The 33 Strategies of War (75 page)

It is a common strategy in bicycle races not to go out in front but to stay right behind the leader, a position that cuts down wind resistance--the leader faces the wind for you and saves you energy. At the last minute, you sprint ahead. Letting other people cut resistance for you and waste their energy on your behalf is the height of economy and strategy.

One of the best stratagems in the Alliance Game is to begin by seeming to help another person in some cause or fight, only for the purpose of furthering your own interests in the end. It is easy to find such people: they have a glaring need, a temporary weakness that you can help them to overcome. Now you have put them under a subtle obligation to you, to use as you will--to dominate their affairs, to divert their energies in the direction you desire. The emotions you create with your offer of help will blind the other person to your ulterior purpose.

The artist Salvador Dali was particularly adept at this version of the game: if someone needed to raise money, say, Dali would come to the rescue, organizing a charity ball or other fund-raising event. The person in need could hardly resist: Dali was friendly with royalty, Hollywood stars, socialites. Soon he would be ordering all kinds of elaborate props for the ball. For his infamous "Night in a Surrealist Forest" in Pebble Beach, California, in 1941, which was intended to benefit starving artists in war-torn Europe, Dali requested a live giraffe, enough pine trees to create a fake forest, the largest bed in the world, a wrecked automobile, and thousands of pairs of shoes from which to serve the first course. In the end the party was a smash and got all kinds of publicity, but, as so often with Dali, the bills far exceeded the receipts; no money was left over for the starving artists of Europe. And strangely enough, all of the publicity was focused on Dali, increasing his fame and winning him more powerful allies.

A variation on the Alliance Game is to play the mediator, the center around which other powers pivot. While remaining covertly autonomous, you make those around you fight for your allegiance. This was essentially how Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister during the Napoleonic era and afterward, restored Austria as Europe's principal power. It helped that Austria is located in the center of Europe and so is strategically vital to the nations around it. Even during the reign of Napoleon, when Austria was at its weakest and Metternich had to cozy up to the French, he kept his country free of lasting entanglements. Without bonding Austria to France by any legal alliance, for example, he tied Napoleon to him emotionally by arranging for the emperor to marry into the Austrian royal family. Keeping all of the great powers--England, France, Russia--at arm's length, he made everything revolve around Austria, even though Austria itself was no longer a great military power.

The brilliance of this variation is that merely by assuming a central position, you can wield tremendous power. For instance, you place yourself at a critical point in the information chain, giving you access to and control over it. Or you produce something other people depend on, giving you incredible leverage. Or you play the mediator everyone needs to resolve a dispute. Whatever it is, you can maintain power in this central position only by keeping yourself unentangled and courted by all. The moment you enter into any kind of lasting alliance, your power is greatly reduced.

A key component of the Alliance Game is the ability to manipulate other people's alliances and even destroy them, sowing dissension among your opponents so that they fight among themselves. Breaking your enemy's alliances is as good as making alliances yourself. When Hernan Cortes landed in Mexico in 1519, he faced hundreds of thousands of Aztecs with 500 men. Knowing that many smaller Mexican tribes resented the powerful Aztec Empire, he slowly worked to peel them away from their alliances with the Aztecs. By filling a tribal leader's ears with horrible stories about the Aztec emperor's plans, for example, he might bait the man into arresting the Aztec envoys on their next visit. That of course would infuriate the emperor, and now the tribe would be isolated and in danger--and would appeal to Cortes for protection. On and on Cortes went with this negative version of the Alliance Game, until the Aztecs' allies had become his.

Your focus here is on stirring up mistrust. Make one partner suspicious of the other, spread rumors, cast doubts on people's motives, be friendly to one ally to make the other jealous. Divide and conquer. In this way you will create a tide of emotions, hitting first this side, then that, until the alliance totters. Now former members of the alliance will feel vulnerable. Through manipulation or outright invitation, make them turn to you for protection.

In facing an enemy that is composed of allies, no matter how large or formidable, do not be afraid. As Napoleon said, "Give me allies to fight." In war, allies generally have problems of command and control. The worst kind of leadership is divided leadership; compelled to debate and agree before they act, allied generals usually move like snails. When fighting large groups of allies, as he often did, Napoleon always attacked first the weak link, the junior partner. Collapse here could make the whole fabric of the alliance fall apart. He would also seek quick victory in battle, even a small one, for no force is more easily discouraged by a defeat than an allied one.

Finally, you will of course be attacked for playing the Alliance Game. People will accuse you of being feckless, amoral, treacherous. Remember: these charges are strategic themselves. They are part of a moral offensive (see chapter 25). To advance their own interests, your accusers are trying to make you feel guilty or look bad. Do not let them get to you. The only real danger is that your reputation will eventually keep people from making alliances with you--but self-interest rules the world. If you are seen to have benefited others in the past and as capable of doing the same in the present, you will have suitors and playing partners. Besides, you are loyal and generous, as long as there is mutual need. And when you show that you cannot be had by the false lure of permanent loyalty and friendship, you will actually find yourself treated with greater respect. Many will be drawn to your realistic and spirited way of playing the game.

Authority: Beware of sentimental alliances where the consciousness of good deeds is the only compensation for noble sacrifices.

--Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

REVERSAL

If you play the Alliance Game, so will those around you, and you cannot take their behavior personally--you must keep dealing with them. But there are some types with whom any kind of alliance will harm you. You can often recognize them by their overeagerness to pursue you: they will make the first move, trying to blind you with alluring offers and glittering promises. To protect yourself from being used in a negative way, always look at the tangible benefits you will gain from this alliance. If the benefits seem vague or hard to realize, think twice about joining forces. Look at your prospective allies' past for signs of greed or of using people without giving in return. Be wary of people who speak well, have apparently charming personalities, and talk about friendship, loyalty, and selflessness: they are most often con artists trying to prey on your emotions. Keep your eye on the interests involved on both sides, and never let yourself be distracted from them.

Life's greatest dangers often come not from external enemies but from our supposed colleagues and friends, who pretend to work for the common cause while scheming to sabotage us and steal our ideas for their gain. Although, in the court in which you serve, you must maintain the appearance of consideration and civility, you also must learn to defeat these people. Work to instill doubts and insecurities in such rivals, getting them to think too much and act defensively. Bait them with subtle challenges that get under their skin, triggering an overreaction, an embarrassing mistake. The victory you are after is to isolate them. Make them hang themselves through their own self-destructive tendencies, leaving you blameless and clean.

THE ART OF ONE-UPMANSHIP

Throughout your life you will find yourself fighting on two fronts. First is the external front, your inevitable enemies--but second and less obvious is the internal front, your colleagues and fellow courtiers, many of whom will scheme against you, advancing their own agendas at your expense. The worst of it is that you will often have to fight on both fronts at once, facing your external enemies while also working to secure your internal position, an exhausting and debilitating struggle.

Life is war against the malice of men.

B
ALTASAR
G
RACIAN
, 1601-58

The solution is not to ignore the internal problem (you will have a short life if you do so) or to deal with it in a direct and conventional manner, by complaining, acting aggressively, or forming defensive alliances. Understand: internal warfare is by nature unconventional. Since people theoretically on the same side usually do their best to maintain the appearance of being team players working for the greater good, complaining about them or attacking them will only make you look bad and isolate you. Yet at the same time, you can expect these ambitious types to operate underhandedly and indirectly. Outwardly charming and cooperative, behind the scenes they are manipulative and slippery.

You need to adopt a form of warfare suited to these nebulous yet dangerous battles, which go on every day. And the unconventional strategy that works best in this arena is the art of one-upmanship. Developed by history's savviest courtiers, it is based on two simple premises: first, your rivals harbor the seeds of their own self-destruction, and second, a rival who is made to feel defensive and inferior, however subtly, will tend to act defensive and inferior, to his or her detriment.

People's personalities often form around weaknesses, character flaws, uncontrollable emotions. People who feel needy, or who have a superiority complex, or are afraid of chaos, or desperately want order, will develop a personality--a social mask--to cover up their flaws and make it possible for them to present a confident, pleasant, responsible exterior to the world. But the mask is like the scar tissue covering a wound: touch it the wrong way and it hurts. Your victims' responses start to go out of control: they complain, act defensive and paranoid, or show the arrogance they try so hard to conceal. For a moment the mask falls.

When you sense you have colleagues who may prove dangerous--or are actually already plotting something--you must try first to gather intelligence on them. Look at their everyday behavior, their past actions, their mistakes, for signs of their flaws. With this knowledge in hand, you are ready for the game of one-upmanship.

Begin by doing something to prick the underlying wound, creating doubt, insecurity, and anxiety. It might be an offhand comment or something that your victims sense as a challenge to their position within the court. Your goal is not to challenge them blatantly, though, but to get under their skin: they feel attacked but are not sure why or how. The result is a vague, troubling sensation. A feeling of inferiority creeps in.

You then follow up with secondary actions that feed their doubts. Here it is often best to work covertly, getting other people, the media, or simple rumor to do the job for you. The endgame is deceptively simple: having piled up enough self-doubt to trigger a reaction, you stand back and let the target self-destruct. You must avoid the temptation to gloat or get in a last blow; at this point, in fact, it is best to act friendly, even offering dubious assistance and advice. Your targets' reaction will be an overreaction. Either they will lash out, make an embarrassing mistake, or reveal themselves too much, or they will get overly defensive and try too hard to please others, working all too obviously to secure their position and validate their self-esteem. Defensive people unconsciously push people away.

At this point your opening action, especially if it is only subtly aggressive, will be forgotten. What will stand out will be your rivals' overreaction and humiliation. Your hands are clean, your reputation unsullied. Their loss of position is your gain; you are one up and they are one down. If you had attacked them directly, your advantage would be temporary or nonexistent; in fact, your political position would be precarious: your pathetic, suffering rivals would win sympathy as your victims, and attention would focus on you as responsible for their undoing. Instead they must fall on their swords. You may have given them a little help, but to whatever extent possible in their own eyes, and certainly in everyone else's, they must have only themselves to blame. That will make their defeat doubly galling and doubly effective.

To win without your victim's knowing how it happened or just what you have done is the height of unconventional warfare. Master the art and not only will you find it easier to fight on two fronts at the same time, but your path to the highest ranks will be that much smoother.

Never interfere with an enemy that is in the process of committing suicide.

--Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

HISTORICAL EXAMPLES

1.
John A. McClernand (1812-1900) watched with envy as his friend and fellow lawyer Abraham Lincoln rose to the U.S. presidency. McClernand, a lawyer and congressman from Springfield, Illinois, had had this ambition himself. Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, in 1861, he resigned his congressional seat to accept a commission as a brigadier general in the Union army. He had no military experience, but the Union needed leadership of any kind it could get, and if he proved himself in battle, he could rise fast. He saw this army position as his path to the presidency.

First of all, a complete definition of the technical term "one-upmanship" would fill, and in fact has filled, a rather large encyclopedia. It can be defined briefly here as the art of placing a person "one-down." The term "one-down" is technically defined as that psychological state which exists in an individual who is not "one-up" on another person.... To phrase these terms in popular language, at the risk of losing scientific rigor, it can be said that in any human relationship (and indeed among other mammals) one person is constantly maneuvering to imply that he is in a "superior position" to the other person in the relationship. This "superior position" does not necessarily mean superior in social status or economic position; many servants are masters at putting their employers one-down. Nor does it imply intellectual superiority as any intellectual knows who has been put "one-down" by a muscular garbage collector in a bout of Indian wrestling. "Superior position" is a relative term which is continually being defined and redefined by the ongoing relationship. Maneuvers to achieve superior position may be crude or they may be infinitely subtle. For example, one is not usually in a superior position if he must ask another person for something. Yet he can ask for it in such a way that he is implying, "This is, of course, what I deserve."

T
HE
S
TRATEGIES OF
P
SYCHOTHERAPY
,
J
AY
H
ALEY
, 1963

McClernand's first post was at the head of a brigade in Missouri under the overall command of General Ulysses S. Grant. Within a year he was promoted to major general, still under Grant. But this was not good enough for McClernand, who needed a stage for his talents, a campaign to run and get credit for. Grant had talked to him of his plans for capturing the Confederate fort at Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River. The fall of Vicksburg, according to Grant, could be the turning point in the war. McClernand decided to sell a march on Vicksburg as his own idea and use it as a springboard for his career.

In September 1862, on leave in Washington, D.C., McClernand paid a visit to President Lincoln. He was "tired of furnishing brains" for Grant's army, he said; he had proved himself on the battlefield and was a better strategist than Grant, who was a little too fond of his whiskey. McClernand proposed to go back to Illinois, where he was well known and could recruit a large army. Then he would follow the Mississippi River south to Vicksburg and capture the fort.

Vicksburg was technically in Grant's department, but Lincoln was not sure the general could lead the audacious attack necessary. He took McClernand to see Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, another former lawyer, who commiserated with his two visitors on the difficulties of dealing with military brass. Stanton listened to and liked McClernand's plan. That October the onetime congressman left Washington with confidential orders, giving him approval for his march on Vicksburg. The orders were a little vague, and Grant was not informed of them, but McClernand would make the best of them.

McClernand quickly recruited more soldiers than he had promised Lincoln he would. He sent his recruits to Memphis, Tennessee, where he would soon join them to march on Vicksburg. But when he arrived in Memphis, in late December 1862, the thousands of men he had recruited were not there. A telegram from Grant--dated ten days earlier and waiting for him in Memphis--informed him that the general was planning to attack Vicksburg. If McClernand arrived in time, he would lead the attack; if not, his men would be led by General William Tecumseh Sherman.

McClernand was livid. The situation had clearly been orchestrated to make it impossible for him to arrive in time to lead his own recruits; Grant must have figured out his plan. The general's polite telegram covering his bases made the whole affair doubly infuriating. Well, McClernand would show him: he would hurry downriver, catch up with Sherman, take over the campaign, and humiliate Grant by winning the credit and honor for capturing Vicksburg.

McClernand did catch up with Sherman, on January 2, 1863, and immediately assumed command of the army. He made an effort to be charming to Sherman, who, he learned, had been planning to raid Confederate outposts around Vicksburg to soften up the approach to the fort. The idea was heaven-sent for McClernand: he would take over these raids, win battles without Grant's name over his, earn himself some publicity, and make his command of the Vicksburg campaign a fait accompli. He followed Sherman's plan to the letter, and the campaign was a success.

At this triumphant point, out of the blue, McClernand received a telegram from Grant: he was to halt operations and wait for a meeting with the general. It was time for McClernand to play his trump card, the president; he wrote Lincoln requesting more explicit orders, and specifically an independent command, but he got no reply. And now vague doubts began to trouble McClernand's peace of mind. Sherman and other officers seemed cool; somehow he had rubbed them the wrong way. Perhaps they were conspiring with Grant to get rid of him. Grant soon appeared on the scene with detailed plans for a campaign against Vicksburg under his own direction. McClernand would lead a corps, which, however, was stationed at the faraway outpost of Helena, Arkansas. Grant made a point of treating him politely, but everything together added up to a humiliating setback.

How to be one up--
how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly. The Lifeman is never caddish himself, but how simply and certainly, often, he can make the other man feel a cad, and over prolonged periods.

T
HE
C
OMPLETE
U
PMANSHIP
,
S
TEPHEN
P
OTTER
, 1950

Now McClernand exploded, writing letter after letter to Lincoln and Stanton to remind them of their earlier rapport and of the support they had once given him, and complaining bitterly about Grant. After days of fuming and writing, McClernand finally received a response from Lincoln--and, to his shock and dismay, the president had somehow turned against him. There had been too many family quarrels among his generals, wrote Lincoln; for the sake of the Union cause, McClernand should subordinate himself to Grant.

McClernand was crushed. He could not figure out what he had done or how it had all gone wrong. Bitter and frustrated, he continued to serve under Grant but questioned his boss's abilities to anyone who would listen, including journalists. In June 1863, after enough negative articles had been printed, Grant finally fired him. McClernand's military career was over, and with it his dreams of personal glory.

Interpretation

From the moment he met John McClernand, General Grant knew he had a troublemaker on his hands. McClernand was the type of man who thought only of his own career--who would steal other people's ideas and plot behind their backs for the sake of personal glory. But Grant would have to be careful: McClernand was popular with the public, a charmer. So when Grant figured out on his own that McClernand was trying to beat him to Vicksburg, he did not confront him or complain. Instead he took action.

Knowing that McClernand had an oversensitive ego, Grant recognized that it would be relatively easy to push the man's buttons. By taking over his subordinate's recruits (technically in his department anyway) while apparently covering his bases in the telegram, he forced McClernand into a rash response that seemed like insubordination to other military men and made it clear how far he was using the war for personal purposes. Once McClernand had rushed to take his troops back from Sherman, Grant stood aside. He knew that a man like this--vain and obnoxious--would irritate the hell out of his brother officers; they would inevitably complain about him to Grant, who, as a responsible officer, would have to pass the complaints upward, apparently without personal feelings in play. Treating McClernand politely while indirectly checkmating him, Grant finally got him to overreact in the worst possible way, with his letters to Lincoln and Stanton. Grant knew that Lincoln was tired of squabbling within the Union high command. While Grant could be seen working quietly to perfect his plans for taking Vicksburg, McClernand was acting petty and throwing tantrums. The difference between the two men was all too clear. With this battle won, Grant repeated it, letting McClernand hang himself with his unwise complaints to the press.