For those interested in military history:
Ukraine’s Big Counteroffensive Seems Inspired by Sun Tzu
ISW affirms that Ukraine scored a “remarkable operational surprise” in Kharkiv oblast. Russian commanders had withdrawn forces from the region to guard the southern city of Kherson, where Ukraine has also mounted counteroffensive operations. At present Western specialists are debating whether the southerly effort was a feint to siphon Russian forces from the north, or whether Ukrainian commanders meant to make a serious push to regain control of Kherson and sever the land bridge connecting the Crimean Peninsula with eastern Ukraine (and thus Russia).
But both parties to the debate could have it right. Kherson could be a feint—with commanders reserving the option to make it something more should the gods of war smile on Ukrainian arms.
In fact, the counteroffensive has a Sun Tzuian flair to it. The ancient Chinese general
exhorted commanders to launch direct, or “orthodox,” attacks in conjunction with indirect, or “unorthodox,” attacks on the enemy host—keeping hostile commanders dizzy with indecision. “Normal” forces should carry out a direct frontal assault while “extraordinary” forces struck at the foe’s flanks, dislocating its efforts at defense. “The force which confronts the enemy is the normal” according to Sun Tzu; “that which goes to his flanks the extraordinary. No commander of an army can wrest the advantage from the enemy without extraordinary forces.”
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Operational advantage, then, accrues from thrusting enemy commanders onto the horns of a dilemma. They don’t know which is the main line of assault, and thus where to commit the bulk of their manpower and firepower to blunt it. And Sun Tzu advises the general to keep them guessing—compounding their dilemma. “I make the enemy conceive my normal force to be the extraordinary and my extraordinary to be the normal. Moreover, the normal may become the extraordinary and vice versa.” If the extraordinary contingent meets with success on the battleground while the normal contingent encounters fierce resistance, in other words, the field general should redesignate the extraordinary force as the normal force—and apply most of the army’s resources to that more promising line of effort.
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And a virtuoso general would shift the effort back again should the shifting fortunes of battle warrant. Etc. In short, Sun Tzu prescribes a highly fluid, deceptive approach to warmaking.
