33strats-ch12-lose-battles-win-wars

LOSE BATTLES BUT WIN THE WAR GRAND STRATEGY Everyone around you is a strategist angling for power, all trying to promote their own interests, often at your expense. Your daily battles with them make you lose sight of the only thing that really matters: victory in the end, the achievement of greater goals, lasting power. Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the battle and calculating ahead. It requires that you focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it. In grand strategy you consider the political ramifications and long-term consequences of what you do. Instead of reacting emotionally to people, you take control, and make your actions more dimensional, subtle, and effective. Let others get caught up in the twists and turns of the battle, relishing their little victories. Grand strategy will bring you the ultimate reward: the last laugh. Readiness is everything. Resolution is indissolubly bound up with caution. If an individual is careful and keeps his wits about him, he need not become excited or alarmed. If he is watchful at all times, even before danger is present, he is armed when danger approaches and need not be afraid. The superior man is on his guard against what is not yet in sight and on the alert for what is not yet within hearing; therefore he dwells in the midst of difficulties as though they did not exist…. If reason triumphs, the passions withdraw of themselves.

THE I CHING, CHINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C. THE GREAT CAMPAIGN Growing up at the Macedonian court, Alexander (356-322 B.C.) was considered a rather strange young man. He enjoyed the usual boyish pursuits, such as horses and warfare; having fought alongside his father, King Philip II, in several battles, he had proved his bravery. But he also loved philosophy and literature. His tutor was the great thinker Aristotle, under whose influence he loved to argue about politics and science, looking at the world as dispassionately as possible. Then there was his mother, Olympias: a mystical, superstitious woman, she had had visions at Alexander’s birth that he would one day rule the known world. She told him about them and filled him with stories of Achilles, from whom her family claimed descent. Alexander adored his mother (while hating his father) and took her prophecies most seriously. From early on in life, he carried himself as if he were more than the son of a king. Alexander was raised to be Philip’s successor, and the state he was to inherit had grown considerably during his father’s reign. Over the years the king had managed to build up the Macedonian army into the supreme force in all Greece. He had defeated Thebes and Athens and had united all the Greek city-states (except Sparta) into a Hellenic league under his leadership. He was a crafty, intimidating ruler. Then, in 336 B.C., a disgruntled nobleman assassinated him. Suddenly seeing Macedonia as vulnerable, Athens declared its independence from the league. The other city-states followed suit. Tribes from the north now threatened to invade. Almost overnight Philip’s small empire was unraveling. When Alexander came to the throne, he was only twenty, and many considered him unready. It was a bad time for learning on the job; the Macedonian generals and political leaders would have to take him under their wing. They advised him to go slowly, to consolidate his position in both the army and Macedonia and then gradually reform the league through force and guile. That was what Philip would have done. But Alexander would not listen; he had another plan, or so it seemed. Without giving his enemies in and beyond Macedonia time to organize against him, he led the army south and reconquered Thebes in a series of lightning maneuvers. Next he marched on the Athenians, who, fearing his retribution, begged forgiveness and pleaded to be readmitted to the league. Alexander granted their wish. The eccentric young prince had shown himself to be a bold and unpredictable king–attacking when he was not meant to, yet showing Athens unexpected mercy. He was hard to read, but his first maneuvers as king had won him many admirers. His next move, however, was still stranger and more audacious: instead of working to consolidate his gains and strengthen the fragile league, he proposed to launch a crusade against the Persian Empire, the Greeks’ great enemy. Some 150 years earlier, the Persians had tried to invade Greece. They had almost succeeded, and it remained their dream to try it again and get it right. With Persia a constant threat, the Greeks could never rest easy, and their maritime trade was cramped by the power of the Persian navy. THE FOX AND THE MONKEY ELECTED KING The monkey, having danced in an assembly of the animals and earned their approval, was elected by them to be king. The fox was jealous. So, seeing a piece of meat one day in a snare, he led the monkey to it, saying that he had found a treasure. But rather than take it for himself, he had kept guard over it, as its possession was surely a prerogative of royalty. The fox then urged him to take it. The monkey approached it, taking no care, and was caught in the trap. When he accused the fox of luring him into a trap, the fox replied: “Monkey, you want to reign over all the animals, but look what a fool you are!” It is thus that those who throw themselves into an enterprise without sufficient thought not only fail, but even become a laughing stock.

FABLES, AESOP, SIXTH CENTURY B.C. In 334 B.C., Alexander led a united army of 35,000 Greeks across the Dardanelle Straits and into Asia Minor, the westernmost part of the Persian Empire. In their first encounter with the enemy, at the Battle of the Granicus, the Greeks routed the Persians. Alexander’s generals could only admire his boldness: he seemed poised to conquer Persia, fulfilling his mother’s prophecy in record time. He succeeded through speed and by seizing the initiative. Now soldiers and generals alike expected him to head straight east into Persia to finish off the enemy army, which seemed surprisingly weak. Once again Alexander confounded expectations, suddenly deciding to do what he had never done before: take his time. That would have seemed wise when he first came to power, but now it seemed likely to give the Persians the one thing they needed: time to recover and replenish. Yet Alexander led his army not east but south, down the coast of Asia Minor, freeing local towns from Persian rule. Next he zigzagged east and then south again, through Phoenicia and into Egypt, quickly defeating the weak Persian garrison there. The Egyptians hated their Persian rulers and welcomed Alexander as their liberator. Now Alexander could use Egypt’s vast stores of grain to feed the Greek army and help keep the Greek economy stable, while depriving Persia of valuable resources. As the Greeks advanced farther from home, the Persian navy, which could land an army almost anywhere in the Mediterranean to attack them from the rear or flank, was a worrying threat. Before Alexander set out on his expedition, many had advised him to build up the Greek navy and take the battle to the Persians by sea as well as land. Alexander had ignored them. Instead, as he passed through Asia Minor and then along the coast of Phoenicia, he simply captured Persia’s principal ports, rendering their navy useless. These small victories, then, had a greater strategic purpose. Even so, they would have meant little had the Greeks been unable to defeat the Persians in battle–and Alexander seemed to be making that victory more difficult. The Persian king, Darius, was concentrating his forces east of the Tigris River; he had numbers and his choice of location and could wait in ease for Alexander to cross the river. Had Alexander lost his taste for battle? Had Persian and Egyptian culture softened him? It seemed so: he had begun to wear Persian clothes and to adopt Persian customs. He was even seen worshipping Persian gods. As the Persian army retreated east of the Tigris, large areas of the Persian empire had come under Greek control. Now Alexander spent much of his time not on warfare but on politics, trying to see how best to govern these regions. He decided to build on the Persian system already in place, keeping the same titles for jobs in the governmental bureaucracy, collecting the same tribute that Darius had done. He changed only the harsh, unpopular aspects of Persian rule. Word quickly spread of his generosity and gentleness toward his new subjects. Town after town surrendered to the Greeks without a fight, only too glad to be part of Alexander’s growing empire, which transcended Greece and Persia. He was the unifying factor, the benevolent overseeing god. Epistemologically speaking, the source of all erroneous views on war lies in idealist and mechanistic tendencies…. People with such tendencies are subjective and one-sided in their approach to problems. They indulge in groundless and purely subjective talk, basing themselves upon a single aspect or temporary manifestation [and] magnify it with similar subjectivity into the whole of the problem…. Only by opposing idealistic and mechanistic tendencies and taking an objective all-sided view in making a study of war can we draw correct conclusions on the question of war. SELECTED MILITARY WRITINGS, MAO TSE-TUNG, 1893-1976 Finally, in 331 B.C., Alexander marched on the main Persian force at Arbela. What his generals had not understood was that, deprived of the use of its navy, its rich lands in Egypt, and the support and tribute of almost all of its subjects, the Persian Empire had already crumbled. Alexander’s victory at Arbela merely confirmed militarily what he had already achieved months earlier: he was now the ruler of the once mighty Persian Empire. Fulfilling his mother’s prophecy, he controlled almost all of the known world. Interpretation Alexander the Great’s maneuvers bewildered his staff: they seemed to have no logic, no consistency. Only later could the Greeks look back and really see his magnificent achievement. The reason they could not understand him was that Alexander had invented a whole new way of thinking and acting in the world: the art of grand strategy. In grand strategy you look beyond the moment, beyond your immediate battles and concerns. You concentrate instead on what you want to achieve down the line. Controlling the temptation to react to events as they happen, you determine each of your actions according to your ultimate goals. You think in terms not of individual battles but of a campaign. Alexander owed his novel style of strategizing to his mother and to Aristotle. His mother had given him a sense of destiny and a goal: to rule the known world. From the age of three, he could see in his mind’s eye the role he would play when he was thirty. From Aristotle he learned the power of controlling his emotions, seeing things dispassionately, thinking ahead to the consequences of his actions. Trace the zigzags of Alexander’s maneuvers and you will see their grand- strategic consistency. His quick actions against first Thebes, then Persia, worked psychically on his soldiers and on his critics. Nothing quiets an army faster than battle; Alexander’s sudden crusade against the hated Persians was the perfect way to unite the Greeks. Once he was in Persia, though, speed was the wrong tactic. Had Alexander advanced, he would have found himself controlling too much land too quickly; running it would have exhausted his resources, and in the ensuing power vacuum, enemies would have sprung up everywhere. Better to proceed slowly, to build on what was there, to win hearts and minds. Instead of wasting money on building a navy, better simply to make the Persian navy unusable. To pay for the kind of extended campaign that would bring long-term success, first seize the rich lands of Egypt. None of Alexander’s actions were wasted. Those who saw his plans bear fruit, in ways they themselves had been entirely unable to predict, thought him a kind of god–and certainly his control over events deep in the future seemed more godlike than human. There is, however, much difference between the East and the West in cultural heritages, in values, and in ways of thinking. In the Eastern way of thinking, one starts with the whole, takes everything as a whole and proceeds with a comprehensive and intuitive synthesization [combinaton] . In the Western way of thinking, however, one starts with the parts, takes [divides] a complex matter into component parts and then deals with them one by one, with an emphasis on logical analysis. Accordingly, Western traditional military thought advocates a direct military approach with a stress on the use of armed forces. THE STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE: SUN ZI & WESTERN APPROACHES TO WAR, CAO SHAN, ED., 1997 To become a grand strategist in life, you must follow the path of Alexander. First, clarify your life–decipher your own personal riddle–by determining what it is you are destined to achieve, the direction in which your skills and talents seem to push you. Visualize yourself fulfilling this destiny in glorious detail. As Aristotle advised, work to master your emotions and train yourself to think ahead: “This action will advance me toward my goal, this one will lead me nowhere.” Guided by these standards, you will be able to stay on course. Ignore the conventional wisdom about what you should or should not be doing. It may make sense for some, but that does not mean it bears any relation to your own goals and destiny. You need to be patient enough to plot several steps ahead–to wage a campaign instead of fighting battles. The path to your goal may be indirect, your actions may be strange to other people, but so much the better: the less they understand you, the easier they are to deceive, manipulate, and seduce. Following this path, you will gain the calm, Olympian perspective that will separate you from other mortals, whether dreamers who get nothing done or prosaic, practical people who accomplish only small things. What I particularly admire in Alexander is, not so much his campaigns…but his political sense. He possessed the art of winning the affection of the people. –Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) TOTAL WARFARE In 1967 the leaders of the American war effort in Vietnam thought they were finally making progress. They had launched a series of operations to search out and destroy the Vietcong–North Vietnamese soldiers who had infiltrated South Vietnam and had come to control much of its countryside. These guerrilla fighters were elusive, but the Americans had inflicted heavy losses on them in the few battles they had managed to force on them that year. The new South Vietnamese government, supported by the Americans, seemed relatively stable, which could help to win it approval among the Vietnamese people. To the north, bombing raids had knocked out many of North Vietnam’s airfields and heavily damaged its air force. Although massive antiwar demonstrations had broken out in the United States, polls showed that most Americans supported the war and believed that the end was in sight. Since the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese army had proved rather ineffective in head-to-head battle against the might of American firepower and technology, the strategy was to somehow lure them into a major engagement. That would be the turning point of the war. And by the end of 1967, intelligence indicated that the North Vietnamese were about to fall into just such a trap: their commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, was planning a major offensive against the U.S. marine outpost at Khe Sanh. Apparently he wanted to repeat his greatest success, the battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, in which he had defeated the French army, driving the French out of Vietnam for good. Khe Sanh was a key strategic outpost. It was located a mere fourteen miles from the demilitarized zone that separated North from South Vietnam. It was also six miles from the border of Laos, site of a stretch of the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese supply route to the Vietcong in the South. General William C. Westmoreland, the overall U.S. commander, was using Khe Sanh to monitor enemy activity to the north and west. Dien Bien Phu had served a similar role for the French, and Giap had been able to isolate and destroy it. Westmoreland would not allow Giap to repeat that feat. He built well-protected airstrips around Khe Sanh, ensuring full use of his helicopters and control of the air. He called up substantial numbers of troops from the south to the Khe Sanh area, just in case he needed them. He also ordered 6,000 additional marines to reinforce the outpost. But a major attack on Khe Sanh was nothing he wanted to discourage: in frontal battle the enemy would finally expose itself to severe defeat. In the first few weeks of 1968, all eyes were on Khe Sanh. The White House and the U.S. media were certain that the decisive battle of the war was about to begin. Finally, at dawn on January 21, 1968, the North Vietnamese army launched a vicious assault. As both sides dug in, the battle turned into a siege. Soon after the engagement began, the Vietnamese were to celebrate their lunar New Year, the holiday called Tet. It was a period of revelry, and in time of war it was also a traditional moment to declare a truce. This year was no different; both sides agreed to halt the fighting during Tet. Early on the morning of January 31, however, the first day of the New Year, reports began to trickle in from all over South Vietnam: virtually every major town and city, as well as the most important American bases, had come under Vietcong attack. An army general, tracking the assault pattern on a map, said it “resembled a pinball machine, lighting up with each raid.” Parts of Saigon itself had been overrun by enemy soldiers, some of whom had managed to blow their way through the wall of the U.S. embassy, the very symbol of the American presence in Vietnam. Marines regained control of the embassy in a bloody fight, which was widely seen on American television. The Vietcong also attacked the city’s radio station, the presidential palace, and Westmoreland’s own compound at the Tan Son Nhut air base. The city quickly descended into street fighting and chaos. Outside Saigon, provincial cities, too, came under siege. Most prominent was the North Vietnamese capture of Hue, the ancient Vietnamese capital and a city revered by Buddhists. Insurgents managed to take control of virtually the whole city. Meanwhile the attacks on Khe Sanh continued in waves. It was hard for Westmoreland to tell what the main target was: were the battles to the south merely a means of drawing forces away from Khe Sanh, or was it the other way around? Within a few weeks, in all parts of South Vietnam, the Americans regained the upper hand, retaking control of Saigon and securing their air bases. The sieges at Hue and Khe Sanh took longer, but massive artillery and air bombardments eventually doomed the insurgents, as well as leveling entire sections of Hue. When dark inertia increases, obscurity and inactivity, negligence and delusion, arise. When lucidity prevails, the self whose body dies enters the untainted worlds of those who know reality. When he dies in passion, he is born among lovers of action; so when he dies in dark inertia, he is born into wombs of folly. The fruit of good conduct is pure and untainted, they say, but suffering is the fruit of passion, ignorance the fruit of dark inertia. From lucidity knowledge is born; from passion comes greed; from dark inertia come negligence, delusion, and ignorance. Men who are lucid go upward; men of passion stay in between; men of dark inertia, caught in vile ways, sink low.

THE BHAGAVAD GITA: KRISHNA’S COUNSEL IN TIME OF WAR, CIRCA FIRST CENTURY A.D. After what later became known as the Tet Offensive was over, Westmoreland likened it to the Battle of the Bulge, near the e