How to Kill With a Borrowed Knife
Let's look at the most dangerous and lethal of Zhuge Liang's Ancient Stratagems
Note: the following is an excerpt from an upcoming book I’m currently working on. If you are interested or would like to read more, let me know!
The Eastern counterpart to Machiavelli’s The Prince may very well be The 36 Stratagems. A work shrouded in mystery, it is alleged to have been written by Zhuge Liang, the brilliant Taoist strategist who is even today worshipped throughout Asia. Like the Prince, the work does not claim to be the original thought of one philosopher but is rather the collected wisdom of countless generations. A sort of, “tips and tools” for how to deal with reality and its obstacles, gathered from countless courts, wars, and intrigues. Being a compilation of common wisdom, many of these stratagems have been named and referred to throughout history, and few are better known amongst Chinese people than to “Kill With a Borrowed Knife”.
To that end, when you and your opponent are at an impasse, the best way through is around, hence the tactic to “Kill with a Borrowed Knife”. Similar to the old saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, to kill with a borrowed knife means to find someone who shares your ideals, goals, or hatreds and giving them a reason to remove your obstacle for you. Getting someone to do your dirty work is always cleaner than doing it yourself.
This is exactly what happened during the Second World War when Hitler plotted to invade Russia. Greatly outnumbered against some of the best generals of the Bolshevik revolution, Hitler’s Third Reich knew that an army was only as good as its leaders. Thus began a concerted disinformation campaign to discredit Stalin’s generals. As Stalin’s secret police began intercepting messages from the Germans addressed to his top brass, the paranoid dictator could not help but suspect treason. As a result, the best commanders in his ranks were purged one by one. When the surprise blitz came in the winter of 19XX, the Russians were totally unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the coordinated German forces. With their best tacticians and strategists consigned to the dustbin of Russian history, the only thing that saved the Russians was the winter.
But if you can think of killing with a borrowed knife, others can think of using you as the knife too. This is why it’s equally important to question other’s motives and fully understand the situation so that you are not in fact falling victim to the same ploy. For example, both America and Russia were embroiled in several conflicts around the globe during the Cold War which led to endless casualties, deaths, and suffering for their civilians, loss of faith in their leadership, and in the case of the Soviet Union, economic and political collapse. America’s attempts to help the South Vietnamese led to the nation being totally embroiled in the conflict and taken for the common colonial aggressor. By the end of the conflict, the people had completely lost faith in its military and general disillusionment with the White House abounded. Meanwhile, the South Vietnamese leadership absconded with over XXXX of the people’s money while the North used American intervention as the rallying point for unifying all of Vietnam under Communist rule.
In the 80s, the Soviet Union became entangled in a similar struggle in Afghanistan, which cost them XXXX soldiers trying to pacify the nation. Meanwhile, the American CIA trained and supplied the Mujahideen, borrowing their cause of an Islamic state to drive the knife into the Soviet military apparatus. The result? XXXX Soviet forces killed, XXXX Afghanis killed, and only XX American casualties. Meanwhile, the USSR, whose economy was barely chugging along, saw its decline accelerated and its very existence vanish virtually overnight in 1991.
Now, lest you think that the Americans got the best end of this deal, remember 9/11. Were it not for all that American training and support, it’s doubtful that the Taliban and Al Qaeda could have created the massive terrorist networks that it did. The very same network which Osama Bin Laden then used to pull off one of the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in history. You may even say that the Mujahideen lent its knife to America to be sharpened against the Russians only to turn the double-edged blade on its user.
Thus, killing with a borrowed knife should be undertaken with great care, with an eye to long-term fallout. Knives are dangerous, even when they aren’t used for war. This is probably why the alleged author of the 36 Stratagems, didn’t give it a more innocuous name.
Thanks again for taking the time to read Secrets of the Sages, I hope you enjoyed this post and maybe even learned something. As always, feedback and questions are greatly appreciated. You can email me back or follow my twitter @richardtseng for more.