The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

Lure him into thinking that one big offensive will ruin you; then bog that offensive down in a protracted war in which he loses valuable time and resources. A frustrated opponent exhausting energy on punches he cannot land will soon make mistakes and open himself up to a vicious counterattack.

Definition: When the enemy wants to take something and you yield it, it is termed “according with.”…In general, when going contrary to something merely solidifies it, it is better to accord with it in order to lead them to flaws. If the enemy wants to advance, be completely flexible and display weakness in order to induce an advance. If the enemy wants to withdraw, disperse and open an escape route for their retreat. If the enemy is relying upon a strong front, establish your own front lines far off, solidly assuming a defensive posture in order to observe their arrogance. If the enemy relies upon their awesomeness, be emptily respectful but substantially plan while awaiting their laxness. Draw them forward and cover them, release and capture them. Exploit their arrogance, capitalize on their laxity. SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY MING DYNASTY TEXT, QUOTED IN THE TAO OF

Kutusov saw the danger: the allies had advanced so many men into the gap in the French lines that they had left their own center exposed. He tried to turn back the last troops heading south, but it was too late. By 11:00 A.M. the French had retaken the heights. Worse, French troops had come up from the southwest to reinforce the southern position and prevent the allies from surrounding the French.

When the enemy finds itself in a predicament and wants to engage us in a decisive battle, wait; when it is advantageous for the enemy but not for us to fight, wait; when it is expedient to remain still and whoever moves first will fall into danger, wait; when two enemies are engaged in a fight that will result in defeat or injury, wait; when the enemy forces, though numerous, suffer from mistrust and tend to plot against one another, wait; when the enemy commander, though wise, is handicapped by some of his cohorts, wait. THE WILES OF WAR: 36 MILITARY STRATEGIES FROM ANCIENT CHINA, TRANSLATED BY SUN HAICHEN, 1991

Instead consider a third option, the Napoleonic way. At times you seem vulnerable and defensive, getting your opponents to disregard you as a threat, to lower their guard. When the moment is right and you sense an opening, you switch to the attack. Make your aggression controlled and your weakness a ploy to disguise your intentions.

By playing weak you can seduce your aggressive enemies to come at you full throttle. Then catch them off guard by switching to the offense when they least expect it. Mixing offense and defense in this fluid fashion, you will stay one step ahead of your inflexible opponents. The best blows are the ones they never see coming.

Roosevelt in turn traveled the country, speaking on his ideas for getting America out of the Depression. He didn’t give many specifics, nor did he respond to Hoover’s attacks directly—but he radiated confidence and ability. Hoover meanwhile seemed shrill and aggressive. The Depression would probably have doomed him to defeat whatever he did, but he lost far bigger than expected: the size of Roosevelt’s victory—nearly an electoral sweep—surprised one and all.

Over the next few years, this pattern repeatedly recurred. Roosevelt would face resistance: The Supreme Court, say, would overturn his programs, and enemies on all sides (Senator Huey Long and labor leader John L. Lewis on the left, Father Charles Coughlin and wealthy businessmen on the right) would launch hostile campaigns in the press. 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. Eventually, he knew, people would tire of these endless attacks and accusations, particularly because, by refusing to reply to them, he made them inevitably one-sided.

THE WILES OF WAR: 36 MILITARY STRATEGIES FROM ANCIENT CHINA, TRANSLATED BY SUN HAICHEN, 1991

Let events come to you, saving valuable time and energy for those brief moments when you blaze with the counterattack.

First, once the aggressor went on the attack, he had no more surprises in store—the defender could clearly see his strategy and take protective action. Second, if the defender could somehow turn back this initial attack, the aggressor would be left in a weak position; his army was disorganized and exhausted.

Time can also be “catching.” In a large-scale battle, when the enemy is restless and trying to bring a quick conclusion to the battle, pay no attention. Instead, try to pretend that you are calm and quiet with no urgent need to end the battle. The enemy will then be affected by your calm and easy attitude and become less alert. When this “catching” occurs, quickly execute a strong attack to defeat the enemy…. There is also a concept called “making one drunk,” which is similar to the notion of “catching.” You can make your opponent feel bored, carefree, or feeble spirited. You should study these matters well. THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS, MIYAMOTO MUSASHI, 1584–1645

Sun Pin, hearing of the approaching Wei cavalry and calculating how fast they were moving, retreated and stationed the Qi army in a narrow pass in the mountains. He had a large tree cut down and stripped of its bark, then wrote on the bare log, “The general of Wei will die at this tree.” He set the log in the path of the pursuing Wei army, then hid archers on both sides of the pass. In the middle of the night, the Wei general, at the head of his cavalry, reached the place where the log blocked the road. Something was written on it; he ordered a torch lit to read it. The torchlight was the signal and the lure: the Qi archers rained arrows on the trapped Wei horsemen. The Wei general, realizing he had been tricked, killed himself.

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.

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. Your

Whatever his strength might be, it is actually a potential weakness, simply because he relies on it: neutralize it and he is vulnerable.

Perhaps your reputation is lower than your opponent’s; that just means you have less to lose. Sling mud—some of it will stick, and gradually your enemy will sink to your level. Always find ways to turn your weakness to advantage.

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. Without overt manipulation on your part, you can control your opponents’ minds.

So mix things up. Watch the situation and make it impossible for your opponents to predict what you will do.

” War is a constant illustration of Murphy’s Law: if anything can go wrong, it will. But when you retreat, when you exchange space for time, you are making Murphy’s Law work for you.

strategist in life, you must follow the path of Alexander. First, clarify your life—decipher your own personal riddle—by determining what it is you are destined to achieve, the direction in which your skills and talents seem to push you. Visualize yourself fulfilling this destiny in glorious detail.

The first step was to think beyond the immediate battle. Supposing you won victory, where would it leave you—better off or worse?

Individual battles matter only in the way they set up the next ones down the line; an army can even deliberately lose a battle as part of a long-term plan.

Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent of all acts of stupidity.

The enemy was just one part of the picture; the strategist also had to anticipate the reactions of allies and neighboring states—any missteps with them and the entire plan could unravel. He had to imagine the peace after the war. He had to know what his army was capable of over time and ask no more of it than that. He had to be realistic. His mind had to expand to meet the complexities of the task—and all this before a single blow was exchanged.

Having clear objectives was crucial to Napoleon. He visualized his goals in intense detail—at the beginning of a campaign, he could see its last battle clearly in his mind.

Do not be afraid to be bold. In the large sense, you are working out for yourself what Alexander experienced as his destiny and what Friedrich Nietzsche called your “life’s task”—the thing toward which your natural leanings and aptitudes, talents and desires, seem to point you. Assigning yourself a life task will inspire and guide you.

Too many wars and battles drag on because neither side knows how to strike at the other’s roots. As a grand strategist, you must expand your vision not only far and wide but under. Think hard, dig deep, do not take appearances for reality. Uncover the roots of the trouble and you can strategize to sever them, ending the war or problem with finality.

He could pretend to take the extra shots that the producer wanted, letting the producer feel powerful without risk to the end result. Hitchcock did the same with actors: instead of telling them directly what to do, he would infect them with the emotion he wanted—fear, anger, desire—by the way he treated them on set.

not of the battle but of the campaign, your first step is crucial. It should usually be deceptively soft and indirect, making it harder to read. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II was a devastating surprise, but as the first move of a campaign it was a disaster.

Always pay attention to the first step of the campaign. It sets the tempo, determines the enemy’s mind-set, and launches you in a direction that had better be the right one.

Understand: if you let narcissism act as a screen between you and other people, you will misread them and your strategies will misfire. You must be aware of this and struggle to see others dispassionately. Every individual is like an alien culture. You must get inside his or her way of thinking, not as an exercise in sensitivity but out of strategic necessity. Only by knowing your enemies can you ever hope to vanquish them.

RALPH D. SAWYER, THE TAO OF SPYCRAFT, 1998

Metternich’s modus operandi was the following: he would quietly study his enemies from behind his smiling, elegant exterior, his own apparent relaxation inviting them to open up. In his very first meeting with Napoleon, he saw a man straining to impress: he noticed that the bantam Napoleon walked on his toes, to look taller, and struggled to suppress his Corsican accent.

It would come from clear knowledge of those around you—the ability to read people like a book. Given that knowledge, you could distinguish friend from foe, smoking out snakes in the grass. You could anticipate your enemies’ malice, pierce their strategies, and take defensive action. Their transparency would reveal to you the emotions they could least control. Armed with that knowledge, you could make them tumble into traps and destroy them.

Understand: day in and day out, people emit signals that reveal their intentions and deepest desires. If we do not pick them up, it is because we are not paying attention. The reason for this is simple: we are usually locked up in our own worlds, listening to our internal monologues, obsessed with ourselves and with satisfying our own egos. Like William Macnaghten, we tend to see other people merely as reflections of ourselves. To the extent that you can drop your self-interest and see people for who they are, divorced from your desires, you will become more sensitive to their signals.

The power taught by the Shinkage school—the same power possessed by Prince Metternich—was the ability to let go of one’s ego, to submerge oneself temporarily in the other person’s mind. You will be amazed at how much you can pick up about people if you can shut off your incessant interior monologue, empty your thoughts, and anchor yourself in the moment. The details you now see give you unfiltered information from which you can put together an accurate picture of people’s weaknesses and desires. Be particularly attentive to their eyes: it takes a lot of effort to hide the eyes’ message about a person’s state of mind.

As Williams demonstrates, the ability to mimic and get inside your enemies’ thought patterns depends on collecting as much information on them as you can, analyzing their past behavior for its habitual patterns, and being alert to the signs they give off in the present.

Do not ask too many questions; the trick is to get people to relax and open up without prodding, shadowing them so quietly that they never guess what you’re really up to.

Be alert, for instance, to the phenomenon of the masked opposite: when someone strikingly manifests a particular personality trait, that trait may well be a cover-up. The oily character who is ingratiatingly effusive with flattery may be hiding hostility and ill will; the aggressive bully may be hiding insecurity; the moralizer may be making a show of purity to hide nefarious desires. Whether they’re throwing dust in your eyes or their own—they may be trying to convince themselves that they’re not what they’re afraid they are—the opposite trait lurks below the surface.

Making people emotional, pushing their buttons, will touch some deep part of their nature. Either they will let slip some truth about themselves or they will put on a mask that you, in the laboratory situation you have created, will be able to peer behind.

The quality of the information you gather on your enemies is more important than the quantity. A single but crucial nugget can be the key to their destruction.

An informal network is the best—a group of allies recruited over time to be your eyes and ears. Try to make friends with people at or near the source of information on your rival; one well-placed friend will yield far more than will a handful of paid spies.

Always look for internal spies, people in the enemy camp who are dissatisfied and have an ax to grind. Turn them to your purposes and they will give you better information than any infiltrator you sneak in from outside.

Finally, the enemy you are dealing with is not an inanimate object that will simply respond in an expected manner to your strategies. Your enemies are constantly changing and adapting to what you are doing.

Your strategies must take this possibility into account; your knowledge of the enemy must be not just deep but timely.

While those around you remain defensive and immobile, you surprise them with sudden and decisive action, forcing them to act before they are ready. They cannot respond, as they usually do, by being elusive or cautious. They will most likely become emotional and react imprudently. You have breached their defenses, and if you keep up the pressure and hit them again with something unexpected, you will send them into a kind of downward psychological spiral—pushing them into mistakes, which further deepens their confusion, and so the cycle goes on.

The former U.S. secretary of state would often take his time when beginning diplomatic negotiations, lulling the other side with bland banter. Then, with the deadline for the end of the talks approaching, he would suddenly hit them with a list of demands. Without enough time to process what was happening, they became prone to giving in or to becoming emotional and making mistakes. This was Kissinger’s version of slow-slow-quick-quick.

The success of this strategy depends on three things: a group that is mobile (often, the smaller the better), superior coordination between the parts, and the ability to send orders quickly up and down the chain of command. Do not depend on technology to accomplish this.

moves quickly has higher morale. Velocity creates a sense of vitality. Moving with speed means there is less time for you and your army to make mistakes. It also creates a bandwagon effect: more and more people admiring your boldness, will decide to join forces with you.