The Warrior Class Blog

We wrote about Sun Tzu’s The Art of War nine common strategic campaign positions here, but you should understand how Sun Tzu lays out these positions in a logical order where one connect logically to the next. Success is all about making the right choices given your positioning, getting to the best ground. For example, in McCain is on “intersecting” terrain, which means that he has the opportunity to solidify alliances. If he makes the right alliances, he can get to “open” terrain and win in a landslide. However, if he makes alliances that alienate his Republican base, he will move to “dangerous” terrain where he is cut off from his base of financial support.

Obama is on “bad” terrain, which means there are a lot of pitfalls that he must avoid such as his past associations (Ayers, Wright, Rezco, etc.), his abortion history, the successful surge in Iraq, drilling for oil, gay marriage, and so on. If he repudiates some past positions, he gets into dangerous terrain where he alienates his financial base but from where he can get to intersecting terrain and, with the right alliances, to open terrain. His only other immediate option is getting to “limiting” terrain, where he concentrates all his resources on a single opening that McCain leaves him and sneaks through to election via “do-or-die” terrain, but this only works McCain is too slow in responding to his move. As we have noticed in a couple of recent posts (here and here, McCain campaign has been responding very quickly recently.

The “first mover” has a strategic advantage as long as the move forces an opponent to do something in your advantage. When a first move is easily counter by a move that develops the opposition’s position, it is wasted. For example, in the presidential election, Obama had one move that could not be countered: picking Hillary as VP. The choice of Biden, however, does little except for make up for Obama’s lack of experience in foreign affairs. This leaves McCain a “free move.” Since Obama has left his flank open in the female demographic, as I have suggested before, McCain should definitely pick a woman. However, since McCain has pulled even in the polls and already has the momentum, he needs less of a surprise like Sarah Palin than he does a direct claim to older women. Dick Morris makes the brilliant suggestion Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the experienced Senator from Texas. She is mature, experienced, articulate, and feminine. I suspect she could handle Biden in the debates effortlessly.

Adaptive strategy teaches that competition isn’t predictable because every contest hinges on the decisions made along the way. The question is always who adapts to the imbalances of strengths and weakness the most quickly. Of all the five factors, the easiest place to correct a weakness is in methods. For example, at the beginning of the presidential race, Obama’s biggest advantage was in the dimension of methods. He was a great speaker but more importantly his campaign was effective and efficient in many areas: picking venues, using the internet, raising money, and especially its fast reaction time. McCain’s campaign, in contrast, was slow and dumb. The biggest change in the campaign has been McCain’s improvement in methods and Ohama’s decline. The VP announcement (which I predicted incorrectly) is the latest example. Obama’s campaign’s idea to make the announcement through text was brilliant long-term for building a contact list, but the execution was worse than terrible. Not only did the news come out in the AP hours before the email, and then the call was made in the middle of the night, waking people up with the news at 3AM. Not very smart. Especially since this gave the McCain campaign time to get a commercial out BEFORE the morning news cycle showing Biden criticizing Obama’s lack of experience and praising McCain. Nothing surprising in the commercial, but do to the poor timing of Obama’s campaign, that commercial was shown with the breaking VP news.

The science of strategy teaches adaptive thinking: the ability to quickly learn from a situation, especially from your mistakes. The people and organizations that learn the fastest and repeat the fewest errors is always going to be the most successful. For example, one of my criticisms of the McCain campaign has been its poor response time, but that has apparently changed. No sooner did the Obama campaign start making an issue of McCain not knowing how many houses his family owned than McCain turn the issue around to bring up Obama’s house and its connection to Rezco. Both in its speed and ability to adapt an attack to the issue at hand, I am reminded of Sun Tzu’s quote about the speed and adaptability of the mountain snake:

You must develop these instant reflexes.
Act like an ordinary mountain snake.
If people strike your head then stop them with your tail.
If they strike your tail then stop them with your head.
If they strike your middle then use both your head and tail.

As everyone knows, misleading opponents and keeping secrets is a big part of Sun Tzu’s classical strategy. Since we cannot trust what opponents say or even do, we have to interpret signs. Chapter Nine of Sun Tzu’s work examines this method in detail listing an observation followed by what it means. In section 5, line 37, its says:

“Your enemy offers too many incentives to his men. He is in trouble.”

If we look at the presidential race right now, where do we see Obama offering incentives? Many have written about how the Clintons have taken over the convention, but this is more of a sign that Obama has given into the Clintons to convince Hillary to join the ticket. I now expect Hillary to be his VP choice, and Hillary will definitely help Obama bring his party together. (And if not Hilllary, another woman, Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas). In either case, this is not a sign of strength on the part of Obama, but a sign that he is in trouble. He needs to do something surprising to change momentum. If nothing else, he wants to change the discussion away from the pitfalls he faces and onto his VP pick.

Classical strategy defines nine common strategic situations to which we must respond. They are defined as types of terrain: scattering, easy, disputed, open, intersecting, dangerous, bad, confined, and deadly. Each requires a specific response. Right now, the two candidates are in very different stages in their campaigns. McCain is on an intersecting terrain, which means that he has the opportunity to solidify alliances. Obama is on bad terrain, which means there are a lot of pitfalls that he must avoid. Needless to say, you want to be on the former, rather than the later. For example, McCain took advantage of his current position at Saddleback, where he solidified his alliances with Christian conservatives. Obama tried to build a bridge there as well, but as we saw, his position demanded that he avoid pitfalls such as the abortion issue. Because of the ground he is on, McCain can only get in trouble if he makes the wrong alliances, for example, with the Democrats by picking Lieberman as his VP (discussed here). That would lead him into the “dangerous” situation where he is cut off from his financial support. Obama, on the other hand, has to continue to avoid issues of his past associations (Ayers, Wright, Rezco, etc.), the abortion issue, the successful surge in Iraq, drilling for oil, and so on. If he can get through that minefield, he will have proven that he truly has the metal to be president. If climate changes didn’t have the potential to change the game at any point, I would be tempted to call the election for McCain today given the terrain the two candidates find themselves on.

Sun Tzu teaches that one of the most important aspects of positioning is managing information. The key is making the perspective we use seem reasonable. Language offers a lot of methods for doing this. In responding to McCain’s criticism of Obama’s position on withdrawing from Iraq as “being willing to lose a war to win an election,” Obama’s response is very clever. He says:

“I don’t run that kind of campaign and frankly that’s how political campaigns have been run in recent years, but I believe that the American people are better than that…If we think we can use the same partisan politics where we just challenge our opponent’s patriotism in an election, the American people will lose.”

First, the statement avoids directly confronting McCain’s charge that Obama’s work for withdrawal in Iraq were motivated by politics by casting it simply as a challenge of his patriotism. This is not a straw-man argument, but a true statement. By McCain’s standards, abandoning Iraq was a unpatriotic act, a violation of America’s principles. However, the subtle point is here that by Obama’s standards, it was not. In Obama’s and his supporters’ view, being in Iraq was the violation of America’s principles. (Though an argument could be made that if Iraq had been a Democratic president’s war, that support would have been more not less political. The majority of Democrat Party is, at its heart, an “anti-war” party.)

But this statement does something even more clever and subtle. It suggests a trick that Obama often uses. The formulation is this: “Since I haven’t criticized by opponent for XYZ, my opponent cannot criticize me for XYZ.” While on the surface, this seems logical, it is actually quite silly. In this case this statement suggests, “Since I wouldn’t criticize McCain for his lack of patriotism, he shouldn’t criticize me.” However, no one could or would criticize McCain’s patriotism so the formula levels an uneven playing field.

And, even though it sounds reasonable, it is also quite funny. It is the basis for a joke. A minister lectures a drunk on his drinking habits. The drunk comes back, “My drinking habits? What about your drinking habits?” The minister responds, “Me? Why I have never touched a drop!” “So we don’t agree on drinking,” the drunk says triumphantly. “And if I don’t criticize your opinions on alcohol, you shouldn’t criticize mine!”

We talk and write a lot about how the recognition-based adaptive decision-making taught by Sun Tzu helps people make the right decisions instantly (see articles here). At the recent Saddleback Presidential Forum last Saturday, we saw the difference in someone trained academically in critical thinking and someone trained in the classical strategy. While Obama’s answers were all intelligent enough, they were unfocused and rambling as he tried to think his way through the issues. McCain, in contrast, spoke from the gut, giving clear concise answers from his well-developed sense of strategic awareness. We have written about McCain working from gut instinct before, but this was a very clear demonstration of the difference between a trained gut and rambling reason.

In Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, surprise or, more specifically, innovation, has a very specific role. You use it at the right time to change momentum. When a standard move works, doing what is expected never changes momentum. For example, in the current presidential campaign, no attack on the opposition, no matter how effective, is going to change momentum because such attacks are expected. What kind of surprises could the candidates use? Well, McCain could come up with a surprising choice of VP candidate, which is why people are talking about the possible choice of Joe Lieberman. A Democrat on a Republican ticket would be very surprising, but it also wouldn’t work because the first strategic rule is that a team must share the same core philosophy and, beyond their agreement on national defense, McCain and Lieberman have very different philosophies. If surprise is the goal, McCain should choose Sarah Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska. She hasn’t gotten a lot of press, but what makes her so unusual is how attractive she is. This is a surprising image for any political candidate and especially for a Republican. If I were McCain, I would announce this choice right before the Democrat convention so that all the Obama people could get on record attacking a beautify, intelligent, successful, woman with more executive experience than either Obama or McCain in front of all those Hillary supporters because she is a Republican.

In studying classical strategy, we seek to see the necessary connections between things than make up the hidden gears and pulleys that drive our world. George Washington famously warned about avoiding “foreign entanglements” in his farewell address, but we forget that in his era, the US was a lonely island of freedom and democracy in a sea of tyranny and monarchy. The spread of freedom and democracy around the world provide the best measure of America’s success and the best contributor not only American but the entire world’s wealth. But that spread of freedom did not happened accidentally or passively. If America had not taken an active hand in fighting tyranny in both hot and cold wars, we would be much poorer for it, both in freedom and money. Thanks to advances communication and transportation, the world has grown progressively smaller, but those who think that we can protect America by ignoring the political plight of free people around the world are smaller still.

Classical strategy teaches us to look for advantageous trade-offs. There is no such thing as a free lunch, but we can buy what we value more using a currency that we value less. Free societies are more prosperous simply because they allow people more of these types of choices. The more control we give to government, the more “value” is determine by central authority and the fewer choices we are free to make. For example, those who think that the government can provide “free health care” simply don’t understand the trade-offs involved. In a nation where we spend more money on eating out than we do on health care, people who are upset about the cost of life saving treatments simply want to believe that the government is God and can accomplish miracles, all evidence to the contrary. As I explain in my seminars, objective reality is what must deal with even when we don’t subjectively believe in it. Those who want to believe that government holds the solution to life’s difficulties must ignore all of their previous objective experience with government-run solutions.

A reader Steve writes:

I’m a big fan of your books and blog and eager to learn your brilliant take on current events. I’m curious what you might think about “over” claiming as Gov. Tim Kaine appears to do in this video. Reminds me of your example of a rooster claiming credit for the sunrise. Ballsy or brilliant?

The quote to which Steve refers is from Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine who explained how Obama saved Georgia from the evil Russians:

“It was a bad crisis for the world. It required tough words but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in. And I’m very, very happy that the Senator’s request for a ceasefire has been complied with by President Medvedev.”

Good strategy requires thinking about what comes next. If Russia is really reacting to Obama’s “tough words,” does Obama also get credit when Russia removes the democratically elected president of Georgia, which is likely to happen any day, and replaces him with their own puppet? If anything, the Russian invasion demonstrates the impotence of Obama’s form of “tuff-talk (TM).” Since Russia knows that no one is going to challenge its power in its surrounding states, the world can talk as much as it likes and it won’t change a thing. As always, actions speak louder than words.

This event gives us the opportunity to see what Obama’s “tuff-talk” looks like, especially compared to that of others. Its defining characteristic is Obama’s willingness to continue talking until he has covered all sides of theissue, and everyone loses interest in what his actual position might possibly be. His campaign’s first statements attacked McCain for condemning Russia because one of McCain’s advisers is Randy Scheunemann, a former lobbyist for Georgia. His next statement took no sides, characterizing the invasion as “an outbreak of violence” and asking both “Georgia and Russia to show restraint.” Finally, he completed his trifecta of positions by finally joining McCain and the rest of the world in condemning Russia.

When Bush and McCain spoke on this issue, people might reasonably think that their tough talk might lead to actions, if only the removal of Russia from the G8, which may be the only practical response. In Obama’s case, his “tuff-talk” (TM) will simply lead to more nuanced future statements, including those condemning any suggestion of actual action, like removal of Russia from the G8.

Speed can be used to keep ahead of competitors or to blunt their attacks. One of the advantages that Obama’s campaign has had all along over McCain’s is its ability to respond quickly. Most recently, this is demonstrated by Obama’s latest video turning around McCain’s tagging Obama as the “world’s biggest celebrity” by tagging McCain as the “biggest celebrity in Washington.” As I said earlier about McCain’s commercial, Obama is turning one of McCain’s strengths, his years of experience, against him and at the same time trying to defuse the “celebrity” charge. The strongest part of this approach is associating McCain with the unpopularity of Congress, but the choice to use the “celebrity” line may do more harm than good. In trying to fight McCain’s use of the term, Obama’s campaign makes two mistakes: 1) it accepts that celebrity is a bad thing, and 2) it invites the public to choose which of the two is really the celebrity. If you accept the first idea, a quick glance of the magazines at the grocery checkout answers the later question all too clearly. Obama would have done better using a different tag such as “the biggest insider in Washington.” This would emphasize Obama’s charge, suggesting that the choice is between a Washington insider and a media celebrity, which put celebrity in a more positive light.

Ran into this article in the UK newspaper, the Guardian about China’s use of Sun Tzu to win the majority of medals at the Chinese Olympics. The article focuses on one aspect of China’s strategy: avoiding direct competition with the US:

“It’s war by other means, and the Chinese have been very bright,” said Francesco Liello, a reporter with La Gazzetta Dello Sport, who has covered three previous Olympics. “I have no doubt that China will get more gold medals than US, but they won’t do it by going head-to-head with the US. They understand that they can’t compete directly.”

However, the article misses several other key aspects of China’s approach, including targeting new medal events, a classic example of targeting empty ground.

One of the most non-intuitive aspects of Sun Tzu’s strategic system is that idea that you cannot copy an opponent’s strengths, so instead you use those strengths against them. A great example are John McCain’s television ads focusing on Obama’s celebrity status, a positive example of a good strategic move from a politician. McCain cannot duplicate Obama’s charism or the adulation of the crowds that Obama draws, but McCain can change the meaning of those images by tagging Obama as the world’s biggest celebrity. While the use of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears images got McCain several million dollars of free publicity for this move, the positioning concept itself is really what is important. Voters are going to see Obama on every magazine cover and making speeches in from of huge crowds, and McCain has seen that he can leverage that visibility to mean something quit negative.

I have predicted the the presidential race will go to the candidate the makes the fewest errors. Today I see that McCain took the lead for the first time in one of the polls (hat tip InstaPundit). Today in a speech, Obama said:

“The state of California, this is an interesting statistic, has implemented such a successful efficiency strategy that while electricity consumption in the US grew 60% in this country in the last three decades, it didn’t grow in California. Think about that. The country as a whole, 60% more electricity usage over the last 30 years, in California, no change. And this is despite the fact that California has been growing in leaps and bounds.”

I thought about it and realized that it had to be incorrect. This report shows that California electricity use between 1988 and 2000 increased 2.5% per year versus the U.S. average of 2.1%. Here is a report that shows that between 1980 and 2004 and its energy use increase 2% per year, while their population has increased 1.8% per year.

In the same speech, Obama spoke about the increasing use of electricity for cars and at the same time called for decreasing electricity use in the US by 15%. Only a politician wouldn’t notice the contradiction.

In this recent article, Richard Reeves call Obama a man of thought and McCain a man of emotion, but what he is describing is not emotion on McCain’s part but gut instinct. As we discuss on our site in this and related articles on gut instincts, cognitive research shows that in complex, chaotic situations, experts make instant gut decisions based on their unconscious recognition of the situations key factors. It is the novices that must think about problems and, at the same time, end up making the most mistakes, which they learn from and eventually develop their own gut instincts. Acting based on the experience that refines your gut instincts is the exact opposite of reacting emotionally, which leads only to the flight or fight reflex.

What works better, individual strategy, where each person charts their own course in adapting to the environment or big picture planning, where the central organization tries to create a larger system to control the environmental? The EconLog addresses the issue (hat tip, InstaPundit) by asking the question:

Go through a mental list of major government programs, and ask how many of them you would enact today in their current formats. Social Security? Even if you like the concept, if you had it to do over again you would make it less susceptible to demographic imbalances. Medicare? Agriculture policy? Energy policy? f you step back and look at it, the problem of fragile by design that I wrote about concerning Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is widespread in top-down solutions. And yet, like Charlie Brown getting ready to kick a football, we seem to have an infinite capacity to believe that it will be different this time. We think that the next top-down design introduced by government will work fine, it will never degrade, and we won’t find ourselves ten or twenty years down the road wondering how such a mess was created.

As in the case of Freddie and Fannie, central planning creates organizations that become to important to fail, even when they do fail, and we all pay the price. The best course for government would be to bail them out the last time, then break them up into a dozens of competing firms that are small enough to fail. Some will fail, but since they would then be responsible for their own survival, they good would survive and thrive.

This would be a good time to look at the presidential race thus far in terms of strategy. The race could be a landslide either way in November but remains close because both candidates keep making simple strategic errors. The top three strategic flaw for each candidate are:

Obama: 1) Slow to recognized and correct judgment errors, i.e. Rev. Wright and Iraq surge, 2) Failure to see climate differences between big cities and most of America, 3) Seems more interested in winning praise than winning the election.

McCain: 1) Slow to take advantage of openings created by Obama, 2) Failure to clarify how he will make better decisions than Bush, 3) Unable to clarify his message and use symbols to communicate it.

Sun Tzu teaches that attacking others is the poorest way to make progress. In most situations, we hurt ourselves more than we hurt our opponents. This problem is illustrated by the recent ban on new fast-food restaurants in LA. While the politicians think they are attacking fast-food, they are actually rewarding them and actually giving them a pile of profits to promote their product. In banning new competitors, the politicians are guaranteeing the profits of existing restaurants, removing any incentive for them to provide healthier food, and, at the same time, preventing the opening of any new fast-food restaurants that might offer a healthier, low-priced alternative. Do you think the existing restaurants came up with the idea and offer political donations to support it?