Maneuvering

Maneuvering, for Sun Tzu, is the most difficult thing in war, because it demands "turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain." You take a circuitous route, distract the enemy with a bait so that he sets out later than you yet arrives first — this is "the knowledge of the artifice of deviation." Done well, maneuvering is profitable; done by an undisciplined multitude, it is most dangerous.

He dwells on that danger because it is so easily underestimated. An army that strips for a forced march to seize an advantage will leave its baggage behind; press the pace day and night, doubling the usual distance to snatch a prize a hundred li away, and the leaders of all three divisions will fall into the enemy's hands — only the strongest stragglers will arrive, perhaps one-tenth of the force. March fifty li and you lose the leader of the first division; march thirty and two-thirds of the army arrives. "We may take it then that an army without its baggage-train is lost; without provisions it is lost; without bases of supply it is lost." Speed has a price, and the commander must weigh the prize against the cost of reaching it intact.

Maneuvering also depends on knowledge of the country — its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps — and on the use of local guides, "for we cannot turn natural advantages to account unless we make use of local guides." War, he says, is founded on deception, movement is decided by expediency, and a force must split or unite as circumstance dictates.

The famous Wind-Forest-Fire-Mountain doctrine appears here: "Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest. In raiding and plundering be like fire; in immovability like a mountain." Be as hard to know as the dark, and when you move, strike like a thunderbolt. Plunder the countryside and divide the spoil; ponder and deliberate before you make a move.

To move a mass of men as one, Sun Tzu turns to command and control: gongs, drums, banners, and flags exist so that "the host may be focused on one particular point" — the ears and eyes of the army are unified, the brave cannot advance alone and the cowardly cannot retreat alone. He closes with the management of the enemy's spirit and your own: avoid an army when its spirit is keen and attack it when it is sluggish and inclined to return; do not press a desperate foe too hard, and "to a surrounded enemy you must leave a way of escape" — a cornered force fights to the death, which costs you needlessly. The practical core is that movement is leverage, but only disciplined, supplied, well-informed movement; speed without preparation throws away the very advantage it chases.