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March 2 - June 21, 2025
The Zulus fought with an intensity the British had never seen; rushing forward as if bullets could not harm them, they seemed to be in a trance.
We humans are extremely clever creatures: in disaster or setback, we often find a way to adapt, to turn the situation around. We look for any gap and often find it; we thrive on hope, craftiness, and will. The history of war is littered with stories of dramatic adjustments and reversals, except in one place: the envelopment. Whether physical or psychological, this is the only true exception to the possibility of turning things around.
That is how Toussaint l’Ouverture ended slavery in what today is called Haiti, at the end of the eighteenth century, and liberated the island from France: he used his greater numbers to create the feeling among the whites on the island that they were hopelessly engulfed by a hostile force. No minority can withstand such a feeling for long.
Aptitude for maneuver is the supreme skill in a general; it is the most useful and rarest of gifts by which genius is estimated. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769–1821
Understand: in life as in war, nothing ever happens just as you expect it to. People’s responses are odd or surprising, your staff commits outrageous acts of stupidity, on and on. If you meet the dynamic situations of life with plans that are rigid, if you think of only holding static positions, if you rely on technology to control any friction that comes your way, you are doomed: events will change faster than you can adjust to them, and chaos will enter your system.
Everything is political in the world today, and politics is all about positioning. In any political battle, the best way to stake out a position is to draw a sharp contrast with the other side.
Use this strategy in the battles of daily life, letting people commit themselves to a position you can turn into a dead end. Never say you are strong, show you are, by making a contrast between yourself and your inconsistent or moderate opponents.
The fight between Britain and Turkey during World War I superbly demonstrates the difference between a war of attrition and a war of maneuver.
exploiting their inability to imagine an Arab attack on Aqaba from the landward side (a failing they shared with his British countrymen), he caught them off guard. Lawrence’s subsequent capture of Aqaba was a masterpiece of economy: only two men died, on his side. (Compare this to the unsuccessful British attempt to take Gaza from the Turks that same year in head-on battle, in which over three thousand British soldiers were killed.) The capture of Aqaba was the turning point in Britain’s eventual defeat of the Turks in the Middle East.
Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister. A few years earlier, Metter-nich had brought Russia into an alliance with Austria and Prussia called the Holy Alliance. Its goal was to protect these nations’ governments from the threat of revolution and to maintain peace in Europe after the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars.
D’Istria was no fool: he knew that what Metternich really wanted was to prevent Russia from expanding its influence in the Mediterranean, which would upset England and destabilize Europe, Metter-nich’s greatest fear. To d’Istria it was simple: he and Metternich were at war over who would have ultimate influence over the czar. And d’Istria had the advantage: he saw the czar often and could counteract Metter-nich’s persuasive powers through constant personal contact.
Metternich possessed a trump card: his years-long study of the czar’s rather strange personality. Alexander was a highly emotional man who would act only in a state of exaltation; he had to turn everything into a crusade. So, right at the beginning of the crisis, Metternich planted the seed that the real crusade here was one not of Christians against Turks but of monarchies against revolution.
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In one-on-one negotiations, Metternich was a chess player on the grand-master level. With Taticheff as with so many others, he first lowered his opponent’s suspicions by playing the foppish, even dim-witted aristocrat. Next he drew out the negotiations, miring them in abstract, legalistic discussions. That made him seem even more stupid, further misleading Taticheff but also confusing and irritating him. A confused and riled negotiator is prone to make mistakes—such as reveal too much about what he is after, always a fatal error.
The offer to stage a conference at which the czar would shine was dazzling and alluring, and it also seemed to offer Russia the chance of greater influence in European affairs (one of Alexander’s deepest desires). In fact the result was the opposite: Alexander ended up signing a document that cut Russia out of the Balkans—Metternich’s goal all along. Knowing how easily people are seduced by appearances, the Austrian minister gave the czar the appearance of power (being the center of attention at the conference), while he himself retained its substance (having the signed document). It is what
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As Metternich so often demonstrated, success in negotiation depends on the level of preparation. If you enter with vague notions as to what you want, you will find yourself shifting from position to position depending on what the other side brings to the table. You may drift to a position that seems appropriate but does not serve your interests in the end. Unless you carefully analyze what leverage you have, your maneuvers are likely to be counterproductive.
Everyone wants something without having any idea how to obtain it, and the really intriguing aspect of the situation is that nobody quite knows how to achieve what he desires. But because I know what I want and what the others are capable of I am completely prepared. —Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–1859)
Those who believe against the evidence that niceness breeds niceness in return are doomed to failure in any kind of negotiation, let alone in the game of life. People respond in a nice and conciliatory way only when it is in their interest and when they have to do so. Your goal is to create that imperative by making it painful for them to fight. If you ease up the pressure out of a desire to be conciliatory and gain their trust, you only give them an opening to procrastinate, deceive, and take advantage of your niceness. That is human nature.
The lesson is simple: by continuing to advance, by keeping up unrelenting pressure, you force your enemies to respond and ultimately to negotiate. If you advance a little further every day, attempts to delay negotiation only make their position weaker. You are demonstrating your resolve and determination, not through symbolic gestures but by administering real pain.
From the beginning de Gaulle ignored the odds and presented himself to one and all as the only man who could save France after its disgraceful surrender. He broadcast stirring speeches to France over the radio. He toured England and the United States, making a show of his sense of purpose, casting himself as a kind of latter-day Joan of Arc.
Churchill and Roosevelt cursed de Gaulle’s name, ruing the day they had let him take any position at all. They even talked about demoting him and forcing him out of the picture. But they always backed down, and in the end they gave him what he wanted. To do otherwise would mean a public scandal in delicate times and would disrupt their relations with the French underground. They would be demoting a man whom much of the public had come to revere.
It would be helpful to know beforehand which kind of negotiator you face. The difficulty is that skillful warriors will make themselves masters of disguise: at first they will seem sincere and friendly, then will reveal their warrior nature when it is too late.
In resolving a conflict with an enemy you do not know well, it is always best to protect yourself by playing the warrior yourself: negotiate while advancing. There will always be time to back off and fix things if you go too far. But if you fall prey to a warrior, you will be unable to recoup anything. In a world in which there are more and more warriors, you must be willing to wield the sword as well, even if you are a shopkeeper at heart.
Let us not consider ourselves victorious until the day after battle, nor defeated until four days later…. Let us always carry the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other, always ready to negotiate but negotiating only while advancing. —Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–1859)
The CIA funneled vast sums of money and matériel to the mujahideen. In neighboring Pakistan, President Zia ul-Haq viewed the invasion as a gift from heaven: having come to power a few years earlier in a military coup, and having recently earned worldwide condemnation by executing his prime minister, Zia saw a way to gain favor with both the United States and the Arab nations by allowing Pakistan to serve as a base for the mujahideen. The Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who had recently signed a controversial peace treaty with Israel, likewise saw a golden opportunity to shore up his Islamic
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People are drawn into gambles by their emotions: they see only the glittering prospects if they win and ignore the ominous consequences if they lose. Taking risks is essential; gambling is foolhardy. It can be years before you recover from a gamble, if you recover at all. The invasion of Afghanistan was a classic gamble. The Soviets were drawn in by the irresistible lure of possessing a client state in the region.
Yet the Soviets took their gamble and made their mess. Now, too late, they realized that the stakes had been raised: to pull out—to lose— would be a devastating blow to their prestige. It would mean the expansion of American interests and a cancerous insurgency on their border. Since they should never have invaded in the first place, they had no rational exit strategy.
How exactly will the engagement end, and where it will leave you? If the answers to those questions seem vague and full of speculation, if success seems all too alluring and failure somewhat dangerous, you are more than likely taking a gamble. Your emotions are leading you into a situation that could end up a quagmire.
Never let pride or concern for your reputation pull you farther into the morass; both will suffer far greater blows by your persistence. Short-term defeat is better than long-term disaster. Wisdom is knowing when to end.
For most of us, the conclusion of anything—a project, a campaign, an attempt at persuasion—represents a kind of wall: our work is done, and it is time to tally our gains and losses and move on. Lyndon Johnson looked at the world much differently: an ending was not like a wall but more like a door, leading to the next phase or battle. What mattered to him was not gaining a victory but where it left him, how it opened onto the next round.
Understand: in any venture, your tendency to think in terms of winning or losing, success or failure, is dangerous. Your mind comes to a stop, instead of looking ahead. Emotions dominate the moment: a smug elation in winning, dejection and bitterness in losing. What you need is a more fluid and strategic outlook on life. Nothing ever really ends; how you finish something will influence and even determine what you do next. Some victories are negative—they lead nowhere—and some defeats are positive, working as a wake-up call or lesson.
By understanding that any victory or defeat is temporary, and that what matters is what you do with them, you will find it easier to keep yourself balanced during the thousands of battles that life entails. The only real ending is death. Everything else is a transition.
The great prizefighter Jack Dempsey was once asked, “When you are about to hit a man, do you aim for his chin or his nose?” “Neither,” Dempsey replied. “I aim for the back of his head.” QUOTED IN THE MIND OF WAR, GRANT T. HAMMOND, 2001
Napoleon Bonaparte was perhaps the greatest general that ever lived. His strategies were marvels of combined flexibility and detail, and he planned all the way to the end. But after defeating the Austrians at Austerlitz and then the Prussians at Jena-Auerstadt—his two greatest victories—he imposed on these nations harsh terms intended to make them weakened satellites of France. Accordingly, in the years after the treaties, both countries harbored a powerful desire for revenge. They secretly built up their armies and waited for the day when Napoleon would be vulnerable. That moment came after
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Napoleon had allowed petty emotion—the desire to humiliate, revenge himself, and force obedience—to infect his strategy. Had he stayed focused on his long-term interests, he would have known that it was better to weaken Prussia and Austria psychologically rather than physically—to seduce them with apparently generous terms, transforming them into devoted allies instead of resentful satellites. Many in Prussia had initially seen Napoleon as a great liberator. Had he only kept Prussia as a happy ally, he would have survived the debacle in Russia and there would have been no Waterloo.
Learn the lesson well: brilliant plans and piled-up conquests are not enough. You can become the victim of your own success, letting victory seduce you into going too far, creating hard-bitten enemies, winning the battle but losing the political game after it. What you need is a strategic third eye: the ability to stay focused on the future while operating in the present and ending your actions in a way that will serve your interests for the next round of war.
The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz analyzed this problem, discussing what he called “the culminating point of victory”—the optimum moment to end the war. To recognize the culminating point of victory, you must know your own resources, how much you can handle, the morale of your soldiers, any signs of a slackening effort. Fail to recognize that moment, keep fighting past it, and you bring on yourself all kinds of unwanted consequences: exhaustion, escalating cycles of violence, and worse.
The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed later that year, granted Russia more-than-generous terms, but Japan solidified its position: the Russians moved out of Manchuria and Korea and left Port Arthur to Japan. Had the Japanese been carried along by their momentum, they would surely have passed the culminating point of victory and had all their gains wiped out by the inevitable counterattack.
On the other side of the scale, the Americans ended the Gulf War of 1991 too soon, allowing much of the Iraqi army to escape its encirclement. That left Saddam Hussein still strong enough to brutally put down the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings that erupted after his defeat in Kuwait and to hang on to power. The allied forces were held back from completing the victory by their desire not to appear to be beating up on an Arab nation and by the fear of a power vacuum in Iraq. Their failure to finish led to far greater violence in the long run.
CENTCOM’s lightning war [Desert Storm] was over. It had been billed as a 100-hour blitz, but three years later it was still an unfinished war. Recalled Gordon Brown, the foreign service officer who served as Schwarzkopf’s chief foreign policy advisor at CENTCOM,“We never did have a plan to terminate the war.” THE GENERAL’S WAR: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE CONFLICT IN THE GULF, MICHAEL R. GORDON AND GENERAL BERNARD E. TRAINOR, 1995
At the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, every last American fighting the Mexican army died— but they died heroically, refusing to surrender. The battle became a rallying cry—“Remember the Alamo!”—and an inspired American force under Sam Houston finally defeated the Mexicans for good. You
In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1874–1965
Dudley Clarke was always clear—and a little later it will be shewn to have been a pity that others were not equally so—that you can never, by deception, persuade an enemy of anything not according with his own expectations, which usually are not far removed from his hopes. It is only by using your knowledge of them that you are able to hypnotize him, not just into thinking, but doing what you want. MASTER OF DECEPTION, DAVID MURE, 1980
Of all the Allies’ generals, Hitler feared Patton the most. He had proven his military skill in North Africa and Sicily. He would be the perfect commander for the invasion.
The Allies knew that reports on the buying up of Pas de Calais maps in Switzerland would reach Hitler, and this would have its own realistic logic. As for the Montgomery sightings in Gibraltar, little did the German agents know they were seeing a look-alike, a man trained to act like the general. In the end the picture the Allies painted was so real to Hitler that well into July he believed in it, long after D-Day had actually happened. Through such subtle deceptions they had compelled him to keep his forces dispersed—perhaps the decisive factor in the success of the invasion.
Your false mirror must incorporate things that are visibly true. It must seem somewhat banal, like life itself. It can have contradictory elements, as the D-Day deception did; reality is often contradictory. In the end, like an Escher painting, you must blend truth and illusion to the point where they become indistinguishable, and your false mirror is taken for reality.
What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also. —Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.)
In essence, military deception is about subtly manipulating and distorting signs of our identity and purpose to control the enemy’s vision of reality and get them to act on their misperceptions. It is the art of managing appearances, and it can create a decisive advantage for whichever side uses it better.
In war, where the stakes are so high, there is no moral taint in using deception. It is simply an added weapon to create an advantage, much as some animals use camouflage and other tricks to help them survive. To refuse this weapon is a form of unilateral disarmament, giving the other side a clearer view of the field—an advantage that can translate into victory. And there is no morality or goodness in losing a war.
The appearance of weakness often brings out people’s aggressive side, making them drop strategy and prudence for an emotional and violent attack. When Napoleon found himself outnumbered and in a vulnerable strategic position before the Battle of Austerlitz, he deliberately showed signs of being panicked, indecisive, and scared. The enemy armies abandoned their strong position to attack him and rushed into a trap. It was his greatest victory.
In the battles of daily life, making people think they are better than you are—smarter, stronger, more competent—is often wise. It gives you breathing space to lay your plans, to manipulate. In a variation on this strategy, the front of virtue, honesty, and uprightness is often the perfect cover in a political world.
