Strategy in Politics by F. Christopher Arterton

Author:F. Christopher Arterton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. This does not mean that the enemy is allowed to escape. The object is to make him believe that there is a road to safety, and thus prevent his fighting with the courage of despair. For you should not press a desperate foe too hard.

The lesson that Sun Tzu teaches us is that conflicts can be won or lost in the thinking or beliefs of the opponent. As much as steel on steel counts, so too does the mental warfare that shapes the beliefs, morale, and actions of the combatants. Today, we should go further to state explicitly that strategic opportunity can be discovered in the mind of the opponent. Win that battle and the physical contest will follow. Pop culture would label this aspect of human interaction as engaging in “head games” or “gamesmanship.” For example, having learned this general lesson, when ordered by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003, the American military first launched a massive air campaign that they dubbed “Shock and Awe.” Their objective certainly was to degrade Saddam Husain’s military capacity; that’s the steel-on-steel dimension. But, by its overwhelming intensity, the bombing campaign was equally designed to undercut the morale of the Iraqi military. Again, strategic opportunity lies in the mind of the opponent.

As one can imagine, there are numerous examples in history in which military commanders have not taken Sun Tzu’s words to heart, much to their detriment. One explicit example occurred on Friday the 25th of October in 1415 on the fields of Agincourt, France. There are differing accounts of the battle between the English army led by Henry V and a much larger French force under Charles D’Albret, the constable of France, including one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, Henry V. But one thing that they agree upon is that a much larger French force was blocking the English escape and their way home. Evidently, D’Albret had not read Sun Tzu. The French also underestimated the power of the English longbows that at close range could penetrate armor. D’Albret also ignored the marshy ground over which his men-at-arms would have to march in full armor to engage the English. By the time the French arrived at the English lines, they were exhausted and besieged by the English archers. In the event, the English fought, in Sun Tzu’s words, with “the courage of despair” and turned a battle in which they were outnumbered by at least three to one into a rout. Numerous errors of judgment by the French contributed to the English victory, but prominent among them was their failure to consider the psychology of the opponent they were facing. As we noted above in Chapter 3, Napoleon Bonaparte understood that the moral was three times more important than the physical.

Thus, an interactive construct of strategy demands that one think carefully about the perceptions and likely moves of the opponent. That means you must develop the capacity to perceive the

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