The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

Battles are in fact dramatic illusions, short moments in the larger flow of events, which is fluid, dynamic, and susceptible to alteration through careful strategy. This way of thinking finds no honor or morality in wasting time, energy, and lives in battles. Instead wars of attrition are seen as lazy, reflecting the primitive human tendency to fight back reactively, without thinking.

Think of weakening your enemies as ripening them like grain, ready to be cut down at the right moment.

Craft a plan with branches. Maneuver warfare depends on planning, and the plan has to be right.

A plan with branches lets you outmaneuver your enemy because your responses to changing circumstances are faster and more rational.

Give yourself room to maneuver. You cannot be mobile, you cannot maneuver freely, if you put yourself in cramped spaces or tie yourself down to positions that do not allow you to move.

Consider the ability to move and keeping open more options than your enemy has as more important than hold...

Give your enemy dilemmas, not problems. Most of your opponents are likely to be clever and resourceful; if your maneuvers simply present them with a problem, they will inevitably solve it. But a dilemma is different: whatever they do, however they respond—retreat, advance, stay still—they are still in trouble.

Create maximum disorder. Your enemy depends on being able to read you, to get some sense of your intentions. The goal of your maneuvers should be to make that impossible, to send the enemy on a wild-goose chase for meaningless information, to create ambiguity as to which way you are going to jump. The more you break down people’s ability to reason about you, the more disorder you inject into their system.

the highest and purest application of maneuver theory is to preempt the enemy, that is, to disarm or neutralize him before the fight.

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:

You do not get lost in this maze of analysis but rather use it to formulate a free-flowing plan with branches, one that puts you in positions with the possibility of maneuver. You keep things loose and adjustable. Any chaos that comes your way is channeled toward the enemy.

Is this the strategic approach to winning i n the turns?

In practicing this policy, you will come to understand Napoleon’s dictum that luck is something you create.

in Roosevelt’s case his initial, presidential, bipartisan pose—that leaves you with open options and room to maneuver. Then let your enemies show their direction. Once they commit to a position, let them hold it—in fact, let them trumpet it. Now that they are fixed in place, maneuver to the side that will crowd them, leaving them only bad options. By waiting to make this maneuver until the last six weeks of the presidential race, Roosevelt both denied the Republicans any time to adjust and kept his own strident appeal from wearing thin.

any political battle, the best way to stake out a position is to draw a sharp contrast with the other side. If you have to resort to speeches to make this contrast, you are on shaky ground: people distrust words. Insisting that you are strong or well qualified rings as self-promotion. Instead make the opposing side talk and take the first move.

Tactic

Never say you are strong, show you are, by making a contrast between yourself and your inconsistent or moderate opponents.

Tactic

The greatest power you can have in any conflict is the ability to confuse your opponent about your intentions. Confused opponents do not know how or where to defend themselves; hit them with a surprise attack and they are pushed off balance and fall. To accomplish this you must maneuver with just one purpose: to keep them guessing.

Tactic

the Boyd cycle. Named for Col. John Boyd, the term refers to the understanding that war consists of the repeated cycle of observation, orientation, decision, and action.

Tactic

THE ART OF MANEUVER, ROBERT R. LEON-HARD, 1991

Possible source for winning in the turns

People will always try to take from you in negotiation what they could not get from you in battle or direct confrontation. They will even use appeals to fairness and morality as a cover to advance their position. Do not be taken in: negotiation is about maneuvering for power or placement, and you must always put yourself in the kind of strong position that makes it impossible for the other side to nibble away at you during your talks.

Earning people’s trust and confidence is not a moral issue but a strategic one: sometimes it is necessary, sometimes it isn’t. People will break their word if it serves their interests, and they will find any moral or legal excuse to justify their moves, sometimes to themselves as well as to others.

Before anything else you must anchor yourself by determining with utmost clarity your long-term goals and the leverage you have for reaching them. That clarity will keep you patient and calm. It will also let you toss people meaningless concessions that seem generous but actually come cheap, for they do not hurt your real goals.

Tactic

often experience proves this logic to be wrong: over time, the people you treat nicely will take you for granted. They will see you as weak and exploitable. Being generous does not elicit gratitude but creates either a spoiled child or someone who resents behavior perceived as charity.

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

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.

Warriors use negotiations as a way to gain time and a stronger position. Shopkeepers operate on the principle that it is more important to establish trust, to moderate each side’s demands and come to a mutually satisfying settlement.

the problem arises when shopkeepers assume they are dealing with another shopkeeper only to find they are facing a warrior.

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)

there is a danger in advancing too far, taking too much, to the point where you create an embittered enemy who will work for revenge.

Your purpose in any settlement you negotiate is never to satisfy greed or to punish the other side but to secure your own interests.

You are judged in this world by how well you bring things to an end.

The art of ending things well is knowing when to stop, never going so far that you exhaust yourself or create bitter enemies that embroil you in conflict in the future. It also entails ending on the right note, with energy and flair.

The great German general Erwin Rommel once made a distinction between a gamble and a risk. Both cases involve an action with only a chance of success, a chance that is heightened by acting with boldness. The difference is that with a risk, if you lose, you can recover: your reputation will suffer no long-term damage, your resources will not be depleted, and you can return to your original position with acceptable losses. With a gamble, on the other hand, defeat can lead to a slew of problems that are likely to spiral out of control.

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.

Persuasion

The only real ending is death. Everything else is a transition.

Then there are those who bring whatever they do to a conclusion, either because they have to or because they can manage the effort. But they cross the finish line with distinctly less enthusiasm and energy than they had starting out. This mars the end of the campaign. Because they are impatient to finish, the ending seems hurried and patched together. And it leaves other people feeling slightly unsatisfied;

The third group comprises those who understand a primary law of power and strategy: the end of something—a project, a campaign, a conversation—has inordinate importance for people. It resonates in the mind. A war can begin with great fanfare and can bring many victories, but if it ends badly, that is all anyone remembers.

Imagine that everything you do has a moment of perfection and fruition. Your goal is to end your project there, at such a peak.

Endings in purely social relationships demand a sense of the culminating point as much as those in war. A conversation or story that goes on too long always ends badly. Overstaying your welcome, boring people with your presence, is the deepest failing: you should leave them wanting more of you, not less.

Endi gs - great point

Finally, since any ending is a kind of beginning of the next phase, it is often wise strategy to end on an ambivalent note. If you are reconciling with an enemy after a fight, subtly hint that you still have a residue of doubt—that the other side must still prove itself to you.

People’s perceptions are filtered through their emotions; they tend to interpret the world according to what they want to see. Feed their expectations, manufacture a reality to match their desires, and they will fool themselves.

In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1874–1965

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,

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.

in the social realm, we learn from an early age to use deception—we tell others what they want to hear, concealing our real thoughts, hedging with the truth, misleading to make a better impression. Many of these deceptions are entirely unconscious.

Reality check - we all use deception from an early age

Since appearances are critical and deception is inevitable, what you want is to elevate your game—to make your deceptions more conscious and skillful. You need the power to cloak your maneuvers, to keep people off balance by controlling the perceptions they have of you and the signs you give out.

ApproACH to politics