Defeating the Enemy Without Fighting a Battle
1 min readDefeating the Enemy Without Fighting a Battle
Sun Wu said，the principle governing warfare can be described as follows:The best outcome is when the enemy surrenders themselves intact；the second best is the capture of the enemy by force.In this sense，forcing enemy to surrender without fighting a battle is the most brilliant tactic.
In tactics，the best scheme is to defeat the enemy by wisdom，the next is to defeat them through diplomatic means，the third is to crush the enemy troops，and the worst is to besiege the enemy city and capture it by force.To attack an enemy city，it takes six months to build large shields and four-wheeled armored vehicles and other weapons.If ageneral cannot control his zeal and drives his soldiers to attack the city，losing one-third of his troops but still fails to occupy it，then the military action will become a disaster.
A good general is capable of forcing enemy troops to surrender without fighting a battle，occupying enemy cities and towns without attacking them，and capturing an enemy country without fighting a long war.We must try to make the enemy surrender intact，andthen we can have control over the whole territory，without any hurt on our army.This is the method of attacking enemy by wisdom，and it can offer us all the benefits we seek.
