The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

supply. It may take several battles to end the war, as each side works to dominate the key positions that will give it control of the theater, but military leaders must try to end it as quickly as possible. The longer it drags on, the more the army’s resources are stretched to a breaking point where the ability to fight collapses. Soldiers’ morale declines with time as well. As with any human activity, however, this positive, orderly side generates a negative, shadow side that contains its own form of power and reverse logic. The shadow side is guerrilla warfare. The rudiments of guerrilla warfare originated thousands of years ago, when smaller nations found themselves invaded by more powerful neighbors; to survive, their armies were forced to flee the invader, for any direct engagement would have destroyed them. It soon became clear that the longer they fled and eluded battle, the more they ruined the enemy’s strategies and confused it by not conforming to the usual logic of engagement.