The awful attacks in London have brought the war on terrorism back to the center of attention.  Confucians and Taoists, famously pacifist both, have little to say about how to respond to armed assault.  Chinese philosophy, however, has other thinkers who take up questions of strategy and tactics, most prominently Sun Tzu (the link takes you to the 1910 Giles translation, the best one on-line I know of.  Off-line, I would recommend Roger Ames’s recent translation).

     There are two points from Sun Tzu that might be important to keep in mind as we think about how to fight back against the perpetrators of wanton violence.

     Before we get to the two points it should be pointed out that applying Sun Tzu to a global network of plotters who control no territory and command no government is a bit tricky.  When he thought about war, Sun Tzu was thinking about a more tangible, settled enemy.  His thinking has obviously been used over the centuries to talk about all sorts of human interactions, from military to business to romance, but we should be aware that 21st century technology and the peculiar character of Al Qaeda are not what Sun Tzu had in mind when he wrote.

     That being said, here are two thoughts that travel well across the centuries:

1. Therefore, the best military policy is to attack strategies…  (Ames, p. 111).

     To attack strategies we need to think about what the enemy is trying to achieve, what their goal is.  I imagine some part of Al Qaeda’s purpose is to create events that will goad us into rash action, counterattacking in ways that produce pictures of innocent people dying.  It is a cynical strategy: killing innocents to try to get us to do the same, but it may be what they rely on to replenish their ranks.  If this is true, then we need to be careful and measured in our responses.   At the very least, we need to think about what it is they are trying to get us to do, so that we can deny them.

2.   Suppose I am asked: If the enemy, in great numbers and with strict discipline in the ranks, is about to advance on us, how do we deal with him?  I would reply: If you get ahead of him to seize something he cannot afford to lose, he will do your bidding.  (Ames, 156-157).

     What is it that they "cannot afford to lose"?  Their leadership?  A great deal of effort goes into hiding and protecting Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri.  Perhaps we should be doing more to find them.  The only other things they might not be able to do without (remember territory and sovereignty are not applicable here – it is not a state we are fighting) might be media exposure and recruits.  The former is very difficult to cut off; so, maybe we need to do more to choke off their recruitment – and that goes back to point 1 above.

     At the very least, we should not act simply from anger or for revenge – that plays into their hands. Sun Tzu tells us that we should be asking: what do they want to achieve, and what can they not do without?