaneously.”32
What is sometimes overlooked by the Western martial artist is that references to water, earth, birds, tigers, and other animals and elements of nature which are often found in the names of Asian martial arts techniques demonstrate an influence of local culture, tradition, religion, and philosophical thought. Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism propagated the belief that man is part of nature, and that nature is comprised of interacting forces that must be in balance to restore harmony. Just as life leads to death, war is the path to destruction but also the path to peace. Talking about techniques in terms of nature; for example, how to block an attack by “parting the wild horse’s mane,”33 may seem confusing to the Western martial artist. But the technique differs only on the philosophical and not practical level. The Western martial arts utilize many techniques that are almost identical in execution to their Asian counterparts yet go by different names. For example, a reverse punch and a front kick can be found in most martial arts regardless of their place of origin.
In the same vein, although Sun Tzu used the word shuaijan (snake) for describing a successfully deployed army—“If you strike its head the tail will respond, if you strike its tail the head will respond. If you strike the middle both the head and tail will react”34—he used the word as an analogy and did not mean to say that the army must study the movements of a snake in order to reach success in war. The Questions and Replies Between T’ang T’ai-Tsung and Li Wei-Kung further reveals that the meaning of heaven, earth, wind, clouds, dragons, tigers, birds, and snakes were not cleverly created formations in the images of animals, but code names for secret techniques:
The ancients secretly concealed [their] methods, so they craftily created these eight names... Dragons, tigers, birds, and snakes originated in the distinctions of the platoons and squads. Later generations erroneously transmitted them. If they were cleverly creating formations in the images of animals, why would they stop at eight?35
Clausewitz viewed war as violent action and its defining characteristic unpredictability as a result of chance (friction) and human weakness. However, as those who are well-versed in the martial arts know through experience and empirical evidence, any theory or battle plan will likely fall apart when the first blows are exchanged. Although action in war will run down in regular motion and each move is designed to bring the martial artist closer to the objective, the means employed are intended to help him reach a defined end. Taking advantage of the enemy’s plans, position, and weapons, and adapting to changing circumstances is crucial to success. Again, Clausewitz underscored the importance of attacking the enemy’s center of gravity: “If the enemy is thrown off balance, he must not be given time to recover. Blow after blow must be struck in the same direction... by constantly seeking out his center of power, by daring all to win all, will one really defeat the enemy.”36
Now that we have gained basic insight into Sun Tzu’s and Clause-witz’s battle philosophies, before proceeding with a deeper analysis of the martial arts it is important to acknowledge that war is an element of being human and is neither Asian nor Western in nature. A simple way to test this concept is by noting how a martial artist with some training under his belt can fight using Sun Tzu’s and Clausewitz’s principles of combat, even if he has never studied either strategist. Neither Sun Tzu nor Clausewitz introduced anything new in