Cheap War Tactics

A bit ago I sat down in my fishbowl-like apartment and read mankind's oldest self-help book: The Art of War by Sun Tzu. After an hour or so, I finished all thirteen chapters of bulleted points from some imperious ancient voice telling me how to siege my next victory. I found the whole thing to be overwhelmingly pedestrian and for a lack of better words a "yeah, no shit" category of literature. However! I think the introduction of just one more chapter would have had me sold: Cheap War Tactics.

The undeniable notion of a cheap war tactic is that it's trivial, and because of this trivialness the move is awfully like an en passant. You let the move happen with no regard for new vulnerability. It's purely futile more times than not. Though, the opponent doesn't fully captivate this since they're shrouded by the opportunity to take such an improbable move. And when improbability isn't the carrier of this weight, they choose the lowest hanging fruit. In fact, a user of this cheapness would much rather dig up the roots of the tree and claim it to bear the same fruit as is on top of the tree. But let's not toss the baby out with the bathwater; these plays might even yield some temporary lead. Much like a tick, they find the laziest places to hide in and suck the life of you ^[*]. Yet all of this effort only to die while doing so.

For some this is their entire playbook. They are the petty kind.

I believe in the same vein that this kind is actually the hardest to oppose. The reason being that there are pseudo forms of this cheapness that can actually go in the direction of deceptive positivity. Let's propose a close ally that is late to yet consider that they might be caught up in a case of transitive perfidy. The opponent will do everything in their menial power to persuade an ally of their care for them. Here the incentive of this play is not necessarily conversion of your allies to their side, but to plant convincing seeds. Seeds, like sirens, that misguide you.

The petty kind is the most dangerous of them all. Even with a futile and unclever playbook, they can slowly tear and gut you. The only way to win in this chapter is to not look. There is one essential requirement for a cheap war tactic to become fruitful: attention. The colder you stare, the more nothingness you give, the more you prevail.

And soon, just like The Poser, no one is looking anymore.