From pattern-reading, the counsel shifts to designing in the gaps—the seams where conflict-expending energies do not yet converge. Sun Tzu lauds exploiting emptiness, striking where the adversary is unprepared, and moving through open ground. Peace design adapts this by creating corridors, pauses, and crossline routines that sap the logic of confrontation. Operation Lifeline Sudan (1989) negotiated relief corridors amid civil war, turning humanitarian necessity into a stabilizing habit. Even the spontaneous 1914 Christmas Truce revealed how unscripted pauses can thicken into cooperation. In each case, the ‘negative space’ is not absence; it is scaffolded room for different behavior, protected long enough to become normal. [...]
