Specific mechanisms of defeat include: flight from overwhelming force, insubordination when soldiers outweigh officers, collapse when officers outweigh soldiers, ruin from insubordinate higher officers fighting on resentment, disorganization from weak authority and unclear orders, and rout from misestimating enemy strength and misemploying weak detachments without picked troops.

By Sun Tzu, from L'Art de la guerre

Key Arguments

  • Facing an enemy ten times one’s size produces flight, all else equal.
  • Imbalance of strength between soldiers and officers produces either insubordination or collapse.
  • Independent, resentful actions by higher officers before commander assessment bring ruin.
  • Weak authority, unclear orders, no fixed duties, and slovenly ranks yield disorganization.
  • Allowing inferior forces to engage superior ones, hurling weak detachments at powerful ones, and neglecting picked soldiers in front rank cause rout.

Source Quotes

15. Other conditions being equal, if one force is hurled against another ten times its size, the result will be the FLIGHT of the former. 16.
16. When the common soldiers are too strong and their officers too weak, the result is INSUBORDINATION. When the officers are too strong and the common soldiers too weak, the result is COLLAPSE. 17.
17. When the higher officers are angry and insubordinate, and on meeting the enemy give battle on their own account from a feeling of resentment, before the commander-in-chief can tell whether or no he is in a position to fight, the result is RUIN. 18.
18. When the general is weak and without authority; when his orders are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixes duties assigned to officers and men, and the ranks are formed in a slovenly haphazard manner, the result is utter DISORGANIZATION. 19.
19. When a general, unable to estimate the enemy’s strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result must be ROUT. 20.

Key Concepts

  • if one force is hurled against another ten times its size, the result will be the FLIGHT of the former.
  • When the common soldiers are too strong and their officers too weak, the result is INSUBORDINATION. When the officers are too strong and the common soldiers too weak, the result is COLLAPSE.
  • When the higher officers are angry and insubordinate, and on meeting the enemy give battle on their own account from a feeling of resentment, before the commander-in-chief can tell whether or no he is in a position to fight, the result is RUIN.
  • when his orders are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixes duties assigned to officers and men, and the ranks are formed in a slovenly haphazard manner, the result is utter DISORGANIZATION.
  • allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result must be ROUT.

Context

x. Terrain (lines 633–713) — causal diagnoses of the six calamities