This is a full reprint in HTML of the fifth chapter (Chapter 5) of the second part (Part II) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

People naturally have their own agendas in the groups you lead. If you’re too authoritarian they will resent you, and if you’re too lax they will revert doing their own interests. You need a chain of command where people buy into your vision and follow your lead naturally. The overall strategic vision must come from you and you alone. But make the group feel involved in the decision making. Take their good ideas, deflect the bad ones and if necessary make minor changes to appease the most political ones.

Part II

Chapter 5

AVOID THE SNARES OF GROUPTHINK

Avoid groupthink: Command-and-control

The problem in leading any group is that people inevitably have their own agendas. If you are too authoritarian, they will resent you and rebel in silent ways. If you are too easygoing, they will revert to their natural selfishness and you will lose control. You have to create a chain of command in which people do not feel constrained by your influence yet follow your lead. Put the right people in place--people who will enact the spirit of your ideas without being automatons. 

Make your commands clear and inspiring, focusing attention on the team, not the leader. Create a sense of participation, but do not fall into Groupthink--the irrationality of collective decision making. Make yourself look like a paragon of fairness, but never relinquish unity of command.

How very different is the cohesion between that of an army rallying around one flag carried into battle at the personal command of one general and that of an allied military force extending 50 or 100 leagues, or even on different sides of the theater! In the first case, cohesion is at its strongest and unity at its closest. In the second case, the unity is very remote, often consisting of no more than a shared political intention, and therefore only scanty and imperfect, while the cohesion of the parts is mostly weak and often no more than an illusion.

ON WAR, CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

THE BROKEN CHAIN

World War I began in August 1914, and by the end of that year, all along the Western Front, the British and French were caught in a deadly stalemate with the Germans. Meanwhile, though, on the Eastern Front, Germany was badly beating the Russians, allies of Britain and France. Britain’s military leaders had to try a new strategy, and their plan, backed by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and others, was to stage an attack on Gallipoli, a peninsula on Turkey’s
Dardanelles Strait. Turkey was an ally of Germany’s, and the Dardanelles was the gateway to Constantinople, the Turkish capital (present-day Istanbul). If the Allies could take Gallipoli, Constantinople would follow, and Turkey would have to leave the war. In addition, using bases in Turkey and the Balkans, the Allies could attack Germany from the southeast, dividing its armies and weakening its ability to fight on the Western Front. They would also have a clear supply line to Russia. Victory at Gallipoli would change the course of the war.

The plan was approved, and in March 1915, General Sir Ian Hamilton was named to lead the campaign. Hamilton, at sixty-two, was an able strategist and an experienced commander. He and Churchill felt certain that their forces, including Australians and New Zealanders, would out-match the Turks.

Churchill’s orders were simple: take Constantinople. He left the details to the general.

Hamilton’s plan was to land at three points on the southwestern tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, secure the beaches, and sweep north. The landings took place on April 27. From the beginning almost everything went wrong: the army’s maps were inaccurate, its troops landed in the wrong places, the beaches were much narrower than expected. Worst of all, the Turks fought back unexpectedly fiercely and well. At the end of the first day, most of the Allies’ 70,000 men had landed, but they were unable to advance beyond the beaches, where the Turks would hold them pinned down for several weeks. It was another stalemate; Gallipoli had become a disaster.

All seemed lost, but in June, Churchill convinced the government to send more troops and Hamilton devised a new plan. He would land 20,000 men at Suvla Bay, some twenty miles to the north. Suvla was a vulnerable target: it had a large harbor, the terrain was low-lying and easy, and it was defended by only a handful of Turks. An invasion here would force the Turks to divide their forces,
freeing up the Allied armies to the south. The stalemate would be broken, and Gallipoli would fall.

To command the Suvla operation Hamilton was forced to accept the most senior Englishman available for the job, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford. Under him, Major General Frederick Hammersley would lead the Eleventh Division. Neither of these men was Hamilton’s first choice.

Stopford, a sixty-one-year-old military teacher, had never led troops in war and saw artillery bombardment as the only way to win a battle; he was also in poor health. Hammersley, for his part, had suffered a nervous breakdown the previous year.

In war it is not men, but the man, that counts.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

Hamilton’s style was to tell his officers the purpose of an upcoming battle but leave it to them how to bring it about. He was a gentleman, never blunt or forceful. At one of their first meetings, for example, Stop-ford requested changes in the landing plans to reduce risk. Hamilton politely deferred to him.

Hamilton did have one request. Once the Turks knew of the landings at Suvla, they would rush in reinforcements. As soon as the Allies were ashore, then, Hamilton wanted them to advance immediately to a range of hills four miles inland, called Tekke Tepe, and to get there before the Turks. From Tekke Tepe the Allies would dominate the peninsula. The order was simple enough, but
Hamilton, so as not to offend his subordinate, expressed it in the most general terms. Most crucially, he specified no time frame. He was sufficiently vague that Stopford completely misinterpreted him: instead of trying to reach Tekke Tepe “as soon as possible,” Stopford thought he should advance to the hills “if possible.” That was the order he gave Hammersley. And as Hammersley, nervous about the whole campaign, passed it down to his colonels, the order became less
urgent and vaguer still.

Also, despite his deference to Stopford, Hamilton overruled the lieutenant general in one respect: he denied a request for more artillery bombardments to loosen up the Turks. Stopford’s troops would outnumber the Turks at Suvla ten to one, Hamilton replied; more artillery was superfluous.

The attack began in the early morning of August 7. Once again much turned bad: Stopford’s changes in the landing plans made a mess. As his officers came ashore, they began to argue, uncertain about their positions and objectives. They sent messengers to ask their next step: Advance? Consolidate?

Hammersley had no answers. Stopford had stayed on a boat offshore, from which to control the battlefield–but on that boat he was impossible to reach quickly enough to get prompt orders from him. Hamilton was on an island still farther away. The day was frittered away in argument and the endless relaying of messages.

The next morning Hamilton began to sense that something had gone very wrong. From reconnaissance aircraft he knew that the flat land around Suvla was essentially empty and undefended; the way to Tekke Tepe was open–the troops had only to march–but they were staying where they were. Hamilton decided to visit the front himself. Reaching Stopford’s boat late that afternoon, he found the general in a self-congratulatory mood: all 20,000 men had gotten ashore.

No, he had not yet ordered the troops to advance to the hills; without artillery he was afraid the Turks might counterattack, and he needed the day to consolidate his positions and to land supplies.

Hamilton strained to control himself: he had heard an hour earlier that Turkish reinforcements had been seen hurrying toward Suvla. The Allies would have to secure Tekke Tepe this evening, he said–but Stopford was against a night march. Too dangerous. Hamilton retained his cool and politely excused himself.

Any army is like a horse, in that it reflects the temper and the spirit of its rider. If there is an uneasiness and an uncertainty, it transmits itself through the reins, and the horse feels uneasy and uncertain.

LONE STAR PREACHER, COLONEL JOHN W. THOMASON, JR., 1941

In near panic, Hamilton decided to visit Hammersley at Suvla. Much to his dismay, he found the army lounging on the beach as if it were a bank holiday. He finally located Hammersley–he was at the far end of the bay, busily supervising the building of his temporary headquarters. Asked why he had failed to secure the hills, Hammersley replied that he had sent several brigades for the purpose,
but they had encountered Turkish artillery and his colonels had told him they could not advance without more instructions. Communications between Hammersley, Stopford, and the colonels in the field were taking forever, and when Stopford had finally been reached, he had sent the message back
to Hammersley to proceed cautiously, rest his men, and wait to advance until the next day. Hamilton could control himself no longer: a handful of Turks with a few guns were holding up an army of 20,000 men from marching a mere four miles!

Tomorrow morning would be too late; the Turkish reinforcements were on their way.

Although it was already night, Hamilton ordered Hammersley to send a brigade immediately to Tekke Tepe. It would be a race to the finish.

Hamilton returned to a boat in the harbor to monitor the situation. At sunrise the next morning, he watched the battlefield through binoculars–and saw, to his horror, the Allied troops in headlong retreat to Suvla. A large Turkish force had arrived at Tekke Tepe thirty minutes before them.

In the next few days, the Turks managed to regain the flats around Suvla and to pin Hamilton’s army on the beach. Some four months later, the Allies gave up their attack on Gallipoli and evacuated their troops.

Interpretation

In planning the invasion at Suvla, Hamilton thought of everything. He  understood the need for surprise, deceiving the Turks about the landing site. He mastered the logistical details of a complex amphibious assault. Locating the key point–Tekke Tepe–from which the Allies could break the stalemate in Gallipoli, he crafted an excellent strategy to get there.

He even tried to prepare for the kind of unexpected contingencies that can always happen in battle. But he ignored the one thing closest to him: the chain of command, and the circuit of  communications by which orders, information, and decisions would circulate back and forth. He was dependent on that circuit to give him control of the situation and allow him to execute his strategy.

The first links in the chain of command were Stopford and Hammersley. Both men were terrified of risk, and Hamilton failed to adapt himself to their weakness: his order to reach Tekke Tepe was polite, civilized, and unforceful, and Stopford and Hammersley interpreted it according to their fears. They saw Tekke Tepe as a possible goal to aim for once the beaches were secured.

The next links in the chain were the colonels who were to lead the assault on Tekke Tepe. They had no contact with Hamilton on his island or with Stopford on his boat, and Hammersley was too overwhelmed to lead them. They themselves were terrified of acting on their own and maybe messing up a plan they had never understood; they hesitated at every step. Below the colonels were officers
and soldiers who, without leadership, were left wandering on the beach like lost ants. Vagueness at the top turned into confusion and lethargy at the bottom. Success depended on the speed with which information could pass in both directions along the chain of command, so that Hamilton could understand what was happening and adapt faster than the enemy. The chain was broken, and Gallipoli was lost.

When a failure like this happens, when a golden opportunity slips through your fingers, you naturally look for a cause.

Maybe you blame your incompetent officers, your faulty technology, your flawed intelligence. But that is to look at the world backward; it ensures more failure.

The truth is that everything starts from the top.

What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design. If your orders are vague and halfhearted, by the time they reach the field they will be meaningless. Let people work unsupervised and they will revert to their natural selfishness: they will see in your orders what they want to see, and their behavior will promote their own interests.

Unless you adapt your leadership style to the weaknesses of the people in your group, you will almost certainly end up with a break in the chain of command. Information in the field will reach you too slowly. A proper chain of command, and the control it brings you, is not an accident; it is your creation, a work of art that requires constant attention and care. Ignore it at your peril.

For what the leaders are, that, as a rule, will the men below them be.

--Xenophon (430?-355? B.C.)

REMOTE CONTROL

In the late 1930s, U.S. Brigadier General George C. Marshall (1880-1958) preached the need for major military reform. The army had too few soldiers, they were badly trained, current doctrine was ill suited to modern technology–the list of problems went on.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to select his next army chief of staff. The appointment was critical: World War II had begun in Europe, and Roosevelt believed that the United States was sure to get involved. He understood the need for military reform, so he bypassed generals with more seniority and experience and chose Marshall for the job.

The appointment was a curse in disguise, for the War Department was hopelessly dysfunctional.

Many of its generals had monstrous egos and the power to impose their way of doing things. Senior officers, instead of retiring, took jobs in the department, amassing power bases and fiefdoms that they did everything they could to protect. A place of feuds, waste, communication breakdowns, and
overlapping jobs, the department was a mess. How could Marshall revamp the army for global war if he could not control it? How could he create order and efficiency?

What must be the result of an operation which is but partially understood by the commander, since it is not his own conception? I have undergone a pitiable experience as prompter at head- quarters, and no one has a better appreciation of the value of such services than myself; and it is particularly in a council of war that such a part is absurd. The greater the number and the higher the rank of the military officers who compose the council, the more difficult will it be to accomplish the triumph of truth and reason, however small be the amount of dissent. What would have been the action of a council of war to which Napoleon proposed the movement of Arcola, the crossing of the Saint-Bernard, the maneuver at Ulm, or that at Gera and Jena? The timid would have regarded them as rash, even to madness, others would have seen a thousand difficulties of execution, and all would have concurred in rejecting them; and if, on the contrary, they had been adopted, and had been executed by any one but Napoleon, would they not certainly have proved failures?

BARON ANTOINE-HENRI DE JOMINI, 1779-1869

Some ten years earlier, Marshall had served as the assistant commander of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he had trained many officers.

Throughout his time there, he had kept a notebook in which he recorded the names of promising young men.

Soon after becoming chief of staff, Marshall began to retire the older officers in the War Department and replace them with these younger men whom he had personally trained. These officers were ambitious, they shared his desire for reform, and he encouraged them to speak their minds and show initiative.

They included men like Omar Bradley and Mark Clark, who would be crucial in World War II, but no one was more important than the protege Marshall spent the most time on: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The relationship began a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when Marshall asked Eisenhower, then a colonel, to prepare a report on what should be done in the Far East. The report showed Marshall that Eisenhower shared his ideas on how to run the war.

For the next few months, he kept Eisenhower in the War Plans Division and watched him closely: the two men met every day, and in that time Eisenhower soaked up Marshall’s style of leadership, his way of getting things done.

Marshall tested Eisenhower’s patience by indicating that he planned to keep him in Washington instead of giving him the field assignment that he desperately wanted.

The colonel passed the test.

Much like Marshall himself, he got along well with other officers yet was quietly forceful. In July 1942, as the Americans prepared to enter the war by fighting alongside the British in North Africa, Marshall surprised one and all by naming Eisenhower commander in the European Theater of Operations.

Eisenhower was by this time a lieutenant general but was still relatively unknown, and in his first few months in the job, as the Americans fared poorly in North Africa, the British clamored for a replacement. But Marshall stood by his man, offering him advice and encouragement.

One key suggestion was for Eisenhower to develop a protege, much as Marshall had with him–a kind of roving deputy who thought the way he did and would act as his go-between with subordinates.

Marshall’s suggestion for the post was Major General Bradley, a man he knew well; Eisenhower accepted the idea, essentially duplicating the staff structure that Marshall had created in the War Department.

With Bradley in place, Marshall left Eisenhower alone.

Marshall positioned his proteges throughout the War Department, where they quietly spread his way of doing things. To make the task easier, he cut the waste in the department with utter ruthlessness, reducing from sixty to six the number of deputies who reported to him.

Marshall hated excess; his reports to Roosevelt made him famous for his ability to summarize a complex situation in a few pages.

The six men who reported to him found that any report that lasted a page too long simply went unread. He would listen to their oral presentations with rapt attention, but the minute they wandered from the topic or said something not thought through, he would look away, bored, uninterested.

It was an expression they dreaded: without saying a word, he had made it known that they had displeased him and it was time for them to leave.

Marshall’s six deputies began to think like him and to demand from those who reported to them the efficiency and streamlined communications style he demanded of them. The speed of the information flow up and down the line was now quadrupled.

"Do you think every Greek here can be a king? It's no good having a carload of commanders. We need One commander, one king, the one to whom Zeus, Son of Cronus the crooked, has given the staff And the right to make decisions for his people." And so Odysseus mastered the army. The men all Streamed back from their ships and huts and assembled With a roar.

THE ILIAD, HOMER, CIRCA NINTH CENTURY B.C.

Marshall exuded authority but never yelled and never challenged men frontally. He had a knack for communicating his wishes indirectly–a skill that was all the more effective since it made his officers think about what he meant.

Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, the military director of the project to develop the atom bomb, once came to Marshall’s office to get him to sign off on $100 million in expenditures. Finding the chief of staff engrossed in paperwork, he waited while Marshall diligently compared documents and made notes.

Finally Marshall put down his pen, examined the $100 million request, signed it, and returned it to Groves without a word. The general thanked him and was turning to leave when Marshall finally spoke: “It may interest you to know what I was doing: I was writing the check for $3.52 for grass seed for my lawn.”

The thousands who worked under Marshall, whether in the War Department or abroad in the field, did not have to see him personally to feel his presence.

They felt it in the terse but insightful reports that reached them from his deputies, in the speed of the responses to their questions and requests, in the department’s efficiency and team spirit. They felt it in the leadership style of men like Eisenhower, who had absorbed Marshall’s diplomatic yet forceful way of doing things. In a few short years, Marshall transformed the War Department and the U.S. Army.

Few really understood how he had done it.

Interpretation

When Marshall became chief of staff, he knew that he would have to hold himself back. The temptation was to do combat with everyone in every problem area: the recalcitrance of the generals, the political feuds, the layers of waste. But Marshall was too smart to give in to that temptation.

First, there were too many battles to fight, and they would exhaust him. He’d get frustrated, lose time, and probably give himself a heart attack. Second, by trying to micromanage the department, he would become embroiled in petty entanglements and lose sight of the larger picture. And finally he would come across as a bully. The only way to slay this many-headed monster, Marshall knew, was to step back.

He had to rule indirectly through others, controlling with such a light touch that no one would realize how thoroughly he dominated.

Reports gathered and presented by the General Staff, on the one hand, and by the Statistical Bureau, on the other, thus constituted the most important sources of information at Napoleon's disposal. 

Climbing through the chain of command, however, such reports tend to become less and less specific; the more numerous the stages through which they pass and the more standardized the form in which they are presented, the greater the danger that they will become so heavily profiled (and possibly sugar-coated or merely distorted by the many summaries) as to become almost meaningless. 

To guard against this danger and to keep subordinates on their toes, a commander needs to have in addition a kind of directed telescope--the metaphor is an apt one--which he can direct, at will, at any part of the enemy's forces, the terrain, or his own army in order to bring in information that is not only less structured than that passed on by the normal channels but also tailored to meet his momentary (and specific) needs. Ideally, the regular reporting system should tell the commander which questions to ask, and the directed telescope should enable him to answer those questions. 

It was the two systems together, cutting across each other and wielded by Napoleon's masterful hand, which made the revolution in command possible.

COMMAND IN WAR, MARTIN VAN CREVELD, 1985

The key to Marshall’s strategy was his selection, grooming, and placement of his proteges. He metaphorically cloned himself in these men, who enacted the spirit of his reforms on his behalf, saving him time and making him appear not as a manipulator but as a delegator.

His cutting of waste was heavy-handed at first, but once he put his stamp on the department, it began to run efficiently on its own–fewer people to deal with, fewer irrelevant reports to read, less wasted time on every level.

This streamlining achieved, Marshall could guide the machine with a lighter touch. The political types who were clogging the chain of command were either retired or joined in the team spirit he infused.

His indirect style of communicating amused some of his staff, but it was actually a highly effective way of asserting his authority. An officer might go home chuckling about finding Marshall fussing over a gardening bill, but it would slowly dawn on him that if he wasted a penny, his boss would know.

Like the War Department that Marshall inherited, today’s world is complex and chaotic. It is harder than ever to exercise control through a chain of command. You cannot supervise everything yourself; you cannot keep your eye on everyone.

Being seen as a dictator will do you harm, but if you submit to complexity and let go of the chain of command, chaos will consume you.

The solution is to do as Marshall did: operate through a kind of remote control. Hire deputies who share your vision but can think on their own, acting as you would in their place.

Instead of wasting time negotiating with every difficult person, work on spreading a spirit of camaraderie and efficiency that becomes self-policing.

Streamline the organization, cutting out waste–in staff, in the irrelevant reports on your desk, in pointless meetings. The less attention you spend on petty details, the more time you will have for the larger picture, for asserting your authority generally and indirectly. People will follow your lead without feeling bullied. That is the ultimate in control.

Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.

--Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

KEYS TO WARFARE

Now more than ever, effective leadership requires a deft and subtle touch.

The reason is simple: we have grown more distrustful of authority. At the same time, almost all of us imagine ourselves as authorities in our own right–officers, not foot soldiers.

Feeling the need to assert themselves, people today put their own interests before the team.

Group unity is fragile and can easily crack.

These trends affect leaders in ways they barely know. The tendency is to give more power to the group: wanting to seem democratic, leaders poll the whole staff for opinions, let the group make decisions, give subordinates input into the crafting of an overall strategy.

Without realizing it, these leaders are letting the politics of the day seduce them into violating one of the most important rules of warfare and leadership: unity of command. Before it is too late, learn the lessons of war: divided leadership is a recipe for disaster, the cause of the greatest military defeats in history.

Among the foremost of these defeats was the Battle of Cannae, in 216 B.C., between the Romans and the Carthaginians led by Hannibal. The Romans outnumbered the Carthaginians two to one but were virtually annihilated in a perfectly executed strategic envelopment.

Hannibal, of course, was a military genius, but the Romans take much of the blame for their own defeat: they had a faulty command system, with two tribunes sharing leadership of the army.

Disagreeing over how to fight Hannibal, these men fought each other as much as they fought him, and they made a mess of things.

Nearly two thousand years later, Frederick the Great, king of Prussia and leader of its army, outfought and outlasted the five great powers aligned against him in the Seven Years’ War partly because he made decisions so much faster than the alliance generals, who had to consult each other in every move they made.

In World War II, General Marshall was well aware of the dangers of divided
leadership and insisted that one supreme commander should lead the Allied armies.

Without his victory in this battle, Eisenhower could not have succeeded in Europe. In the Vietnam War, the unity of command enjoyed by the North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap gave him a tremendous advantage over the Americans, whose strategy was crafted by a crowd of politicians and generals.

Divided leadership is dangerous because people in groups often think and act in ways that are illogical and ineffective–call it Groupthink.

People in groups are political: they say and do things that they think will help their image within the group. They aim to please others, to promote themselves, rather than to see things dispassionately. Where an individual can be bold and creative, a group is often afraid of risk. The need to find a compromise among all the different egos kills creativity. The group has a mind of its own, and that mind is cautious, slow to decide, unimaginative, and sometimes downright irrational.

This is the game you must play: Do whatever you can to preserve unity of command.

Keep the strings to be pulled in your hands; the over-arching strategic vision must come from you and you alone.

At the same time, hide your tracks.

Work behind the scenes; make the group feel involved in your decisions. Seek their advice, incorporating their good ideas, politely deflecting their bad ones.

If necessary, make minor, cosmetic strategy changes to assuage the insecure political animals in the group, but ultimately trust your own vision. Remember the dangers of group decision making. The first rule of effective leadership is never to relinquish your unity of command.

Tomorrow at dawn you depart [from St. Cloud] and travel to Worms, cross the Rhine there, and make sure that all preparations for the crossing of the river by my guard are being made there. 

You will then proceed to Kassel and make sure that the place is being put in a state of defense and provisioned. Taking due security precautions, you will visit the fortress of Hanau. Can it be secured by a coup de main? 

If necessary, you will visit the citadel of Marburg too. You will then travel on to Kassel and report to me by way of my charge d'affaires at that place, making sure that he is in fact there. 

The voyage from Frankfurt to Kassel is not to take place by night, for you are to observe anything that might interest me. From Kassel you are to travel, also by day, by the shortest way to Koln. The land between Wesel, Mainz, Kassel, and Koln is to be reconnoitered. 

What roads and good communications exist there? Gather information about communications between Kassel and Paderborn. What is the significance of Kassel? Is the place armed and capable of resistance?

Evaluate the forces of the Prince Elector in regard to their present state, their artillery, militia, strong places. From Koln you will travel to meet me at Mainz; you are to keep to the right bank on the Rhine and submit a short appreciation of the country around Dusseldorf, Wesel, and Kassel. 

I shall be at Mainz on the 29th in order to receive your report. 

You can see for yourself how important it is for the beginning of the campaign and its progress that you should have the country well imprinted on your memory.

NAPOLEON'S WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS TO FIELD GENERAL, QUOTED IN COMMAND IN WAR, MARTIN VAN CREVELD, 1985

Control is an elusive phenomenon. Often, the harder you tug at people, the less control you have over them. Leadership is more than just barking out orders; it takes subtlety.

Early in his career, the great Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman was often overwhelmed with frustration.

He had visions of the films he wanted to make, but the work of being a director was so taxing and the pressure so immense that he would lash out at his cast and crew, shouting orders and attacking them for not giving him what he wanted. Some would stew with resentment at his dictatorial ways, others became obedient automatons.

With almost every new film, Bergman would have to start again with a new cast and crew, which only made things worse.

But eventually he put together a team of the finest cinematographers, editors, art directors, and actors in Sweden, people who shared his high standards and whom he trusted.

That let him loosen the reins of command; with actors like Max von Sydow, he could just suggest what he had in mind and watch as the great actor brought his ideas to life. Greater control could now come from letting go.

A critical step in creating an efficient chain of command is assembling a skilled team that shares your goals and values.

That team gives you many advantages: spirited, motivated people who can think on their own; an image as a delegator, a fair and democratic leader; and a saving in your own valuable energy, which you can redirect toward the larger picture.

In creating this team, you are looking for people who make up for your deficiencies, who have the skills you lack.

In the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln had a strategy for defeating the South, but he had no military background and was disdained by his generals. What good was a strategy if he could not realize it? But Lincoln soon found his teammate in General Ulysses S. Grant, who shared his belief in offensive warfare and who did not have an oversize ego.

Once Lincoln discovered Grant, he latched on to him, put him in command, and let him run the war as he saw fit.

Be careful in assembling this team that you are not seduced by expertise and intelligence. Character, the ability to work under you and with the rest of the team, and the capacity to accept responsibility and think independently are equally key. That is why Marshall tested Eisenhower for so long. You may not have as much time to spare, but never choose a man merely by his glittering
resume. Look beyond his skills to his psychological makeup.

Rely on the team you have assembled, but do not be its prisoner or give it undue influence.Franklin D. Roosevelt had his infamous “brain trust,” the advisers and cabinet members on whom he depended for their ideas and opinions, but he never let them in on the actual decision making, and he kept them from building up their own power base within the administration.

He saw them simply as tools, extending his own abilities and saving him valuable time. He understood unity of command and was never seduced into violating it.

A key function of any chain of command is to supply information rapidly from the trenches, letting you adapt fast to circumstances. The shorter and more streamlined the chain of command, the better for the flow of information. Even so, information is often diluted as it passes up the chain: the telling details that reveal so much become standardized and general as they are filtered through formal channels.

Some on the chain, too, will interpret the information for you, filtering what you hear. To get more direct knowledge, you might occasionally want to visit the field yourself.

Marshall would sometimes drop in on an army base incognito to see with his own eyes how his reforms were taking effect; he would also read letters from soldiers. But in these days of increasing complexity, this can consume far too much of your time.

What you need is what the military historian Martin van Creveld calls “a directed telescope”: people in various parts of the chain, and elsewhere, to give you instant information from the battlefield.

These people–an informal network of friends, allies, and spies–let you bypass the slow- moving chain. The master of this game was Napoleon, who created a kind of shadow brigade of younger officers in all areas of the military, men chosen for their loyalty, energy, and intelligence.

At a moment’s notice, he would send one of these men to a far-off front or garrison, or even to enemy headquarters (ostensibly as a diplomatic envoy), with secret instructions to gather the kind of information he could not get fast enough through normal channels. In general, it is important to cultivate these directed telescopes and plant them throughout the group.

They give you flexibility in the chain, room to maneuver in a generally rigid environment. The single greatest risk to your chain of command comes from the political animals in the group.

People like this are inescapable; they spring up like weeds in any organization.

Not only are they out for themselves, but they build factions to further their own agendas and fracture the cohesion you have built. Interpreting your commands for their own purposes, finding loopholes in any ambiguity, they create invisible breaks in the chain.

Try to weed them out before they arrive. In hiring your team, look at the candidates’ histories: Are they restless? Do they often move from place to place? That is a sign of the kind of ambition that will keep them from fitting in. When people seem to share your ideas exactly, be wary: they are probably mirroring them to charm you.

The court of Queen Elizabeth I of England was full of political types.

Elizabeth’s solution was to keep her opinions quiet; on any issue, no one outside
her inner circle knew where she stood. That made it hard for people to mirror her, to disguise their intentions behind a front of perfect agreement. Hers was a wise strategy.

Another solution is to isolate the political moles–to give them no room to maneuver within the organization. Marshall accomplished this by infusing the group with his spirit of efficiency; disrupters of that spirit stood out and could quickly be isolated. In any event, do not be naive.

Once you identify the moles in the group, you must act fast to stop them from building a power base from which to destroy your authority.

Finally, pay attention to the orders themselves–their form as well as their substance. Vague orders are worthless. As they pass from person to person, they are hopelessly altered, and your staff comes to see them as symbolizing uncertainty and indecision.

It is critical that you yourself be clear about what you want before issuing your orders. On the other hand, if your commands are too specific and too narrow, you will encourage people to behave like automatons and stop thinking for themselves–which they must do when the situation requires it. Erring in neither direction is an art.

Here, as in so much else, Napoleon was the master. His orders were full of juicy details, which gave his officers a feel for how his mind worked while also allowing them interpretive leeway.

He would often spell out possible contingencies, suggesting ways the officer could adapt his instructions if necessary. Most important, he made his orders inspiring. His language communicated the spirit of his desires.

A beautifully worded order has extra power; instead of feeling like a minion, there only to execute the wishes of a distant emperor, the recipient becomes a participant in a great cause. Bland, bureaucratic orders filter down into listless activity and imprecise execution.

Clear, concise, inspiring orders make officers feel in control and fill troops with fighting spirit.

Authority: Better one bad general than two good ones.
--Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

REVERSAL

No good can ever come of divided leadership. If you are ever offered a position in which you will have to share command, turn it down, for the enterprise will fail and you will be held responsible.

Better to take a lower position and let the other person have the job.

It is always wise, however, to take advantage of your opponent’s faulty command structure. Never be intimidated by an alliance of forces against you: if they share leadership, if they are ruled by committee, your advantage is more than enough. In fact, do as Napoleon did and seek out enemies with that kind of command structure. You cannot fail to win.

Conclusion

There’s some great advice in this chapter for the manager and supervisor. When you are in a role, you must show leadership, no matter what style you possess. And make sure that everyone is following your lead in what ever actions you take.

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This is a full reprint in HTML of the fourth chapter (Chapter 4) of the first part (Part I) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory. Place yourself on “death ground,” where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.

Part I

Chapter 4

Create a sense of urgency and desperation; The Death Ground Strategy

You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Since nothing seems urgent to you, you are only half involved in what you do. The only way to change is through action and outside pressure. Put yourself in situations where you have too much at stake to waste time or resources–if you cannot afford to lose, you won’t. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory where you must depend on your wits and energy to see you through. Place yourself on “death ground,” where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.

Cortes ran all that aground with the ten ships. Cuba, to be sure, was still there, in the blue sea, with its farms, its cows and its tame Indians; but the way to Cuba was no longer through sunny blue waves, rocked in soft idleness, oblivious of danger and endeavor; it was through Motecucuma's court, which had to be conquered by ruse, by force, or by both; through a sea of warlike Indians who ate their prisoners and donned their skins as trophies; at the stroke of their chief's masterly hand, the five hundred men had lost that flow of vital memories and hopes which linked up their souls with their mother-island; at one stroke, their backs had been withered and had lost all sense of life. Henceforward, for them, all life was ahead, towards those forbidding peaks which rose gigantically on the horizon as if to bar all access to what was now not merely their ambition, but their only possible aim--Mexico, mysterious and powerful behind the conflicting tribes. 

- HERNAN CORTES: CONQUEROR OF MEXICO, SALVADOR DE MADARIAGA, 1942

THE NO-RETURN TACTIC

In 1504 an ambitious nineteen-year-old Spaniard named Hernan Cortes gave up his studies in law and sailed for his country’s colonies in the New World. Stopping first in Santo Domingo (the island today comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic), then in Cuba, he soon heard about a land to the west called Mexico–an empire teeming with gold and dominated by the Aztecs, with their magnificent highland capital of Tenochtitlan. From then on, Cortes had just one thought: someday he would conquer and settle the land of Mexico.

Over the next ten years, Cortes slowly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming secretary to the Spanish governor of Cuba and then the king’s treasurer for the island. In his own mind, though, he was merely biding his time. He waited patiently while Spain sent other men to Mexico, many of them never to return.

Finally, in 1518, the governor of Cuba, Diego de Velazquez, made Cortes the leader of an expedition to discover what had happened to these earlier explorers, find gold, and lay the groundwork for the country’s conquest. Velazquez wanted to make that future conquest himself, however, so for this expedition he wanted a man he could control, and he soon developed doubts about Cortes–the man was clever, perhaps too much so. Word reached Cortes that the governor was having second thoughts about sending him to Mexico. Deciding to give Velazquez no time to nurse his misgivings, he managed to slip out of Cuba in the middle of the night with eleven ships. He would explain himself to the governor later.

The expedition landed on Mexico’s east coast in March 1519. Over the next few months, Cortes put his plans to work–founding the town of Veracruz, forging alliances with local tribes who hated the Aztecs, and making initial contact with the Aztec emperor, whose capital lay some 250 miles to the west. But one problem plagued the conquistador: among the 500 soldiers who had sailed with him from Cuba were a handful who had been placed there by Velazquez to act as spies and make trouble for him if he exceeded his authority. These Velazquez loyalists accused Cortes of mismanaging the gold that he was collecting, and when it became clear that he intended to conquer Mexico, they spread rumors that he was insane–an all-too-convincing accusation to make about a man planning to lead 500 men against half a million Aztecs, fierce warriors known to eat their prisoners’ flesh and wear the skins as trophies. A rational man would take the gold they had, return to Cuba, and come back later with an army. Why stay in this forbidding land, with its diseases and its lack of creature comforts, when they were so heavily outnumbered? Why not sail for Cuba, back home where their farms, their wives, and the good life awaited them?

Cortes did what he could with these troublemakers, bribing some, keeping a close eye on others. Meanwhile he worked to build a strong enough rapport with the rest of his men that the grumblers could do no harm. All seemed well until the night of July 30, when Cortes was awoken by a Spanish sailor who, begging for mercy, confessed that he had joined in a plot to steal a ship and return that very evening to Cuba, where the conspirators would tell Velazquez about Cortes’s goal of conquering Mexico on his own.

Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, bring struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. 

- HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1659-1720

Cortes sensed that this was the decisive moment of the expedition. He could easily squash the conspiracy, but there would be others. His men were a rough lot, and their minds were on gold, Cuba, their families–anything but fighting the Aztecs. He could not conquer an empire with men so divided and untrustworthy, but how to fill them with the energy and focus for the immense task he faced?Thinking this through, he decided to take swift action. He seized the conspirators and had the two ringleaders hanged. Next, he bribed his pilots to bore holes in all of the ships and then announce that worms had eaten through the boards of the vessels, making them unseaworthy.

Pretending to be upset at the news, Cortes ordered what was salvageable from the ships to be taken ashore and then the hulls to be sunk. The pilots complied, but not enough holes had been bored, and only five of the ships went down. The story of the worms was plausible enough, and the soldiers accepted the news of the five ships with equanimity. But when a few days later more ships were run aground and only one was left afloat, it was clear to them that Cortes had arranged the whole thing. When he called a meeting, their mood was mutinous and murderous.

This was no time for subtlety. Cortes addressed his men: he was responsible for the disaster, he admitted; he had ordered it done, but now there was no turning back. They could hang him, but they were surrounded by hostile Indians and had no ships; divided and leaderless, they would perish. The only alternative was to follow him to Tenochtitlan. Only by conquering the Aztecs, by becoming lords of Mexico, could they get back to Cuba alive. To reach Tenochtitlan they would have to fight with utter intensity. They would have to be unified; any dissension would lead to defeat and a terrible death. The situation was desperate, but if the men fought desperately in turn, Cortes guaranteed that he would lead them to victory. Since the army was so small in number, the glory and riches would be all the greater. Any cowards not up to the challenge could sail the one remaining ship home.

There is something in war that drives so deeply into you that death ceases to be the enemy, merely another participant in a game you don't wish to end. 

- PHANTOM OVER VIETNAM, JOHN TROTTI, USMC, 1984

No one accepted the offer, and the last ship was run aground. Over the next months, Cortes kept his army away from Veracruz and the coast. Their attention was focused on Tenochtitlan, the heart of the Aztec empire. The grumbling, the self-interest, and the greed all disappeared. Understanding the danger of their situation, the conquistadors fought ruthlessly. Some two years after the destruction of the Spanish ships, and with the help of their Indian allies, Cortes’s army laid siege to Tenochtitlan and conquered the Aztec empire.

You don't have time for this display, you fool," he said in a severe tone. "This, whatever you're doing now, may be your last act on earth. It may very well be your last battle. There is no power which could guarantee that you are going to live one more minute...." "...Acts have power," he said, "Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be one's last act on earth. I recommend that you reconsider your life and bring your acts into that light.... Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man." "Is it so terrible to be a timid man?" "No. It isn't if you are going to be immortal, but if you are going to die there is not time for timidity, simply because timidity makes you cling to something that exists only in your thoughts. It soothes you while everything is at a lull, but then the awesome, mysterious world will open its mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realize that your sure ways were not sure at all. Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men." 

-JOURNEY TO IXTLAN: THE LESSONS OF DON JUAN, CARLOS CASTANEDA, 1972

Interpretation

On the night of the conspiracy, Cortes had to think fast. What was the root of the problem he faced? It was not Velazquez’s spies, or the hostile Aztecs, or the incredible odds against him. The root of the problem was his own men and the ships in the harbor. His soldiers were divided in heart and mind. They were thinking about the wrong things–their wives, their dreams of gold, their plans for the future. And in the backs of their minds there was always an escape route: if this conquest business went badly, they could go home. Those ships in the harbor were more than just transportation; they represented Cuba, the freedom to leave, the ability to send for reinforcements–so many possibilities.

For the soldiers the ships were a crutch, something to fall back on if things got ugly. Once Cortes had identified the problem, the solution was simple: destroy the ships. By putting his men in a desperate place, he would make them fight with utmost intensity.

A sense of urgency comes from a powerful connection to the present. Instead of dreaming of rescue or hoping for a better future, you have to face the issue at hand. Fail and you perish. People who involve themselves completely in the immediate problem are intimidating; because they are focusing so intensely, they seem more powerful than they are. Their sense of urgency multiplies their strength and gives them momentum. Instead of five hundred men, Cortes suddenly had the weight of a much larger army at his back.

Like Cortes you must locate the root of your problem. It is not the people around you; it is yourself, and the spirit with which you face the world. In the back of your mind, you keep an escape route, a crutch, something to turn to if things go bad. Maybe it is some wealthy relative you can count on to buy your way out; maybe it is some grand opportunity on the horizon, the endless vistas of time that seem to be before you; maybe it is a familiar job or a comfortable relationship that is always there if you fail. Just as Cortes’s men saw their ships as insurance, you may see this fallback as a blessing–but in fact it is a curse. It divides you. Because you think you have options, you never involve yourself deeply enough in one thing to do it thoroughly, and you never quite get what you want. Sometimes you need to run your ships aground, burn them, and leave yourself just one option: succeed or go down. Make the burning of your ships as real as possible–get rid of your safety net. Sometimes you have to become a little desperate to get anywhere.

The ancient commanders of armies, who well knew the powerful influence of necessity, and how it inspired the soldiers with the most desperate courage, neglected nothing to subject their men to such a pressure. 

- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

THE DEATH-AT-YOUR-HEELS TACTIC

In 1845 the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, then twenty-four, shook the Russian literary world with the publication of his first novel, Poor Folk. He became the toast of St. Petersburg society. But something about his early fame seemed empty to him. He drifted into the fringes of left-wing politics, attending meetings of various socialist and radical groups. One of these groups centered on the charismatic Mikhail Petrashevsky.

Three years later, in 1848, revolution broke out all across Europe. Inspired by what was happening in the West, Russian radical groups like Petrashevsky’s talked of following suit. But agents of Czar Nicholas I had infiltrated many of these groups, and reports were written about the wild things being discussed at Petrashevsky’s house, including talk of inciting peasant revolts. Dostoyevsky was fervent about freeing the serfs, and on April 23, 1849, he and twenty-three other members of the Petrashevsky group were arrested.

After eight months of languishing in jail, the prisoners were awakened one cold morning and told that today they would finally hear their sentences. A few months’ exile was the usual punishment for their crime; soon, they thought, their ordeal would be over.

They were bundled into carriages and driven through the icy streets of St. Petersburg. Emerging from the carriages into Semyonovsky Square, they were greeted by a priest; behind him they could see rows of soldiers and, behind the soldiers, thousands of spectators. They were led toward a scaffold covered in black cloth at the center of the square. In front of the scaffold were three posts, and to the side was a line of carts laden with coffins.

Lord Naoshige said, "The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate." 

- HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1659-1720

Dostoyevsky could not believe what he saw. “It’s not possible that they mean to execute us,” he whispered to his neighbor. They were marched to the scaffold and placed in two lines. It was an unbelievably cold day, and the prisoners were wearing the light clothes they’d been arrested in back in April. A drumroll sounded. An officer came forward to read their sentences: “All of the accused are guilty as charged of intending to overthrow the national order, and are therefore condemned to death before a firing squad.” The prisoners were too stunned to speak.

As the officer read out the individual charges and sentences, Dostoyevsky found himself staring at the golden spire of a nearby church and at the sunlight bouncing off it. The gleams of light disappeared as a cloud passed overhead, and the thought occurred to him that he was about to pass into darkness just as quickly, and forever. Suddenly he had another thought: If I do not die, if I am not killed, my life will suddenly seem endless, a whole eternity, each minute a century. I will take account of everything that passes–I will not waste a second of life again.

The prisoners were given hooded shirts. The priest came forward to read them their last rites and hear their confessions. They said good-bye to one another. The first three to be shot were tied to the posts, and the hoods were pulled over their faces. Dostoyevsky stood in the front, in the next group to go. The soldiers raised their rifles, took aim–and suddenly a carriage came galloping into the square. A man got out with an envelope. At the last second, the czar had commuted their death sentences.

It had long been known, of course, that a man who, through disciplined training, had relinquished any desire or hope for survival and had only one goal--the destruction of his enemy--could be a redoubtable opponent and a truly formidable fighter who neither asked nor offered any quarter once his weapon had been unsheathed. In this way, a seemingly ordinary man who, by the force of circumstances rather than by profession, had been placed in the position of having to make a desperate choice, could prove dangerous, even to a skilled fencing master. One famous episode, for example, concerns a teacher of swordsmanship who was asked by a superior to surrender a servant guilty of an offense punishable by death. This teacher, wishing to test a theory of his concerning the power of that condition we would call "desperation," challenged the doomed man to a duel. Knowing full well the irrevocability of his sentence, the servant was beyond caring one way or the other, and the ensuing duel proved that even a skilled fencer and teacher of the art could find himself in great difficulty when confronted by a man who, because of his acceptance of imminent death, could go to the limit (and even beyond) in his strategy, without a single hesitation or distracting consideration. The servant, in fact, fought like a man possessed, forcing his master to retreat until his back was almost to the wall. At last the teacher had to cut him down in a final effort, wherein the master's own desperation brought about the fullest coordination of his courage, skill, and determination. 

- SECRETS OF THE SAMURAI, OSCAR RATTI AND ADELE WESTBROOK, 1973

Later that morning, Dostoyevsky was told his new sentence: four years hard labor in Siberia, to be followed by a stint in the army. Barely affected, he wrote that day to his brother, “When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness,…then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift…every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If youth only knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.”

A few days later, ten-pound shackles were put on Dostoyevsky’s arms and legs–they would stay there for the length of his prison term–and he was carted off to Siberia. For the next four years, he endured the most abysmal prison conditions. Granted no writing privileges, he wrote novels in his head, memorized them. Finally, in 1857, still serving the army period of his sentence, he was allowed to start publishing his work. Where before he would torture himself over a page, spend half a day idling it away in thought, now he wrote and wrote. Friends would see him walking the streets of St. Petersburg mumbling bits of dialogue to himself, lost in his characters and plots. His new motto was “Try to get as much done as possible in the shortest time.”

Some pitied Dostoyevsky his time in prison. That made him angry; he was grateful for the experience and felt no bitterness. But for that December day in 1849, he felt, he would have wasted his life. Right up until his death, in 1881, he continued writing at a frantic pace, churning out novel after novel–Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov–as if each one were his last.

Interpretation

Czar Nicholas had decided to sentence the Petrashevsky radicals to hard labor soon after their arrest. But he wanted to teach them a harsher lesson as well, so he dreamed up the cruel theater of the death sentence, with its careful details–the priest, the hoods, the coffins, the last-second pardon. This, he thought, would really humble and humiliate them. In fact, some of the prisoners were driven insane by the events of that day. But the effect on Dostoyevsky was different: he had been afflicted for years with a sense of wandering, of feeling lost, of not knowing what to do with his time. An extremely sensitive man, that day he literally felt his own death deep in his bones. And he experienced his “pardon” as a rebirth.

The effect was permanent. For the rest of his life, Dostoyevsky would consciously bring himself back to that day, remembering his pledge never to waste another moment. Or, if he felt he had grown too comfortable and complacent, he would go to a casino and gamble away all his money. Poverty and debt were for him a kind of symbolic death, throwing him back on the possible nothingness of his life. In either case he would have to write, and not the way other novelists wrote–as if it were a pleasant little artistic career, with all its attendant delights of salons, lectures, and other frills. Dostoyevsky wrote as if his life were at stake, with an intense feeling of urgency and seriousness.

Death is impossible for us to fathom: it is so immense, so frightening, that we will do almost anything to avoid thinking about it. Society is organized to make death invisible, to keep it several steps removed. That distance may seem necessary for our comfort, but it comes with a terrible price: the illusion of limitless time, and a consequent lack of seriousness about daily life. We are running away from the one reality that faces us all.

As a warrior in life, you must turn this dynamic around: make the thought of death something not to escape but to embrace. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them half awake and halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency? Cruel theaters staged by a czar are unnecessary; death will come to you without them. Imagine it pressing in on you, leaving you no escape–for there is no escape. Feeling death at your heels will make all your actions more certain, more forceful. This could be your last throw of the dice: make it count.

While knowing that we will die someday, we think that all the others will die before us and that we will be the last to go. Death seems a long way off. Is this not shallow thinking? It is worthless and is only a joke within a dream.... In sofar as death is always at one's door, one should make sufficient effort and act quickly.

--Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1720)

KEYS TO WARFARE

Quite often we feel somewhat lost in our actions. We could do this or that–we have many options, but none of them seem quite necessary. Our freedom is a burden–what do we do today, where do we go?Our daily patterns and routines help us to avoid feeling directionless, but there is always the niggling thought that we could accomplish so much more. We waste so much time. Upon occasion all of us have felt a sense of urgency. Most often it is imposed from outside: we fall behind in our work, we inadvertently take on more than we can handle, responsibility for something is thrust into our hands. Now everything changes; no more freedom. We have to do this, we have to fix that. The surprise is always how much more spirited and more alive this makes us feel; now everything we do seems necessary. But eventually we go back to our normal patterns. And when that sense of urgency goes, we really do not know how to get it back.

Leaders of armies have thought about this subject since armies existed: how can soldiers be motivated, be made more aggressive, more desperate? Some generals have relied on fiery oratory, and those particularly good at it have had some success. But over two thousand years ago, the Chinese strategist Sun-tzu came to believe that listening to speeches, no matter how rousing, was too passive an experience to have an enduring effect. Instead Sun-tzu talked of a “death ground”–a place where an army is backed up against some geographical feature like a mountain, a river, or a forest and has no escape route. Without a way to retreat, Sun-tzu argued, an army fights with double or triple the spirit it would have on open terrain, because death is viscerally present. Sun-tzu advocated deliberately stationing soldiers on death ground to give them the desperate edge that makes men fight like the devil. That is what Cortes did in Mexico, and it is the only sure way to create a real fire in the belly. The world is ruled by necessity: People change their behavior only if they have to. They will feel urgency only if their lives depend on it.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, they began to question Han Hsin. "According to The Art of War , when one fights he should keep the hills to his right or rear, and bodies of water in front of him or to the left," they said. "Yet today you ordered us on the contrary to draw up ranks with our backs to the river, saying 'We shall defeat Chao and feast together!' We were opposed to the idea, and yet it has ended in victory. What sort of strategy is this?" "This is in The Art of War too," replied Han Hsin. "It is just that you have failed to notice it! Does it not say in The Art of War : 'Drive them into a fatal position and they will come out alive; place them in a hopeless spot and they will survive'? Moreover, I did not have at my disposal troops that I had trained and led from past times, but was forced, as the saying goes, to round up men from the market place and use them to fight with. Under such circumstances, if I had not placed them in a desperate situation where each man was obliged to fight for his own life, but had allowed them to remain in a safe place, they would have all run away. Then what good would they have been to me?" "Indeed!" his generals exclaimed in admiration. "We would never have thought of that." 

-RECORDS OF THE HISTORIAN, SZUMA CHIEN, CIRCA 145 B.C.-CIRCA 86 B.C.

Death ground is a psychological phenomenon that goes well beyond the battlefield: it is any set of circumstances in which you feel enclosed and without options. There is very real pressure at your back, and you cannot retreat. Time is running out. Failure–a form of psychic death–is staring you in the face. You must act or suffer the consequences.

Understand: we are creatures who are intimately tied to our environment–we respond viscerally to our circumstances and to the people around us. If our situation is easy and relaxed, if people are friendly and warm, our natural tension unwinds. We may even grow bored and tired; our environment is failing to challenge us, although we may not realize it. But put yourself in a high-stakes situation–a psychological death ground–and the dynamic changes. Your body responds to danger with a surge of energy; your mind focuses. Urgency is forced on you; you are compelled to waste no more time.

The trick is to use this effect deliberately from time to time, to practice it on yourself as a kind of wake-up call. The following five actions are designed to put you on a psychological death ground. Reading and thinking about them won’t work; you must put them into effect. They are forms of pressure to apply to yourself. Depending on whether you want a low-intensity jolt for regular use or a real shock, you can turn the level up or down. The scale is up to you.

Stake everything on a single throw. In 1937 the twenty-eight-year-old Lyndon B. Johnson–at the time the Texas director of the National Youth Administration–faced a dilemma. The Texas congressman James Buchanan had suddenly died. Since loyal Texan voters tended to return incumbents to office, a Texan congressional seat generally came available only every ten or twenty years–and Johnson wanted to be in Congress by the time he was thirty; he did not have ten years to wait. But he was very young and was virtually unknown in Buchanan’s old district, the tenth. He would be facing political heavyweights whom voters would heavily favor. Why try something that seemed doomed to failure? Not only would the race be a waste of money, but the humiliation, if Johnson lost badly, could derail his long-term ambitions.

Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man; if they existed, his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong, a man's life needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted. The individual attains significance as a free spirit only by surrounding himself with these limitations and by determining for himself what his duty is. 

-THE I CHING, CHINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.

Johnson considered all this–then decided to run. Over the next few weeks, he campaigned intensely, visiting the district’s every backwater village and town, shaking the poorest farmer’s hand, sitting in drugstores to meet people who had never come close to talking to a candidate before. He pulled every trick in the book–old-style rallies and barbecues, newfangled radio ads. He worked night and day–and hard. By the time the race was over, Johnson was in a hospital, being treated for exhaustion and appendicitis. But, in one of the great upsets in American political history, he had won.

By staking his future on one throw, Johnson put himself in a death-ground situation. His body and spirit responded with the energy he needed. Often we try too many things at one time, thinking that one of them will bring us success–but in these situations our minds are diffused, our efforts halfhearted. It is better to take on one daunting challenge, even one that others think foolish. Our future is at stake; we cannot afford to lose. So we don’t.

Act before you are ready. In 49 B.C. a group of Roman senators, allied with Pompey and fearing the growing power of Julius Caesar, ordered the great general to disband his army or be considered a traitor to the Republic. When Caesar received this decree, he was in southern Gaul (modern-day France) with only five thousand men; the rest of his legions were far to the north, where he had been campaigning. He had no intention of obeying the decree–that would have been suicide–but it would be weeks before the bulk of his army could join him. Unwilling to wait, Caesar told his captains, “Let the die be cast,” and he and his five thousand men crossed the Rubicon, the river marking the border between Gaul and Italy. Leading troops onto Italian soil meant war with Rome. Now there was no turning back; it was fight or die. Caesar was compelled to concentrate his forces, to not waste a single man, to act with speed, and to be as creative as possible. He marched on Rome. By seizing the initiative, he frightened the senators, forcing Pompey to flee.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day 

-NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

When danger is greatest.--It is rare to break one's leg when in the course of life one is toiling upwards--it happens much more often when one starts to take things easy and to choose the easy paths. 

-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844-1900

We often wait too long to act, particularly when we face no outside pressure. It is sometimes better to act before you think you are ready–to force the issue and cross the Rubicon. Not only will you take your opponents by surprise, you will also have to make the most of your resources. You have committed yourself and cannot turn back. Under pressure your creativity will flourish. Do this often and you will develop your ability to think and act fast.

Enter new waters. The Hollywood studio MGM had been good to Joan Crawford: it had discovered her, made her a star, crafted her image. By the early 1940s, though, Crawford had had enough. It was all too comfortable; MGM kept casting her in the same kinds of roles, none of them a challenge. So, in 1943, Crawford did the unthinkable and asked out of her contract.

Be absolute for death; either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences, That dost this habituation, where thou keep'st, Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble; For all the accommodations that thou bear'st Are nursed by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant; For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more. 

-MEASURE FOR MEASURE, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616

The consequences for Crawford could have been terrible; to challenge the studio system was considered highly unwise. Indeed, when she then signed up with Warner Brothers, predictably enough she was offered the same mediocre sorts of scripts. She turned them down. On the verge of being fired, she finally found the part she had been looking for: the title role in Mildred Pierce, which, however, she was not offered. Setting to work on the director, Michael Curtiz, she managed to change his mind and land the role. She gave the performance of her life, won her only Best Actress Oscar, and resurrected her career.

In leaving MGM, Crawford was taking a big chance. If she failed to succeed at Warner Brothers, and quickly, her career would be over. But Crawford thrived on risk. When she was challenged, when she felt on edge, she burst with energy and was at her best. Like Crawford, you sometimes have to force yourself onto death ground–leaving stale relationships and comfortable situations behind, cutting your ties to the past. If you give yourself no way out, you will have to make your new endeavor work. Leaving the past for unknown terrain is like a death–and feeling this finality will snap you back to life.

Make it “you against the world.” Compared to sports like football, baseball is slow and has few outlets for aggression. This was a problem for the hitter Ted Williams, who played best when he was angry–when he felt that it was him against the world. Creating this mood on the field was difficult for Williams, but early on, he discovered a secret weapon: the press. He got into the habit of insulting sportswriters, whether just by refusing to cooperate with them or by verbally abusing them. The reporters returned the favor, writing scathing articles on his character, questioning his talent, trumpeting the slightest drop in his batting average. It was when Williams was hammered by the press, though, that he played best. He would go on a hitting tear, as if to prove them wrong. In 1957, when he carried on a yearlong feud with the papers, he played perhaps his greatest season and won the batting title at what for a baseball player is the advanced age of forty. As one journalist wrote, “Hate seems to activate his reflexes like adrenaline stimulates the heart. Animosity is his fuel!”

For Williams the animosity of the press and, with the press, of the public, was a kind of constant pressure that he could read, hear, and feel. They hated him, they doubted him, they wanted to see him fail; he would show them. And he did. A fighting spirit needs a little edge, some anger and hatred to fuel it. So do not sit back and wait for people to get aggressive; irritate and infuriate them deliberately. Feeling cornered by a multitude of people who dislike you, you will fight like hell. Hatred is a powerful emotion. Remember: in any battle you are putting your name and reputation on the line; your enemies will relish your failure. Use that pressure to make yourself fight harder.

Keep yourself restless and unsatisfied. Napoleon had many qualities that made him perhaps history’s greatest general, but the one that raised him to the heights and kept him there was his boundless energy. During campaigns he worked eighteen to twenty-hour days. If necessary, he would go without sleep for several days, yet sleeplessness rarely reduced his capacities. He would work in the bath, at the theater, during a dinner party. Keeping his eye on every detail of the war, he would ride endless miles on horseback without tiring or complaining.

O gentlemen, the time of life is short! To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial's point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour. An if we live, we live to tread on kings; If die, brave death, when princes die with us! 

-KING HENRY IV, PART I, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616

Certainly Napoleon had extraordinary endurance, but there was more to it than that: he never let himself rest, was never satisfied. In 1796, in his first real position of command, he led the French to a remarkable victory in Italy, then immediately went on another campaign, this time in Egypt. There, unhappy with the way the war was going and with a lack of political power that he felt was cutting into his control over military affairs, he returned to France and conspired to become first consul. This achieved, he immediately set out on his second Italian campaign. And on he went, immersing himself in new wars, new challenges, that required him to call on his limitless energy. If he did not meet the crisis, he would perish.

When we are tired, it is often because we are bored. When no real challenge faces us, a mental and physical lethargy sets in. “Sometimes death only comes from a lack of energy,” Napoleon once said, and lack of energy comes from a lack of challenges, comes when we have taken on less than we are capable of. Take a risk and your body and mind will respond with a rush of energy. Make risk a constant practice; never let yourself settle down. Soon living on death ground will become a kind of addiction–you won’t be able to do without it. When soldiers survive a brush with death, they often feel an exhilaration that they want to have again. Life has more meaning in the face of death. The risks you keep taking, the challenges you keep overcoming, are like symbolic deaths that sharpen your appreciation of life.

Authority: When you will survive if you fight quickly and perish if you do not, this is called [death] ground.... Put them in a spot where they have no place to go, and they will die before fleeing. If they are to die there, what can they not do? Warriors exert their full strength. When warriors are in great danger, then they have no fear. When there is nowhere to go, they are firm, when they are deeply involved, they stick to it. If they have no choice, they will fight. 

-The Art of War, Sun-tzu (fourth century B.C.)

REVERSAL

If the feeling of having nothing to lose can propel you forward, it can do the same for others. You must avoid any conflict with people in this position. Maybe they are living in terrible conditions or, for whatever reason, are suicidal; in any case they are desperate, and desperate people will risk everything in a fight. This gives them a huge advantage. Already defeated by circumstances, they have nothing to lose. You do. Leave them alone.

Conversely, attacking enemies when their morale is low gives you the advantage. Maybe they are fighting for a cause they know is unjust or for a leader they do not respect. Find a way to lower their spirits even further. Troops with low morale are discouraged by the slightest setback. A show of force will crush their fighting spirit.

Always try to lower the other side’s sense of urgency. Make your enemies think they have all the time in the world; when you suddenly appear at their border, they are in a slumbering state, and you will easily overrun them. While you are sharpening your fighting spirit, always do what you can to blunt theirs.

Conclusion

The world is in the midst of World War III right now. It is being fought with things that are strange and unusual, and it is not being reported. In fact, the “news” is instead sending everyone off on “wild goose chases” down “rabbit holes”. No one actually knows what is going on.

It is critically important that you secure yourself and your family, and maintain a calm head through all of this. Let those around you make rash, foolish decisions, panic, and worry. That is not for you.

Recognize who you are, and where you are. Then, steely and calmly conduct your affirmation campaigns to wrest control of the reality that surrounds you and bend it to your will. You have this ability. Make it so.

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This is a full reprint in HTML of the third chapter (Chapter 3) of the first part (Part I) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

AMIDST THE TURMOIL OF EVENTS, DO NOT LOSE YOUR PRESENCE OF MIND

THE COUNTERBALANCE STRATEGY

In the heat of battle, the mind tends to lose its balance. Too many things confront you at the same time—unexpected setbacks,  doubts and  criticisms from your own allies.  There’s a  danger of responding emotionally, with fear, depression, or frustration.

It is vital to keep your presence of mind, maintaining your mental powers whatever the circumstances.

You must actively resist the emotional pull of the moment—staying decisive, confident, and aggressive no matter what hits you. Make the mind tougher by exposing it to adversity. Learn to detach yourself from the chaos of the battlefield. Let others lose their heads; your presence of mind will steer you clear of their influence and keep you on course.

[Presence of mind] must play a great role in war, the domain of the unexpected, since it is nothing but an increased capacity of dealing with the unexpected. We admire presence of mind in an apt repartee, as we admire  quick thinking in the  face of danger.... The  expression "presence of mind" precisely conveys the speed and immediacy of the help provided by the intellect.

ON WAR, CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

THE HYPERAGGRESSIVE TACTIC

Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) had been through it all. He had lost his right eye in the siege of Calvi and his right arm in the Battle of Tenerife. He had defeated the Spanish at Cape St. Vincent in 1797 and had thwarted Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign by defeating his navy at the Battle of the Nile the following year. But none of his tribulations and triumphs prepared him for the problems he faced from his own colleagues in the British navy as they prepared to go to war against Denmark in February 1801.

Nelson, England’s most glorious war hero, was the obvious choice to lead the fleet. Instead the Admiralty chose Sir Hyde Parker, with Nelson his second-in-command. This war was a delicate business; it was intended to force the disobedient Danes to comply with a British-led embargo on the shipping of military goods to France. The fiery Nelson was prone to lose his cool. He hated Napoleon, and if he went too far against the Danes, he would produce a diplomatic fiasco. Sir Hyde was an older, more stable, even-tempered man who would do the job and nothing more.

Nelson swallowed his pride and took the assignment, but he saw trouble ahead. He knew that time was of the essence: the faster the navy sailed, the less chance the Danes would have to build up their defenses. The ships were ready to sail, but Parker’s motto was “Everything in good order.” It wasn’t his style to hurry. Nelson hated his casualness and burned for action: he reviewed intelligence reports, studied maps, and came up with a detailed plan for fighting the Danes. He wrote to Parker urging him to seize the initiative. Parker ignored him.

More life may trickle out of men through thought than through a gaping wound.

THOMAS HARDY, 1840-1928

At last, on March 11, the British fleet set sail. Instead of heading for Copenhagen, however, Parker anchored well to the north of the city’s harbor and called a meeting of his captains. According to intelligence reports, he explained, the Danes had prepared elaborate defenses for Copenhagen. Boats anchored in the harbor, forts to the north and south, and mobile artillery batteries could blast the British out of the water. How to fight this artillery without terrible losses? Also, pilots who knew the waters around Copenhagen reported that they were treacherous, places of sandbars and tricky winds. Navigating these dangers under bombardment would be harrowing. With all of these difficulties, perhaps it was best to wait for the Danes to leave harbor and then fight them in open sea.

Nelson struggled to control himself. Finally he let loose, pacing the room, the stub of his lost arm jerking as he spoke. No war, he said, had ever been won by waiting. The Danish defenses looked formidable “to those who are children at war,” but he had worked out a strategy weeks earlier: he would attack from the south, the easier approach, while Parker and a reserve force would stay to the city’s north. Nelson would use his mobility to take out the Danish guns. He had studied the maps: sandbars were no threat. As for the wind, aggressive action was more important than fretting over wind.

Nelson’s speech energized Parker’s captains. He was by far their most successful leader, and his confidence was catching. Even Sir Hyde was impressed, and the plan was approved.

So Grant was alone; his most trusted subordinates besought him to change his plans, while his superiors were astounded at his temerity and strove to interfere. 

Soldiers of reputation and civilians in high places condemned, in advance, a campaign that seemed to them as hopeless as it was unprecedented. 

If he failed, the country would concur with the Government and the Generals. 

Grant knew all this, and appreciated his danger, but was as invulnerable to the apprehensions of ambition as to the entreaties of friendship, or the anxieties even of patriotism. 

That quiet confidence in himself which never forsook him, and which amounted indeed almost to a feeling of fate, was uninterrupted. Having once determined in a matter that required irreversible decision, he never reversed, nor even misgave, but was steadily loyal to himself and his plans. 

This absolute and implicit faith was, however, as far as possible from conceit or enthusiasm; it was simply a consciousness or conviction, rather, which brought the  very strength it believed in; which was itself strength, and which inspired others with a trust in him, because he was able thus to trust himself.

MILITARY HISTORY OF ULYSSES S. GRANT, ADAM BADEAU, 1868

The next morning Nelson’s line of ships advanced on Copenhagen, and the battle began. The Danish guns, firing on the British at close range, took a fierce toll. Nelson paced the deck of his flagship, HMS Elephant, urging his men on. He was in an excited, almost ecstatic state. A shot through the mainmast nearly hit him: “It is warm work, and this day may be the last to any of us at any moment,” he told a colonel, a little shaken up by the blast, “but mark you, I would not be elsewhere for thousands.”

Parker followed the battle from his position to the north. He now regretted agreeing to Nelson’s plan; he was responsible for the campaign, and a defeat here could ruin his career. After four hours of back-and-forth bombardment, he had seen enough: the fleet had taken a beating and had gained no advantage. Nelson never knew when to quit. Parker decided it was time to hoist signal flag 39, the order to withdraw. The first ships to see it were to acknowledge it and pass the signal on down the line. Once acknowledged there was nothing else to do but retreat.

The battle was over.

On board the Elephant, a lieutenant told Nelson about the signal. The vice-admiral ignored it. Continuing to pound the Danish defenses, he eventually called to an officer, “Is number sixteen still hoisted?” Number 16 was his own flag; it meant “Engage the enemy more closely.” The officer confirmed that the flag was still flying. “Mind you keep it so,” Nelson told him.

A few minutes later, Parker’s signal still flapping in the breeze, Nelson turned to his flag captain: “You know, Foley, I have only one eye–I have a right to be blind sometimes.” And raising his telescope to his blind eye, he calmly remarked, “I really do not see the signal.”

Torn between obeying Parker and obeying Nelson, the fleet captains chose Nelson. They would risk their careers along with his. But soon the Danish defenses started to crack; some of the ships anchored in the harbor surrendered, and the firing of the guns began to slow. Less than an hour after Parker’s signal to stop the battle, the Danes surrendered.

The next day Parker perfunctorily congratulated Nelson on the victory. He did not mention his subordinate’s disobedience. He was hoping the whole affair, including his own lack of courage, would be quietly forgotten.

Interpretation

When the Admiralty put its faith in Sir Hyde, it made a classical military error: it entrusted the waging of a war to a man who was careful and methodical. Such men may seem calm, even strong, in times of peace, but their self-control often hides weakness: the reason they think things through so carefully is that they are terrified of making a mistake and of what that might mean for them and their career.

This doesn’t come out until they are tested in battle: suddenly they cannot make a decision. They see problems everywhere and defeat in the smallest setback. They hang back not out of patience but out of fear. Often these moments of hesitation spell their doom.

There was once a man who may be called the "generalissimo" of robbers and who went by the name of Hakamadare. 

He had a strong mind and a powerful build. He was swift of foot, quick with his hands, wise in thinking and plotting. Altogether there was no one who could compare with him. 

His business was to rob people of their possessions when they were off guard. 

Once, around the tenth month of a year, he needed clothing and decided to get hold of some. 

He went to prospective spots and walked about, looking. 

About midnight when people had gone to sleep and were quiet, under a somewhat blurry moon he saw a man dressed in abundant clothes sauntering about on a boulevard. The man, with his trouser-skirt tucked up with strings perhaps and in a formal hunting robe which gently covered his body, was playing the flute, alone, apparently in no hurry to go to any particular place. 

Wow, here's a fellow who's shown up just to give me his clothes, Hakamadare thought. 

Normally he would have gleefully run up and beaten his quarry down and robbed him of his clothes. But this time, unaccountably, he felt something fearsome about the man, so he followed him for a couple of hundred yards. 

The man himself didn't seem to think, Somebody's following me. On the contrary, he continued to play the flute with what appeared to be greater calm. 

Give him a try, Hakamadare said to himself, and ran up close to the man, making as much clatter as he could with his feet. 

The man, however, looked not the least disturbed. He simply turned to look, still playing the flute. It wasn't possible to jump on him. Hakamadare ran off. 

Hakamadare tried similar approaches a number of times, but the man remained utterly unperturbed. Hakamadare realized he was dealing with an unusual fellow. When they had covered about a thousand yards, though, Hakamadare decided he couldn't continue like this, drew his sword, and ran up to him. 

This time the man stopped playing the flute and, turning, said, "What in the world are you doing?" Hakamadare couldn't have been struck with greater fear even if a demon or a god had run up to attack him when he was walking alone. 

For some unaccountable reason he lost both heart and courage. 

Overcome with deathly fear and despite himself, he fell on his knees and hands. "What are you doing?" the man repeated. 

Hakamadare felt he couldn't escape even if he tried. "I'm trying to rob you," he blurted out. "My name is Hakamadare." "

I've heard there's a man about with that name, yes. A dangerous, unusual fellow, I'm told," the man said. 

Then he simply said to Hakamadare, "Come with me," and continued on his way, playing the flute again. 

Terrified that he was dealing with no ordinary human being, and as if possessed by a demon or a god, Hakamadare followed the man, completely mystified. Eventually the man walked into a gate behind which was a large house. 

He stepped inside from the verandah after removing his shoes. While Hakamadare was thinking, He must be the master of the house, the man came back and summoned him. 

As he gave him a robe made of thick cotton cloth, he said, "If you need something like this in the future, just come and tell me. If you jump on somebody who doesn't know your intentions, you may get hurt." 

Afterward it occurred to Hakamadare that the house belonged to Governor of Settsu Fujiwara no Yasumasa. 

Later, when he was arrested, he is known to have observed, "He was such an unusually weird, terrifying man!" 

Yasumasa was not a warrior by family tradition because he was a son of Munetada. Yet he was not the least inferior to anyone who was a warrior by family tradition. 

He had a strong mind, was quick with his hands, and had tremendous strength. 

He was also subtle in thinking and plotting. So even the imperial court did not feel insecure in employing him in the way of the warrior. As a result, the whole world greatly feared him and was intimidated by him.

LEGENDS OF THE SAMURAI, HIROAKI SATO, 1995

Lord Nelson operated according to the opposite principle. Slight of build, with a delicate constitution, he compensated for his physical weakness with fierce determination. He forced himself to be more resolute than anyone around him. The moment he entered battle, he ratcheted up his aggressive impulses.

Where other sea lords worried about casualties, the wind, changes in the enemy’s formation, he concentrated on his plan. Before battle no one strategized or studied his opponent more thoroughly. (That knowledge helped Nelson to sense when the enemy was ready to crumble.) But once the engagement began, hesitation and carefulness were dropped.

Presence of mind is a kind of counterbalance to mental weakness, to our  tendency to get emotional and lose perspective in the heat of battle.

Our greatest weakness is losing heart, doubting ourselves, becoming unnecessarily cautious.

Being more careful is not what we need; that is just a screen for our fear of conflict and of making a mistake. What we need is double the resolve–an intensification of confidence. That will serve as a counterbalance.

In moments of turmoil and trouble, you must force yourself to be more determined. Call up the aggressive energy you need to overcome caution and inertia. Any mistakes you make, you can rectify with more energetic action still. Save your carefulness for the hours of preparation, but once the fighting begins, empty your mind of doubts. Ignore those who quail at any setback and call for retreat. Find joy in attack mode. Momentum will carry you through.

The senses make a more vivid impression on the mind than systematic thought.... Even the man who planned the operation and now sees it being carried out may well lose confidence in his earlier judgment.... War has a way of masking the stage with scenery crudely daubed with fearsome apparitions. Once this is cleared away, and the horizon becomes unobstructed, developments will confirm his earlier convictions--this is one of the great chasms between planning and execution.

--Carl von Clausewitz, ON WAR (1780-1831)

THE DETACHED-BUDDHA TACTIC

Watching the movie director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) at work on a film set was often quite a surprise to those seeing it for the first time. Most filmmakers are wound-up balls of energy, yelling at the crew and barking out orders, but Hitchcock would sit in his chair, sometimes dozing, or at least with his eyes half closed.

On the set of Strangers on a Train, made in 1951, the actor Farley Granger thought Hitchcock’s behavior meant he was angry or upset and asked him if anything was wrong. “Oh,” Hitchcock replied sleepily, “I’m so bored.” The crew’s complaints, an actor’s tantrums–nothing fazed him; he would just yawn, shift in his chair, and ignore the problem. “Hitchcock…didn’t seem to direct us at all,” said the actress Margaret Lockwood. “He was a dozing, nodding Buddha with an enigmatic smile on his face.”

It was hard for Hitchcock’s colleagues to understand how a man doing such stressful work could stay so calm and detached. Some thought it was part of his character–that there was something inherently cold-blooded about him. Others thought it a gimmick, a put-on.

Few suspected the truth: before the filmmaking had even begun, Hitchcock would have prepared for it with such intense attention to detail that nothing could go wrong.

He was completely in control; no temperamental actress, no panicky art director, no meddling producer could upset him or interfere with his plans. Feeling such absolute security in what he had set up, he could afford to lie back and fall asleep.

Hitchcock’s process began with a story-line, whether from a novel or an idea of his own. As if he had a movie projector in his head, he would begin to visualize the film. Next, he would start meeting with a writer, who would soon realize that this job was unlike any other. Instead of taking some producer’s half-baked idea and turning it into a screenplay, the writer was simply there to put on paper the dream trapped in Hitchcock’s mind.

He or she would add flesh and bones to the characters and would of course write the dialog, but not much else.

When Hitchcock sat down with the writer Samuel Taylor for the first script meeting on the movie Vertigo (1958), his descriptions of several scenes were so vivid, so intense, that the experiences seemed almost to have been real, or maybe something he had dreamed. This completeness of vision foreclosed creative conflict. As Taylor soon realized, although he was writing the script, it would remain a Hitchcock creation.

Once the screenplay was finished, Hitchcock would transform it into an elaborate shooting script.

Blocking, camera positions, lighting, and set dimensions were spelled out in detailed notes. Most directors leave themselves some latitude, shooting scenes from several angles, for example, to give the film editor options to work with later on. Not Hitchcock: he essentially edited the entire film in the shooting script. He knew exactly what he wanted and wrote it down. If a producer or actor tried to add or change a scene, Hitchcock was outwardly pleasant–he could afford to pretend to listen–but inside he was totally unmoved.

Nothing was left to chance. For the building of the sets (quite elaborate in a movie like Rear Window), Hitchcock would present the production designer with precise blueprints, floor plans, incredibly detailed lists of props. He supervised every aspect of set construction.

He was particularly attentive to the clothes of  his leading actresses: according to Edith Head, costumer on many Hitchcock movies, including Dial M for Murder in 1954, “There was a reason for every color, every style, and he was absolutely certain about everything he settled on. For one scene he saw [Grace Kelly] in pale green, for another in white chiffon, for another in gold. He was really putting a dream together in the studio.” When the actress Kim Novak refused to wear a gray suit in Vertigo because she felt it made her look washed out, Hitchcock told her he wanted her to look like a woman of mystery who had just stepped out of the San Francisco fog. How could she argue with that?

She wore the suit.

Hitchcock’s actors found working with him strange yet pleasant. Some of Hollywood’s best– Joseph Cotten, Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman–said that he was the easiest director to work for: his nonchalance was catching, and since his films were so carefully staged as not to depend on the actor’s performance in any particular scene, they could relax.

Everything went like clockwork.

As James Stewart told the cast of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), “We’re in the hands of an expert here. You can lean on him. Just do everything he tells you and the whole thing will be okay.”

As Hitchcock sat calmly on the set, apparently half asleep, the cast and crew could see only the small part each one played. They had no idea how everything fit into his vision. When Taylor saw Vertigo for the first time, it was like seeing another man’s dream. The film neatly duplicated the vision Hitchcock had expressed to him many months before.

Interpretation

The first film Hitchcock directed was The Pleasure Garden, a silent he made in 1925. The production went wrong in every conceivable way.

Hitchcock hated chaos and disorder; unexpected events, panicky crew members, and any loss of control made him miserable.

From that point on, he decided, he would treat filmmaking like a military operation.

He would give his producers, actors, and crew no room to mess up what he wanted to create. He taught himself every aspect of film production: set design, lighting, the technicalities of cameras and lenses, editing, sound. He ran every stage of the film’s making. No shadow could fall between the planning and the execution.

Establishing control in advance the way Hitchcock did might not seem like presence of mind, but it actually takes that quality to its zenith. It means entering battle (in Hitchcock’s case a film shoot) feeling calm and ready.

Setbacks may come, but you will have foreseen them and thought of alternatives, and you are ready to respond.

Your mind will never go blank when it is that well prepared. When your colleagues barrage you with doubts, anxious questions, and slipshod ideas, you may nod and pretend to listen, but really you’re ignoring them–you’ve out-thought them in advance. And your relaxed manner will prove contagious to other people, making them easier to manage in turn.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by everything that faces you in battle, where so many people are asking or telling you what to do. So many vital matters press in on you that you can lose sight of your goals and plans; suddenly you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Understand: presence of mind is the ability to detach yourself from all that, to see the whole battlefield, the whole picture, with clarity. All great generals have this quality. And what gives you that mental distance is preparation, mastering the details beforehand. Let people think your Buddha-like detachment comes from some mysterious source. The less they understand you the better.

For the love of God, pull yourself together and do not look at things so darkly: the first step backward makes a poor impression in the army, the second step is dangerous, and the third becomes fatal.

--Frederick the Great (1712-86), letter to a general

KEYS TO WARFARE

We humans like to see ourselves as rational creatures. We imagine that what separates us from animals is the ability to think and reason. But that is only partly true: what distinguishes us from animals just as much is our capacity to laugh, to cry, to feel a range of emotions. We are in fact emotional creatures as well as rational ones, and although we like to think we govern our actions through reason and thought, what most often dictates our behavior is the emotion we feel in the moment.

We maintain the illusion that we are rational through the routine of our daily affairs, which helps us to keep things calm and apparently controlled. Our minds seem rather strong when we’re following our routines. But place any of us in an adverse situation and our rationality vanishes; we react to pressure by growing fearful, impatient, confused. Such moments reveal us for the emotional creatures we are: under attack, whether by a known enemy or unpredictably by a colleague, our response is dominated by feelings of anger, sadness, betrayal. Only with great effort can we reason our way through these periods and respond rationally–and our rationality rarely lasts past the next attack.

Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity–precisely the time when you need strength. What best equips you to cope with the heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.

No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for it–to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it. Historical figures who stand out for their presence of mind–Alexander the Great, Ulysses S. Grant, Winston Churchill–acquired it through adversity, through trial and error. They were in positions of responsibility in which they had to develop this quality or sink. Although these men may have been blessed with an unusual amount of personal fortitude, they had to work hard to strengthen this into presence of mind.

The first quality of a General-in-Chief is to have a cool head which receives exact impressions of things, which never gets heated, which never allows itself to be dazzled, or intoxicated, by good or bad news. 

The successive simultaneous sensations which he receives in the course of a day must be classified, and must occupy the correct places they merit to fill, because common sense and reason are the results of the comparison of a number of sensations each equally well considered. 

There are certain men who, on account of their moral and physical constitution, paint mental pictures out of everything: however exalted be their reason, their will, their courage, and whatever good qualities they may possess, nature has not fitted them to command armies, nor to direct great operations of war.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

The ideas that follow are based on their experience and hard-won victories. Think of these ideas as exercises, ways to toughen your mind, each a kind of counterbalance to emotion’s overpowering pull.

Expose yourself to conflict. George S. Patton came from one of America’s most distinguished military families–his ancestors included generals and colonels who had fought and died in the American Revolution and the Civil War. Raised on stories of their heroism, he followed in their footsteps and chose a career in the military. But Patton was also a sensitive young man, and he had one deep fear: that in battle he would turn coward and disgrace the family name.

Patton had his first real taste of battle in 1918, at the age of thirty-two, during the Allied offensive on the Argonne during World War I. He commanded a tank division. At one point during the battle, Patton managed to lead some American infantrymen to a position on a hilltop overlooking a key strategic town, but German fire forced them to take cover. Soon it became clear that they were trapped: if they retreated, they would come under fire from positions on the sides of the hill; if they advanced, they would run right into a battery of German machine guns. If they were all to die, as it seemed to Patton, better to die advancing. At the moment he was to lead the troops in the charge, however, Patton was stricken by intense fear. His body trembled, and his legs turned to jelly. In a confirmation of his deepest fears, he had lost his nerve.

At that instant, looking into the clouds beyond the German batteries, Patton had a vision: he saw his illustrious military ancestors, all in their uniforms, staring sternly down at him. They seemed to be inviting him to join their company–the company of dead war heroes. Paradoxically, the sight of these men had a calming effect on the young Patton: calling for volunteers to follow him, he yelled, “It is time for another Patton to die!” The strength had returned to his legs; he stood up and charged toward the German guns. Seconds later he fell, hit in the thigh. But he survived the battle.

From that moment on, even after he became a general, Patton made a point of visiting the front lines, exposing himself needlessly to danger. He tested himself again and again. His vision of his ancestors remained a constant stimulus–a challenge to his honor. Each time it became easier to face down his fears. It seemed to his fellow generals, and to his own men, that no one had more presence of mind than Patton. They did not know how much of his strength was an effort of will.

The story of Patton teaches us two things. First, it is better to confront your fears, let them come to the surface, than to ignore them or tamp them down. Fear is the most destructive emotion for presence of mind, but it thrives on the unknown, which lets our imaginations run wild. By deliberately putting yourself in situations where you have to face fear, you familiarize yourself with it and your anxiety grows less acute. The sensation of overcoming a deep-rooted fear in turn gives you confidence and presence of mind. The more conflicts and difficult situations you put yourself through, the more battle-tested your mind will be.

There was a fox who had never seen a lion. But one day he happened to meet one of these beasts face to face. On this first occasion he was so terrified that he felt he would die of fear. He encountered him again, and this time he was also frightened, but not so much as the first time. But on the third occasion when he saw him, he actually plucked up the courage to approach him and began to chat. This fable shows that familiarity soothes our fears.

FABLES, AESOP, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.

Second, Patton’s experience demonstrates the motivating power of a sense of honor and dignity. In giving in to fear, in losing your presence of mind, you disgrace not only yourself, your self-image, and your reputation but your company, your family, your group. You bring down the communal spirit. Being a leader of even the smallest group gives you something to live up to: people are watching you, judging you, depending on you. To lose your composure would make it hard for you to live with yourself.

Be self-reliant. There is nothing worse than feeling dependent on other people. Dependency makes you vulnerable to all kinds of emotions–betrayal, disappointment, frustration–that play havoc with your mental balance.

Early in the American Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant, eventual commander in chief of the Northern armies, felt his authority slipping. His subordinates would pass along inaccurate information on the terrain he was marching through; his captains would fail to follow through on his orders; his generals were criticizing his plans. Grant was stoical by nature, but his diminished control over his troops led to a diminished control over himself and drove him to drink.

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. Lord Takanobu said, "If discrimination is long, it will spoil." Lord Naoshige said, "When matters are done leisurely, seven out of ten will turn out badly. 

A warrior is a person who does things quickly." When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. With an intense, fresh and unde-laying spirit, one will make his judgments within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.

HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1659-1720

Grant had learned his lesson by the time of the Vicksburg campaign, in 1862-63. He rode the terrain himself, studying  it firsthand. He reviewed intelligence reports himself. He honed the precision of his orders, making it harder for his captains to flout them. And once he had made a decision, he would ignore his fellow generals’ doubts and trust his convictions. To get things done, he came to rely on himself. His feelings of helplessness dissolved, and with them all of the attendant emotions that had ruined his presence of mind.

Being self-reliant is critical. To make yourself less dependent on others and so-called experts, you need to expand your repertoire of skills. And you need to feel more confident in your own judgment. Understand: we tend to overestimate other people’s abilities–after all, they’re trying hard to make it look as if they knew what they were doing–and we tend to underestimate our own. You must compensate for this by trusting yourself more and others less.

It is important to remember, though, that being self-reliant does not mean burdening yourself with petty details. You must be able to distinguish between small matters that are best left to others and larger issues that require your attention and care.

Suffer fools gladly. John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, is one of history’s most successful generals. A genius of tactics and strategy, he had tremendous presence of mind. In the early eighteenth century, Churchill was often the leader of an alliance of English, Dutch, and German armies against the mighty forces of France. His fellow generals were timid, indecisive, narrow-minded men. They balked at the duke’s bold plans, saw dangers everywhere, were discouraged at the slightest setback, and promoted their own country’s interests at the expense of the alliance. They had no vision, no patience: they were fools.

On a famous occasion during the civil war, Caesar tripped when disembarking from a ship on the shores of Africa and fell flat on his face. With his talent for improvisation, he spread out his arms and embraced the earth as a symbol of conquest. By quick thinking he turned a terrible omen of failure into one of victory.

CICERO: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROME'S GREATEST POLITICIAN, ANTHONY EVERITT, 2001

The duke, an experienced and subtle courtier, never confronted his colleagues directly; he did not force his opinions on them. Instead he treated them like children, indulging them in their fears while cutting them out of his plans.

Occasionally he threw them a bone, doing some minor thing they had suggested or pretending to worry about a danger they had imagined.

But he never let himself get angry or frustrated; that would have ruined his presence of mind, undermining his ability to lead the campaign. He forced himself to stay patient and cheerful. He knew how to suffer fools gladly.

We mean the ability to keep one's head at times of exceptional stress and violent emotion.... But it might be closer to the truth to assume that the faculty known as self-control--the gift of keeping calm even under the greatest stress--is rooted in temperament. 

It is itself an emotion which serves to balance the passionate feelings in strong characters without destroying them, and it is this balance alone that assures the dominance of the intellect. 

The counter-weight we mean is simply the sense of human dignity, the noblest pride and deepest need of all: the urge to act rationally at all times. Therefore we would argue that a strong character is one that will not be unbalanced by the most powerful emotions.

ON WAR, CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

Understand: you cannot be everywhere or fight everyone. Your time and energy are limited, and you must learn how to preserve them. Exhaustion and frustration can ruin your presence of mind. The world is full of fools–people who cannot wait to get results, who change with the wind, who can’t see past their noses. You encounter them everywhere: the indecisive boss, the rash colleague, the hysterical subordinate. When working alongside fools, do not fight them. Instead think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance. Detach yourself emotionally. And while you’re inwardly laughing at their foolishness, indulge them in one of their more harmless ideas. The ability to stay cheerful in the face of fools is an important skill.

Crowd out feelings of panic by focusing on simple tasks. Lord Yamanouchi, an aristocrat of eighteenth-century Japan, once asked his tea master to accompany him on a visit to Edo (later Tokyo), where he was to stay for a while. He wanted to show off to his fellow courtiers his retainer’s skill in the rituals of the tea ceremony. Now, the tea master knew everything there was to know about the tea ceremony, but little else; he was a peaceful man. He dressed, however, like a samurai, as his high position required.

One day, as the tea master was walking in the big city, he was accosted by a samurai who challenged him to a duel. The tea master was not a swordsman and tried to explain this to the samurai, but the man refused to listen. To turn the challenge down would disgrace both the tea master’s family and Lord Yamanouchi. He had to accept,  though that meant certain death. And accept he did, requesting only that the duel be put off to the next day. His wish was granted.

In panic, the tea master hurried to the nearest fencing school. If he were to die, he wanted to learn how to die honorably. To see the fencing master ordinarily required letters of introduction, but the tea master was so insistent, and so clearly terrified, that at last he was given an interview. The fencing master listened to his story.

However, he perceived now that it did not greatly matter what kind of soldiers he was going to fight, so long as they fought, which fact no one disputed. There was a more serious problem. 

He lay in his bunk pondering upon it. 

He tried to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle.... A little panic-fear grew in his mind. As his imagination went forward to a fight, he saw hideous possibilities. 

He contemplated the lurking menaces of the future, and failed in an effort to see himself standing stoutly in the midst of them. He recalled his visions of broken-bladed glory, but in the shadow of the impending tumult he suspected them to be impossible pictures. 

He sprang from the bunk and began to pace nervously to and fro. "Good Lord, what's th' matter with me?" he said aloud. 

He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity. He saw that he would again be obliged to experiment as he had in early youth. He must accumulate information of himself, and meanwhile he resolved to remain close upon his guard lest those qualities of which he knew nothing should everlastingly disgrace him. 

"Good Lord!" he repeated in dismay.... For days he made ceaseless calculations, but they were all wondrously unsatisfactory. He found that he could establish nothing. 

He finally concluded that the only way to prove himself was to go into the blaze, and then figuratively to watch his legs to discover their merits and faults. He reluctantly admitted that he could not sit still and with a mental slate and pencil derive an answer. To gain it, he must have blaze, blood, and danger, even as a chemist requires this, that, and the other. So he fretted for an opportunity.

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, STEPHEN CRANE, 1871-1900

The swordsman was sympathetic: he would teach the poor visitor the art of dying, but first he wanted to be served some tea. The tea master proceeded to perform the ritual, his manner calm, his concentration perfect.

Finally the fencing master yelled out in excitement, “No need for you to learn the art of death! The state of mind you’re in now is enough for you to face any samurai. When you see your challenger, imagine you’re about to serve tea to a guest. Take off your coat, fold it up carefully, and lay your fan on it just as you do at work.” This ritual completed, the tea master was to raise his sword in the same alert spirit. Then he would be ready to die.

The tea master agreed to do as his teacher said. The next day he went to meet the samurai, who could not help but notice the completely calm and dignified expression on his opponent’s face as he took off his coat. Perhaps, the samurai thought, this fumbling tea master is actually a skilled swordsman. He bowed, begged pardon for his behavior the day before, and hurried away.

When circumstances scare us, our imagination tends to take over, filling our minds with endless anxieties.

You need to gain control of your imagination, something easier said than done. Often the best way to calm down and give yourself such control  is to force the mind to concentrate on something relatively simple–a calming ritual, a repetitive task that you are good at. You are creating the kind of composure you naturally have when your mind is absorbed in a problem. A focused mind has no room for anxiety or for the effects of an overactive imagination. Once you have regained your mental balance, you can then face the problem at hand. At the first sign of any kind of fear, practice this technique until it becomes a habit. Being able to control your imagination at intense moments is a crucial skill.

Unintimidate yourself. Intimidation will always threaten your presence of mind. And it is a hard feeling to combat.

During World War II, the composer Dmitry Shostakovich and several of his colleagues were called into a meeting with the Russian ruler Joseph Stalin, who had commissioned them to write a new national anthem. Meetings with Stalin were terrifying; one misstep could lead you into a very dark alley. He would stare you down until you felt your throat tighten. And, as meetings with Stalin often did, this one took a bad turn: the ruler began to criticize one of the composers for his poor arrangement of his anthem. Scared silly, the man admitted he had used an arranger who had done a bad job. Here he was digging several graves: Clearly the poor arranger could be called to task. The composer was responsible for the hire, and he, too, could pay for the mistake. And what of the other composers, including Shostakovich? Stalin could be relentless once he smelled fear.

Shostakovich had heard enough: it was foolish, he said, to blame the arranger, who was mostly following orders. He then subtly redirected the conversation to a different subject–whether a composer should do his own orchestrations. What did Stalin think on the matter? Always eager to prove his expertise, Stalin swallowed the bait. The dangerous moment passed.

Shostakovich maintained his presence of mind in several ways. First, instead of letting Stalin intimidate him, he forced himself to see the man as he was: short, fat, ugly, unimaginative. The dictator’s famous piercing gaze was just a trick, a sign of his own insecurity. Second, Shostakovich faced up to Stalin, talking to him normally and straightforwardly. By his actions and tone of voice, the composer showed that he was not intimidated. Stalin fed off fear. If, without being aggressive or brazen, you showed no fear, he would generally leave you alone.

The key to staying unintimidated is to convince yourself that the person you’re facing is a mere mortal, no different from you–which is in fact the truth. See the person, not the myth. Imagine him or her as a child, as someone riddled with insecurities. Cutting the other person down to size will help you to keep your mental balance.

Develop your Fingerspitzengefuhl (fingertip feel). Presence of mind depends not only on your mind’s ability to come to your aid in difficult situations but also on the speed with which this happens. Waiting until the next day to think of the right action to take does you no good at all. “Speed” here means responding to circumstances with rapidity and making lightning-quick decisions. This power is often read as a kind of intuition, what the Germans call “Fingerspitzengefuhl” (fingertip feel).

Erwin Rommel, who led the German tank campaign in North Africa during World War II, had great fingertip feel. He could sense when the Allies would attack and from what direction. In choosing a line of advance, he had an uncanny feel for his enemy’s weakness; at the start of a battle, he could intuit his enemy’s strategy before it unfolded.

To Rommel’s men their general seemed to have a genius for war, and he did possess a quicker mind than most. But Rommel also did things to enhance his quickness, things that reinforced his feel for battle.

First, he devoured information about the enemy–from details about its weaponry to the psychological traits of the opposing general.

Second, he made himself an expert in tank technology, so that he could get the most out of his equipment.

Third, he not only memorized maps of the North African desert but would fly over it, at great risk, to get a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield.

Finally, he personalized his relationship with his men. He always had a sense of their morale and knew exactly what he could expect from them.

Rommel didn’t just study his men, his tanks, the terrain, and the enemy–he got inside their skin, understood the spirit that animated them, what made them tick. Having felt his way into these things, in battle he entered a state of mind in which he did not have to think consciously of the situation. The totality of what was going on was in his blood, at his fingertips.

He had Fingerspitzengefuhl.

Whether or not you have the mind of a Rommel, there are things you can do to help you respond faster and bring out that intuitive feel that all animals possess. Deep knowledge of the terrain will let you process information faster than your enemy, a tremendous advantage. Getting a feel for the spirit of men and material, thinking your way into them instead of looking at them from outside, will help to put you in a different frame of mind, less conscious and forced, more unconscious and intuitive. Get your mind into the habit of making lightning-quick decisions, trusting your fingertip feel. Your mind will advance in a kind of mental blitzkrieg, moving past your opponents before they realize what has hit them.

Finally, do not think of presence of mind as a quality useful only in periods of adversity, something to switch on and off as you need it. Cultivate it as an everyday condition. Confidence, fearlessness, and self-reliance are as crucial in times of peace as in times of war. Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed his tremendous mental toughness and grace under pressure not only during the crises of the Depression and World War II but in everyday situations–in his dealings with his family, his cabinet, his own polio-racked body. The better you get at the game of war, the more your warrior frame of mind will do for you in daily life. When a crisis does come, your mind will already be calm and prepared. Once presence of mind becomes a habit, it will never abandon you.

The man with centre has calm, unprejudiced judgment. He knows what is important, what unimportant. He meets realilty serenely and with detachment keeping his sense of proportion. The Hara no aru hito [man with centre] faces life calmly, is tranquil, ready for anything.... Nothing upsets him. 

If suddenly fire breaks out and people begin to shout in wild confusion [he] does the right thing immediately and quietly, he ascertains the direction of the wind, rescues what is most important, fetches water, and behaves unhesitatingly in the way the emergency demands. 

The Hara no nai hito is the opposite of all this. 

The Hara no nai hito applies to the man without calm judgment. He lacks the measure which should be second nature. Therefore he reacts haphazardly and subectively, arbitrarily and capriciously. He cannot distinguish between important and unimportant, essential and unessential. 

His judgment is not based upon facts but on temporary conditions and rests on subjective foundations, such as moods, whims, "nerves." 

The Hara no nai hito is easily startled, is nervous, not because he is particularly sensitive but because he lacks that inner axis which would prevent his being thrown off centre and which would enable him to deal with situations realistically.... 

Hara [centre, belly] is only in slight measure innate. It is above all the result of persistent self-training and discipline, in fact the fruit of responsible, individual development. 

That is what the Japanese means when he speaks of the Hara no dekita hito , the man who has accomplished or finished his belly, that is, himself: for he is mature. If this development does not take place, we have the Hara no dekita inai hito, someone who has not developed, who has remained immature, who is too young in the psychological sense. The Japanese also say Hara no dekita inai hito wa hito no ue ni tatsu koto ga dekinai: the man who has not finished his belly cannot stand above others (is not fit for leadership).

HARA: THE VITAL CENTRE, KARLFRIED GRAF VON DURCKHEIM, 1962

Authority: A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)

REVERSAL

It is never good to lose your presence of mind, but you can use those moments when it is under threat to know how to act in the future. You must find a way to put yourself in the thick of battle, then watch yourself in action. Look for your own weaknesses, and think about how to compensate for them. People who have never lost their presence of mind are actually in danger: someday they will be taken by surprise, and the fall will be harsh. All great generals, from Julius Caesar to Patton, have at some point lost their nerve and then have been the stronger for winning it back. The more you have lost your balance, the more you will know about how to right yourself.

You do not want to lose your presence of mind in key situations, but it is a wise course to find a way to make your enemies lose theirs. Take what throws you off balance and impose it on them. Make them act before they are ready. Surprise them–nothing is more unsettling than the unexpected need to act. Find their weakness, what makes them emotional, and give them a double dose of it. The more emotional you can make them, the farther you will push them off course.

Conclusion

The world is in the midst of World War III right now. It is being fought with things that are strange and unusual, and it is not being reported. In fact, the “news” is instead sending everyone off on “wild goose chases” down “rabbit holes”. No one actually knows what is going on.

It is critically important that you secure yourself and your family, and maintain a calm head through all of this. Let those around you make rash, foolish decisions, panic, and worry. That is not for you.

Recognize who you are, and where you are. Then, steely and calmly conduct your affirmation campaigns to wrest control of the reality that surrounds you and bend it to your will. You have this ability. Make it so.

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This is a full reprint in HTML of the second chapter (Chapter 2) of the first part (Part I) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

PART I

2. DO NOT FIGHT THE LAST WAR

THE GUERRILLA-WAR-OF-THE-MIND STRATEGY

What most often weighs you down and brings you misery is the past, in the form of unnecessary attachments, repetitions of tired formulas, and the memory of old victories and defeats. 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. What you may lose in comfort and security, you will gain in surprise, making it harder for your enemies to tell what you will do. Wage guerrilla war on your mind, allowing no static lines of defense, no exposed citadels—make everything fluid and mobile.

Theory cannot equip the mind with formulas for solving problems, nor can it mark the narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side. But it can give the mind insight into the great mass of phenomena and of their relationships, then leave it free to rise into the higher realms of action. There the mind can use its innate talents to capacity, combining them all so as to seize on what is right and true as though this were a single idea formed by their concentrated pressure--as though it were a response to the immediate challenge rather than a product of thought.

ON WAR, CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

THE LAST WAR

No one has risen to power faster than Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). In 1793 he went from captain in the French revolutionary army to brigadier general. In 1796 he became the leader of the French force in Italy fighting the Austrians, whom he crushed that year and again three years later. He became first consul of France in 1801, emperor in 1804. In 1805 he humiliated the Austrian and Russian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz.

For many, Napoleon was more than a great general; he was a genius, a god of war. Not everyone was impressed, though: there were Prussian generals who thought he had merely been lucky. Where Napoleon was rash and aggressive, they believed, his opponents had been timid and weak. If he ever faced the Prussians, he would be revealed as a great fake.

Among these Prussian generals was Friedrich Ludwig, prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen (1746- 1818). Hohenlohe came from one of Germany’s oldest aristocratic families, one with an illustrious military record. He had begun his career young, serving under Frederick the Great (1712-86) himself, the man who had single-handedly made Prussia a great power. Hohenlohe had risen through the ranks, becoming a general at fifty–young by Prussian standards.

To Hohenlohe success in war depended on organization, discipline, and the use of superior strategies developed by trained military minds. The Prussians exemplified all of these virtues. Prussian soldiers drilled relentlessly until they could perform elaborate maneuvers as precisely as a machine. Prussian generals intensely studied the victories of Frederick the Great; war for them was a mathematical affair, the application of timeless principles. To the generals Napoleon was a Corsican hothead leading an unruly citizens’ army. Superior in knowledge and skill, they would out-strategize him. The French would panic and crumble in the face of the disciplined Prussians; the Napoleonic myth would lie in ruins, and Europe could return to its old ways.

In August 1806, Hohenlohe and his fellow generals finally got what they wanted: King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, tired of Napoleon’s broken promises, decided to declare war on him in six weeks. In the meantime he asked his generals to come up with a plan to crush the French.

Hohenlohe was ecstatic.

This campaign would be the climax of his career. He had been thinking for years about how to beat Napoleon, and he presented his plan at the generals’ first strategy session: precise marches would place the army at the perfect angle from which to attack the French as they advanced through southern Prussia. An attack in oblique formation–Frederick the Great’s favorite tactic–would deliver a devastating blow. The other generals, all in their sixties and seventies, presented their own plans, but these too were merely variants on the tactics of Frederick the Great. Discussion turned into argument; several weeks went by. Finally the king had to step in and create a compromise strategy that would satisfy all of his generals.

He [Baron Antoine-Henri de Jomini] --often quite arbitrarily--presses [the deeds of Napoleon] into a system which he foists on Napoleon, and, in doing so, completely fails to see what, above all, really constitutes the greatness of this captain--namely, the reckless boldness of his operations, where, scoffing at all theory, he always tried to do what suited each occasion best.

FRIEDRICH VON BERNHARDI, 1849-1930

A feeling of exuberance swept the country, which would soon relive the glory years of Frederick the Great. The generals realized that Napoleon knew about their plans–he had excellent spies–but the Prussians had a head start, and once their war machine started to move, nothing could stop it.

On October 5, a few days before the king was to declare war, disturbing news reached the generals.

A reconnaissance mission revealed that divisions of Napoleon’s army, which they had believed was dispersed, had marched east, merged, and was massing deep in southern Prussia. The captain who had led the scouting mission reported that the French soldiers were marching with packs on their backs: where the Prussians used slow-moving wagons to provision their troops, the French carried their own supplies and moved with astonishing speed and mobility.

Before the generals had time to adjust their plans, Napoleon’s army suddenly wheeled north, heading straight for Berlin, the heart of Prussia. The generals argued and dithered, moving their troops here and there, trying to decide where to attack. A mood of panic set in. Finally the king ordered a retreat: the troops would reassemble to the north and attack Napoleon’s flank as he advanced toward Berlin. Hohenlohe was in charge of the rear guard, protecting the Prussians’ retreat.

On October 14, near the town of Jena, Napoleon caught up with Hohenlohe, who finally faced the battle he had wanted so desperately. The numbers on both sides were equal, but while the French were an unruly force, fighting pell-mell and on the run, Hohenlohe kept his troops in tight order, orchestrating them like a corps de ballet. The fighting went back and forth until finally the French captured the village of Vierzehnheiligen.

Hohenlohe ordered his troops to retake the village. In a ritual dating back to Frederick the Great, a drum major beat out a cadence and the Prussian soldiers, their colors flying, re-formed their positions in perfect parade order, preparing to advance. They were in an open plain, though, and Napoleon’s men were behind garden walls and on the house roofs. The Prussians fell like ninepins to the French marksmen. Confused, Hohenlohe ordered his soldiers to halt and change formation. The drums beat again, the Prussians marched with magnificent precision, always a sight to behold–but the French kept shooting, decimating the Prussian line.

Never had Hohenlohe seen such an army. The French soldiers were like demons. Unlike his disciplined soldiers, they moved on their own, yet there was method to their madness. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, they rushed forward on both sides, threatening to surround the Prussians. The prince ordered a retreat. The Battle of Jena was over.

Like a house of cards, the Prussians quickly crumbled, one fortress falling after another. The king fled east. In a matter of days, virtually nothing remained of the once mighty Prussian army.

THE BAT AND THE HOUSE-FERRETS

A bat fell to the ground and was caught by a house-ferret. Realizing that she was on the point of being killed, she begged for her life. The house-ferret said to her that she couldn't let her go, for ferrets were supposed to be natural enemies to all birds. The bat replied that she herself was not a bird, but a mouse. She managed to extricate herself from her danger by this means. Eventually, falling a second time, the bat was caught by another house-ferret. Again she pleaded to the ferret not to eat her. The second ferret declared that she absolutely detested all mice. But the bat positively affirmed that she was not a mouse but a bat. And so she was released again. And that was how she saved herself from death twice by a mere change of name. This fable shows that it is not always necessary to confine ourselves to the same tactics. But, on the contrary, if we are adaptable to circumstances we can better escape danger.

FABLES, AESOP, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.

Interpretation

The reality facing the Prussians in 1806 was simple: they had fallen fifty years behind the times. Their generals were old, and instead of responding to present circumstances, they were repeating formulas that had worked in the past.

Their army moved slowly, and their soldiers were automatons on parade. The Prussian generals had many signs to warn them of disaster: their army had not performed well in its recent engagements, a number of Prussian officers had preached reform, and, last but not least, they had had ten years to study Napoleon–his innovative strategies and the speed and fluidity with which his armies converged on the enemy. Reality was staring them in the face, yet they chose to ignore it. Indeed, they told themselves that Napoleon was the one who was doomed.

You might find the Prussian army just an interesting historical example, but in fact you are likely marching in the same direction 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. Then suddenly a young Napoleon crosses our path, a person who does not respect tradition, who fights in a new way. Only then do we see that our ways of thinking and responding have fallen behind the times.

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.

When in 1806 the Prussian generals...plunged into the open jaws of disaster by using Frederick the Great's oblique order of battle, it was not just a case of a style that had outlived its usefulness but the most extreme poverty of the imagination to which routine has ever led. The result was that the Prussian army under Hohenlohe was ruined more completely than any army has ever been ruined on the battlefield.

--Carl von Clausewitz, ON WAR (1780-1831)

THE PRESENT WAR

In 1605, Miyamoto Musashi, a samurai who had made a name for himself as a swordsman at the young age of twenty-one, was challenged to a duel. The challenger, a young man named Matashichiro, came from the Yoshioka family, a clan itself renowned for swordsmanship. Earlier that year Musashi had defeated Matashichiro’s father, Genzaemon, in a duel. Days later he had killed Genzaemon’s younger brother in another duel. The Yoshioka family wanted revenge.

I never read any treatises on strategy.... When we fight, we do not take any books with us.

MAO TSE-TUNG, 1893-1976

Musashi’s friends smelled a trap in Matashichiro’s challenge and offered to accompany him to the duel, but Musashi went alone. In his earlier fights with the Yoshiokas, he had angered them by showing up hours late; this time, though, he came early and hid in the trees. Matashichiro arrived with a small army.

Musashi would “arrive way behind schedule as usual,” one of them said, “but that trick won’t work with us anymore!” Confident in their ambush, Matashichiro’s men lay down and hid in the grass. Suddenly Musashi leaped out from behind his tree and shouted, “I’ve been waiting long enough. Draw your sword!”

In one swift stroke, he killed Matashichiro, then took a position at an angle to the other men. All of them jumped to their feet, but they were caught off guard and startled, and instead of surrounding him, they stood in a broken line. Musashi simply ran down the line, killing the dazed men one after another in a matter of seconds.

Musashi’s victory sealed his reputation as one of Japan’s greatest swordsmen. He now roamed the country looking for suitable challenges. In one town he heard of an undefeated warrior named Baiken whose weapons were a sickle and a long chain with a steel ball at the end of it. Musashi wanted to see these weapons in action, but Baiken refused: the only way he could see them work, Baiken said, was by fighting a duel.

REFRESHING THE MIND When you and your opponent are engaged in combat which is dragging on with no end in sight, it is crucial that you should come up with a completely different technique. 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.

THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS, MIYAMOTO MUSASHI, 1584-1645

Once again Musashi’s friends chose the safe route: they urged him to walk away. No one had come close to defeating Baiken, whose weapons were unbeatable: swinging his ball in the air to build up momentum, he would force his victim backward with a relentless charge, then hurl the ball at the man’s face. His opponent would have to fend off the ball and chain, and while his sword arm was occupied, in that brief instant Baiken would slash him with the sickle across his neck.

Ignoring the warnings of his friends, Musashi challenged Baiken and showed up at the man’s tent with two swords, one long, one short. Baiken had never seen someone fight with two swords. Also, instead of letting Baiken charge him, Musashi charged first, pushing his foe back on his heels. Baiken hesitated to throw the ball, for Musashi could parry it with one sword and strike him with the other. As he looked for an opening, Musashi suddenly knocked him off balance with a blow of the short sword and then, in a split second, followed with a thrust of the long one, stabbing him through and killing the once undefeated master Baiken.

A few years later, Musashi heard about a great samurai named Sasaki Ganryu, who fought with a very long sword–a startlingly beautiful weapon, which seemed possessed of some warlike spirit. This fight would be Musashi’s ultimate test. Ganryu accepted his challenge; the duel would take place on a little island near the samurai’s home.

It is a disease to be obsessed by the thought of winning. It is also a disease to be obsessed by the thought of employing your swordsmanship. So it is to be obsessed by the thought of using everything you have learned, and to be obsessed by the thought of attacking. It is also a disease to be obsessed and stuck with the thought of ridding yourself of any of these diseases. A disease here is an obsessed mind that dwells on one thing. Because all these diseases are in your mind, you must get rid of them to put your mind in order.

TAKUAN, JAPAN, 1573-1645

On the morning of the duel, the island was packed. A fight between such warriors was unprecedented. Ganryu arrived on time, but Musashi was late, very late. An hour went by, then two; Ganryu was furious.

Finally a boat was spotted approaching the island. Its passenger was lying down, half asleep, it seemed, whittling at a long wooden oar. It was Musashi. He seemed lost in thought, staring into the clouds. When the boat came to shore, he tied a dirty towel around his head and jumped out of the boat, brandishing the long oar–longer than Ganryu’s famous sword. This strange man had come to the biggest fight of his life with an oar for a sword and a towel for a headband.

Ganryu called out angrily, “Are you so frightened of me that you have broken your promise to be here by eight?” Musashi said nothing but stepped closer. Ganryu drew his magnificent sword and threw the sheath onto the sand. Musashi smiled: “Sasaki, you have just sealed your doom.” “Me? Defeated? Impossible!” “What victor on earth,” replied Musashi, “would abandon his sheath to the sea?” This enigmatic remark only made Ganryu angrier.

Then Musashi charged, aiming his sharpened oar straight for his enemy’s eyes. Ganryu quickly raised his sword and struck at Musashi’s head but missed, only cutting the towel headband in two. He had never missed before. In almost the same instant, Musashi brought down his wooden sword, knocking Ganryu off his feet. The spectators gasped. As Ganryu struggled up, Musashi killed him with a blow to the head. Then, after bowing politely to the men officiating over the duel, he got back into the boat and left as calmly as he had arrived.

From that moment on, Musashi was considered a swordsman without peer.

Anyone can plan a campaign, but few are capable of waging war, because only a true military genius can handle the developments and circumstances.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

Interpretation

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.

With Matashichiro he decided it was time to arrive early, which he hadn’t done in his previous fights. Victory against superior numbers depended on surprise, so he leaped up when his opponents lay down; then, once he had killed their leader, he set himself at an angle that invited them to charge at him instead of surrounding him, which would have been much more dangerous for him.

With Baiken it was simply a matter of using two swords and then crowding his space, giving him no time to react intelligently to this novelty.

With Ganryu he set out to infuriate and humiliate his haughty opponent– the wooden sword, the nonchalant attitude, the dirty-towel headband, the enigmatic remark, the charge at the eyes.

Musashi’s opponents depended on brilliant technique, flashy swords, and unorthodox weapons. That is the same as fighting the last war: instead of responding to the moment, they relied on training, technology, and what had worked before.

Musashi, who had grasped the essence of strategy when he was still very young, turned their rigidity into their downfall. His first thought was of the gambit that would take this particular opponent most by surprise. Then he would anchor himself in the moment: having set his opponent off balance with something unexpected, he would watch carefully, then respond with another action, usually improvised, that would turn mere disequilibrium into defeat and death.

Thunder and wind: the image of DURATION. Thus the superior man stands firm And does not change his direction. Thunder rolls, and the wind blows; both are examples of extreme mobility and so are seemingly the very opposite of duration, but the laws governing their appearance and subsidence, their coming and going, endure. In the same way the independence of the superior man is not based on rigidity and immobility of character. He always keeps abreast of the time and changes with it. What endures is the unswerving directive, the inner law of his being, which determines all his actions.

THE I CHING, CHINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.

In preparing yourself for war, you must rid yourself of myths and misconceptions.  Strategy is not a question of learning a series of moves or ideas to follow like a recipe; victory has no magic formula. Ideas are merely nutrients for the soil: they lie in your brain as possibilities, so that in the heat of the moment they can inspire a direction, an appropriate and creative response. Let go of all fetishes–books, techniques, formulas, flashy weapons–and learn to become your own strategist.

Thus one's victories in battle cannot be repeated--they take their form in response to inexhaustibly changing circumstances.

--Sun-tzu (fourth century B.C.)

KEYS TO WARFARE

In looking back on an unpleasant or disagreeable experience, the thought inevitably occurs to us: if only we had said or done x instead of y, if only we could do it over.

Many a general has lost his head in the heat of battle and then, looking back, has thought of the one tactic, the one maneuver, that would have changed it all.

Even Prince Hohenlohe, years later, could see how he had botched the retaking of Vierzehnheiligen.

The problem, though, is not that we think of the solution only when it is too late. 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. More books, theories, and thinking only make the problem worse.

My policy is to have no policy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809-1865

Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized. Knowledge, experience, and theory have limitations: no amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the chaos of life, for the infinite possibilities of the moment. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this “friction”: the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. 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.

It can be valuable to analyze what went wrong in the past, but it is far more important to develop the capacity to think in the moment. In that way you will make far fewer mistakes to analyze.

If you put an empty gourd on the water and touch it, it will slip to one side. No matter how you try, it won't stay in one spot. The mind of someone who has reached the ultimate state does not stay with anything, even for a second. It is like an empty gourd on the water that is pushed around.

TAKUAN, JAPAN, 1573-1645

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.

The first step is simply to be aware of the process and of the need to fight it. The second is to adopt a few tactics that might help you to restore the mind’s natural flow.

Reexamine all your cherished beliefs and principles. When Napoleon was asked what principles of war he followed, he replied that he followed none.  His genius was his ability to respond to circumstances, to make the most of what he was given–he was the supreme opportunist. 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. Of course the study of history and theory can broaden your vision of the world, but you have to combat theory’s tendency to harden into dogma. 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.

Our education is often a problem. During World War II, the British fighting the Germans in the deserts of North Africa were well trained in tank warfare; you might say they were indoctrinated with theories about it. Later in the campaign, they were joined by American troops who were much less educated in these tactics. Soon, though, the Americans began to fight in a way that was equal if not superior to the British style; they adapted to the mobility of this new kind of desert combat. According to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel himself, the leader of the German army in North Africa,

"The Americans...profited far more than the British from their experience in Africa, thus confirming the axiom that education is easier than reeducation."

What Rommel meant was that education tends to burn precepts into the mind that are hard to shake. In the midst of combat, the trained mind may fall a step behind–focusing more on learned rules than on the changing circumstances of battle.

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. You will develop your own strategic muscles instead of depending on other people’s theories and books.

Erase the memory of the last war. The last war you fought is a danger, even if you won it. It is fresh in your mind. If you were victorious, you will tend to repeat the strategies you just used, for success makes us lazy and complacent; if you lost, you may be skittish and indecisive.

Do not think about the last war; you do not have the distance or the detachment. Instead do whatever you can to blot it from your 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.

Ted Williams, perhaps baseball’s greatest pure hitter, made a point of always trying to forget his last at-bat. Whether he’d gotten a home run or a strikeout, he put it behind him. No two at-bats are the same, even against the same pitcher, and Williams wanted an open mind. He would not wait for the next at-bat to start forgetting: the minute he got back to the dugout, he started focusing on what was happening in the game taking place. Attention to the details of the present is by far the best way to crowd out the past and forget the last war.

Keep the mind moving. When we were children, our minds never stopped. We were open to new experiences and absorbed as much of them as possible. We learned fast, because the world around us excited us. When we felt frustrated or upset, we would find some creative way to get what we wanted and then quickly forget the problem as something new crossed our path.

All the greatest strategists–Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Musashi–were childlike in this respect. Sometimes, in fact, they even acted like children.

The reason is simple: superior strategists see things as they are. They are highly sensitive to dangers and opportunities. Nothing stays the same in life, and keeping up with circumstances as they change requires a great deal of mental fluidity. Great strategists do not act according to preconceived ideas; they respond to the moment, like children. Their minds are always moving, and they are always excited and curious. They quickly forget the past–the present is much too interesting.

Defeat is bitter. Bitter to the common soldier, but trebly bitter to his general. The soldier may comfort himself with the thought that, whatever the result, he has done his duty faithfully and steadfastly, but the commander has failed in his duty if he has not won victory--for that is his duty. 

He has no other comparable to it. He will go over in his mind the events of the campaign. "Here," he will think, "I went wrong; here I took counsel of my fears when I should have been bold; there I should have waited to gather strength, not struck piecemeal; at such a moment I failed to grasp opportunity when it was presented to me." He will remember the soldiers whom he sent into the attack that failed and who did not come back. 

He will recall the look in the eyes of men who trusted him. "I have failed them," he will say to himself, "and failed my country!" He will see himself for what he is--a defeated general. 

In a dark hour he will turn in upon himself and question the very foundations of his leadership and manhood. And then he must stop! For if he is ever to command in battle again, he must shake off these regrets, and stamp on them, as they claw at his will and his self-confidence. He must beat off these attacks he delivers against himself, and cast out the doubts born of failure. 

Forget them, and remember only the lessons to be learned from defeat--they are more than from victory.

DEFEAT INTO VICTORY, WILLIAM SLIM, 1897-1970

The Greek thinker Aristotle thought that life was defined by movement. What does not move is dead. What has speed and mobility has more possibilities, more life. We all start off with the mobile mind of a Napoleon, but as we get older, we tend to become more like the Prussians. You may think that what you’d like to recapture from your youth is your looks, your physical fitness, your simple pleasures, but what you really need is the fluidity of mind you once possessed.

Whenever you find your thoughts revolving around a particular subject or idea–an obsession, a resentment–force them past it. Distract yourself with something else. Like a child, find something new to be absorbed by, something worthy of concentrated attention. Do not waste time on things you cannot change or influence. Just keep moving.

Absorb the spirit of the times. Throughout the history of warfare, there have been classic battles in which the past has confronted the future in a hopeless mismatch. It happened in the seventh century, when the Persians and Byzantines confronted the invincible armies of Islam, with their new form of desert fighting; or in the first half of the thirteenth century, when the Mongols used relentless mobility to overwhelm the heavy armies of the Russians and Europeans; or in 1806, when Napoleon crushed the Prussians at Jena.

In each case the conquering army developed a way of fighting that maximized a new form of technology or a new social order.

You can reproduce this effect on a smaller scale by attuning yourself to the spirit of the times. Developing antennae for the trends that have yet to crest takes work and study, as well as the flexibility to adapt to those trends.

As you get older, it is best to periodically alter your style.

In the golden age of Hollywood, most actresses had very short careers. But Joan Crawford fought the studio system and managed to have a remarkably long career by constantly changing her style, going from siren to noir heroine to cult queen.

Instead of staying sentimentally attached to some fashion of days gone by, she was able to sense a rising trend and go with it. By constantly adapting and changing your style, you will avoid the pitfalls of your previous wars. Just when people feel they know you, you will change.

Reverse course. The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky suffered from epilepsy. Just before  a seizure, he would experience a moment of intense ecstasy, which he described as a feeling of being suddenly flooded with reality, a momentary vision of the world exactly as it is.

Later he would find himself getting depressed, as this vision was crowded out by the habits and routines of daily life. During these depressions, wanting to feel that closeness to reality again, he would go to the nearest casino and gamble away all his money.

There reality would overwhelm him; comfort and routine would be gone, stale patterns broken. Having to rethink everything, he would get his creative energy back. This was the closest he could deliberately come to the sense of ecstasy he got through epilepsy.

Dostoyevsky’s method was a little extreme, but sometimes you have to shake yourself up, break free from the hold of the past.

This can take the form of reversing your course, doing the opposite of what you would normally do in any given situation, putting yourself in some unusual circumstance, or literally starting over. In those situations the mind has to deal with a new reality, and it snaps to life. The change may be alarming, but it is also refreshing–even exhilarating.

To know that one is in a certain condition, in a certain state, is already a process of liberation; but a man who is not aware of his condition, of his struggle, tries to be something other than he is, which brings about habit. So, then, let us keep in mind that we want to examine what is, to observe and be aware of exactly what is the actual, without giving it any slant, without giving it an interpretation. It needs an extraordinarily astute mind, an extraordinarily pliable heart, to be aware of and to follow what is; because what is is constantly moving, constantly undergoing a transformation, and if the mind is tethered to belief, to knowledge, it ceases to pursue, it ceases to follow the swift movement of what is. What is is not static, surely--it is constantly moving, as you will see if you observe it very closely. To follow it, you need a very swift mind and a pliable heart--which are denied when the mind is static, fixed in a belief, in a prejudice, in an identification; and a mind and heart that are dry cannot follow easily, swiftly, that which is.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI, 1895-1986

Relationships often develop a certain tiresome predictability. You do what you usually do, other people respond the way they usually do, and around it goes. If you reverse course, act in a novel manner, you alter the entire dynamic. Do this every so often to break up the relationship’s stale patterns and open it to new possibilities.

Think of your mind as an army.

Armies must adapt to the complexity and chaos of modern war by becoming more fluid and maneuverable. The ultimate extension of this evolution is guerrilla warfare, which exploits chaos by making disorder and unpredictability a strategy.

The guerrilla army never stops to defend a particular place or town; it wins by always moving, staying one step ahead. By following no set pattern, it gives the enemy no target.

The guerrilla army never repeats the same tactic. It responds to the situation, the moment, the terrain where it happens to find itself. There is no front, no concrete line of communication or supply, no slow-moving wagon.

The guerrilla army is pure mobility.

That is the model for your new way of thinking. Apply no tactic rigidly; do not let your mind settle into static positions, defending any particular place or idea, repeating the same lifeless maneuvers. Attack problems from new angles, adapting to the landscape and to what you’re given. By staying in constant motion you show your enemies no target to aim at. You exploit the chaos of the world instead of succumbing to it.

REVERSAL

There is never any value in fighting the last war. But while you’re eliminating that pernicious tendency, you must imagine that your enemy is trying to do the same–trying to learn from and adapt to the present.

Some of history’s worst military disasters have come not out of fighting the last war but out of assuming that that’s what your opponent will do.

When Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, he thought the United States had yet to recover from “Vietnam syndrome”–the fear of casualties and loss that had been so traumatic during the Vietnam period–and that it would either avoid war altogether or would fight in the same way it had, trying to win the fight from the air instead of on the ground.

He did not realize that the American military was ready for a new kind of war.

Remember: the loser in any battle may be too traumatized to fight again but may also learn from the experience and move on. Err on the side of caution; be ready. Never let your enemy surprise you in war.

Conclusion

My latest article (prior to this one) underlines this entire strategy. Which is WHY all the American Generals and Admirals are telling the politicians and neocons in Washington DC to “Stand Down”. They, those on K-street in Washington DC want to fight against China or Russia. But the generals strongly advise against it.

You can read about it here…

• Pentagon Leaders are starting to shout-down the neocon war-hawks on K-street in Washington DC

Personally, the United States is in need of a shake-up, and maybe it’s time for a serious “house cleaning” in Washington DC as well. Maybe it would be a good thing to see Washington DC erased from the map. I am sure that the world would be a much calmer and nicer world.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my 33 Strategies of War index here..

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This is a full reprint in HTML of the first chapter (Chapter 1) of the first part (Part I) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

PART I

SELF-DIRECTED WARFARE

War, or any kind of conflict, is waged and won through strategy. Think of strategy as a series of lines and arrows aimed at a goal: at getting you to a certain point in the world, at helping you to attack a problem in your path, at figuring out how to encircle and destroy your enemy. Before directing these arrows at your enemies, however, you must first direct them at yourself.

Your mind is the starting point of all 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.

The following four chapters are designed to make you aware of the disorders that are probably flourishing in your mind right now and to arm you with specific strategies for eliminating them.

These chapters are arrows to aim at yourself. Once you have absorbed them through thought and practice, they will serve as a self-corrective device in all your future battles, freeing the grand strategist within you.

DECLARE WAR ON YOUR ENEMIES

THE POLARITY STRATEGY

Life is endless battle and conflict, and you cannot fight effectively unless you can identify your enemies. People are subtle and evasive, disguising their intentions, pretending to be on your side.

You need clarity. Learn to smoke out your enemies, to spot them by the signs and patterns that reveal hostility. Then, once you have them in your sights, inwardly declare war. As the opposite poles of a magnet create motion, your enemies–your opposites–can fill you with purpose and direction. As people who stand in your way, who represent what you loathe, people to react against, they are a source of energy. Do not be naive: with some enemies there can be no compromise, no
middle ground.

Then [Xenophon] got up, and first called together the under-officers of Proxenos. 

When they were collected he said: 

"Gentlemen, I cannot sleep and I don't think you can; and I can't lie here when I see what a plight we are in. 

It is clear that the enemy did not show us open war until they thought they had everything well prepared; and no-one among us takes the pains to make the best possible resistance. 

"Yet if we give way, and fall into the king's power, what do we expect our fate will be? 

When his own half-brother was dead, the man cut off his head and cut off his hand and stuck them up on a pole. 

We have no-one to plead for us, and we marched here to make the king a slave or to kill him if we could, and what do you think our fate will be? 

Would he not go to all extremes of torture to make the whole world afraid of making war on him? 

Why, we must do anything to keep out of his power! 

While the truce lasted, I never ceased pitying ourselves, I never ceased congratulating the king and his army. 

What a vast country I saw, how large, what endless provisions, what crowds of servants, how many cattle and sheep, what gold, what raiment! 

But when I thought of these our soldiers--we had no share in all these good things unless we bought them, and few had anything left to buy with; and to procure anything without buying was debarred by our oaths. 

While I reasoned like this, I sometimes feared the truce more than the war now. 

"However, now they have broken the truce, there is an end both to their insolence and to our suspicion. 

There lie all these good things before us, prizes for whichever side prove the better men; the gods are the judges of the contest, and they will be with us, naturally.... "

When you have appointed as many commanders as are wanted, assemble all the other soldiers and encourage them; that will be just what they want now. 

Perhaps you have noticed yourselves how crestfallen they were when they came into camp, how crestfallen they went on guard; in such a state I don't know what you could do with them.... 

But if someone could turn their minds from wondering what will happen to them, and make them wonder what they could do, they will be much more cheerful. 

You know, I am sure, that not numbers or strength brings victory in war; but whichever army goes into battle stronger in soul, their enemies generally cannot withstand them." 

-ANABASIS: THE MARCH UP COUNTRY, XENOPHON, 430?-355? B.C.

THE INNER ENEMY

In the spring of 401 B.C., Xenophon, a thirty-year-old country gentleman who lived outside Athens, received an intriguing invitation: a friend was recruiting Greek soldiers to fight as mercenaries for Cyrus, brother of the Persian king Ataxerxes, and asked him to go along.

The request was somewhat unusual: the Greeks and the Persians had long been bitter enemies. Some eighty years earlier, in fact, Persia had tried to conquer Greece.

But the Greeks, renowned fighters, had begun to offer their services to the highest bidder, and within the Persian Empire there were rebellious
cities that Cyrus wanted to punish.

Greek mercenaries would be the perfect reinforcements in his large army.

Xenophon was not a soldier. In fact, he had led a coddled life, raising dogs and horses, traveling into Athens to talk philosophy with his good friend Socrates, living off his inheritance.

He wanted adventure, though, and here he had a chance to meet the great Cyrus, learn war, see Persia. Perhaps when it was all over, he would write a book. He would go not as a mercenary (he was too wealthy for that) but as a philosopher and historian.

After consulting the oracle at Delphi, he accepted the invitation.

Some 10,000 Greek soldiers joined Cyrus’s punitive expedition. The mercenaries were a motley crew from all over Greece, there for the money and the adventure.

They had a good time of it for a while, but a few months into the job, after leading them deep into Persia, Cyrus admitted his true purpose: he was marching on Babylon, mounting a civil war to unseat his brother and make himself
king.

Unhappy to be deceived, the Greeks argued and complained, but Cyrus offered them more money, and that quieted them.

The armies of Cyrus and Ataxerxes met on the plains of Cunaxa, not far from Babylon. Early in the battle, Cyrus was killed, putting a quick end to the war.

Now the Greeks’ position was suddenly precarious: having fought on the wrong side of a civil war, they were far from home and surrounded by hostile Persians.

They were soon told, however, that Ataxerxes had no quarrel with them.

His only desire was that they leave Persia as quickly as possible. He even sent them an envoy, the Persian commander Tissaphernes, to provision them and escort them back to Greece.

And so, guided by Tissaphernes and the Persian army, the mercenaries began the long trek home–some fifteen hundred miles.

A few days into the march, the Greeks had new fears: their supplies from the Persians were insufficient, and the route that Tissaphernes had chosen for them was problematic.

Could they trust these Persians?

They started to argue among themselves.

The Greek commander Clearchus expressed his soldiers’ concerns to Tissaphernes, who was sympathetic: Clearchus should bring his captains to a meeting at a neutral site, the Greeks would voice their grievances, and the two sides would come to an understanding.

Clearchus agreed and  appeared the next day with his officers at the appointed time and place–where, however, a large contingent of Persians surrounded and arrested them.

They were beheaded that same day.

One man managed to escape and warn the Greeks of the Persian treachery.

That evening the Greek camp was a desolate place. Some men argued and accused; others slumped drunk to the ground. A few considered flight, but with their leaders dead, they felt doomed.

That night Xenophon, who had stayed mostly on the sidelines during the expedition, had a dream: a lightning bolt from Zeus set fire to his father’s house.

He woke up in a sweat.

It suddenly struck him: death was staring the Greeks in the face, yet they lay around moaning, despairing, arguing.

The problem was in their heads.

Fighting for money rather than for a purpose or cause, unable to distinguish between friend and foe, they had gotten lost.

The barrier between them and home was not rivers or mountains or the Persian army but their own muddled state of mind.

Xenophon didn’t want to die in this disgraceful way.

He was no military man, but he knew philosophy and the way men think, and he believed that if the Greeks concentrated on the enemies who wanted to kill them, they would become alert and creative.

If they focused on the vile treachery of the Persians, they would grow angry, and their anger would motivate them.

They had to stop being confused mercenaries and go back to being Greeks, the polar opposite of the faithless Persians.

What they needed was clarity and direction.

Xenophon decided to be Zeus’s lightning bolt, waking the men up and illuminating their way. He called a meeting of all the surviving officers and stated his plan:

We will declare war without parley on the Persians–no more thoughts of bargaining or debate.

We will waste no more time on argument or accusation among ourselves; every ounce of our energy will be spent on the Persians.

We will be as inventive and inspired as our ancestors at Marathon, who fought off a vastly larger Persian army.

We will burn our wagons, live off the land, move fast. We will not for one second lay down our arms or forget the dangers around us.

It is us or them, life or death, good or evil.

Should any man try to confuse us with clever talk or with vague ideas of appeasement, we will declare him too stupid and cowardly to be on our side and we will drive him away.

Let the Persians make us merciless.

We must be consumed with one idea: getting home alive.

The officers knew that Xenophon was right.

The next day a Persian officer came to see them, offering to act as an ambassador between them and Ataxerxes; following Xenophon’s counsel, he was quickly and rudely driven away.

It was now war and nothing else.

Roused to action, the Greeks elected leaders, Xenophon among them, and began the march home.

Forced to depend on their wits, they quickly learned to adapt to the terrain, to avoid battle, to move at night.

They successfully eluded the Persians, beating them to a key mountain pass and moving through it before they could be caught.

Although many enemy tribes still lay between them and Greece, the dreaded Persian army was now behind them.

It took several years, but almost all of them returned to Greece alive.

Political thought and political instinct prove themselves theoretically and practically in the ability to distinguish friend and enemy. The high points of politics are simultaneously the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy.

CARL SCHMITT, 1888-1985

Interpretation

Life is battle and struggle, and you will constantly find yourself facing bad situations, destructive relationships, dangerous engagements.

How you confront these difficulties will determine your fate.

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.

Think of yourself as always about to go into battle. Everything depends on your frame of mind and on how you look at the world.

A shift of perspective can transform you from a passive and confused mercenary into a motivated and creative fighter.

We are defined by our relationship to other people.

As children we develop an identity by differentiating ourselves from others, even to the point of pushing them away, rejecting them, rebelling.

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.

Duped by other people’s treachery, you hesitate at the fatal moment and descend into whining and argument.

Focus on an enemy.

It can be someone who blocks your path or sabotages you, whether subtly or
obviously;

It can be someone who has hurt you or someone who has fought you unfairly;

It can be a value or an idea that you loathe and that you see in an individual or group.

It can be an abstraction: stupidity, smugness, vulgar materialism.

Do not listen to people who say that the distinction between friend and enemy is primitive and passe.

They are just disguising their fear of conflict behind a front of false warmth.

They are trying to push you off course, to infect you with the vagueness that inflicts them.

Once you feel clear and motivated, you will have space for true friendship and true compromise.

Your enemy is the polar star that guides you.

Given that direction, you can enter battle.

He that is not with me is against me.

--Luke 11:23

THE OUTER ENEMY

In the early 1970s, the British political system had settled into a comfortable pattern: the Labour Party would win an election, and then, the next time around, the Conservatives would win.

Back and forth the power went, all fairly genteel and civilized.

In fact, the two parties had come to resemble one another.

But when the Conservatives lost in 1974, some of them had had enough. Wanting
to shake things up, they proposed Margaret Thatcher as their leader. The party was divided that year, and Thatcher took advantage of the split and won the nomination.

I am by nature warlike.

To attack is among my instincts.

To be able to be an enemy, to be an enemy--that presupposes a strong nature, it is in any event a condition of every strong nature.

It needs resistances, consequently it seeks resistances....

The strength of one who attacks has in the opposition he needs a kind of gauge; every growth reveals itself in the seeking out of a powerful opponent--or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike also challenges problems to a duel.

The undertaking is to master, not any resistances that happen to present themselves, but those against which one has to bring all one's strength, suppleness and mastery of weapons--to master equal opponents.

-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844-1900

No one had ever seen a politician quite like Thatcher.

A woman in a world run by men, she was also proudly middle class–the daughter of a grocer–in the traditional party of the aristocracy.

Her clothes were prim, more like a housewife’s than a politician’s.

She had not been a player in the Conservative Party; in fact, she was on its right-wing fringes.

Most striking of all was her style: where other politicians were smooth and conciliatory, she confronted her opponents, attacking them directly. She had an appetite for battle.

Most politicians saw Thatcher’s election as a fluke and didn’t expect her to last. And in her first few years leading the party, when Labour was in power, she did little to change their opinion.

She railed against the socialist system, which in her mind had choked all initiative and was largely responsible for the decline of the British economy.

She criticized the Soviet Union at a time of detente.

Then, in the winter of 1978-79, several public-sector unions decided to strike.

Thatcher went on the warpath, linking the strikes to the Labour Party and Prime Minister James Callaghan.

This was bold, divisive talk, good for making the evening news–but not for winning elections.

You had to be gentle with the voters, reassure them, not frighten them. At least that was the conventional wisdom.

In 1979 the Labour Party called a general election.

Thatcher kept on the attack, categorizing the election as a crusade against socialism and as Great Britain’s last chance to modernize.

Callaghan was the epitome of the genteel politician, but Thatcher got under his skin.

He had nothing but disdain for this housewife-turned-politician, and he returned her fire: he agreed that the election was a watershed, for if Thatcher won, she would send the economy into shock.

The strategy seemed partly to work; Thatcher scared many voters, and the polls that tracked personal popularity showed that her numbers had fallen well below Callaghan’s.

At the same time, though, her rhetoric, and Callaghan’s response to it, polarized the electorate, which could finally see a sharp difference between the parties.

Dividing the public into left and right, she charged into the breach, sucking
in attention and attracting the undecided. She won a sizable victory.

Thatcher had bowled over the voters, but now, as prime minister, she would have to moderate her tone, heal the wounds–according to the polls, at any rate, that was what the public wanted.

But Thatcher as usual did the opposite, enacting budget cuts that went even deeper than she had proposed during the campaign.

As her policies played out, the economy did indeed go into shock, as
Callaghan had said it would, and unemployment soared.

Men in her own party, many of whom had by that point been resenting her treatment of them for years, began publicly to question her
abilities.

These men, whom she called the “wets,” were the most respected members of the
Conservative Party, and they were in a panic: she was leading the country into an economic disaster that they were afraid they would pay for with their careers.

Thatcher’s response was to purge them from her cabinet.

She seemed bent on pushing everyone away; her legion of enemies was growing, her poll numbers slipping still lower.

Surely the next election would be her last.

[Salvador Dali] had no time for those who did not agree with his principles, and took the war into the enemy camp by writing insulting letters to many of the friends he had made in the Residencia, calling them pigs. 

He happily compared himself to a clever bull avoiding the cowboys and generally had a great deal of fun stirring up and scandalizing almost every Catalan intellectual worthy of the name. Dali was beginning to burn his bridges with the zeal of an arsonist.... 

"We [Dali and the filmmaker Luis Bunuel] had resolved to send a poison pen letter to one of the great celebrities of Spain," 

Dali later told his biographer Alain Bosquet. 

"Our goal was pure subversion.... Both of us were strongly influenced by Nietzsche.... 

We hit upon two names: Manuel de Falla, the composer, and Juan Ramon Jimenez, the poet. We drew straws and Jimenez won.... 

So we composed a frenzied and nasty letter of incomparable violence and addressed it to Juan Ramon Jimenez. 

It read: 'Our Distinguished Friend: We believe it is our duty to inform you--disinterestedly--that your work is deeply repugnant to us because of its immorality, its hysteria, its arbitrary quality....' It caused Jimenez great pain...."

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY: A BIOGRAPHY OF DALI, MEREDITH ETHERINGTON- SMITH, 1992

Then, in 1982, on the other side of the Atlantic, the military junta that ruled Argentina, needing a cause to distract the country from its many problems, invaded the Falkland Islands, a British possession to which, however, Argentina had a historical claim.

The officers of the junta felt certain that the British would abandon these islands, barren and remote.

But Thatcher did not hesitate: despite the distance–eight thousand miles–she sent a naval task force to the Falklands.

Labour leaders attacked her for this pointless and costly war.

Many in her own party were terrified; if the attempt to retake the islands failed, the party would be ruined.

Thatcher was more alone than ever.

But much of the public now saw her qualities, which had seemed so irritating, in a new light: her obstinacy became courage, nobility.

Compared to the dithering, pantywaisted, careerist men around her, Thatcher seemed resolute and confident.

The British successfully won back the Falklands, and Thatcher stood taller than ever. Suddenly the country’s economic and social problems were forgotten.

Thatcher now dominated the scene, and in the next two elections she crushed Labour.

Interpretation

Margaret Thatcher came to power as an outsider: a middle-class woman, a right-wing 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.

If Thatcher had become like the men around her, she would simply have been
replaced by yet another man.

Her instinct was to stay an outsider.

In fact, she pushed being an outsider as far as it could go: she set herself up as one woman against an army of men.

At every step of the way, to give her the contrast she needed, Thatcher marked out an opponent: the socialists, the wets, the Argentineans.

These enemies helped to define her image as determined, powerful, self-sacrificing.

Thatcher was not seduced by popularity, which is ephemeral and superficial.

Pundits might obsess over popularity numbers, but in the mind of the voter–which, for a politician, is the field of battle–a dominating presence has more pull than does likability. Let some of the public hate you; you cannot please everyone.

Your enemies, those you stand sharply against, will help you to forge a support base that will not desert you.

Do not crowd into the center, where everyone else is; there is no room to fight in a crowd.

Polarize people, drive some of them away, and create a space for battle.

Everything in life conspires to push you into the center, and not just politically.

The center is the realm of compromise.

Getting along with other people is an important skill to have, but it comes with a danger: by always seeking the path of least resistance, the path of conciliation, you forget who you are, and you sink into the center with everyone else. 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 worry about antagonizing people; without antagonism there is no battle, and without battle, there is no chance of victory.

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.

The opposition of a member to an associate is no purely negative social factor, if only because such opposition is often the only means for making life with actually unbearable people at least possible.

If we did not even have the power and the right to rebel against tyranny, arbitrariness, moodiness, tactlessness, we could not bear to have any relation to people from whose characters we thus suffer.

We would feel pushed to take desperate steps–and these, indeed, would end the
relation but do not, perhaps, constitute “conflict.”

Not only because of the fact that…oppression usually increases if it is suffered calmly and without protest, but also because opposition gives us inner satisfaction, distraction, relief…

Our opposition makes us feel that we are not completely victims of the circumstances.

GEORG SIMMEL, 1858-1918

Don't depend on the enemy not coming; depend rather on being ready for him.

--Sun-tzu, The Art of War (fourth century B.C.)

KEYS TO WARFARE

We live in an era in which people are seldom directly hostile.

The rules of engagement–social, political, military–have changed, and so must your notion of the enemy.

An up-front enemy is rare now and is actually a blessing.

People hardly ever attack you openly anymore, showing their intentions, their desire to destroy you; instead they are political and indirect.

Although the world is more competitive than ever, outward aggression is discouraged, so people have learned to go underground, to attack unpredictably and craftily.

Many use friendship as a way to mask aggressive desires: they come close to you to do more harm. (A friend knows best how to hurt you.)

Or, without actually being friends, they offer assistance and alliance: they may seem supportive, but in the end they’re advancing their own interests at your expense.

Then there are those who master moral warfare, playing the victim, making you feel guilty for something unspecified you’ve done.

The battlefield is full of these warriors, slippery, evasive, and clever.

Understand: the word “enemy”–from the Latin inimicus, “not a friend”–has been demonized and politicized.

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.

(Sometimes indifference and neglect are better weapons than aggression, because you can’t see the hostility they hide.)

Without getting paranoid, you need to realize that there are people who wish you ill and operate indirectly.

Identify them and you’ll suddenly have room to maneuver.

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 naive victim.

Do not find yourself constantly retreating, reacting to your enemies’ maneuvers.

Arm yourself with prudence, and never completely lay down your arms, not even for friends.

As one travels up any one of the large rivers [of Borneo], one meets with tribes that are successively more warlike. 

In the coast regions are peaceful communities which never fight save in self-defense, and then with but poor success, whereas in the central regions, where the rivers take their rise, are a number of extremely warlike tribes whose raids have been a constant source of terror to the communities settled in the lower reaches of the rivers.... 

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 community are much greater; each man identifies himself with the whole community and accepts and loyally performs the social duties laid upon him.

WILLIAM MCDOUGALL, 1871-1938

People are usually good at hiding their hostility, but often they unconsciously give off signals showing that all is not what it seems.

One of the closest friends and advisers of the Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Tse-tung was Lin Biao, a high-ranking member of the Politburo and possible successor to the chairman.

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, though, Mao detected a change in Lin: he had become effusively friendly.

Everyone praised Mao, but Lin’s praise was embarrassingly fervent.

To Mao this meant that something was wrong.

He watched Lin closely and decided that the man was plotting a takeover, or at the very least positioning himself for the top spot.

And Mao was right: Lin was plotting 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.

Trust your instincts: if someone’s behavior seems suspicious, it probably is.

It may turn out to be benign, but in the meantime it is best to be on your guard.

You can sit back and read the signs or you can actively work to uncover your enemies–beat the grass to startle the snakes, as the Chinese say.

In the Bible we read of David’s suspicion that his father-in-law, King Saul, secretly wanted him dead.

How could David find out?

He confided his suspicion to Saul’s son Jonathan, his close friend. Jonathan refused to believe it, so David suggested a test.

He was expected at court for a feast.

He would not go; Jonathan would attend and pass along David’s excuse, which would be adequate but not urgent.

Sure enough, the excuse enraged Saul, who exclaimed, “Send at once and fetch him unto me–he deserves to die!”

David’s test succeeded because it was ambiguous.

His excuse for missing the feast could be read in more than one way: if Saul meant well toward David, he would have seen his son-in-law’s absence as
no more than selfish at worst, but because he secretly hated David, he saw it as effrontery, and it pushed him over the edge.

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.

Often the best way to get people to reveal themselves is to provoke tension and argument.

The Hollywood producer Harry Cohn, president of Universal Pictures, frequently used this strategy to ferret out the real position of people in the studio who refused to show what side they were on: he would suddenly attack their work or take an extreme position, even an offensive one, in an argument. His provoked directors and writers would drop their usual caution and show their real beliefs.

Understand: people tend to be vague and slippery because it is safer than outwardly committing to something. If you are the boss, they will mimic your ideas. Their agreement is often pure courtiership. 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 facade 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.

Man exists only in so far as he is opposed.

GEORG HEGEL, 1770-1831

Sometimes it is better to take a less direct approach with your potential enemies–to be as subtle and conniving as they are.

In 1519, Hernan Cortes arrived in Mexico with his band of adventurers.

Among these five hundred men were some whose loyalty was dubious.

Throughout the expedition, whenever any of Cortes’s soldiers did something he saw as suspicious, he never got angry or accusatory. Instead he pretended to go along with them, accepting and approving what they had done.

Thinking Cortes weak, or thinking he was on their side, they would take another step. Now he had what he wanted: a clear sign, to himself and others, that they were traitors. Now he could isolate and destroy them.

Adopt the method of Cortes: 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.

An enemy is often large and hard to pinpoint–an organization, or a person hidden behind some complicated network. What you want to do is take aim at one part of the group–a leader, a spokesman, a key member of the inner circle.

That is how the activist Saul Alinsky tackled corporations and bureaucracies.

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.

Like Alinsky, never aim at a vague, abstract enemy.

It is hard to drum up the emotions to fight such a bloodless battle, which in any case leaves your enemy invisible.

Personalize the fight, eyeball to eyeball.

Danger is everywhere.

There are always hostile people and destructive relationships.

The only way to break out of a negative dynamic is to confront it.

Repressing your anger, avoiding the person threatening you, always looking to conciliate–these common strategies spell ruin.

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.

It is the only way out.

The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the bible--for she often read aloud when her husband was absent--soon awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused in me the desire to learn. Having no fear of my kind mistress before my eyes, (she had given me no reason to
fear,) I frankly asked her to teach me to read; and without hesitation, the dear woman began the task, and very soon, by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and could spell words of three or four letters...Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and, probably for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and mistresses, in the management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade the continuance of her [reading] instruction; telling her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief....

Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of his remarks; and, like an obedient wife, began to shape her course in the direction indicated by her husband. The effect of his words, on me, was neither slight nor transitory. His iron sentences--cold and harsh--sunk deep into my heart, and stirred up
not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the white man's power to
perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. "Very well," thought I; "knowledge unfits a child to be a slave." 

I instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom. This was just what I needed; and got it at a time, and from a source, whence I least expected it.... Wise as Mr. Auld was, he evidently underrated my comprehension, and had little idea of the use to which I was capable of putting the impressive lesson he was giving to his wife.... That which he most loved I
most hated; and the very determination which he expressed to keep me in ignorance, only rendered me the more resolute in seeking intelligence.

MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1818-1895

The child psychologist Jean Piaget saw conflict as a critical part of mental development. Through battles with peers and then parents, children learn to adapt to the world and develop strategies for dealing with problems. 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. Instead of shrinking from the idea of having enemies, then, embrace it. Conflict is therapeutic.

Enemies bring many gifts.

For one thing, they motivate you and focus your beliefs.

The artist Salvador Dali found early on that there were many qualities he could not stand in people: conformity, romanticism, piety.

At every stage of his life, he found someone he thought embodied these anti- ideals–an enemy to vent on. First it was the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who wrote romantic poetry; then it was Andre Breton, the heavy-handed leader of the surrealist movement.

Having such enemies to rebel against made Dali feel confident and inspired.

Enemies also give you a standard by which to judge yourself, both personally and socially.

The samurai of Japan had no gauge of their excellence unless they fought the best swordsmen; it took Joe Frazier to make Muhammad Ali a truly great fighter.

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.

Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target.

You should relish the attention and the chance to prove yourself.

We all have aggressive impulses that we are forced to repress; an enemy supplies you with an outlet for these drives. At last you have someone on whom to
unleash your aggression without feeling guilty.

Leaders have always found it useful to have an enemy at their gates in times of trouble, distracting the public from their difficulties.

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.

So exaggerate the differences between you and the enemy–draw the lines clearly.

Xenophon made no effort to be fair; he did not say that the Persians weren’t really such a bad lot and had done much to advance civilization. He called them barbarians, the antithesis of the Greeks.

He described their recent treachery and said they were an evil culture that could find no favor with the gods.

And so it is with you: victory is your goal, not fairness and balance. Use the rhetoric of war to heighten the stakes and stimulate the spirit.

What you want in warfare is room to maneuver.

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.

Early on, Julius Caesar identified Pompey as his enemy. Measuring his actions and calculating carefully, he did only those things that left him in a solid position in relation to Pompey.

When war finally broke out between the two men, Caesar was at his best.

But once he defeated Pompey and had no more such rivals, he lost all sense of
proportion–in fact, he fancied himself a god.

His defeat of Pompey was his own undoing.

Your enemies force on you a sense of realism and humility.

Remember: there are always people out there who are more aggressive, more devious, more ruthless than you are, and it is inevitable that some of them will cross your path.

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.

With some people you have to harden yourself, to recognize that there is no middle ground, no hope of conciliation.

For your opponent your desire to compromise is a weapon to use against you.

Know these dangerous enemies by their past: look for quick power grabs, sudden rises in fortune, previous acts of treachery. 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.

Authority: If you count on safety and do not think of danger, if you do not know enough to be wary when enemies arrive, this is called a sparrow nesting on a tent, a fish swimming in a cauldron–they won’t last the day.–Chuko Liang (A.D. 181-234 )

REVERSAL

Always keep the search for and use of enemies under control. It is clarity you want, not paranoia.

It is the downfall of many tyrants to see an enemy in everyone.

They lose their grip on reality and become hopelessly embroiled in the emotions their paranoia churns up.

By keeping an eye on possible enemies, you are simply being prudent and 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.

Margaret Thatcher, usually brilliant at the polarizing game, eventually lost control of it: she created too many enemies and kept repeating the same tactic, even in situations that called for 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.

Even if that impression was false, it was the height of wisdom to create it.

Conclusion

Reading this, I cannot help but understand why Trump and his crew of dinosaurs were so rabidly inclined to label the biggest trading partner as an enemy. This article describes why.

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