Chapter 3, Section III: Sun Tzu: War Is Deception
- john raymond
- Jul 7
- 3 min read
"All warfare is based on deception."
So begins one of the most enduring and potent strategic insights in history. For Sun Tzu, deception was not an auxiliary tool in war; it was the primary mechanism by which victory is achieved. His wisdom, forged in ancient battlefields and preserved for millennia, speaks not to a bygone era of sword and shield but to the modern battles waged with information, narrative, and psychological disruption.
To study Sun Tzu today is not to study the past—it is to study the present more clearly.
Central to Sun Tzu’s philosophy is the notion that perception matters more than force. It is better to shape how the enemy sees the battlefield than to overwhelm it with raw power. Victory should be obtained before the fighting begins, by making the enemy think they have already lost—or by ensuring they never fully understand the terrain they are standing on. A wise commander, in Sun Tzu's framework, attacks not the enemy’s strength, but their weakness. He wins not with might, but with misdirection, doubt, and control of narrative.
We saw these ideas manifest in a chillingly effective way during Russia’s 2016 interference in the U.S. election. No tanks crossed borders. No bombs fell from the sky.
Instead, memes were deployed. Troll farms and disinformation campaigns saturated American digital life. Russia didn’t need to destroy American institutions; it only needed to make Americans mistrust them.
The goal wasn’t destruction—it was perception warfare. It was, in every way, a textbook Sun Tzu operation.
Trump was not the architect of this campaign. But he was its perfect vessel. His craving for attention, his rejection of truth, and his instinct for chaos made him the ideal amplifier of a strategy he didn’t even need to comprehend.
The Russians didn’t need a brilliant collaborator—they needed a selfish one. One who would value personal power over national integrity, one who could be flattered, baited, and unleashed. Trump fit the bill. He didn’t plan the asymmetric attack. But he carried it further than any Russian agent could have dreamed.
Contrast this with the Bush administration, which in its own way perverted Sun Tzu’s principles by turning them inward. The Iraq War was not waged with deception aimed at an enemy—it was waged with deception aimed at the American public.
Intelligence was distorted, questions were silenced, and fear was cultivated. But unlike Sun Tzu’s approach, where deception leads to strategic clarity and victory, Bush’s strategy led to quagmire and confusion. Military strength was wasted. The public was lied to. And the result was not strategic brilliance, but geopolitical exhaustion.
Where Sun Tzu advises winning without fighting, Bush fought without winning.
The lesson from both these modern cases is this: the battlefield has changed. It is now mental, perceptual, psychological.
The weapons are not just bullets or bombs—they are narratives, fears, and viral deceptions.
Trump’s presidencies serve as a lesson in just how potent such a strategy can be when paired with someone deeply vulnerable to exploitation. His lies aren’t mere gaffes. They are weapons. His chaos isn’t random. It is strategic noise that benefits America’s enemies.
So we must ask ourselves: do we, the public, understand war as well as our enemies do? Do we know what it means to be attacked—not with missiles, but with misinformation?
If Sun Tzu’s test is winning without fighting, what does it say that Russia won a major psychological campaign against the U.S. without ever declaring war?
What the 21st century demands is not just more firepower, but more discernment. It demands that citizens, strategists, and policymakers alike recognize that asymmetric warfare is now the default—not the exception.
And the first rule of that warfare is this: if you can shape what your enemy believes, you do not need to destroy them.
Trump’s utility to Putin was not his ideology. It was his malleability. It was his willingness to live in a lie, sell it to others, and brand it as truth. In that, he was not just complicit in asymmetric warfare—he was its frontline soldier.
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