 As the last quote intimates, the proper implementation of ritual is also decisive in politics and international  relations.[6]  In the “Debate about Warfare”, for example, Xunzi offers a distinctive variant of the old Confucian idea that a true king (wang 王—always a moral term in Confucian discourse) will succeed on the battlefield without even having to fight, because the populace will not support a tyrant or hegemon (ba 霸, a lord who rules by brute force). What is unique is Xunzi’s emphasis on ritual as the key to a well-ordered state. To be sure, earlier writings had also discussed the idea of ritual as the foundation of statecraft, and the Zuo Commentary to the Springs and Autumns (Zuozhuan 左傳), in particular, is famous for its scenes in which a ruler who is about to attack his neighbor publicly justifies his aggression on the grounds that he is merely “punishing” his enemy’s intolerable violations of ritual. But Xunzi raises the significance of ritual to a new level: in his view, the ruler’s ability to govern his state in accordance with ritual is the sole criterion that will determine success or failure on the battlefield (Xunzi 15.1c; see also Xunzi 16.1).