The 33 Strategies of War (60 page)

Understand: in any venture, your tendency to think in terms of winning or losing, success or failure, is dangerous. Your mind comes to a stop, instead of looking ahead. Emotions dominate the moment: a smug elation in winning, dejection and bitterness in losing. What you need is a more fluid and strategic outlook on life. Nothing ever really ends; how you finish something will influence and even determine what you do next. Some victories are negative--they lead nowhere--and some defeats are positive, working as a wake-up call or lesson. This fluid kind of thinking will force you to put more strategic emphasis on the quality and mood of the ending. It will make you look at your opponents and decide whether you might do better to be generous to them at the end, taking a step back and transforming them into allies, playing on the emotions of the moment. Keeping your eyes on the aftermath of any encounter, you will think more of the feeling you leave people with--a feeling that might translate into a desire to see more of you. By understanding that any victory or defeat is temporary, and that what matters is what you do with them, you will find it easier to keep yourself balanced during the thousands of battles that life entails. The only real ending is death. Everything else is a transition.

As Yasuda Ukyo said about offering up the last wine cup, only the end of things is important. One's whole life should be like this. When guests are leaving, the mood of being reluctant to say farewell is essential.

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

KEYS TO WARFARE

There are three kinds of people in the world. First, there are the dreamers and talkers, who begin their projects with a burst of enthusiasm. But this burst of energy quickly peters out as they encounter the real world and the hard work needed to bring any project to an end. They are emotional creatures who live mainly in the moment; they easily lose interest as something new grabs their attention. Their lives are littered with half-finished projects, including some that barely make it beyond a daydream.

Then there are those who bring whatever they do to a conclusion, either because they have to or because they can manage the effort. But they cross the finish line with distinctly less enthusiasm and energy than they had starting out. This mars the end of the campaign. Because they are impatient to finish, the ending seems hurried and patched together. And it leaves other people feeling slightly unsatisfied; it is not memorable, does not last, has no resonance.

Both of these types begin each project without a firm idea of how to end it. And as the project progresses, inevitably differing from what they had imagined it would be, they become unsure how to get out of it and either give up or simply rush to the end.

The great prizefighter Jack Dempsey was once asked, "When you are about to hit a man, do you aim for his chin or his nose?" "Neither," Dempsey replied. "I aim for the back of his head."

QUOTED IN
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IND OF
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T. H
AMMOND
, 2001

The third group comprises those who understand a primary law of power and strategy: the end of something--a project, a campaign, a conversation--has inordinate importance for people. It resonates in the mind. A war can begin with great fanfare and can bring many victories, but if it ends badly, that is all anyone remembers. Knowing the importance and the emotional resonance of the ending of anything, people of the third type understand that the issue is not simply finishing what they have started but finishing it well--with energy, a clear head, and an eye on the afterglow, the way the event will linger in people's minds. These types invariably begin with a clear plan. When setbacks come, as setbacks will, they are able to stay patient and think rationally. They plan not just to the end but past it, to the aftermath. These are the ones who create things that last--a meaningful peace, a memorable work of art, a long and fruitful career.

The reason it is hard to end things well is simple: endings inspire overpowering emotions. At the end of a bitter conflict, we have a deep desire for peace, an impatience for the truce. If the conflict is bringing us victory, we often succumb to delusions of grandeur or are swept by greed and grab for more than we need. If the conflict has been nasty, anger moves us to finish with a violent, punitive strike. If we lose, we are left with a burning desire for revenge. Emotions like these can ruin all of our prior good work. There is in fact nothing harder in the realm of strategy than keeping our head on straight all the way to the end and past the end--yet nothing is more necessary.

Napoleon Bonaparte was perhaps the greatest general that ever lived. His strategies were marvels of combined flexibility and detail, and he planned all the way to the end. But after defeating the Austrians at Austerlitz and then the Prussians at Jena-Auerstadt--his two greatest victories--he imposed on these nations harsh terms intended to make them weakened satellites of France. Accordingly, in the years after the treaties, both countries harbored a powerful desire for revenge. They secretly built up their armies and waited for the day when Napoleon would be vulnerable. That moment came after his disastrous retreat from Russia in 1812, when they pounced on him with horrible fervor.

Napoleon had allowed petty emotion--the desire to humiliate, revenge himself, and force obedience--to infect his strategy. Had he stayed focused on his long-term interests, he would have known that it was better to weaken Prussia and Austria psychologically rather than physically--to seduce them with apparently generous terms, transforming them into devoted allies instead of resentful satellites. Many in Prussia had initially seen Napoleon as a great liberator. Had he only kept Prussia as a happy ally, he would have survived the debacle in Russia and there would have been no Waterloo.

Learn the lesson well: brilliant plans and piled-up conquests are not enough. You can become the victim of your own success, letting victory seduce you into going too far, creating hard-bitten enemies, winning the battle but losing the political game after it. What you need is a strategic third eye: the ability to stay focused on the future while operating in the present and ending your actions in a way that will serve your interests for the next round of war. This third eye will help you counteract the emotions that can insidiously infect your clever strategies, particularly anger and the desire for revenge.

Victory seems to have been achieved. There remains merely a remnant of the evil resolutely to be eradicated as the time demands. Everything looks easy. Just there, however, lies the danger. If we are not on guard, evil will succeed in escaping by means of concealment, and when it has eluded us new misfortunes will develop from the remaining seeds, for evil does not die easily.

T
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HING
, C
HINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.

The critical question in war is knowing when to stop, when to make your exit and come to terms. Stop too soon and you lose whatever you might have gained by advancing; you allow too little time for the conflict to show you where it is heading. Stop too late and you sacrifice your gains by exhausting yourself, grabbing more than you can handle, creating an angry and vengeful enemy. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz analyzed this problem, discussing what he called "the culminating point of victory"--the optimum moment to end the war. To recognize the culminating point of victory, you must know your own resources, how much you can handle, the morale of your soldiers, any signs of a slackening effort. Fail to recognize that moment, keep fighting past it, and you bring on yourself all kinds of unwanted consequences: exhaustion, escalating cycles of violence, and worse.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Japanese watched as Russia made advances into China and Korea. In 1904, hoping to stem Russian expansion, they launched a surprise attack on the Russian-held town of Port Arthur, on the coast of Manchuria. Since they were clearly the smaller country and had fewer military resources, they hoped that a quick offensive would work in their favor. The strategy--the brainchild of Baron Gentaro Kodama, vice chief of Japan's general staff--was effective: by stealing the initiative, the Japanese were able to bottle up the Russian fleet at Port Arthur while they landed armies in Korea. That allowed them to defeat the Russians in key battles on land and at sea. Momentum was clearly on their side.

In April 1905, however, Kodama began to see great danger in his own success. Japan's manpower and resources were limited; Russia's were vast. Kodama convinced the Japanese leaders to consolidate the gains they had made and sue for peace. The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed later that year, granted Russia more-than-generous terms, but Japan solidified its position: the Russians moved out of Manchuria and Korea and left Port Arthur to Japan. Had the Japanese been carried along by their momentum, they would surely have passed the culminating point of victory and had all their gains wiped out by the inevitable counterattack.

On the other side of the scale, the Americans ended the Gulf War of 1991 too soon, allowing much of the Iraqi army to escape its encirclement. That left Saddam Hussein still strong enough to brutally put down the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings that erupted after his defeat in Kuwait and to hang on to power. The allied forces were held back from completing the victory by their desire not to appear to be beating up on an Arab nation and by the fear of a power vacuum in Iraq. Their failure to finish led to far greater violence in the long run.

Imagine that everything you do has a moment of perfection and fruition. Your goal is to end your project there, at such a peak. Succumb to tiredness, boredom, or impatience for the end and you fall short of that peak. Greed and delusions of grandeur will make you go too far. To conclude at this moment of perfection, you must have the clearest possible sense of your goals, of what you really want. You must also command an in-depth knowledge of your resources--how far can you practicably go? This kind of awareness will give you an intuitive feel for the culminating point.

CENTCOM's lightning war
[
Desert Storm
]
was over. It had been billed as a 100-hour blitz, but three years later it was still an unfinished war. Recalled Gordon Brown, the foreign service officer who served as Schwarzkopf's chief foreign policy advisor at CENTCOM, "We never did have a plan to terminate the war."

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ONFLICT IN THE
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M
ICHAEL
R. G
ORDON AND
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ENERAL
B
ERNARD
E. T
RAINOR
, 1995

Endings in purely social relationships demand a sense of the culminating point as much as those in war. A conversation or story that goes on too long always ends badly. Overstaying your welcome, boring people with your presence, is the deepest failing: you should leave them wanting more of you, not less. You can accomplish this by bringing the conversation or encounter to an end a moment before the other side expects it. Leave too soon and you may seem timid or rude, but do your departure right, at the peak of enjoyment and liveliness (the culminating point), and you create a devastatingly positive afterglow. People will still be thinking of you long after you are gone. In general, it is always best to end with energy and flair, on a high note.

Victory and defeat are what you make of them; it is how you deal with them that matters. Since defeat is inevitable in life, you must master the art of losing well and strategically. First, think of your own mental outlook, how you absorb defeat psychologically. See it as a temporary setback, something to wake you up and teach you a lesson, and even as you lose, you end on a high note and with an edge: you are mentally prepared to go on the offensive in the next round. So often, those who have success become soft and imprudent; you must welcome defeat as a way to make yourself stronger.

Second, you must see any defeat as a way to demonstrate something positive about yourself and your character to other people. This means standing tall, not showing signs of bitterness or becoming defensive. Early in his term as president, John F. Kennedy embroiled the country in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a failed invasion of Cuba. While he accepted full responsibility for the debacle, he did not overdo his apologies; instead he went to work on correcting the mistake, making sure it would not happen again. He kept his composure, showing remorse but also strength. In doing so he won public and political support that helped him immensely in his future fights.

Third, if you see that defeat is inevitable, it is often best to go down swinging. That way you end on a high note even as you lose. This helps to rally the troops, giving them hope for the future. At the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, every last American fighting the Mexican army died--but they died heroically, refusing to surrender. The battle became a rallying cry--"Remember the Alamo!"--and an inspired American force under Sam Houston finally defeated the Mexicans for good. You do not have to experience physical martyrdom, but a display of heroism and energy makes defeat into a moral victory that will soon enough translate into a concrete one. Planting the seeds of future victory in present defeat is strategic brilliance of the highest order.