American Go E-Journal

Ron Paul, the libertarian politician who ran unsuccessfully for this year’s Republican Presidential nomination, will have a disproportionate influence at the GOP’s convention this week thanks to his employment of shi (pronounced “sure”), “a strategy expounded and employed by Chinese philosophers and military strategists for thousands of years,” according to “The Grand Shi Strategy of Ron Paul,” a guest column in Forbes by Mark Spitznagel. “Throughout history, perhaps the clearest and most pedagogical example of shi at work has been in the Chinese board game weiqi,” writes Spitznagel, who uses the board position here to show that while “White is far ahead in terms of tangible territory right now…black has established a strategic advantage and intangible edge by moving into the center to command the rest of the board.” Spitznagel sees Ron Paul’s shi strategy “in the great patience and nonaggression that favors the slow buildup of influence and strategic advantage over the decisive all-or-nothing clash,” arguing that the strategy’s success is exemplified by “Mitt Romney’s support of Paul’s current ‘Audit The Fed’ bill, as well as his recent position on the inefficacy of further (as well as past) Fed quantitative easing; it remains only a question of degree with Romney, but a position that nonetheless would have been unlikely without the pressure from the Paul campaign—especially given Romney’s otherwise very simplistic Keynesian-leaning views.”
Thanks to Jim Hlavka for passing this along.