The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

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.

The problem faced by those of us who live in societies of abundance is that we lose a sense of limit. We are carefully shielded from death and can pass months, even years, without contemplating it. We imagine endless time at our disposal and slowly drift further from reality; we imagine endless energy to draw on, thinking we can get what we want simply by trying harder. We start to see everything as limitless—the goodwill of friends, the possibility of wealth and fame. A few more classes and books and we can extend our talents and skills to the point where we become different people. Technology can make anything achievable.

Abundance makes us rich in dreams, for in dreams there are no limits. But it m...

In life you must be a warrior, and war requires realism.

While others may find beauty in endless dreams, warriors find it in reality, in awareness of limits, in making the most of what they have.

Their awareness that their days are numbered—that they could die at any time—grounds them in reality.

There are things they can never do, talents they will never have, lofty goals they will never reach; that hardly bothers them. Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively.

Armies that seem to have the edge in money, resources, and firepower tend to be predictable. Relying on their equipment instead of on knowledge and strategy, they grow mentally lazy.

If you and your enemy are equals, getting hold of more weaponry matters less than making better use of what you have.

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 ha...

Even if you have the technology, fight the peasant’s war.

Wise generals through the ages, then, have learned to begin by examining the means they have at hand and then to develop their strategy out of those tools.

Ground yourself not in dreams and plans but in reality: think of your own skills, any political advantage you might have, the morale of your troops, how creatively you can use the means at your disposal.

Dreaming first of what you want and then trying to find the means to reach it is a recipe for exhaustion, waste, and defeat.

Do not mistake cheapness for perfect economy—armies have failed by spending too little as often as by spending too much.

In the end the cost of trying to win on the cheap wound up punitively expensive.

Perfect economy, then, does not mean hoarding your resources. That is not economy but stinginess—deadly in war. Perfect economy means finding a golden mean, a level at which your blows count but do not wear you out.

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.

Oddly enough, knowing your limits will expand your limits; getting the most out of what you have will let you have more.

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.

His superiority lay in the fluidity of his thinking: he did not conceive war in mutually exclusive terms of defense and offense. In his mind they were inextricably linked: a defensive position was the perfect way to disguise an offensive maneuver, a counterattack; an offensive maneuver was often the best way to defend a weak position.

In a dangerous moment, when those around you see only doom and the need to retreat, that is when you smell an opportunity.

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.)

Roosevelt would retreat, ceding the spotlight. In his absence the attacks would seem to pick up steam, and his advisers would panic—but Roosevelt was just biding his time.

In the periods when Roosevelt was silent, his opponents’ attacks would grow, and grow more shrill—but that only gave him material he could use later, taking advantage of their hysteria to make them ridiculous.

the army must prefer stillness to movement.

Therefore the wise man treasures stillness. By keeping still, he can dispel temerity and cope with the temerarious enemy.

Now he let his opponents make the first move: whether by attacking him or by detailing their own positions, they would expose themselves, giving him openings to use their own words against them later on.

(nothing is more infuriating than engaging with someone and getting no response)

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.

It is easy to give in to impatience and make the first move, but there is more strength in holding back, patiently letting the other person make the play. That inner strength will almost always prevail over outward aggression.

Make jujitsu your style in almost everything you do: it is your way of responding to aggression in everyday life, your way of facing circumstances. Let events come to you, saving valuable time and energy for those brief moments when you blaze with the counterattack.

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)

It was the strategy of choice of Napoleon Bonaparte, T. E. Lawrence, Erwin Rommel, and Mao Tse-tung.

We are inherently impatient creatures. We find it hard to wait; we want our desires to be satisfied as quickly as possible. This is a tremendous weakness, for it means that in any given situation we often commit ourselves without enough thought.

The first step in mastering the counterattack is to master yourself, and particularly the tendency to grow emotional in conflict.

You, too, should look for the emotion that your enemies are least able to manage, then bring it to the surface. With a little work on your part, they will lay themselves open to your counterattack.

Edgar A. Guest’s “It Couldn’t Be Done”: 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 our own time, the family therapist Jay Haley has observed that for many difficult people acting out is a strategy—a method of control.

But Haley discovered that if you encourage their difficult behavior, agree with their paranoid ideas, and push them to go further, you turn the dynamic around. This is not what they want or expect; now they’re doing what you want, which takes the fun out of it.

Whenever you find yourself on the defensive and in trouble, the greatest danger is the impulse to overreact.

A key principle of counterattack is never to see a situation as hopeless. No matter how strong your enemies seem, they have vulnerabilities you can prey upon and use to develop a counterattack.

If your opponent’s advantage comes from a superior style of fighting, the best way to neutralize it is to learn from it, adapting it to your own purposes.

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.

Difficulties with other people are inevitable; you must be willing to defend yourself and sometimes to take the offensive. The modern dilemma is that taking the offensive is unacceptable today—attack and your reputation will suffer, you will find yourself politically isolated, and you will create enemies and resistance. The counterattack is the answer. Let your enemy make the first move, then play the victim.

Fighting them head-on is generally foolish; fighting is what they are good at, and they are unscrupulous to boot. You will probably lose.

First, people are more likely to attack you if they see you as weak or vulnerable. Second, they cannot know for sure that you’re weak; they depend on the signs you give out, through your behavior both present and past. Third, they are after easy victories, quick and bloodless. That is why they prey on the vulnerable and weak.

This is generally done by taking some visible action that will confuse aggressors and make them think they have misread you: you may indeed be vulnerable, but they are not sure.

Action has much more credibility than mere threatening or fiery words; hitting back, for instance, even in some small, symbolic way, will show that you mean what you say.