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Strategic warriors operate much differently. They think ahead toward their long-term goals, decide which fights to avoid and which are inevitable, know how to control and channel their emotions. When forced to fight, they do so with indirection and subtle maneuver, making their manipulations hard to trace. In this way they can maintain the peaceful exterior so cherished in these political times.
Perhaps the greatest strategist of them all was Sun-tzu, author of the ancient Chinese classic The Art of War. In his book, written probably the fourth century B.C., can be found traces of almost all the strategic patterns and principles later developed over the course of centuries. But what connects them, in fact what constitutes the art of war itself in Sun-tzu’s eyes, is the ideal of winning without bloodshed.
them. In strategy you must see your emotional responses to events as a kind of disease that must be remedied.
When you have success, be extra wary. When you are angry, take no action. When you are fearful, know you are going to exaggerate the dangers you face. War demands the utmost in realism, seeing things as they are. The more you can limit or compensate for your emotional responses, the closer you will come to this ideal.
A general has led his troops to defeat, lives have been wasted, and that is how history will judge him. You must strive to apply this ruthless standard in your daily life, judging people by the results of their actions, the deeds that can be seen and measured, the maneuvers they have used to gain power. What
As a corollary to this, look at everything other people do as a strategic maneuver, an attempt to gain victory. People who accuse you of being unfair, for example, who try to make you feel guilty, who talk about justice and morality, are trying to gain an advantage on the chessboard.
Everything in life can be taken away from you and generally will be at some point. Your wealth vanishes, the latest gadgetry suddenly becomes passé, your allies desert you. But if your mind is armed with the art of war, there is no power that can take that away.
You may imagine you are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being tactical. To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into. Keeping your overall goals in mind, it becomes much easier to decide when to fight and when to walk away.
Every day you face battles—that is the reality for all creatures in their struggle to survive. But the greatest battle of all is with yourself—your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end. You must declare unceasing war on yourself. As a warrior in life, you welcome combat and conflict as ways to prove yourself, to better your skills, to gain courage, confidence, and experience. Instead of repressing your doubts and fears, you must face them down, do battle with them.
war and all strategy. A mind that is easily overwhelmed by emotion, that is rooted in the past instead of the present, that cannot see the world with clarity and urgency, will create strategies that will always miss the mark. To become a true strategist, you must take three steps. First, become aware of the weakness and illness that can take hold of the mind, warping its strategic powers. Second, declare a kind of war on yourself to make yourself move forward. Third, wage ruthless and continual battle on the enemies within you by applying certain strategies.
As people who stand in your way, who represent what you loathe, people to react against, they are a source of energy.
As Xenophon said, your obstacles are not rivers or mountains or other people; your obstacle is yourself. If you feel lost and confused, if you lose your sense of direction, if you cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, you have only yourself to blame.
The more clearly you recognize who you do not want to be, then, the clearer your sense of identity and purpose will be. Without a sense of that polarity, without an enemy to react against, you are as lost as the Greek mercenaries.
radical. The first instinct of most outsiders who attain power is to become insiders—life on the outside is hard—but in doing so they lose their identity, their difference, the thing that makes them stand out in the public eye.
Your enemies, those you stand sharply against, will help you to forge a support base that will not desert you.
Instead see yourself as a fighter, an outsider surrounded by enemies. Constant battle will keep you strong and alert. It will help to define what you believe in, both for yourself and for others.
Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared. Victory over your enemies will bring you a more lasting popularity.
Don’t depend on the enemy not coming; depend rather on being ready for him.
Your first task as a strategist is to widen your concept of the enemy, to include in that group those who are working against you, thwarting you, even in subtle ways.
You can stand back and wait and see or you can take action, whether aggressive or just evasive, to avoid the worst. You can even work to turn this enemy into a friend. But whatever you do, do not be the naïve victim.
Arm yourself with prudence, and never completely lay down your arms, not even for friends.
It might be supposed that the peaceful coast people would be found to be superior in moral qualities to their more warlike neighbors, but the contrary is the case. In almost all respects the advantage lies with the warlike tribes. Their houses are better built, larger, and cleaner; their domestic morality is superior; they are physically stronger, are braver, and physically and mentally more active and in general are more trustworthy. But, above all, their social organization is firmer and more efficient because their respect for and obedience to their chiefs and their loyalty to their
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busily. The point is not to mistrust all friendly gestures but to notice them. Register any change in the emotional temperature: unusual chumminess, a new desire to exchange confidences, excessive praise of you to third parties, the desire for an alliance that may make more sense for the other person than for you.
Follow David’s example: say or do something that can be read in more than one way, that may be superficially polite but that could also indicate a slight coolness on your part or be seen as a subtle insult. A friend may wonder but will let it pass. The secret enemy, though, will react with anger. Any strong emotion and you will know that there’s something boiling under the surface.
Get them emotional; people are usually more sincere when they argue. If you pick an argument with someone and he keeps on mimicking your ideas, you may be dealing with a chameleon, a particularly dangerous type. Beware of people who hide behind a façade of vague abstractions and impartiality: no one is impartial. A sharply worded question, an opinion designed to offend, will make them react and take sides.
Adopt the method of Cortés: if friends or followers whom you suspect of ulterior motives suggest something subtly hostile, or against your interests, or simply odd, avoid the temptation to react, to say no, to get angry, or even to ask questions. Go along, or seem to turn a blind eye: your enemies will soon go further, showing more of their hand. Now you have them in sight, and you can attack.
In his 1960s campaign to desegregate Chicago’s public-school system, he focused on the superintendent of schools, knowing full well that this man would try to shift the blame upward. By taking repeated hits at the superintendent, he was able to publicize his struggle, and it became impossible for the man to hide. Eventually those behind him had to come to his aid, exposing themselves in the process.
Avoidance of conflict becomes a habit, and you lose the taste for battle. Feeling guilty is pointless; it is not your fault you have enemies. Feeling wronged or victimized is equally futile. In both cases you are looking inward, concentrating on yourself and your feelings. Instead of internalizing a bad situation, externalize it and face your enemy.
Those children who seek to avoid conflict at all cost, or those who have overprotective parents, end up handicapped socially and mentally. The same is true of adults: it is through your battles with others that you learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to protect yourself.
A tough opponent will bring out the best in you. And the bigger the opponent, the greater your reward, even in defeat. It is better to lose to a worthy opponent than to squash some harmless foe. You will gain sympathy and respect, building support for your next fight.
In using your enemies to rally your troops, polarize them as far as possible: they will fight the more fiercely when they feel a little hatred.
Tight corners spell death. Having enemies gives you options. You can play them off against each other, make one a friend as a way of attacking the other, on and on. Without enemies you will not know how or where to maneuver, and you will lose a sense of your limits, of how far you can go.
You will have a tendency to want to conciliate and compromise with them. The reason is that such types are often brilliant deceivers who see the strategic value in charm or in seeming to allow you plenty of space, but actually their desires have no limit, and they are simply trying to disarm you.
Once you suspect you are dealing with a Napoleon, do not lay down your arms or entrust them to someone else. You are the last line of your own defense.
Always keep the search for and use of enemies under control. It is clarity you want, not paranoia.
cautious. Keep your suspicions to yourself, so that if you’re wrong, no one will know. Also, beware of polarizing people so completely that you cannot back off.
retreat. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a master polarizer, always looking to draw a line between himself and his enemies. Once he had made that line clear enough, though, he backed off, which made him look like a conciliator, a man of peace who occasionally went to war.
You must consciously wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment. Be ruthless on yourself; do not repeat the same tired methods. Sometimes you must force yourself to strike out in new directions, even if they involve risk.
yourself. What limits individuals as well as nations is the inability to confront reality, to see things for what they are. As we grow older, we become more rooted in the past. Habit takes over. Something that has worked for us before becomes a doctrine, a shell to protect us from reality. Repetition replaces creativity. We rarely realize we’re doing this, because it is almost impossible for us to see it happening in our own minds.
Never take it for granted that your past successes will continue into the future. Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today. You must cut yourself loose from the past and open your eyes to the present. Your tendency to fight the last war may lead to your final war.
By refreshing your mind and techniques as you continue to fight your opponent, you will find an appropriate rhythm-timing with which to defeat him. Whenever you and your opponent become stagnant, you must immediately employ a different method of dealing with him in order to overcome him.
Miyamoto Musashi, author of The Book of Five Rings, won all his duels for one reason: in each instance he adapted his strategy to his opponent and to the circumstances of the moment.
instead of responding to the moment, they relied on training, technology, and what had worked before.
The problem is that we imagine that knowledge is what was lacking: if only we had known more, if only we had thought it through more thoroughly. That is precisely the wrong approach. What makes us go astray in the first place is that we are unattuned to the present moment, insensitive to the circumstances. We are listening to our own thoughts, reacting to things that happened in the past, applying theories and ideas that we digested long ago but that have nothing to do with our predicament in the present.
The better we can adapt our thoughts to changing circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be. The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response.
Think of the mind as a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater its energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences (whether traumas or successes), and preconceived notions are like boulders or mud in this river, settling and hardening there and damming it up. The river stops moving; stagnation sets in. You must wage constant war on this tendency in the mind.
Your only principle, similarly, should be to have no principles. To believe that strategy has inexorable laws or timeless rules is to take up a rigid, static position that will be your undoing.
Be brutal with the past, with tradition, with the old ways of doing things. Declare war on sacred cows and voices of convention in your own head.
When you are faced with a new situation, it is often best to imagine that you know nothing and that you need to start learning all over again. Clearing your head of everything you thought you knew, even your most cherished ideas, will give you the mental space to be educated by your present experience—the best school of all.
mind. During the Vietnam War, the great North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap had a simple rule of thumb: after a successful campaign, he would convince himself that it had actually been a failure. As a result he never got drunk on his success, and he never repeated the same strategy in the next battle. Rather he had to think through each situation anew.
