More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
March 2 - June 21, 2025
Napoleon was famous for his well-timed promotions and for promoting soldiers on merit, making even the lowliest private feel that if he proved himself, he could someday be a marshal. But a drum major becoming a baron overnight? That was entirely beyond their experience. Word of it spread rapidly through the troops and had an electrifying effect—particularly on the newest conscripts, the ones who were most homesick and depressed.
Napoleon was the greatest man manager in history: he took millions of unruly, undisciplined, unsoldierly young men, recently liberated by the French Revolution, and molded them into one of the most successful fighting forces ever known. Their high morale was all the more remarkable for the ordeals he put them through.
From the story of King Pyrrhus and his famous lament after the Battle of Asculum comes the expression “Pyrrhic victory,” signifying a triumph that is as good as a defeat, for it comes at too great a cost. The victor is too exhausted to exploit his win, too vulnerable to face the next battle. And indeed, after the “victory” at Asculum, Pyrrhus staggered from one disaster to the next, his army never quite strong enough to defeat his growing hosts of enemies. This culminated in his untimely death in battle, ending Epirus’s hopes to become a power in Greece.
When the weapons have grown dull and spirits depressed, when our strength has been expended and resources consumed, then others will take advantage of our exhaustion to arise. Then even if you have wise generals you cannot make things turn out well in the end. —The Art of War, Sun-tzu (fourth century B.C.)
Defying her ministers, Elizabeth did what she could to keep the peace with Spain, refusing to provoke Philip. That bought her time to put aside funds for building up the British navy. Meanwhile she worked in secret to damage the Spanish economy, which she saw as its only weak spot.
Spain’s enormous, expanding empire in the New World made it powerful, but that empire was far away. To maintain it and profit from it, Philip was entirely dependent on shipping, a vast fleet that he paid for with enormous loans from Italian bankers. His credit with these banks depended on the safe passage of his ships bringing gold from the New World. The power of Spain rested on a weak foundation.
And so Queen Elizabeth unleashed her greatest captain, Sir Francis Drake, on the Spanish treasure ships. He was to appear to be operating on his own, a pirate out for his own profit. No one was to know of the connection between him and the queen. With each ship that he captured, the interest rate on Philip’s loans crept upward, until eventually the Italian banke...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Elizabeth put an important part of her meager resources into building up England’s spy network— in fact, she made it the most sophisticated intelligence agency in Europe.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada has to be considered one of the most cost-effective in military history: a second-rate power that barely maintained a standing army was able to face down the greatest empire of its time. What made the victory possible was the application of a basic military axiom: attack their weaknesses with your strengths.
A cat, for instance, instinctively practices an economy of motion and gesture, never wasting effort. People who live in poverty, similarly, are acutely aware of their limits: forced to make the most of what they have, they are endlessly inventive. Necessity has a powerful effect on their creativity.
Giap was endlessly inventive in using the jungle to neutralize American air power, disorient American foot soldiers, and camouflage his own troops. He could not hope to win a pitched battle against superior U.S. weaponry, so he put his effort into spectacular, symbolic, demoralizing attacks that would drive home the futility of the war when they appeared on American TV. With the minimum that he had, he created the maximum effect.
As Pablo Picasso said, Even if you are wealthy, act poor. The poor are more inventive, and often have more fun, because they value what they have and know their limits. Sometimes in strategy you have to ignore your greater strength and force yourself to get the maximum out of the minimum. Even if you have the technology, fight the peasant’s war.
Years later, Turkish documents were uncovered that revealed that the British fleet had been on the verge of success: in another day or two, it would have broken through and Constantinople would probably have fallen. The whole course of the war might have been changed. But the British had overeconomized; at the last moment, they had pulled their punches, worrying about cost. In the end the cost of trying to win on the cheap wound up punitively expensive.
Neither boxer was happy, both wanted a more conclusive result, so they met again in 1975, in the famous “Thrilla in Manila.” This time Ali won in the fourteenth round, but neither man was ever the same again: these three fights had taken too much out of them, shortening their careers. Pride and anger had overtaken their powers of reason. Do not fall into such a trap; know when to stop. Do not soldier on out of frustration or pride. Too much is at stake.
The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it but in what one pays for it—what it costs us. —Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
By abandoning the Pratzen Heights, Napoleon seemed to have put himself in a vulnerable position: his southern lines were weak, and his route of retreat, southwest toward Vienna, was exposed. An allied army could take the Pratzen Heights, pivot south to break through that weak point in his lines and cut off his retreat, then move back north to surround his army and destroy him.
Kutusov saw the danger: the allies had advanced so many men into the gap in the French lines that they had left their own center exposed. He tried to turn back the last troops heading south, but it was too late. By 11:00 A.M. the French had retaken the heights. Worse, French troops had come up from the southwest to reinforce the southern position and prevent the allies from surrounding the French. Everything had turned around. Through the town of Pratzen, the French were now pouring through the allied center and were swiftly moving to cut off the retreat of the allied troops to their south.
Each part of the allied army—north, center, and south—was now effectively isolated from the others. The Russians in the southernmost position tried to retreat farther to the south, but thousands of them lost their lives in the frozen lakes and marshes in their path. By 5:00 P.M. the rout was complete, and a truce was called.
However desperate the situation and circumstances, don’t despair. When there is everything to fear, be unafraid. When surrounded by dangers, fear none of them. When without resources, depend on resourcefulness. When surprised, take the enemy itself by surprise. —Sun-tzu, The Art of War (fourth century B.C.)
Aggression is deceptive: it inherently hides weakness. Aggressors cannot control their emotions. They cannot wait for the right moment, cannot try different approaches, cannot stop to think about how to take their enemies by surprise. In that first wave of aggression, they seem strong, but the longer their attack goes on, the clearer their underlying weakness and insecurity become.
The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy. —Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done, There are thousands to prophesy failure; There are thousands to point out to you one by one, The dangers that wait to assail you. But just buckle in with a bit of a grin, Just take off your coat and go to it; Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.
In the nineteenth century, the Apaches of the American Southwest were for many years able to torment U.S. troops through guerrilla-style tactics that were perfectly suited to the terrain. Nothing seemed to work until General George Crook hired disaffected Apaches to teach him their way of fighting and serve as scouts. Adapting their style of warfare, Crook neutralized the Apaches’ strengths and finally defeated them.
The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by a rapid and audacious attack. —Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)
Retreat is not to be confused with flight. Flight means saving oneself under any circumstances, whereas retreat is a sign of strength. We must be careful not to miss the right moment while we are in full possession of power and position. Then we shall be able to interpret the signs of the time before it is too late and to prepare for provisional retreat instead of being drawn into a desperate life-and-death struggle.
If your organization is small in numbers, then do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does…. Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. RULES FOR RADICALS, SAUL D. ALINSKY, 1972
Jackson altered Union perceptions first by his bold attack on Kerns-town, which made Lincoln and McClellan think he had more troops than he did—they could not imagine that anyone would be so stupid as to send only 3,600 men against a Union stronghold.
A key concept in Taoism is that of wei wu—the idea of action through inaction, of controlling a situation by not trying to control it, of ruling by abdicating rule. Wei wu involves the belief that by reacting and fighting against circumstances, by constantly struggling in life, you actually move backward, creating more turbulence in your path and difficulties for yourself. Sometimes it is best to lie low, to do nothing but let the winter pass. In such moments you can collect yourself and strengthen your identity.
We respond to events routinely and mechanically instead of trying to understand their differences. In our dealings with other people, too, we are easily infected by their tempo and mood. All this creates a kind of fog. We fail to see events for what they are; we do not know ourselves.
.qa
Your task as a strategist is simple: to see the differences between yourself and other people, to understand yourself, your side, and the enemy as well as you can, to get more perspective on events, to know things for what they are.
.qa what is your task as a strategist?
Most people respond to aggression by in some way getting involved with it. It is almost impossible to hold back. By disengaging completely and retreating, you show great power and restraint. Your enemies are desperate for you to react; retreat infuriates and provokes them into further attack. So keep retreating, exchanging space for time. Stay calm and balanced. Let them take the land they want; like the Germans, lure them into a void of nonaction.
The Russians used this technique with Napoleon by not giving him a fight until he was deep in Russia with his army disheartened and his supply lines overstretched even destroyed.
War is a physical affair, which takes place somewhere specific: generals depend on maps and plan strategies to be realized in particular locations. But time is just as important as space in strategic thought, and knowing how to use time will make you a superior strategist, giving an added dimension to your attacks and defense.
Only by opposing idealistic and mechanistic tendencies and taking an objective all-sided view in making a study of war can we draw correct conclusions on the question of war.
In grand strategy you look beyond the moment, beyond your immediate battles and concerns. You concentrate instead on what you want to achieve down the line. Controlling the temptation to react to events as they happen, you determine each of your actions according to your ultimate goals. You think in terms not of individual battles but of a campaign.
After what later became known as the Tet Offensive was over, West-moreland likened it to the Battle of the Bulge, near the end of World War II. There the Germans had managed to surprise the Allies by staging a bold incursion into eastern France. In the first few days, they had advanced rapidly, creating panic, but once the Allies recovered, they had managed to push the Germans back—and eventually it became apparent that the battle was the German military’s death knell, their last shot. So it was, Westmoreland argued, with the North Vietnamese army at Khe Sanh and the Vietcong throughout the
...more
The North Vietnamese saw the war very differently. By nature and practice, they viewed conflict in much broader terms. They looked at the political situation in the South, where American search-and-destroy missions were alienating South Vietnamese peasants. The North Vietnamese, meanwhile, did everything they could to win the peasants over and earned for themselves an army of millions of silent sympathizers. How could the South be secure when the Americans had failed to capture the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese farmers?
The North Vietnamese also looked to the American political scene, where, in 1968, there was to be a presidential election. And they looked at American culture, where support for the war was wide but not deep. The Vietnam War was the first televised war in history; the military was trying to control information about the war, but the images on television spoke for themselves.
In effect, the goal of the Tet Offensive was not a military target but the American public in front of its televisions. Once Americans lost faith—and in an election year—the war was doomed. The North Vietnamese did not have to win a single pitched battle on the field, and in fact they never did. But by extending their vision beyond the battlefield to politics and culture, they won the war.
War is the continuation of politics by other means. —Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831)
We use cleverness and strategy to grab for what we want, but we do not stop to think about whether what we want is necessary, or what the consequences of getting it will be. The extended vision that rationality brings us is often eclipsed by the reactive, emotional animal within—the stronger side of our nature.
In classical Greek tragedies such as Oedipus Rex, the protagonist may think he knows the truth and knows enough about the world to act in it, but his vision is limited by his emotions and desires. He has only a partial perspective on life and on his own actions and identity, so he acts imprudently and causes suffering.
During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese intensely studied the American cultural scene. They looked for shifts in public opinion and strained to understand the U.S. political system and the social effects of television. American strategists, on the other hand, revealed an absolutely minimal understanding of the alien cultures of Vietnam—whether the South Vietnamese culture they were supporting or the North Vietnamese culture they were trying to fight. Blinded by their obsession with stopping the spread of communism, they failed to note the far deeper influences of culture and religion on
...more
In the Roman Civil War in 49 B.C., Julius Caesar faced off against Pompey, who was then the more experienced military man. Caesar gained the edge by planning his maneuvers with an eye to their effect on public opinion in Rome. Lacking support in the Senate, he built support among the general public. Caesar was a brilliant political animal, and what made him so was his grasp of the public psyche: he understood their self-interest and shaped his strategies accordingly. Being political means understanding people—seeing through their eyes.
When the Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy in 218 B.C., various Roman generals strained to defeat him, but none was effective. The Roman general later called Scipio Africanus looked at the situation differently: the problem wasn’t Hannibal himself, or his base in Spain, or his ability to restock his supplies by sea from Carthage; the problem was Carthage itself. This was a country with an intractable hatred of Rome, and a long power struggle had endured between the two. Instead of taking on Hannibal, a brilliant military man, in Italy, then, Scipio invaded Carthage, forcing Hannibal
...more
The Prussian military theoretician Carl von Clausewitz famously argued that war is the continuation of politics by other means. He meant that every nation has goals—security, well-being, prosperity—that it ordinarily pursues through politics, but when another nation or internal force thwarts their achievement through politics, war is the natural result.
This means that you yourself are largely the agent of anything bad that happens to you. With more prudence, wiser policies, and greater vision, you could have avoided the danger. So when something goes wrong, look deep into yourself—not in an emotional way, to blame yourself or indulge your feelings of guilt, but to make sure that you start your next campaign with a firmer step and greater vision.
supreme grand strategists as Julius Caesar and Napoleon eventually fell victim to this dynamic: losing their sense of reality, they began to believe that their instincts were infallible. The greater the victory, the greater the danger. As you get older, as you move to your next campaign, you must retrench, strain doubly hard to rein in your emotions, and maintain a sense of realism.
Bait.—“Everyone has his price”—this is not true. But there surely exists for everyone a bait he cannot help taking. Thus to win many people over to a cause one needs only to put on it a gloss of philanthropy, nobility, charitableness, self-sacrifice— and on to what cause can one not put it?—: these are the sweetmeats and dainties for their soul; others have others. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1886
On January 13, British forces at the fort in Jalalabad saw a single horse struggling toward the gates. Its half-dead rider, Dr. William Brydon, was the sole survivor of the British army’s doomed invasion of Afghanistan.
Blindness and narcissism like this are not so rare; we find them every day. Our natural tendency is to see other people as mere reflections of our own desires and values. Failing to understand the ways they are not like us, we are surprised when they do not respond as we had imagined. We unintentionally offend and alienate people, then blame them, not our inability to understand them, for the damage done.
