Strategy: A History

by Lawrence Freedman

He set down eleven. A number were basic to any underdog strategy. The first was pure Sun Tzu: persuade the opponent that you were stronger than was really the case (“If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do”). The second and third were about staying close to the comfort zone of your own people and going outside that of the opponent in order to “cause confusion, fear, and retreat.” Rule 4 was to use the opponent’s own rulebook against them, and Rule 5 was to use ridicule (“man’s most potent weapon”) because it was hard to counterattack and infuriated the opposition. This led to Rule 6, which was that a good tactic was one your people enjoyed, while a bad tactic was not only not fun but also (Rule 7) dragged on and became hard to sustain. This was because (Rule 8) the essence of a good strategy was to keep the pressure on the opponent. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.” Rule 9 was an observation about how threats could be more terrifying than the reality, and Rule 10 was about the need for a constructive alternative, an answer to the question, “Okay, what would you do?” Lastly, Rule 11 commanded: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Ide...