01.017 This specialized warfare leads to victory...

[lozen]

"This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand."

I think this is saying to use your brains and assess each individual situation. The guidelines given should be followed but of course there are always going to be new variables (etc.) that need to be analyzed in like of Sun Tzu's teachings.

[coyote]

"This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand."

The whole concept of deception, stealth, and swiftness describes modern day covert actions. The mission will be successful if you employ these tactics with full knowledge of the enemy (his strengths and weaknesses) and you don't share any of your information or strategy with the enemy.

[Kane]

I understand the specialization part. Meaning you must master these studies and yourself to be victorious. But what does it mena by "transmiting beforehand"? Does it mean that you should not learn everything at the last moment?

[macjavelin]

To signal intention is the worst mistake in warfare. The principles by which you finance may target sponsoring nations or companies vulnerable for plundering attacks, the principles by which you dislocate soldiers may place them in danger of ambush or traps, and the lines of supply may be cut off leaving the soldiers exhausting local ressources.

In either case the campaing is weakened.

In hand to hand combat signalling intention is the path to defeat, while reading the opponent is the path to victory. A certain style of Karate has an immensely powerful blow called Kakushin-Tsuki, meaning "invisible punch" or "unsignalled punch". In opposition to most blows, that draws strength from the air, this blow draws strength from the ground, meaning: The momentum comes from below, from moving the wrist sending energy upward through the body to move the fist like the snap of a snake.

The movement is somewhat similar to movements performed by "electric boogie"-dancers. It is controlled from the hips like most other blows. The origin is Chinese Kung Fu, and performed with mastery, it is an invincible deadly technique against one opponent, either crushing the throat, sending the nose bone into the brain or causing the heart to collapse. Where most other blows allows the opponent to detect the movement within his field of sight due to the shoulder movement prior to the movement of the hand, this movement is only detectable if one is looking down into the ground, which no opponent would do. Thus the name.

[Uzume]

This specialized warfare leads to victory ...

A victorious campaign doesn't start with the first shot fired, but with successful intelligence gathering and calculation. In a sense, any political or business organization is always "at war," seeking to keep tabs as much as possible on potential or actual competitors. Intelligence remains, however, an ongoing concern throughout the duration of any conflict. Effective command has to remain sensitive to changing conditions not only in the field, but on our own and the enemy’s home fronts, and among sideliner states that may or may not join in. War is ultimately a political instrument, after all, as drastic as it is. We thus can’t afford to separate it, in our thinking, from its political and economic contexts.

... and may not be transmitted beforehand.

Some previous posters have interpreted this to mean that maintaining secrecy is vital at this stage so that you don’t betray your intentions. – Reasonably enough, I think, given Sun Tzu's emphasis on the importance of maintaining a “formless” posture relative to the competition ... I suspect, though, that his intent was to point out that formulating a successful strategy is contingent on what you find out about your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses relative to your own. This is a dynamic and changing reality, and every situation is bound to present its unique aspects, calling for creative insight and originality. Abstract generalities are only as good to us as we can successfully apply them to specifics on the ground.

[Jeremy]

Goes back to the trust issue. If you are discovered at any level then the entire plan is useless and must not be employed. The circle is broken and can not function. Secrecy is the most important element at this point. It is the final ingredient before action can be successful. Loose lips sink ships.

[bobby guerra]

Originally posted by sonshi
This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand.

Sound strategy is only as good as its effectiveness to produce results. Sun Tzu was confident in the use of deception in warfare, and advised us to stop anything that undermines the effort. One such prevention is to not allow information to...

Come study Sun Tzu's Art of War with us. More details.

never allow your enemy to know how you will win never telepath your movements unless it s to deceive him into taking a certain shape then he is divided gapped seperated he does not know how to fight when to fight and if you are a genius why to fight all this makes for advantage since wars should be won by suprise,one man can overcome a thousand and never have been known to exist.

[Shaun Halligan]

This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand.

This implys two things, for a plan to be effective its secrecy must be maintained and also for this two occur a super quick decision maker is needed, instant planning doesnt have a chance to be transmitted.

[Realist]

This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand.

Do not let your plans be exploited to the enemy; secrecy is the key. You must be surreptitious; you must be wary of enemy spies or any other way your strategy might be conveyed to the opposition. Be prudent, do not reveal the all-out plan unless exploiting one is imperative to the other. And keep in mind flexibility of strategy; if it is somehow exploited, you must be flexible in strategy and be able to alter your plans accordingly.

[Vesting]

This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand.]

This short section made me ponder about the very origin of the arms race, which still goes on today... and probably far beyond.

During the Neolithical era, as anthropologists have found out, warfare amoung rival clans was mostly a ritualized bloody exersize between opposing male groups. Exiled groups of males, struggling for sexual excess to the females and more easier to obtain food resources, became nomadic hunters.

To prove their abilities, males engaged in fights, fights in which the idea of 'honour' was yet still seen as an important aspect of their own behaviour. They had to live closely with the available fertile women and other men in the small nomadic groups or human settlements.

Those people observed, or heard about, the ritual fights. They critically judged both their potential mate's physical strenght and character. The level of anonymity in ancient human settlements was low: everybody knew about each other, not like the anonymity in modern cities.

Good manners were paramount. As a consequence, a bad reputation among the populace could literally kill you: a treat of being exiled from the protection and care of the community was a matter of life and death. As a result, by natural selection, people cannot still handle the feeling of being isolated for too long. They simply break down mentally sooner or later.

Women generally tend to play down unsuitable or sick males, especially those who are expressing even the most subtle signs of over-agressive behaviour, as such male behaviour it is a well known potential health risk to themselves (and their own children) to court with such types of males.

At the same time, females were (and still are), by their genetic disposition and social pressure, forced to court with the stronger and smartest males in the group, in an attempt to optimize both their own and their offspring's survival chances in a harsh everyday eality.

Therefore, to please the females' desire for protection, males had to develop a mental control over their expression of anger. They had to show in a ritualized fashion the ability to handle their anger (usually caused by females making them jealous... ).

At the same time males had also to develop the ability to fight to be able to stop real violence, or wild predators, theathening the same females' fate. This is a tricky balance of emotional and physical power to keep a close hold on.

This process of mutal sexual selection pressures among the two sexes, and between the same sexes themselves, gradually altered the male and female mentality during the ages, to eventually become more and more agressive and cunning -- and a bit less caring, at least in the case of males. Finally resulting in mass slautering.

While the males became more agressive, females may have become more advanced in using their emotional awareness and sensitivity to perform the act of indirect agression. Usually by means of verbal insinuations, especially indirectly against each other. Essentially the same thing, agression, but hidden in quite another quality: they tend to use males instead to perform the actual acts of physical violence.

Compared to our contempory times, warfare in the very earliest times may be romantically seen as a bloody, but still a somewhat, 'fair' game. In ancient times, people seem to have ended their struggle in a ritual manner, as soon as the involved parties became too exhausted. At least, that' s what you can read in the contempory antropological literature.

However, beyond mere wrestling competions -- probably the oldest of the martial arts -- and the usage of sticks and throwing stones, much more advanced long-range weaponry then using fists and kicks, must soon have altered the rules of warfare -- assuming if there were any such rules, at all.

It may have been the case that the ancient Chinese people had to figure out guerrilla methods and other phychological warefare tactics and strategies against their own neighbors, such as explained by the Sun Tzu text, out of sheer necessity. The other ancient civilizations probably had the same experience while they grew larger.

In the advent of Era the Hundred Warring states, probably due to the fact that new inventions, such as the usage of mass-produced bronse and iron weaponry -- including the crossbow --, dramatically changed the killing methods such as formerly used during warfare. Because of this arms race development, warfare soon became way too 'efficient' to be called just a bloody ritual. It became a periodic large scale massacre instead.

To counter this constant threat, the ancients had to invent new sets of cognitive and emotional strategies, and new weapons also, to prevent massacres or even the whole destruction of the little kindows they lived in, e.g. the kings and ruling elites selected new methods to consolidate their power and wealth.

War became a serious large scale matter, a struggle with its own hard to understand dynamic, triggered by an excellerated arms race, and more specialized individuals. People who we now call 'strategists', soonsalso entered the scene of war. Of course, they taught each other their trade secrets and dirty trics.

Originally, I'm convinced, the treatise of The Art of War was used as a secret mnemo technique for the ruling class, especially among the military elite, if I'm not mistaken. The orinal Chinese text rhymes (according to Sinological experts who can read it), which -- of course -- makes its valuable contents much easier to remember and to apply it.
I don't think it was just a historian, like a Herodotus, who wrote it. This text has been written by someone who was very experienced in actual warfare.

Despite easy to remember poetry, the original Chinese text may have been deliterate written to be very difficult to read. Much of the understanding of the text probably depended on the tacit knowlegde of the geography involved and the environmental conditions, and, of course, the idiosyncrasies of the people in those earlier times. You had to be fully immersed into the culture to gain its full understanding. Therfore, I must assume that at least some part of the originally intented meaning cannot be conveyed to a modern western reader.

Now, going back again to the probably intended meaning of the section (01.017) to begin with. The strategic principles conveyed in the original bamboo scrolls, the way I now tend to interpretate it, was the difference between life of death of those little ancient Chinese kingdoms involved.

The author of this book and his successors had to closely guard its very existance, as the contents seems to me to speed ups the whole process of strategic thought. They certainly weren't stupid. Therefore, the author warns the avid reader in this particular section to shut his mouth and to keep the knowlegde conveyed by this book a secret.

Eventually, despite all secrecy involved, this strange book, written about 2,500 years ago, became to be more generally known along the ages. Well. It's truly amazingly, as clear as it is written. Despite all the changes in the modern world of today, the described principles of the ancient arms race are still valid today. The ancient author must have gained by experience a deep but a harsh understanding of the behaviour of human nature at its worst.

[Hephaestus]

Originally posted by sonshi
This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand.

This contradicts previous statements, and makes you aware that war is an everchanging thing. You may be able to "know yourself and know your enemy, and need not fear the result of a hundred battles" and you may be able to "know victory and defeat" based on the five leadership virtues, but there are still limits to what one may know. War is as formless as the water which fills the oceans, and so those who engage in it must be equally formless.

[Bubishi]

Originally posted by sonshi
[B]This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand.

I think sun tzu is emphasising the need for surpise in this passage.

You have to be carefull not to make too many plans in implicating this strategy.

This is because the enemy might suspect that you will attack his weaknesses and will lead you into a trap.

THEREFORE YOUR MUST DECIEVE YOUR ENEMY BEFORE YOU ATTACK HIM WHERE HE DOES NOT EXPECT TO BE ATTACKED.

[Kouga Gennosuke]

You team is bred to carry out a task without knowing it's true worth but knowing it will meet the company's goal. Very effective.

[Theophilite]

AoW 1:17

And the Lamb asked "What will this lead to, and how come I can't do it straight out? Why prolong it?"
And the Lion answered "This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand."
Lamb: "So, whatever it takes I will do. We shall be victorious over Man's Sin. This is not our battle to fight but we will fight it anyway, because we care so much for Man. And, in the proper time we will carry out our plan."

This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand.

What has been said about this warfare is so specific that great care must be taken to follow it all up. It will be foolish to just do half of the calculations, half of the preperation, ... and then think "haaa what the heck, lets just go kill the enemy"

This specialized warfare provides the complete manual which should be used in warfare. Half a meal, aint a meal .. it must be consumed whole, before you can enjoy its full effect. If you only eat half, but your opponent eats the whole meal ... you will starve to death and your opponent will smile at your downfall.

Knowledge is power. Use all this knowledge and benifit from its power.