The chapter is a short ranked list of military virtues, and every item on it is a negation. One who is good as a warrior is not warlike. One who is good in battle does not get angry. One who is good at overcoming the enemy does not engage him. One who is good at using people puts himself below them.
The four are not variations on a theme. They address different levels of a command structure: the individual fighter, the officer in an engagement, the commander deciding whether there will be an engagement, and the general who has to get work out of subordinates. At each level the recommended quality is the absence of the disposition the role is popularly associated with.
The third is the strongest claim and the most conventional in the strategic literature of the period, which also held that the best victory is the one obtained without battle. What this chapter adds is the second item, about anger, which treats a commander's temper as a technical fault. Chapter sixty-nine develops the same point by saying there is no calamity greater than taking the enemy lightly.
The fourth item leaves war altogether. Using people is an administrative activity, and putting oneself below them is the rule of chapter sixty-six restated. The chapter includes it in a military list without comment, which suggests the author saw no boundary between commanding an army and governing a state.
The closing terms are large: this is called the power of not contending, the strength of using others, and matching heaven, the highest reach of the ancients.