Comparing: Competition and Conflict

The Art of War, Chapter 7.1.1-8 Everyone uses the arts of war.

This post continues our project explaining each stanza of Sun Tzu’s work. The English and Chinese are from my award-winning translation, The Art of War and The Ancient Chinese Revealed. Start here for the book’s opening lines.

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This article begins Chapter 7 of The Art of War. The general topic of this chapter is armed conflict. “Armed conflict” is specifically defined as using our limited resources to tear down the positions of others rather than building up our own. While we can win a few comparisons if we tear down the positions of others, it is a poor long-term strategy. This chapter is the basis of Sun Tzu’s view of “winning without conflict.” It has many aspects: how we establish our positions, how we advance them, and how we defend them.

In the first stanza, Sun Tzu gives us a generic picture of what happens in all forms of competition, but it ends with a single line about what must not happen. Competition must not descend into destructive behavior. Many find this confusing because too many assume that conflict is the foundation of competition. The two concepts are often confused in everything negative we hear about competition. People think they are against competition when all they are really against is conflict. The second stanza here is only three lines. It reiterates the danger of conflict and then goes onto praise the surprising benefits of avoiding it.

• In the section below, we summarize each Chinese character with a single English word shown in < > brackets.

Competition is Not Conflict

<All> <use> <war> <’s> <methods>
Everyone uses the arts of war.

This line starts this chapter on conflict by reiterating the fact that competition is unavoidable. Competition is a universal state. Competition is comparison. Alternatives must be compared to rank them. We must rank them to choose what is best. Comparison is not conflict, which is the failure of making good decisions.

<General> <endure> <order> <from> <monarch>
You accept orders from the government.

In Chinese, this line makes me laugh. It describes the common situation for military generals in the era of Sun Tzu and those who lead competitive forces in our world today. The emperor sets the mission, despite his competitive skill or, more commonly, lack of it. The general had to <endure> these decisions by finding a way to reach the goal while avoiding destruction of his forces. The head of the organization, the monarch, may think in terms of crushing his enemies, but the head of the competitive efforts cannot afford to do so and must find other ways to reach their leader’s deeper goals.

<Join> <army> <masses> <crowd>
Then you assemble your army.

Even if we don’t plan armed conflict, we want to amass a superior fighting force. The best way to avoid conflict is to make ourselves appear unbeatable. We want to appear capable of tearing down the positions of others even when that is not our intention.

<Meet> <harmoniously> <and> <yet> <shelter>
You organize your men and build camps.

This line is about two different topics.

First, it is about building alliances, even with those who could be our enemies. We can <meet> <harmoniously> in different ways that are not destructive. A “battle” is any event where we are compared in a meaningful way with our rivals. Such meetings are common in everyday forms of competition and seldom destructive. Such meetings can be used for many different purpose, for example, to form alliances or to carve out defendable niches. Our alliances and niches are just as important as the size of our forces in discouraging others from challenging us.

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