One of my professors (and a veteran himself) gifted me a copy of Sun Tzu when I graduated from college. I only got about a third of the way through before life took over, but I've been meaning to go back and finish it. Thank you for the prompt (and the clarifying editorial).
You know, I'm teaching an Asian and African History class to 5th/6th graders at our homeschool coop this fall. I should include a few excerpts as assigned reading when we cover China. What sections would you include (for a 2-3 page read)?
Hmm. For this age range, maybe Chapter 3. There he discusses strategy, patience, and striking at opportune moments. You can actually see a lot of Chapter 3's insights present in the approach of China to geopolitics today.
While it presents an interesting strategic perspective using Sun Tzu’s concept of “death ground,” it overlooks a critical reality: the nature of the Iranian regime itself. This is not simply a conventional adversary responding rationally to pressure in the same way a traditional state might. The current government of Iran has a long, well-documented history of suppressing its own people—particularly women, religious minorities, and political dissenters—through executions, violence, and public displays of punishment.
It is essential to distinguish between the Iranian people, many of whom desire freedom and reform, and the ruling regime, which has repeatedly demonstrated hostility not only toward its own citizens but also toward the United States and its allies.
Framing this conflict primarily as a negotiation misstep risks minimizing the deeply rooted ideological motivations that drive the regime’s behavior. While academic frameworks often emphasize negotiation theory, real-world military and strategic education—such as that taught in U.S. war colleges—tends to present a more complex and, at times, less optimistic view of adversaries like this one.
I do have a question for the author: what gives you the impression that Iranian leadership was genuinely willing to negotiate? The United States and other nations have attempted negotiations with this regime for decades, including sustained and recent diplomatic efforts. Yet these attempts have frequently been met with limited cooperation, delay tactics, or outright resistance. This raises serious doubts about whether traditional negotiation strategies—such as offering a “golden bridge”—are realistic in this context.
Additionally, the regime’s demonstrated disregard for both American lives and its own citizens complicates the assumption that pressure alone drives its decision-making. Reports of military or weapons-related infrastructure being positioned adjacent to civilian areas, including schools, suggest calculated choices that increase risk to innocent people. This is not the behavior of a government primarily seeking mutual stability; rather, it reflects leadership willing to accept—or even leverage—civilian vulnerability in pursuit of its objectives.
While strategic restraint and diplomatic off-ramps are valuable in theory, they may not be effective when dealing with leadership that prioritizes ideological goals and regime preservation over mutual benefit. Any serious analysis must account for this reality, and its absence in the article is notable.
At the same time, it remains important not to conflate a regime with its people and to consider the human cost of escalation. From a faith perspective, there is also a call to pursue both truth and justice—recognizing evil where it exists, while still valuing human life and seeking wise, measured responses rather than reactionary ones.
Ultimately, the situation is far more complex than the article suggests. It requires not only strategic insight, but also moral clarity, discernment, and an honest recognition of the kind of adversary being addressed.
The radical nature of the regime actually makes the case for the danger of death ground even stronger, imo. After all, the regime is feeling the pressure of impending "death" both domestically and internationally and, if we can't or won't actually execute on destroying the regime, then significant risk exists as to what their response to such active threats will be.
If you are going to place your opponent on death ground and press them, and they're ideologically driven in such a way that death itself is a form of martyrdom, you'd better be able to take them out before they have maximized the cost. I don't think we can accomplish that with the Iranian regime, as we underestimated how entrenched it is far beyond any individuals.
This regime is driven by the Karbala Paradigm, which welcomes opposition as an opportunity at righteous resistance.
Astute and generally relevant observations - but Lao Tzu was writing about a generic "enemy" in an age where the rules of war were just a part of an elaborate school international relations, especially in China at that time. Conflict was recurrent, regulated and deeply enmeshed - mediated by geography, massive, stable cultural spheres and "slow tech" - when the next ten years looked - for most intents and purposes - like the last ten.
Before rapid global travel, before the bomb, before the internet & AI. This is making a conflict wild at heart - no real rules, fake news, flagrant wild predictions, uncertainty reigns. War that is no science, no tactic, and certainly no art.
Now, we have a case where just about the only thing holding much of the the Arab world together is animosity towards the West in general - and America and Israel in particular. This is a clash of civilizations - not just a tactic of diplomacy. This is why so many - very much including Trump - are actively going against their own self interest.
This is not - and has never been - 5D chess. It's just blood for oil. Always has been - just it's been Arab blood- Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, Yemenite. Now- finally - we are actually putting our own skins at risk. I know many would rather others die for our prosperity, but reckonings have a logic of their own.
Reason has little force at present. It's eminently reasonable to recognize that fact.
I appreciate your post, but I think that we have moved past the point of negotiating with this regime. I perceive that the goal is actually something that Sun Tzu would have quite heartily approved: depriving the enemy of the means to resist and/or to oppress his people without direct combat so as to allow regime change or popular uprising.
The assumption of "without direct combat" is the dangerous assumption. No such deprivation has occurred, and never in modernity has regime change been accomplished through a mere bombing campaign.
Lots of straw men in that response! Not assuming there’s no direct combat, but there hasn’t been yet. Not saying that regime change can happen “through a mere bombing campaign,” but it could set the conditions for such a change if the Iranian people decide enough is enough. And I am a veteran of both the effort in the Balkans and the Forever War, so you’re not debating with just any other nerd.
I appreciate the detail and thought with which you expressed your opinion here, and found the study of war enlightening.
My thoughts are not nearly as educated and I've never studied war strategy. However, I do think it's at least worth considering the possible merit of the apparent US goal at this time - to completely dismantle and destroy the current Iranian regime, so that a new regime, selected with our guidance, can take power and better lead the people.
I think it has been made abundantly clear that the current rulers will not ever stop their practices of brutal crimes against humanity and attacking our allies. Peace negotiations may lessen it for a time, but it always comes back. And every time it does come back, it seems worse than before.
Based on your post, you probably know more about this than I do. Does The Art of War mention anything about what might cause a need to leave no way out and provide no bridge?
While the concept of the goal is admirable, I think our effort was engaged in ignorantly, with a vast underestimation of what would be required to unseat this regime supported by tens of millions of Iranians and entrenched deeply within Iranian society.
Decapitation doesn't necessarily work against an ideological opponent with millions of adherents.
Right this moment, we don't appear to be building a bridge for the Iranian people to find their own way out opposite this regime either. Such an effort would involve armament, coordination of communication and organizational infrastructure, and/or some other enablement of revolution. If that was our goal, we needed to act before 30,000 were massacred. Not after the massacres have already cowed the population and killed their revolutionary leaders.
Respectfully, I just want to clarify that the reality of the Iranian regime's evils and their popularity domestically is an argument outside of the conversation of what's being put forward here.
I don't think the Jews are the problem. I think radicalization is the problem and I am calmly sharing not *my* words. *I* am not the source of this message. I think it's important that you deal with facts. Otherwise you have no context to really understand anything. The history is real. Do you even know any Muslims? I doubt it.
It is my understanding that the "way out" of this war is amnesty to soldiers who stop killing their own people and a new leadership willing to gain that leadership with free elections.
So I am not sure your comparisons are equal. I agree with Tricia Moseley. These are evil, evil peoplewho have been lying to us since 1979. I have English students (over the internet) and they talk to me. They are suffering. They are hungry, and threatened with arrest and imprisonment over the slightest thing. When was the last time you saw an Iranian woman not forced to cover her face?
Yeah, and Sun Tzu never dealt with, let alone made war against a bunch of leaders whose whole world view is built on a death cult. You’re assuming the Mullah mentality is rational like our Western one. In Islam they are happy to sign a treaty and then get back to cutting your head off when they think they have regained the advantage. This bunch are “Twelvers” with a pretty nasty idea of how they must act to bring about the eschatological downfall of the world as we know it and usher in complete world dominance of their brand of Islam. They will accommodate the West to death, literally, until they achieve the End. Trump gave them acceptable outs in the talks leading up to this. They were never going to give up the nuke quest as they saw it as the way to bring out the Mahdi.
If you want to insist coexistence absent war is impossible, that's your prerogative, but it kind of makes any productive path forward impossible and is the mindset that will inevitably lead to a bloody and protracted war with destruction of life and finances wrought on us all.
It not my prerogative. I didn’t dream up this death cult called Islam in a cave 1400 years ago that proceeded to conquer the world within a generation. They are not spice merchants in a bazaar.
A respected Israeli rabbi is making a striking claim: the Messiah will be announced this Thursday, Rosh Chodesh Nisan, the first day of the Hebrew month of Nisan and the beginning of the Biblical calendar year. According to Rabbi Baruch Rosenblum, a leading rabbinical figure known throughout Israel, the timing is tied directly to one of the most strategically volatile waterways on earth, currently the focus of the war between the US and Iran: the Strait of Hormuz.The Sages connect this expectation to the destruction of Amalek, the archetypal enemy of Israel. “What remains of the war against our enemies? We must finish them, particularly the leaders, by this Thursday,” Rosenblum said. He then made a striking remark: “I joked with President Trump, saying, ‘You must finish the job by Thursday.’ God willing, he will bring in the necessary resources, like B2 bombers, and the mission will be completed.”
The theological and geopolitical core of Rabbi Rosenblum’s lecture rests on the Kli Paz, a commentary on the book of Yeshayahu (Isaiah) written approximately 500 years ago by Rabbi Shmuel Laniado.
“A slaughter (zevach) for Hashem in Botzra, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom” (Isaiah 34:6).
You may also want to look into the rabbi’s views on Christians and Noahide laws. Making the argument that Islam is a “death cult” while never acknowledging the regime change treachery the US has inflicted on Iran for decades and failing to understand that the radicalism in Judaism is what is pushing uninformed, naive, propagandised and gullible Christians into war on behalf of ppl who would happily and literally behead them for religious reasons is typical, but unacceptable. None of any of this is the way of Jesus that Christians are meant and commanded to walk.
More it's the JOOOS that are the problem change the subject BS taqqiyah. I don't support this war on religious grounds since Islam demonstrates over and over again it is an apocalyptic political ideological death cult masquerading as a religion. There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. The nominal Muslims are the radicals. The jihadists are the true followers of your sixth century illiterate, child molesting, warlord. I wonder which "peaceful" mooslim thought up the slogan, "after Saturday, comes Sunday." And it's not the first time some rabbi has proclaimed the arrival of a messiah. The one characteristic of all those "messiahs" is they died and stayed in the grave. I follow the one Messiah who rose from the dead and one day will come again to judge the quick and the dead.
No I did not. Go back to my last comment, double the font size and read it again. Jesus Christ is the only Messiah and the true Israel, not the modern socialist state of Israel. And those who are in Christ are the church. Because of their unbelief they have been labeled the synagogue of Satan. They are outside the New Covenant and until they come to a saving knowledge of the true Messiah which Paul predicted they are lost as geese in a snow storm. Having said that I support the modern state of Israel has a right to exist and as human beings made in the image of God not be subjected to constant attempts at a second Holocaust at the hands of the death cult running Iran and its proxies.
Your latest comment is irrelevant if you haven't verified the assumptions you made in your first comment—assumptions that the article refutes. Neither the font size, nor rereading it, nor the snide remarks, nor deliberate ignorance will change that.
One of my professors (and a veteran himself) gifted me a copy of Sun Tzu when I graduated from college. I only got about a third of the way through before life took over, but I've been meaning to go back and finish it. Thank you for the prompt (and the clarifying editorial).
The Art of War is an interesting read, with plenty of principles that can be extrapolated into everyday life, too!
You know, I'm teaching an Asian and African History class to 5th/6th graders at our homeschool coop this fall. I should include a few excerpts as assigned reading when we cover China. What sections would you include (for a 2-3 page read)?
Hmm. For this age range, maybe Chapter 3. There he discusses strategy, patience, and striking at opportune moments. You can actually see a lot of Chapter 3's insights present in the approach of China to geopolitics today.
thanks!
Thank you for your article.
While it presents an interesting strategic perspective using Sun Tzu’s concept of “death ground,” it overlooks a critical reality: the nature of the Iranian regime itself. This is not simply a conventional adversary responding rationally to pressure in the same way a traditional state might. The current government of Iran has a long, well-documented history of suppressing its own people—particularly women, religious minorities, and political dissenters—through executions, violence, and public displays of punishment.
It is essential to distinguish between the Iranian people, many of whom desire freedom and reform, and the ruling regime, which has repeatedly demonstrated hostility not only toward its own citizens but also toward the United States and its allies.
Framing this conflict primarily as a negotiation misstep risks minimizing the deeply rooted ideological motivations that drive the regime’s behavior. While academic frameworks often emphasize negotiation theory, real-world military and strategic education—such as that taught in U.S. war colleges—tends to present a more complex and, at times, less optimistic view of adversaries like this one.
I do have a question for the author: what gives you the impression that Iranian leadership was genuinely willing to negotiate? The United States and other nations have attempted negotiations with this regime for decades, including sustained and recent diplomatic efforts. Yet these attempts have frequently been met with limited cooperation, delay tactics, or outright resistance. This raises serious doubts about whether traditional negotiation strategies—such as offering a “golden bridge”—are realistic in this context.
Additionally, the regime’s demonstrated disregard for both American lives and its own citizens complicates the assumption that pressure alone drives its decision-making. Reports of military or weapons-related infrastructure being positioned adjacent to civilian areas, including schools, suggest calculated choices that increase risk to innocent people. This is not the behavior of a government primarily seeking mutual stability; rather, it reflects leadership willing to accept—or even leverage—civilian vulnerability in pursuit of its objectives.
While strategic restraint and diplomatic off-ramps are valuable in theory, they may not be effective when dealing with leadership that prioritizes ideological goals and regime preservation over mutual benefit. Any serious analysis must account for this reality, and its absence in the article is notable.
At the same time, it remains important not to conflate a regime with its people and to consider the human cost of escalation. From a faith perspective, there is also a call to pursue both truth and justice—recognizing evil where it exists, while still valuing human life and seeking wise, measured responses rather than reactionary ones.
Ultimately, the situation is far more complex than the article suggests. It requires not only strategic insight, but also moral clarity, discernment, and an honest recognition of the kind of adversary being addressed.
The radical nature of the regime actually makes the case for the danger of death ground even stronger, imo. After all, the regime is feeling the pressure of impending "death" both domestically and internationally and, if we can't or won't actually execute on destroying the regime, then significant risk exists as to what their response to such active threats will be.
If you are going to place your opponent on death ground and press them, and they're ideologically driven in such a way that death itself is a form of martyrdom, you'd better be able to take them out before they have maximized the cost. I don't think we can accomplish that with the Iranian regime, as we underestimated how entrenched it is far beyond any individuals.
This regime is driven by the Karbala Paradigm, which welcomes opposition as an opportunity at righteous resistance.
However, there are also credible claims that a deal was nearing reach when the war was begun. In my opinion, it seems Israel saw a closing window to achieve their military objectives and lured/deceived Trump into joining them. Here's an article with some coverage on what was underway in those negotiations: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/17/uk-security-adviser-attended-us-iran-talks-and-judged-deal-was-within-reach
Astute and generally relevant observations - but Lao Tzu was writing about a generic "enemy" in an age where the rules of war were just a part of an elaborate school international relations, especially in China at that time. Conflict was recurrent, regulated and deeply enmeshed - mediated by geography, massive, stable cultural spheres and "slow tech" - when the next ten years looked - for most intents and purposes - like the last ten.
Before rapid global travel, before the bomb, before the internet & AI. This is making a conflict wild at heart - no real rules, fake news, flagrant wild predictions, uncertainty reigns. War that is no science, no tactic, and certainly no art.
Now, we have a case where just about the only thing holding much of the the Arab world together is animosity towards the West in general - and America and Israel in particular. This is a clash of civilizations - not just a tactic of diplomacy. This is why so many - very much including Trump - are actively going against their own self interest.
This is not - and has never been - 5D chess. It's just blood for oil. Always has been - just it's been Arab blood- Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, Yemenite. Now- finally - we are actually putting our own skins at risk. I know many would rather others die for our prosperity, but reckonings have a logic of their own.
Reason has little force at present. It's eminently reasonable to recognize that fact.
I appreciate your post, but I think that we have moved past the point of negotiating with this regime. I perceive that the goal is actually something that Sun Tzu would have quite heartily approved: depriving the enemy of the means to resist and/or to oppress his people without direct combat so as to allow regime change or popular uprising.
The assumption of "without direct combat" is the dangerous assumption. No such deprivation has occurred, and never in modernity has regime change been accomplished through a mere bombing campaign.
Lots of straw men in that response! Not assuming there’s no direct combat, but there hasn’t been yet. Not saying that regime change can happen “through a mere bombing campaign,” but it could set the conditions for such a change if the Iranian people decide enough is enough. And I am a veteran of both the effort in the Balkans and the Forever War, so you’re not debating with just any other nerd.
I appreciate the detail and thought with which you expressed your opinion here, and found the study of war enlightening.
My thoughts are not nearly as educated and I've never studied war strategy. However, I do think it's at least worth considering the possible merit of the apparent US goal at this time - to completely dismantle and destroy the current Iranian regime, so that a new regime, selected with our guidance, can take power and better lead the people.
I think it has been made abundantly clear that the current rulers will not ever stop their practices of brutal crimes against humanity and attacking our allies. Peace negotiations may lessen it for a time, but it always comes back. And every time it does come back, it seems worse than before.
Based on your post, you probably know more about this than I do. Does The Art of War mention anything about what might cause a need to leave no way out and provide no bridge?
While the concept of the goal is admirable, I think our effort was engaged in ignorantly, with a vast underestimation of what would be required to unseat this regime supported by tens of millions of Iranians and entrenched deeply within Iranian society.
Decapitation doesn't necessarily work against an ideological opponent with millions of adherents.
Right this moment, we don't appear to be building a bridge for the Iranian people to find their own way out opposite this regime either. Such an effort would involve armament, coordination of communication and organizational infrastructure, and/or some other enablement of revolution. If that was our goal, we needed to act before 30,000 were massacred. Not after the massacres have already cowed the population and killed their revolutionary leaders.
"We don't appear to be building a bridge for the Iranian people to find their own way..."
I agree with this statement. We don't. We have gone that route before, and ended up arming our enemies. We want to strongly guide them to
selecting their new way and make sure that way won't come back to bite us. We've tried this the "nice" way before, many times.
I'm not saying the way we're going now was the perfect choice. But it may be the best available of very limited options
There is no way the US would walk away from negotiation tables, after all we've learned in the last
decades, and ever trust that the current, crumbling, Iranian regime would hold up their end of any deal
for any meaningful period of time.
Run for President, then decide. Only God has all of the information. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else is privy to what only God understands.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1E2ZVajXmQ/
For another perspective!
Respectfully, I just want to clarify that the reality of the Iranian regime's evils and their popularity domestically is an argument outside of the conversation of what's being put forward here.
I don't think the Jews are the problem. I think radicalization is the problem and I am calmly sharing not *my* words. *I* am not the source of this message. I think it's important that you deal with facts. Otherwise you have no context to really understand anything. The history is real. Do you even know any Muslims? I doubt it.
It is my understanding that the "way out" of this war is amnesty to soldiers who stop killing their own people and a new leadership willing to gain that leadership with free elections.
So I am not sure your comparisons are equal. I agree with Tricia Moseley. These are evil, evil peoplewho have been lying to us since 1979. I have English students (over the internet) and they talk to me. They are suffering. They are hungry, and threatened with arrest and imprisonment over the slightest thing. When was the last time you saw an Iranian woman not forced to cover her face?
Yeah, and Sun Tzu never dealt with, let alone made war against a bunch of leaders whose whole world view is built on a death cult. You’re assuming the Mullah mentality is rational like our Western one. In Islam they are happy to sign a treaty and then get back to cutting your head off when they think they have regained the advantage. This bunch are “Twelvers” with a pretty nasty idea of how they must act to bring about the eschatological downfall of the world as we know it and usher in complete world dominance of their brand of Islam. They will accommodate the West to death, literally, until they achieve the End. Trump gave them acceptable outs in the talks leading up to this. They were never going to give up the nuke quest as they saw it as the way to bring out the Mahdi.
Negotiations appeared to be working prior to the war's outbreak: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/18/ignorance-misunderstanding-obfuscation-iran-nuclear-talks-trump
If you want to insist coexistence absent war is impossible, that's your prerogative, but it kind of makes any productive path forward impossible and is the mindset that will inevitably lead to a bloody and protracted war with destruction of life and finances wrought on us all.
It not my prerogative. I didn’t dream up this death cult called Islam in a cave 1400 years ago that proceeded to conquer the world within a generation. They are not spice merchants in a bazaar.
A respected Israeli rabbi is making a striking claim: the Messiah will be announced this Thursday, Rosh Chodesh Nisan, the first day of the Hebrew month of Nisan and the beginning of the Biblical calendar year. According to Rabbi Baruch Rosenblum, a leading rabbinical figure known throughout Israel, the timing is tied directly to one of the most strategically volatile waterways on earth, currently the focus of the war between the US and Iran: the Strait of Hormuz.The Sages connect this expectation to the destruction of Amalek, the archetypal enemy of Israel. “What remains of the war against our enemies? We must finish them, particularly the leaders, by this Thursday,” Rosenblum said. He then made a striking remark: “I joked with President Trump, saying, ‘You must finish the job by Thursday.’ God willing, he will bring in the necessary resources, like B2 bombers, and the mission will be completed.”
The theological and geopolitical core of Rabbi Rosenblum’s lecture rests on the Kli Paz, a commentary on the book of Yeshayahu (Isaiah) written approximately 500 years ago by Rabbi Shmuel Laniado.
“A slaughter (zevach) for Hashem in Botzra, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom” (Isaiah 34:6).
https://israel365news.com/416833/leading-rabbi-says-the-messiah-could-arrive-thursday-cites-500-year-old-book-naming-the-strait-of-hormuz-as-site-of-final-war/
You may also want to look into the rabbi’s views on Christians and Noahide laws. Making the argument that Islam is a “death cult” while never acknowledging the regime change treachery the US has inflicted on Iran for decades and failing to understand that the radicalism in Judaism is what is pushing uninformed, naive, propagandised and gullible Christians into war on behalf of ppl who would happily and literally behead them for religious reasons is typical, but unacceptable. None of any of this is the way of Jesus that Christians are meant and commanded to walk.
More it's the JOOOS that are the problem change the subject BS taqqiyah. I don't support this war on religious grounds since Islam demonstrates over and over again it is an apocalyptic political ideological death cult masquerading as a religion. There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. The nominal Muslims are the radicals. The jihadists are the true followers of your sixth century illiterate, child molesting, warlord. I wonder which "peaceful" mooslim thought up the slogan, "after Saturday, comes Sunday." And it's not the first time some rabbi has proclaimed the arrival of a messiah. The one characteristic of all those "messiahs" is they died and stayed in the grave. I follow the one Messiah who rose from the dead and one day will come again to judge the quick and the dead.
So I take it that you didnt actually read the article then?
No I did not. Go back to my last comment, double the font size and read it again. Jesus Christ is the only Messiah and the true Israel, not the modern socialist state of Israel. And those who are in Christ are the church. Because of their unbelief they have been labeled the synagogue of Satan. They are outside the New Covenant and until they come to a saving knowledge of the true Messiah which Paul predicted they are lost as geese in a snow storm. Having said that I support the modern state of Israel has a right to exist and as human beings made in the image of God not be subjected to constant attempts at a second Holocaust at the hands of the death cult running Iran and its proxies.
Your latest comment is irrelevant if you haven't verified the assumptions you made in your first comment—assumptions that the article refutes. Neither the font size, nor rereading it, nor the snide remarks, nor deliberate ignorance will change that.
And speaking of pdf's I don't know, but are there many muslims in the E files?