The 33 Strategies of War

Right off the bat, Greene show a Nietzschean 'beyond good and evil' approach, denying a universal morality and drawing for the warrior on the the thoughts of a communist and Nazi.

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.

This from Carl Schmitt, German jurist, political theorist, geopolitician and prominent member of the Nazi Party. First chapter also in using as an exemplar of identifying the enemy, quotes from Saul Alinsky, the American community activist and political theorist whose work through the Chicago-based show more Industrial Areas Foundation helped poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords. His Rules for Radicals is quoted from multiple times throughout, but that is the only nod to Schmitt.

Also referred to is the usual suspects of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, various actors from the stages of ancient Eurasian warfare and a fair amount on Napoleon. In mining 20th century Eurasian conflict a lot of mention is made of Võ Nguyên Giáp. Giáp is often credited with North Vietnam's military victory over the United States and South Vietnam. But, this book is about more broadly about strategizing in conflict than combat operations. So various areas are drawn upon, such as sports like Ali-Liston, Ali-Frazier, and baseball's Ted Williams. The author also makes much of Alfred Hitchcock as a director drowsing in his chair as a part of controlling through conflict avoidance in his closely arranged productions. (I don't recall reading of this behavior before.)

While the history and observations are interesting, this feels like a grocery list of observations. Almost all include an interpretation with a reversal. So, with 33 vectors and their opposites, it feels a bit lacking in coherence and direction. Also it seems to be advocating a manipulative and aggressive worldview that strikes me as unevolved.

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.

Here is a concise list of the strategies from this book.

1] Declare war on your enemies: Polarity
You cannot fight effectively unless you can identify them. Learn to smoke them out, then inwardly declare war. Your enemies can fill you with purpose and direction.
2] Do not fight the last war: Guerilla-war-of-the-mind
Wage war on the past and ruthlessly force yourself to react to the present. Make everything fluid and mobile.
3] Amidst the turmoil of events, do not lose your presence of mind: Counterbalance
Keep your presence of mind whatever the circumstances. Make your mind tougher by exposing it to adversity. Learn to detach yourself from the chaos of the battlefield.
4] Create a sense of urgency and desperation: Death-ground
Place yourself where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.
5] Avoid the snares of groupthink: Command-and-control
Create a chain of command where people do not feel constrained by your influence yet follow your lead. Create a sense of participation, but do not fall into groupthink.
6] Segment your forces: Controlled-chaos
The critical elements in war are speed and adaptability--the ability to move and make decisions faster than the enemy. Break your forces into independent groups that can operate on their own. Give them the spirit of the campaign, a mission to accomplish, and room to run.
7] Transform your war into a crusade: Morale
Get them to think less about themselves and more about the group. Involve them in a cause, a crusade against a hated enemy. Make them see their survival is tied to the success of the army as a whole.
8] Pick your battles carefully: Perfect-economy
Consider the hidden costs of war: time, political goodwill, an embittered enemy bent on revenge. Sometimes it is better to undermine your enemies covertly.
9] Turn the tables: Counterattack
Let the other side move first. If aggressive, bait them into a rash attack that leaves them in a weak position.
10] Create a threatening presence: Deterrence
Build a reputation for being a little crazy. Fighting you is not worth it. Uncertainty can be better than an explicit threat. If your opponents aren't sure what attacking you will cost, they will not want to find out.
11] Trade space for time: Nonengagement
Retreat is a sign of strength. Resisting the temptation to respond buys valuable time. Sometimes you accomplish most by doing nothing.
12] Lose battles, but win the war: Grand strategy
Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.
13] Know your enemy: Intelligence
The target of your strategies is not the army you face, but the mind who runs it. Learn to read people.
14] Overwhelm resistance with speed and suddenness: Blitzkrieg
Speed is power. Striking first, before enemies have time to think or prepare will make them emotional, unbalanced, and prone to error.
15] Control the dynamic: Forcing
Instead of trying to dominate the other side's every move, work to define the nature of the relationship itself. Control your opponent's mind, pushing emotional buttons and compelling them to make mistakes.
16] Hit them where it hurts: Center-of-gravity
Find the source of your enemy's power. Find out what he cherishes and protects and strike.
17] Defeat them in detail: Divide and conquer
Separate the parts and sow dissension and division. Turn a large problem into small, eminently defeatable parts.
18] Expose and attack your opponent's soft flank: Turning
Frontal assaults stiffen resistance. Instead, distract your enemy's attention to the front, then attack from the side when they expose their weakness.
19] Envelop the enemy: Annihilation
Create relentless pressure from all sides and close off their access to the outside world. When you sense weakening resolve, tighten the noose and crush their willpower.
20] Maneuver them into weakness: Ripening for the sickle
Before the battle begins, put your opponent in a position of such weakness that victory is easy and quick. Create dilemmas where all potential choices are bad.
21] Negotiate while advancing: Diplomatic war
Before and during negotiations, keep advancing, creating relentless pressure and compelling the other side to settle on your terms. The more you take, the more you can give back in meaningless concessions. Create a reputation for being tough and uncompromising so that people are giving ground even before they meet you.
22] Know how to end things: Exit strategy
You are judged by how well things conclude. Know when to stop. Avoid all conflicts and entanglements from which there are no realistic exits.
23] Weave a seamless blend of fact and fiction: Misperception
Make it hard for your enemies to know what is going on around them. Feed their expectations, manufacture a reality to match their desires, and they will fool themselves. Control people's perceptions of reality and you control them.
24] Take the line of least expectation: Ordinary-Extraordinary
Upset expectations. First do something ordinary and conventional, then hit them with the extraordinary. Sometimes the ordinary is extraordinary because it is unexpected.
25] Occupy the moral high ground: Righteousness
The cause you are fighting for must seem more just than the enemy's. Questioning their motives and making enemies appear evil can narrow their base of support and room to maneuver. When you come under moral attack from a clever enemy, don't whine or get angry--fight fire with fire.
26] Deny them targets: The Void
The feeling of emptiness is intolerable for most people. Give enemies no target to attach. Be dangerous and elusive, and let them chase you into the void. Deliver irritating but damaging side attacks and pinpricks.
27] Seem to work for the interests of others while furthering your own: Alliance
Get others to compensate for your deficiencies, do your dirty work, fight your wars. Sow dissension in the alliances of others, weakening opponents by isolating them.
28] Give your rivals enough rope to hang themselves: One-upmanship
Instill doubts and insecurities in rivals, getting them to think too much and act defensive. Make them hang themselves through their own self-destructive tendencies, leaving you blameless and clean.
29] Take small bites: Fait Accompli
Take small bites to play on people's short attention span. Before they notice, you may acquire an empire.
30] Penetrate their minds: Communication
Infiltrate your ideas behind enemy lines, sending messages through little details. Lure people into coming to the conclusions you desire and into thinking they've gotten there by themselves.
31] Destroy from within: The Inner Front
To take something you want, don't fight those who have it, but join them. Then either slowly make it your own or wait for the right moment to stage a coup.
32] Dominate while seeming to submit: Passive-Aggression
Seem to go along, offering no resistance, but actually dominate the situation. Disguise your aggression so you can deny that it exists.
33] Sow uncertainty and panic through acts of terror: Chain Reaction
Terror can paralyze a people's will to resist and destroy their ability to plan a strategic response. The goal is to cause maximum chaos and provoke a desperate overreaction. To counter terror, stay balanced and rational. show less

(Alistair) As an amoral, power-hungry schemer, I greatly enjoyed Robert Greene's first book, The 48 Laws of Power, both as a codification of many of the principles of power-use, deceit and manipulation, and an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable read filled with historical example and anecdote to illustrate them. (In fact, I think I'll read that one again one day soon.) Delightfully Machiavellian.

I am pleased to report that in The 33 Strategies of War, Greene has done it again, moving from the tactical to the strategic scale; Sun-tzu more than Machiavelli, although these strategies apply equally to conflicts other than war - business, politics, and negotiation - and again beautifully illustrated with historical examples. Well worth show more reading - although, of course, if one isn't suited to this sort of thing, one probably shouldn't expect to become a powermonger overnight.

(While it's not a topic I hold much fascination for, perhaps I should read his The Art of Seduction, too, just to complete the entire Amoral Series? Probably.)
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2008/03/the-33-strategies-of-war-ro... ) show less

I liked this book; not fabulous, but I did like it. I have many of the books on war (Machiavelli's [book: The Prince], [book: Moltke on the Art of War], [author: Sun Tzu]'s classic, Alexander the Great's version, some from Napoleon, some Civil War writings, etc.) and this is a conglomeration of many of those I'm familiar with.

Having said that, the style gets tiresome after a while. Many of the best parts are the sidebars where the author quotes directly from some of the best in war theory and war stories. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to read it all at once but perhaps a chapter a week. As it was, it took me many months to get through.

Things I learned: Many of the things I learned were better found in Machiavelli, Alexander and show more Napoleon. Echos of things I already knew. Still, it is nice to have all of this in one volume. I suppose I could have done without the ever-present quotes from "I Ching" and such. show less

Another set of pithy laws and quotations, like those in the "The (48?) Secrets of Power". Don't just read this as a "How-To", read it to see other sides of people who were famous, such as Joan Crawford. While I'm not about to use these principles myself, I won't fall for them now either.
Oh, and as a teaser: after reading this book, there is a certain famous Artist that you will never be able to think of with anything but a feeling of being soiled for even being in the same room with his works.

I love Robert Greene’s books usually but this one was just OK. Too many strategies; too many leaders, too many wars.

Psychopathy 101. Self help book for managers, as vapid as any other self help book. Better researched than most but that does not translate into value.

This is a facinating book on relating war to real life. Every chapter relates to my life in some way.