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Tuesday, June 10, 2025 - 03:31 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Theoretical Bases Of Strategy

It certainly didn't take long at all for a bunch of events hinted at from the June 4th blog entry to transpire, beginning with a relatively innocuous dissent by Elon Musk on the One Big, Beautiful Bill mere hours after it was posted. That, as it turned out, was taken by TRUMP as a challenge, and a few provocative (and now deleted) X-es by Musk later, the saga ended with GEOTUS wishing Musk well, but not wishing to communicate further with him, at the present moment.

Considering that the Tesla founder had reportedly engaged in some nonconsensual amateur mixed martial arts (which, recall, he has been training in) with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, he was fortunate not to have landed behind bars here, with GEOTUS once again demonstrating his characteristic (and very non-LKY-like) mercy - before making a surprise appearance at UFC 316. His fist-pumping to renowned adopted gay anthem YMCA (surely?) might then have been a show of solidarity with (the increasingly-unrecognized) Pride* Month, or perhaps his unwittingly-mauled Treasury Secretary.


So much inclusiveness!


Musk's departure from the scene would quickly be followed by riots in Los Angeles, stemming from a (completely legal and justified) raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers... which somehow developed into a spate of mostly-peaceful conflagrations swiftly dubbed by news outlets as "a song of ICE and fire". Fans of the series might do well to remember Tywin Lannister's quote on Kings, then, with nationwide "No Kings**" protests planned for Saturday. As pointed out last month, this has to be a backhanded acknowledgement of sorts!

This, of course, happens to be a pretty-obvious mirror of the socialist rebellion that LKY had to face early in his career, which soon had the FBI Director warning rioters that they would be jailed if they assaulted his officers. The situation seems to have stabilized somewhat after GEOTUS deployed the National Guard, and without having to arrest Democrat politicos (and enablers), in yet another flourish of strategic nous. Well, he did write the book on the subject after all, as we shall see!

[*The other one didn't last very long.]

[**Then again, the original L.A. riots started because of one.]


Books Of The Art

[noun] "a detailed plan for achieving success in situations such as war, politics, business, industry, or sport, or the skill of planning for such situations"

- Cambridge Dictionary



孙子兵法, 川子(交)易经!
[N.B. Translation of couplet:
The world laughs at me for being too mad;
I laugh back at them for not seeing through (my cunning plan)]
(Sources: amazon.sg, and again)


In the realm of grand strategy, but one name has been preeminent since antiquity: that of Sun Tzu, legendary author of The Art of War, that timeless treatise that has stood unequalled in the field for some two thousand and five hundred years. One should not discount other celebrated contributors, certainly: Carl von Clausewitz and his Vom Kriege have oft been raised as the Western equivalent to Sun Tzu; stretching the definition a little, we have storied schemers such as Machiavelli and Richelieu, who inspired later generations of strategists, theorists and practitioners such as Bismarck, Talleyrand, Mearsheimer and Mao. The Art of War's position at the head of the canon remained essentially unchallenged circa 500 B.C., however, until its spiritual sequel The Art of Deal was published in 1987.

The direct Mandarin translation of The Art of Deal (交易经), as it happens, literally references another classic, the I Ching (易经). To distinguish the modern masterpiece from its older and lesser cousin, it is referred to as 懂王易经 (King Dong***'s I Ching) in academic circles, as opposed to the slightly-outdated first edition, 文王易经 (for King Wen of Zhou). Properly put, The Art of Deal is a brilliant syncretic fusion of the pragmatic (Art of War; e.g. "a little hyperbole never hurts", building upon the dictum "all warfare is based on deception") and the abstruse (I Ching; e.g. "keep [your] balls in the air"); like yin and yang, this interplay between the mundane and the mystical feeds and uplifts both, within an inexhaustible cycle.

And as to how these tomes have been applied to the Trade War chapter of The Greatest Game... relax, we're coming to that, any day now!

[***The title itself implicitly praising his very large hands.]



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Next: The Deal Is Up


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