Sun Tzu was talking about human psychology not about making a strategic choice.
Sun Tzu was saying it is better to give your enemy the illusion of a path to retreat. If you don’t, the enemy will fight to the death. It is for the same reason why you should treat your prisoners humanely. You want them to surrender and end the fighting as quickly as possible.
Choosing a strategic plan only works if you follow through and execute. What is worse than paralysis by over analysis is a boss who constantly changes strategy. That is a sure path to ruin.
Not sure how that is a contradiction. My point was that the goal isn’t necessarily to reduce the options the opponent has, because if you remove all options it’s actually not a good move - as the enemy will then fight to the death, literally or metaphorically.