H015
Should you trap your enemy completely?
A complete trap sounds like a complete win. Sun Tzu advised the opposite: leave a surrounded enemy a way out. Then he gave his own army no way out at all.
People with no way out have nothing to lose by fighting. On Iwo Jima in 1945, about 21,000 Japanese defenders had been taught that surrender was shameful and believed the Americans would kill them anyway. Only 216 were captured during the battle, and more than 6,800 Americans died taking the island. In the 1991 Gulf War, coalition forces dropped 29 million leaflets telling Iraqi soldiers how to surrender safely, and nearly 87,000 did. A way out doesn't have to be a gap in the line. A believable promise of safe surrender works the same way.
Sun Tzu used one idea in both directions: leave the enemy a way out so they stop fighting, and give your own soldiers none so they never stop. Whether in a war, a negotiation, or an argument, cornering the other side completely can make the fight harder, not easier.
Try it somewhere else
A gym makes canceling a membership almost impossible.
How might trapping members end up hurting the gym?
See the numbers
| Battle | Defenders | Surrendered | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iwo Jima, 1945 | about 21,000 | 216 during the battle | about 1% |
| Okinawa, 1945 | — | about 11,250 | 12% |
| Gulf War, 1991 | about 300,000 reached by leaflets | nearly 87,000 | about 29% |
How solid is this evidence?
These battles aren't a controlled experiment. They differ in culture, orders, how the war was going, and how hopeless each army's position was. Still, historians point to the same pattern: Japanese soldiers feared, often correctly, that Allied troops would kill them if they tried to surrender, and surrenders rose after U.S. commanders began encouraging troops to take prisoners in 1944. On Okinawa, 12% of the defenders surrendered, far more than on earlier islands.
A 2017 study of many battles by Todd Lehmann and Yuri Zhukov found that surrender spreads once it starts, and spreads faster when the opposing army has signed the Geneva Conventions, so prisoners can expect decent treatment.
A way out isn't always mercy
The Roman writer Vegetius praised the same advice, credited to the general Scipio, “that a way should be built for the enemy to flee by,” for a harder reason: “For when an escape route is revealed, the minds of all are united on turning their backs, and they are slaughtered unavenged, like sheep.” “Trapped men draw extra courage from desperation,” he wrote. “The only hope of safety for the defeated is to expect no safety.”
And closing the trap sometimes works. At Cannae in 216 BC, Hannibal surrounded a much larger Roman army and destroyed it. Leaving a way out is a trade-off: fewer of your own losses now, but some of the enemy may live to fight again.
Related exhibits
Sources: Sun Tzu, The Art of War, translated by Lionel Giles (1910), VII.36 and XI.23. Iwo Jima: about 21,000 defenders, 216 taken prisoner during the battle, and more than 6,800 American dead (Naval History and Heritage Command; Wikipedia, “Battle of Iwo Jima”). Okinawa: about 11,250 Japanese military personnel surrendered, 12% of the defenders (Wikipedia, “Japanese prisoners of war in World War II”). Gulf War: 29 million leaflets reaching about 98% of 300,000 Iraqi troops and nearly 87,000 surrenders (Jones and Summe, Association of the United States Army, 1997). Lehmann and Zhukov, “Until the Bitter End? The Diffusion of Surrender Across Battles” (2017). Vegetius, De Re Militari, Book III.