This Quote Means: 'The wise win before the fight while the ignorant fight to win'

Among the most well-regarded books on strategy and warfare is Chinese general Sun Tzu's Art of War. Quotations from the treatise, believed to have been written around the 5th century BC, are often cited to illustrate the importance of planning, knowledge-gathering and anticipating the enemy's moves. Even in modern times, analysts have used insights from the work to view wars like the one going on between Ukraine and Russia. But beyond the battlefield, the book can be interpreted as saying that the strategies underlined in it are a means of last resort. Even at a time of great insecurity, when…