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Phrase: Know thy enemy
With Christmas around the corner and the New Year fast approaching, it’s only natural to look back on the past year of accomplishments, lessons learned, and mistakes made.
Of course, the year’s major event that has affected everyone on earth has been the Russo-Ukraine War.
The famous Chinese general Sun Tzu said:
“Know thyself and know thy enemy; a thousand battles, a thousand victories.”
Sun Tzu
It means you must understand your and your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses to win in battle.
It also highlights our failure.
From Sun Tzu’s quote, we take the phrase know thy enemy.
It’s hard to believe, but most nations involved in the catastrophe of the Russo-Ukraine war both over and underestimated Russia’s ability to conduct conventional war.
We failed at knowing thy enemy.
Sun Tzu’s guidance to know thyself and know thy enemy was ignored by Russia, too.
Thousands of people are dead, hundreds of thousands are hungry, and millions are paying more for daily necessities.
Know thy enemy is wise advice.
Before we can defend ourselves, we need to know the capabilities of our enemies.
Just look at how quickly Japan has decided to double its defence budget.
A country with a national debt of 266% of GDP is struggling to pay pensions to the 30% of its population over 65 years old and now needs to find the money for bullets, bombs, planes, tanks, boots and training.
Ignorance is bliss until someone smacks you in the face because you didn’t expect it.
Looking back at 2022, knowing thy enemy is a lesson we have all had to relearn.
Putin gave us all a wake-up call to remember to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Unfortunately, it’s our fault the Ukrainians are suffering.
Let’s hope in 2023, we can fix our mistakes.
Slava Ukraini!
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 66.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.