Mueller’s Art of War
He’s playing the long game, just like Sun Tzu
“He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.”
— Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
Will Robert Mueller indict Trump? Speculation has been rampant, though insiders don’t expect the special counsel to contravene a DOJ legal opinion that seems to preclude indictment of a sitting president. But the will-he-won’t-he dichotomy asks the wrong question. Using strategies of warfare, Mueller has likely already conceived an endgame, setting the stage for Trump’s downfall.
Strategic warfare developed as a means to fight and win wars effectively and efficiently as human societies grew in size and began to operate within a political system. In primitive times, war was not strategic; tribes fought each other in brutal battles that amounted to primal, ritualized violence geared as much toward displaying dominance and masculinity as to actually accomplishing a military objective. Since then, from ancient China to medieval Europe to the modern world, the greatest strategists like Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi, Carl von Clausewitz, and T.E. Lawrence have produced writings that capture their strategic philosophies. Likewise, history’s greatest generals, such as Alexander the Great…