The 33 Strategies of War (74 page)

THE LION AND THE WILD ASS

A lion and a wild ass entered into an agreement to hunt wild beasts together. The lion was to use his great strength, while the ass would make use of his greater speed. When they had taken a certain number of animals, the lion divided up the spoils into three portions. "I'll take the first share because I am the king," he said. "The second share will be mine because I have been your partner in the chase," he said. "As for the third share," he said to the wild ass, "this share will be a great source of harm to you, believe me, if you do not yield it up to me. And, by the way, get lost!"
It is suitable always to calculate your own strength, and not to enter into an alliance with people stronger than yourself.

F
ABLES
,
A
ESOP, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.

Throughout your life you will find yourself in groups that demand fusion, forcing you into all kinds of false alliances that command your emotions. You must find a way to the position of strength and power: able to interact and engage with people while staying autonomous. You deftly avoid false alliances by taking provocative actions that make it impossible for people to entrap you. You shake up the dynamic as much as possible, targeting the troublemakers and controllers. Once you are in a position where you are able to stay rational within the group, you can seem to join an alliance without worrying about your emotions running away with you. And you will find that as the person who is simultaneously autonomous and part of the group, you will become a center of gravity and attention.

Enter into action under the cover of helping another's interests, only to further your own in the end.... This is the perfect stratagem and disguise forrealizing your ambitions, for the advantages you seem to offer only serve as lures to influence the other person's will. They think their interests are being advanced when in truth they are opening the way for yours.

--Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658)

KEYS TO WARFARE

To survive and advance at all in life, we find ourselves constantly having to use other people for some purpose, some need--to obtain resources we cannot get on our own, to give us protection of some sort, to compensate for a skill or talent we do not possess. As a description of human relationships, however, the word "use" has ugly connotations, and in any case we always like to make our actions seem nobler than they are. We prefer to think of these interactions as relationships of assistance, partnering, friendship.

This is not a matter of mere semantics; it is the source of a dangerous confusion that will harm you in the end. When you look for an ally, you have a need, an interest you want met. This is a practical, strategic matter upon which your success depends. If you allow emotions and appearances to infect the kinds of alliances you form, you are in danger. The art of forming alliances depends on your ability to separate friendship from need.

The state of Jin, located in modern Shaanhsi, grew steadily in strength by swallowing small neighbors. There were two small states, Hu and Yu, to its south. In the spring of the nineteenth year under King Hui of Zhou (658
B.C
), Duke Xian of Jin sent for a trusted minister, Xun Xi, and declared his intention to attack Hu. "We have little chance to gain advantage," observed Xun Xi after a pause. "Hu and Yu have always been very close. When we attack one of them, the other will surely come to its rescue. Pitched one to one, neither of them is our match, but the result is far from certain if we fight both of them at the same time." "Surely you are not saying we have no way to cope with these two small states?" asked the duke. Xun Xi thought for a while before replying.... "I have thought up a plan by which we will be able to subdue both Hu and Yu. For the first step we should present the Duke of Yu with handsome gifts and ask him to lend us a path by which we can attack Hu." The duke asked, "But we have just offered gifts to Hu and signed a friendly agreement with it. We can hardly make Yu believe that we want to attack Hu instead of Yu itself." "That is not so difficult to work out," replied Xun Xi. "We may secretly order our men on the border to make raids on Hu. When the men of Hu come to protest, we may use that as a pretext to attack them. In this way Yu will be convinced of our professed intention." The duke considered it a good plan. Before long, armed conflicts broke out along the Jin-Hu border to the south. Thereupon the duke asked, "Now we have good reason to convince Yu of our intention to attack Hu. But it will not lend the path to us unless it receives a good profit in return. So what shall we use to bribe the Duke of Yu?" Xun Xi replied, "Though the Duke of Yu is known to be very greedy, he will not be moved unless our gifts are extremely precious. So why not offer him fine horses from Qu and jade from Chuiji?" The duke looked reluctant. "But these are the best treasures I have. I can hardly bring myself to part with them." "I am not surprised by your doubts," said Xun Xi. "Nevertheless, we are bound to subdue Hu now that it has lost the shield of Yu. After Hu is conquered, Yu will not be able to survive on its own. Therefore, when you send these gifts to the Duke of Yu, you are simply consigning the jade to your external mansion and the horses to your external stable...."...When Xun Xi was ushered into the court of Yu and presented the gifts, the Duke of Yu's eyes bulged.... "The men of Hu have repeatedly worked up disturbances along our border,"
[
said Xun Xi
]
. "To protect our people from the calamity of war, we have exerted the highest restraint and concluded a peace treaty with Hu. Nevertheless, the impudent Hu takes our restraint for weakness and is now creating new troubles by making invidious charges against us. Therefore my lord was compelled to order a punitive expedition against Hu, and he dispatched me to ask your permission to let our troops pass through your land. This way, we can get around our border with Hu, where its defense is strong, and launch a surprise attack at its weak point. When we have defeated the men of Hu, we shall present you with splendid trophies to testify to our mutual alliance and friendship."...That summer the Jin troops attacked Hu by way of Yu. The Duke of Yu led a band of force in person to join in the expedition. They defeated the Hu army and captured Xiayang, one of Hu's two major cities. The Duke of Yu received his share of the booty and believed he had nothing to regret for....... In autumn of the twenty-second year under King Hui of Zhou (655
B.C.
), the Duke of Jin again sent an envoy to borrow a path from Yu
[
to Hu
],
and again the Duke of Yu gave his consent....... In the eighth month, the Duke of Jin led six hundred war chariots and proceeded by way of Yu to attack Hu. They laid siege to Shangyang, the capital of Hu.... The city, after holding out for nearly four months, finally yielded. The Duke of Hu fled...and Hu as a feudal state was destroyed. On their way back, the Jin troops halted at Yu. The Duke of Yu came to welcome them, receiving the Duke of Jin into the capital. The Jin troops seized the chance to storm into the city. Taken totally off guard, the Yu army submitted with little resistance, and the Duke of Yu was taken prisoner. Duke Xian of Jin was extremely pleased when Xun Xi returned to present him with the horses and jade as well as the captured Duke of Yu.

T
HE
W
ILES OF
W
AR
: 36 M
ILITARY
S
TRATEGIES FROM
A
NCIENT
C
HINA
,
TRANSLATED BY
S
UN
H
AICHEN
, 1991

The first step is to understand that all of us constantly use other people to help and advance ourselves. (Bowen went so far as to use his own family in an experiment to solve a professional dilemma.) There is no shame in this, no need to ever feel guilty. Nor should we take it personally when we realize that someone else is using us; using people is a human and social necessity. Next, with this understanding in mind, you must learn to make these necessary alliances strategic ones, aligning yourself with people who can give you something you cannot get on your own. This requires that you resist the temptation to let your decisions about alliances be governed by your emotions; your emotional needs are what your personal life is for, and you must leave them behind when you enter the arena of social battle. The alliances that will help you most are those involving mutual self-interest. Alliances infected with emotions, or with ties of loyalty and friendship, are nothing but trouble. Being strategic with your alliances will also keep you from the bad entanglements that are the undoing of so many.

Think of your alliances as stepping-stones toward a goal. Over the course of your life, you will be constantly jumping from one stone to the next to suit your needs. When this particular river is crossed, you will leave them behind you. We will call this constant shifting yet advancing use of allies the "Alliance Game."

Many key principles of the Alliance Game originated in ancient China, which was composed of numerous states in continual flux--now weak, now powerful, now weak again. War was a dangerous affair, for a state that invaded another would stir up a lot of mistrust among the others and would often find itself losing ground in the long run. Meanwhile, a state that remained too loyal to an ally might find itself pulled into a war from which it could not break free and would go down in the process. The formation of proper alliances was in some ways a more important art than that of warfare itself, and the statesmen adept at this art were more powerful than military leaders.

It was through the Alliance Game that the state of Chin was able to slowly expand during the dangerous Warring States period of 403-221
B.C.
Chin would make alliances with distant states and attack nearby ones; the nearby state that Chin had invaded could not get help from its outlying neighbor because that neighbor was now allied to Chin. If Chin faced an enemy that had a key ally, it would work first to disrupt the alliance--sowing dissension, spreading rumors, courting one of the two sides with money--until the alliance fell apart. Then Chin would invade first one of the two states, then the other. Gradually, bit by bit, it gobbled up neighboring states until, in the late third century
B.C.
, it was able to unify China--a remarkable feat.

To play the Alliance Game right, today as in ancient China, you must be realistic to the core, thinking far ahead and keeping the situation as fluid as possible. The ally of today may be the enemy of tomorrow. Sentiment has no place in the picture. If you are weak but clever, you can slowly leapfrog into a position of strength by bouncing from one alliance to another. The opposite approach is to make a key alliance and stick with it, valuing trust and an established relationship. This can work well in stable times, but in periods of flux, which are more common, it can prove to be your undoing: differences in interest will inevitably emerge, and at the same time it will become hard to disentangle yourself from a relationship in which so much emotion has been invested. It is safer to bank on change, to keep your options open and your alliances based on need, not loyalty or shared values.

In the golden age of Hollywood, actresses had almost the least amount of power of anyone. Careers were short; even a great star would be replaced in a few years by someone younger. An actress would stay loyal to her studio, then watch helplessly as the roles dried up. The actress who best bucked the trend was Joan Crawford, who played her own version of the Alliance Game. In 1933, for instance, she met the screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz, then a timid young man just starting out on what would be an illustrious career. Crawford recognized his talent immediately and went out of her way to befriend him, much to his amazement. He went on to write nine screenplays for her, greatly lengthening her career.

Crawford would also court cameramen and photographers, who would then work overtime to light her well and make her look good. She might do the same with a producer who controlled a screenplay with a role in it she coveted. Crawford would often make alliances with up-and-coming young talent who valued a relationship with the star. Then she would gracefully break or forget the connection when it no longer served her needs. Nor would she stay loyal to the studio, or indeed to anyone--only to herself. Her unsentimental approach to her own shifting network of alliances allowed her to avoid the trap that most actresses found embedded in the system.

The key to playing the game is to recognize who can best advance your interests at that moment. This need not be the most obviously powerful person on the scene, the person who
seems
to be able to do most for you; alliances that meet specific needs or answer particular deficiencies are often more useful. (Grand alliances between two great powers are generally the least effective.) Because Louis XI had a weak army, the Swiss, though minor players on the European scene, were the allies he needed. Recognizing this years in advance, he cultivated an alliance that bewildered his enemies. As an ambitious young congressional assistant in Washington, Lyndon Johnson realized he lacked all kinds of powers and talents to get him to the top. He became a clever user of other people's talents. Realizing the importance of information in Congress, he made a point of befriending and allying himself with those at key positions--whether high or low--in the information chain. He was particularly good with older men who enjoyed the company of a lively young man and the role of the father figure giving advice. Slowly, from being a poor kid from Texas with no connections, Johnson raised himself to the top, through his network of convenient alliances.