The 33 Strategies of War (78 page)

Interpretation

A Hollywood actress has to be thick-skinned, and Joan Crawford was the quintessence of the Hollywood actress: she had a huge capacity to absorb and deal with insults and disrespect. Whenever she could, though, she plotted to get the last laugh on her various nemeses, leaving them humiliated. Crawford knew that people thought of her as somewhat of a bitch, a tough, even unpleasant woman. She felt this was unfair--she had been kind to many--but she could live with it. What annoyed her was how Shearer got away with playing the elegant lady when in fact, Crawford believed, she was a nasty specimen beneath her charming exterior. So Crawford maneuvered to get Shearer to expose a side of herself that few had seen. Just that glimmer was memorable to the Hollywood community and humiliating to Shearer.

With Davis it was all in the timing: Crawford ruined her night of glory (which she had been gloating about for months) without even saying a mean word. Crawford knew that Bancroft would be unable to attend and learned from inside information that she would win, so she happily volunteered to accept the prize on her behalf.

Inevitably a patient entering analysis begins to use ploys which have placed him one-up in previous relationships (this is called a "neurotic pattern"). The analyst learns to devastate these maneuvers of the patient. A simple way, for example, is to respond inappropriately to what the patient says. This places the patient in doubt about everything he has learned in relationships with other people. The patient may say, "Everyone should be truthful," hoping to get the analyst to agree with him and thereby follow his lead. He who follows another lead is one-down. The analyst may reply with silence, a rather weak ploy in this circumstance, or he may say, "Oh?" The "Oh?" is given just the proper inflection to imply, "How on earth could you have ever conceived such an idea?" This not only places the patient in doubt about his statement, but in doubt about what the analyst means by "Oh?" Doubt is, of course, the first step toward one-downness. When in doubt the patient tends to lean on the analyst to resolve the doubt, and we lean on those who are superior to us. Analytic maneuvers designed to arouse doubt in a patient are instituted early in analysis. For example, the analyst may say, "I wonder if that's
really
what you're feeling." The use of "really" is standard in analytic practice. It implies the patient has motivations of which he is not aware. Anyone feels shaken, and therefore one-down, when this suspicion is placed in his mind.

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

You will often find yourself nursing the desire to revenge yourself on those who have mistreated you. The temptation is to be direct, to say something honest and mean, to let people know how you feel--but words are ineffective here. A verbal spat lowers you to the other person's level and often leaves you with a bad feeling. The sweeter revenge is an action that gives you the last laugh, leaving your victims with a sense of vague but corrosive inferiority. Provoke them into exposing a hidden, unpleasant side to their character, steal their moment of glory--but make this the battle's last maneuver. That gives you the double delight of showing you are no one to mess with and inflicting a wound that sticks around. As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold.

"I wonder if that's really what you're feeling." The use of "really" is standard in analytic practice. It implies the patient has motivations of which he is not aware. Anyone feels shaken, and therefore one-down, when this suspicion is placed in his mind.

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

Authority: We often give our rivals the means of our own destruction.

--Aesop (sixth century
B.C.
)

REVERSAL

Sometimes outright war is best--when, for example, you can crush your enemies by encirclement. In the ongoing relationships of daily life, though, one-upmanship is usually the wiser strategy. It may sometimes seem therapeutic to outfight your rivals directly; it may sometimes be appealing to send an overtly intimidating message. But the momentary gains you may earn with a direct approach will be offset by the suspicions you arouse in your colleagues, who will worry that someday you will strong-arm them, too. In the long run, it is more important to secure good feelings and maintain appearances. Wise courtiers always seem to be paragons of civilized behavior, encasing their iron fist in a velvet glove.

If you seem too ambitious, you stir up resentment in other people; overt power grabs and sharp rises to the top are dangerous, creating envy, distrust, and suspicion. Often the best solution is to take small bites, swallow little territories, playing upon people's relatively short attention spans. Stay under the radar and they won't see your moves. And if they do, it may already be too late; the territory is yours, a fait accompli. You can always claim you acted out of self-defense. Before people realize it, you have accumulated an empire.

PIECEMEAL CONQUEST

On June 17, 1940, Winston Churchill, prime minister of England, received a surprise visit from the French general Charles de Gaulle. The Germans had begun their blitzkrieg invasion of the Low Countries and France a mere five weeks earlier, and they had advanced so far so fast that not only France's military but its government as well had already collapsed. The French authorities had fled, either to parts of France not yet occupied by the Germans or to French colonies in North Africa. None, however, had fled to England--but here was General de Gaulle, a solitary exile seeking refuge and offering his services to the Allied cause.

The two men had met before, when de Gaulle had briefly served as France's undersecretary of state for war during the weeks of the blitzkrieg. Churchill had admired his courage and resolution at that difficult moment, but de Gaulle was a strange fellow. At the age of fifty, he had a somewhat undistinguished military record and could hardly be considered an important political figure. But he always acted as if he were at the center of things. And here he was now, presenting himself as the man who could help rescue France, although many other Frenchmen could be considered more suitable for the role. Nevertheless, de Gaulle might be someone whom Churchill could mold and use for his purposes.

Within hours of de Gaulle's arrival in England, the French military sued for peace with the Germans. Under the agreement the two nations worked out, the unoccupied parts of France were to be ruled by a French government friendly to the invaders and based in Vichy. That same evening de Gaulle presented Churchill with a plan: Broadcasting on BBC Radio, he would address all Frenchmen still loyal to a free France and would urge them to not lose heart. He would also call on any who had managed to get to England to contact him. Churchill was reluctant: he did not want to offend the new French government, with which he might have to deal. But de Gaulle promised to say nothing that could be read as treachery to the Vichy government, and at the last minute he was given permission.

De Gaulle delivered the speech much as he had outlined it--except that he ended it with the promise he would be back on the air the next day. This was news to Churchill, yet once the promise had been made, it might look bad to keep de Gaulle off the air, and anything that would hearten the French during these dark days seemed worthwhile.

In the next broadcast, de Gaulle was decidedly bolder. "Any Frenchman who still has weapons," he announced, "has the absolute duty to continue the resistance." He even went so far as to instruct his fellow generals still in France to disobey the enemy. Those who rallied to him in England, he said, would form part of a nation without territory to be called Free France and of a new army to be called Fighting France, the spearhead of an eventual liberation of mainland France from the Germans.

Occupied with other matters and believing de Gaulle's audience to be small, Churchill overlooked the general's indiscretions and allowed him to continue his broadcasts--only to find that each new program made it harder to pull the plug. De Gaulle was transforming himself into a celebrity. The performance of the French military and government during the blitzkrieg had been widely seen as a disgrace, and in the aftermath no one had stepped forward to alter this perception of cowardice--except de Gaulle. His voice radiated confidence, and his face and tall figure stood out in photographs and newsreels. Most important, his appeals had effect: his Fighting France grew from a few hundred soldiers in July 1940 to several thousand a month later.

Soon de Gaulle was clamoring to lead his forces on a campaign to liberate French colonies in Central and Equatorial Africa from the Vichy government. The area was mostly desert and rain forest and was far from the more strategic regions of North Africa on the Mediterranean, but it contained some seaports that might be useful, and so Churchill gave de Gaulle his backing. The French forces were able to take Chad, Cameroon, the French Congo, and Gabon with relative ease.

When de Gaulle returned to England late in 1940, he now had thousands of square miles of territory under his control. His command meanwhile had swelled to close to 20,000 soldiers, and his bold venture had captured the imagination of the British public. No longer the low-order general who had sought refuge months before, he was now a military and political leader. And de Gaulle was equal to this change in status: he was now making demands of the English and acting in a rather aggressive manner. Churchill was beginning to regret giving him so much leeway.

The following year British intelligence discovered that de Gaulle had been making important contacts among the growing French Resistance movement. The Resistance, which was dominated by communists and socialists, had started off chaotic, lacking a coherent structure. De Gaulle had personally chosen an official in the prewar socialist government, Jean Moulin, who had come to England in October 1941, to help unify this underground force. Of all de Gaulle's maneuverings, this was the one that could benefit the Allies most directly; an efficient Resistance would be invaluable. So, with Churchill's blessing, Moulin was parachuted into southern France in early 1942.

Chien/Development (Gradual Progress)

This hexagram is made up of Sun (wood, penetration) above, i.e., without, and Ken (mountain, stillness) below, i.e., within. A tree on a mountain develops slowly according to the law of its being and consequently stands firmly rooted. This gives the idea of a development that proceeds gradually, step by step. The attributes of the trigrams also point to this: within is tranquility, which guards against precipitate actions, and without is penetration, which makes development and progress possible.

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

By the end of that year, the increasingly imperious de Gaulle had so offended many within the Allied governments and armies--particularly U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt--that a plan was discussed to replace him with someone more malleable. The Americans believed they had found the perfect man for the job: General Henri Giraud, one of France's most respected military officials, a man with a record far more distinguished than de Gaulle's. Churchill approved, and Giraud was named commander in chief of French forces in North Africa. Sensing the allied plot, de Gaulle requested a personal meeting with Giraud to discuss the situation; after much bureaucratic wrangling, he was granted permission and arrived in Algiers in May 1943.

The two men were at each other's throats almost immediately, each making demands to which the other could never agree. Finally de Gaulle compromised: proposing a committee that would prepare to lead a post-war France, he drafted a document naming Giraud as commander in chief of the armed forces and copresident of France with de Gaulle. In return de Gaulle got the committee to be expanded in size and cleansed of officials with Vichy connections. Giraud was satisfied and signed on. Shortly thereafter, however, Giraud left Algiers for a visit to the United States, and de Gaulle, in his absence, filled the expanded committee with Gaullist sympathizers and Resistance members. Upon Giraud's return he discovered that he had been stripped of much of his political power. Isolated on a committee that he had helped to form, he had no way to defend himself, and in a matter of months de Gaulle was named sole president, then commander in chief. Giraud was quietly retired.

Roosevelt and Churchill watched these developments with increasing alarm. They tried to intervene, making various threats, but in the end they were powerless. Those BBC broadcasts that had started out so innocently were now listened to avidly by millions of Frenchmen. Through Moulin, de Gaulle had gained almost complete control of the French Resistance; a break with de Gaulle would put the Allies' relationship with the Resistance in jeopardy. And the committee that de Gaulle had helped form to govern postwar France was now recognized by governments around the world. To take on the general in any kind of political struggle would be a public-relations nightmare destructive to the war effort.

Somehow this once undistinguished general had forged a kind of empire under his control. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Interpretation

When General Charles de Gaulle fled to England, he had one goal: to restore the honor of France. He intended to do this by leading a military and political organization that would work to liberate France. He wanted his country to be seen as an equal among the Allies, rather than as a vanquished nation dependent on others to regain its freedom.

Had de Gaulle announced his intentions, he would have been seen as a dangerous mix of delusion and ambition. And had he grabbed for power too quickly, he would have shown those intentions. Instead, supremely patient and with an eye on his goal, he took one small bite at a time. The first bite--always the most important--was to gain himself public exposure with first one BBC broadcast, then, through clever maneuvering, an ongoing series. Here, exploiting his keen dramatic instincts and hypnotic voice, he quickly established a larger-than-life presence. This allowed him to create and build up his military group Fighting France.

He took his next bite by bringing those African territories under the control of Fighting France. His control over a large geographical area, no matter how isolated, gave him unassailable political power. Then he insinuated himself into the Resistance, taking over a group that had been a communist bastion. Finally he created--and, bite by bite, gained complete control of--a committee to govern the free France of the future. Because he proceeded in such a piecemeal fashion, no one really noticed what he was up to. When Churchill and Roosevelt realized how far he had insinuated himself into the Resistance, and into the minds of the British and American publics as France's destined postwar leader, it was too late to stop him. His preeminence was a fait accompli.

It is not easy to make one's way in this world, to strive with energy to get what you want without incurring the envy or antipathy of others who may see you as aggressive and ambitious, someone to thwart. The answer is not to lower your ambitions but rather to disguise them. A piecemeal approach to conquest of anything is perfect for these political times, the ultimate mask of aggression. The key to making it work is to have a clear sense of your objective, the empire you want to forge, and then to identify the small, outlying areas of the empire that you will first gobble up. Each bite must have a logic in an overall strategy but must be small enough that no one senses your larger intentions. If your bites are too big, you will take on more than you are ready for and find yourself overwhelmed by problems; if you bite too fast, other people will see what you are up to. Let the passage of time masterfully disguise your intentions and give you the appearance of someone of modest ambition. By the time your rivals wake up to what you have consumed, they risk being consumed themselves if they stand in your way.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

--Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

KEYS TO WARFARE

At first glance we humans might seem hopelessly violent and aggressive. How else to account for history's endless series of wars, which continue into the present? But in fact this is somewhat of an illusion. Standing out dramatically from daily life, war and conflict compel disproportionate attention. The same can be said of those aggressive individuals in the public realm who are constantly grabbing for more.

The truth is that most people are conservative by nature. Desperate to keep what they have, they dread the unforeseen consequences and situations that conflict inevitably brings. They hate confrontation and try to avoid it. (That is why so many people resort to passive aggression to get what they want.) You must always remember this fact of human nature as you plot your way through life. It is also the foundation for any fait accompli strategy.

The strategy works as follows: Suppose there is something you want or need for your security and power. Take it without discussion or warning and you give your enemies a choice, either to fight or to accept the loss and leave you alone. Is whatever you have taken, and your unilateral action in taking it, worth the bother, cost, and danger of waging war? Which costs more, the war (which might easily escalate into something large) or the loss? Take something of real value and they will have to choose carefully; they have a big decision to make. Take something small and marginal, though, and it is almost impossible for your opponents to choose battle. There are likely to be many more reasons for leaving you alone than for fighting over something small. You have played to your enemy's conservative instincts, which are generally stronger than their acquisitive ones. And soon your ownership of this property becomes a fait accompli, part of the status quo, which is always best left alone.

Sooner or later, as part of this strategy, you will take another small bite. This time your rivals are warier; they are starting to see a pattern. But what you have taken is once again small, and once again they must ask themselves if fighting you is worth the headache. They didn't to do it before--why now? Execute a fait accompli strategy subtly and well, as de Gaulle did, and even though a time may come when your goal becomes clear, and when they regret their previous pacifism and consider war, by that time you will have altered the playing field: you are neither so small nor so easy to defeat. To take you on now entails a different kind of risk; there is a different, more powerful reason for avoiding conflict. Only nibble at what you want and you never spark enough anger, fear, or mistrust to make people overcome their natural reluctance to fight. Let enough time pass between bites and you will also play to the shortness of people's attention spans.