4~ Wednesday, April 9, 1986

- North Shore News

Bob Hunter

e strictly personal

MANY *!OONS ago, when I was involved in various
non-violent eco-guerrilla media campaigns to save this,
protect thit, and prevent whatnot, somebody slipped
me a copy of a booklet titled The Art of War, by an
ancient Chinese general named Sun Tzu.

It seemed odd to me at the
time, since I considered myself
part of the peace movement, that
somebody should be asking me to
read a bock about war. J] have
since learned that I should have
read MORE books about war,
but who said wisdom comes be-
fore experience?

I did read Sun Tzu. And, as a
matter of fact, over the years
found myself adopting many of
his teachings about strategy,
organization and tactics, which
are as relevent to protest move-
ments and governments alike to-
day as they were when they were
written in the fourth century

Here are a few of his observa-
tions:

“AIL warfare is based on
deception.’’ ‘‘Do not press an
enemy at bay.” ‘‘There has never
been .a protracted. war where a
country -has- benefitted.’”? ‘To
surround ‘an enemy you must
leave a way of escape.” ‘‘Fight
‘downhill; do not ascend to at-
tack.””

I have since learned that rather
than being an esoteric pamphlet,
the collection of essays by Sun
Tzu has in fact served as the
definitive classic manual on war-
fare throughout all of the history
of China, right up to Mao Tse-
tung.

It was also the basic document
studied by Japanese military
leaders before the Second World
War.

It was translated into French i in
1782, in time for Napoleon to
read; it. Perhaps more to the
point, in the modern context,
Sun ;Tzu’s ideas were introduced
by ‘the Mongol-Tartars into
Russia. A former Chief of the
General Staff of the Red Army,
Marshal Shaposhnikov, knew the
book well enough to paraphrase
it in many of his own directives.

In fact, much Communist mili-
tary doctrine comes down to one
of Sun Tzu’s points, to the effect
that the prerequisite for victory is
“to make proper preparations in
the: enemy's camp so that the
result is decided beforehand.’”

It is one of the tragedies of the
20th Century that the West fell so
much’ ‘under the’ influence of
‘Clausewitz, the military thinker
whose massive tomes On. War
boiled down to the dictum that

“war is an act of violence pushed ~

“to its utmost bounds.’’
: Certainly, that’s the idea of
war that we are familiar with to-

day.

Yet, Sun Tzu, the East's
greatest martial essayist, would
have been utterly appalled by
such a notion.

“The supreme art of war,”’ ac-
cording to Sun Tzu, ‘‘is to sub-
due the enemy without fighting."

This wasn’t intended as any
hippie-dippy peacenik stuff. Sun
Tzu’s goal was to develop a
systematic treatise io guide rulers
and other generals in the in-
telligent and successful prosecu-
tion of war. He was simply op-
posed to waste, heroics and stu-
pidity.

Something that sums up his
distinct lack of wimpiness is his
comment about what to do when
an enemy advances over a river:
“Do not meet him at the water's
edge. It is advantageous to allow
half his force to cross and then |
strike.” F

The skilfull strategist, he
believed, should not only be able
to. subdue the enemy’s army |
without engaging it, but to take
his cities without having to lay
siege to them, and to overthrow
his state without bloodying a
sword.

His advice to rulers and com-
manders was to NOT place §
reliance on sheer military power.
Rather than the goal of war being
slaughter and destruction, it was
to take everything intact.

War was a “‘grave concern of
the state’? and, as such, should
be thoroughly studied. He was
the first known writer to
recognize that armed conflict, in-
stead of being an aberration, is in
fact a recurring conscious act —
and therefore subject to rational
analysis. . i

The man who would conquer
first frustrated his enemy’s plans,
then broke up his alliances, drove
wedges between rulers and
’ subordinated, ' planted spies
everywhere, nurtured subversion, -
and . generally isolated and
demoralized the enemy so that
his will to resist was broken.

Only if all of the above failed
— plus a thousand and one other

: dirty tricks — did one finally

send in the army. And even then,
,the goal was to win in the
shortest possible time win the
least cost in lives and equipment,
striving all the time to inflict the
fewest possible casualties.

‘Sun Tzu wouldn’t have
thought much of today’s nuclear
Mutual Assured Destruction
stand-off as a strategy, would he?

GVRD representatives named

REPRESENTATIVES from North
Shore municipalities and .Bowen
Island have been appointed to 1986
Greater Vancouver -
District committees.

North Vancouver District Mayor .

Marilyn. Baker was re-appointed
Chairman'‘of the Housing Com-
mittee and appointed a meniber of
the Executive and Water & Waste
Management committees. She_ is
also a member of the GVRD
Labour Relations Bureau.

District Ald. Stephen McMinn
was appointed to the Parks Com-
mittee. Regional Parks on the
North Shore are. Capilano River,
Lynn Headwaters and Crippen (on
Bowen Island).

West Vancouver Mayor Derrick
Humphreys was re-named Chair-

‘Regional :

man of the Electoral Areas Com-
mittee and a member of the Execu-
tive Committee “and the Parks
Committee.

Ald. Alex Brokenshire, West
Vancouver, was appointed a
nvcmber of the Labour Relations
Bureau.

North Vancouver City Mayor °

Jack Loucks was named Deputy
Chairman of the Executive Com-
mittee and a member of the Water
& Waste Management Committee
and the Labour Relations Bureau.

Ald. Stejla Jo Dean, North
Vancouver City, was appointed to
the Parks Committee.

Douglas Pollock, Mayor of
Lions Bay, was named to the Elec-
toral Areas and Parks committees.

‘COMPLETE PROHIBITION’ — DEAN

City to draft skateboard ban

NORTH VANCOUVER Ci-
ty is on its way to fully barr-

ing skateboards from city

sidewalks.

By STEPHEN BARRINGTON
Contributing Writer

City council voted Monday to
have staff draft an amendment
bylaw that would ban skateboards
from North Vancouver sidewalks.

Ald. Stella Jo Dean, who gave
the notice of motion March 24,
noted that the city’s existing street
and traffic bylaw only contained a
limited ban on skateboards.

‘‘What I’m asking for is a com-
plete prohibition,’? Dean told
council. ‘‘E’ve seen people prac-
tically knocked over, especially the
elderly.”’

But Ald. Dana Taylor said he
would not support the motion: ‘I
can see the hazards of skateboards,
but I suspect the greatest com-
plaint is with the noise or the tricks
they do,’’ he said.

DIFFICULT TO REGULATE

“think the real issue is attemp-
ting to regulate something that is
difficult to regulate,’’ Taylor ex-
plained.

“The use is a matter that re-
quires consideration of the user,”’
he said. ‘‘! think the fact of the

matter is that they can be used
safely."

‘ Taylor said he thought that pe-
destrians and skateboarders could
share the sidewalk “‘if there is care
and attention taken on the part of

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“T think the two can be com-
patible,’’ he concluded.

Ald. Allan Blair noted that he
lived on a newly paved street that
skateboarders frequently travel

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