Applying Military Strategy in Life - Microsoft Talk

This is not a book about

strategy

, there are thousands of other books on that topic, this is a book about

military

strategy

, a very particular form of knowledge of philosophy that I believe has incredible relevance to any conflict and to all types of situations that we face. I encounter it in everyday

life

, but there is something very peculiar about

military

strategy, something that I don't think is ever discussed, and what I mean is that over the centuries all kinds of brilliant ideas have evolved about how to fight wars of the more efficient way. manner and these ideas have been compiled to form a kind of body of military knowledge and at times these ideas have been written down in various pamphlets and manuals, the most famous of which is Sun Tzu's The Art of War, but this knowledge was never studied in universities. and these books were never read by the general public;

Instead, this enormous information about The Art of War was jealously guarded and treasured by the elites who ruled a country, so that, for example, a king or ruler of a country would have a copy of the Art of Sun Tzu. de Guerra would keep it by his bed, he would read it, he would share it with his closest advisors and with his senior military and these, a handful of men, would get together on occasion and discuss the ideas and how to apply these ideas and layers. strategy for wars and situations faced by officers and soldiers in an army studied tactics, tactics are basically the art of how to deal with the immediate needs and problems of an army, but they were rigorously excluded from any study of the broader topic. of strategy, the same prevailed in the culture of the country in general.

The educated elites could read books on all kinds of abstract spiritual topics and philosophy and whatever, but they could never get their hands on books like The Art of War. I can not think of anything. another form of knowledge that has had such a profound and lasting impact on history that has actually been studied by so few people and I think of course this raises the question of why at first glance you might think that military strategy is a very technical arcane topic. but I don't think it has anything to do with that, I think it's a question of power.

In this knowledge, in these books there were all kinds of brilliant ideas about how to take any kind of negative situation and turn it into a positive situation, how to identify your opponent's particular psychological weaknesses and how to take advantage of those weaknesses and literally have the enemy defeated. in addition. Ideas on how to organize your army and inspire it to fight. Essentially military strategy is a kind of bridge between an The idea and its transformation into reality is what I call the supreme practical philosophy and this type of very practical knowledge in the hands of citizens and soldiers could be very dangerous could lead to change could lead to the revolution and that is why information was kept away.

From them in 1801, when the slaves of the island of what is now known as Haiti rebelled against their French masters, the first thing they did was obtain military strategy books that They had been left behind and studied these manuals day and night. Now they did this obviously because they knew that Napoleon Bonaparte himself had sent a ship full of soldiers to put down this rebellion and these men had never studied strategy and desperately needed this knowledge to be able to fight against Napoleon's army in the field, but there it was happening something else, something a little more fundamental, this was some kind of ultimate battle, the most stressful environment, it was a choice between preserving the thin little thread of freedom they had or returning to slavery and in this type of situation the tendency was become very confused, very emotional, make mistakes and lose control of the situation.

Military strategy represented to them a kind of ladder that they could climb to rise above this very stressful and confusing situation and get a kind of perspective of the entire battlefield and everything. what was happening to have some clarity about the situation act with some purpose and direction and take control of the situation and of course the leaders of this revolt it was very appropriate for them to study strategy because they became the first army in history to defeat to a French army under Napoleon, which was an absolutely remarkable achievement, now you're probably wondering, it's all very interesting, Mr.

Green, on a historical level and all, but what does that have to do with us now that Don't we live in times like this? an enlightened modern era and everything has changed. I'm here to report that, in fact, nothing has changed. Military strategy remains a topic that is really only studied in depth by specialists in very closed military schools and by a very small number of people, mostly men. which is basically the same situation that has prevailed for thousands and thousands of years. I am not suggesting that there are elites in this country who are controlling access to this information about military strategy.

I think there is something else going on, something ideological or cultural we live in a culture that tends to promote certain values ​​and ideals values ​​of getting along with other people cooperating being a team player not creating much conflict or confrontation these are values ​​of peace war for another On the other hand, it is seen as something quite dark and sinister, a relic of our barbaric past. Now, for a modern democracy, a war between superpowers is a necessary evil, and as a necessary evil, we have an army, a group of specialists who study and fight wars for us.

It's almost like we erected this incredibly. solid barrier on this side we have the military and on this side we have social or private

life

and a person who would cross this barrier and take this knowledge contained in the Art of War and actually try to apply it in a social situation. like an office, for example, that a person like that would bring a lot of aggression, a lot of conflict and confrontation to this kind of sensitive social environment. This is a cultural prejudice that, in fact, is not actually based on truth. 500 years ago, the great Chinese strategist.

Sun Tzu defined The Art of War in a way that I believe will never be surpassed. He said that The Art of War is winning with minimum bloodshed and minimum violence. If to win a war you have to shed a lot of blood, you should do it. Not fighting that war is the closest a war artist attempts to get as close as possible to this ideal. In fact, a person who is steeped in The Art of War knows how to resolve a conflict in a healthy and rational way. in the Art of War he knows how to avoid small entanglements how to choose his battles very carefully a person who knows the Art of War actually creates less conflicts around him less resistance and fewer problems now at the same time that this type of prejudice exists cultural that I'm

talk

ing about against war there's something else happening on the ground uh the reality that we deal with day to day is very different there's a very big disconnect I think we would all agree that in comparison for the lives of our parents and grandparents, the world we inhabit is much more competitive, it is even much more unpleasant than anything they knew.

Society has been divided into all kinds of groups, we have all these wars, these trade wars, cultural wars, Internet wars, political wars. um, excuse me, what happens in many groups is that people no longer have such strong ties with the company, with the nation or with any group to which they belong, people inevitably in this highly competitive environment think first and foremost of themselves, their own agendas, their own interests and sometimes this clashes with the interests of the group when this spreads throughout the world and there are millions and millions of people who are now hungry for power and control over their lives and their destinies. .

Creating an unprecedented moment in history where many people are creating power struggles in environments like a company that never existed before. Something like office politics, for example, is a completely new phenomenon. We don't even realize that 40 years ago there was no such thing. that this is a new word mission this is a culture that disapproves of overt aggression many people revert to a type of passive aggression to get what they want they become very cunning and very manipulative they operate as a kind of guerrilla warriors in a social environment So , when you add all this up, you add the newness of this phenomenon, you add the confusion of all these different battles that happen in our lives, and you add the subtlety that many people now fight with, you have a very dangerous kind of situation.

It's a very difficult environment for us to navigate and what tends to happen to people when they're faced with a situation where they have a lot of battles coming at them from a lot of different directions is that we all tend to become very tactical. In this sense, it means that we do it. The best we can to deal with the immediate problems that are happening around us, we are reacting to what people are giving us and I basically call this tactical hell once you get into tactical hell and you are constantly reacting to what people are doing. around you. it's extremely difficult to get out of this, you get stuck in this mode, we could benefit immensely now more than ever, we could gain incredible benefit from this from some kind of mental transformation where we could put our minds above all this confusion , this whole battle. happening and have a sort of enhanced perspective of what's going on around us and have that kind of clarity and direction that precisely military strategy is designed to provide the same kind of perspective that it has given to elites for centuries and that slaves who rebelled in Haiti put their hands on my book is an attempt to free the military strategy from this prison that it has inhabited for thousands of years and free it to each and every one so that they can do with it whatever they want so that they can become in your own master strategist my discussion of war in this sense is not a moral question it is not a question of whether what I am doing is good or bad it is a question of power the people who have traditionally been excluded from this type of war ? information let's say women let's say minorities well suddenly now they have more access to this information or not my book is also an attempt to give them a very clear way out of what I call tactical hell this idea is my However, the solution to get you out of Tactical Hell is based on a premise and the premise is that the following strategy is not a formula, which is what most people tend to think.

Most people think of strategy because I have to memorize certain points a, b and c. one two and three I learn what the teacher says about strategy I memorize it and apply it here there that is formulaic thinking that is tactical thinking disguised as strategy strategy is in fact a philosophy it is a way of looking at the world a different way of look at the world, a point of view, a philosophy that I find very beautiful and fascinating, and once you absorb the basic ideas of this philosophy, they become internalized, you start to see things differently and, from the inside out, you begin By

applying

these strategies to your own circumstances, you adapt. to your own life and not the other way around, and this can be very freeing and very empowering now.

I want to make my whole approach to strategy a little clearer and I want to discuss one of the chapters of my book a chapter a strategy that I think is perhaps the most fundamental the most important of all of them which is called not fighting the last war and I want

talk

to you about it by telling you a story that I tell in that A particular chapter of this story is about perhaps the most famous Japanese samurai warrior who ever lived and also one of the greatest strategists of all time. His name is Miyamoto Musashi.

Miyamoto Musashi lived around the beginning of the 17th century in Japan, when Musashi was around 21 years old. old man fought and killed two members of the yoshioka clan in duels the yoshioka family was very famous for their sword fighting skills one of the youngest members of this clan a young man named Mata shichiro swore revenge on Musashi for this and that is why they challenged Busashi to a duel. Musashi's friends smell the trap here and warned him not to accept, not to accept this duel, naturally. Musashi accepted it, he would never listen to anyone. They said, "Well, you better not go to this duel alone because it is." It will probably be an ambush, of course, Musashi went to the duel alone in the last two duels with the Yoshioka clan.

Musashi had all arrived late, that was one of his favorite techniques to make his opponent throw them off their game and catch them. This time annoyed, he arrived early and hid behind a tree, sure enough, a couple of minutes later, Mata Shichiru appeared surrounded by an army of nine other samurai warriors and Musashi could hear them talking and one of them said that Musashi is always late. well, that trick isn't going to work this time and the samurai warriors began to sit and wait for Musashi to arrive a few seconds later. Musashi jumped out from behind his tree holding his sword and said:"I've waited long enough," Mata Shichiro began to approach him.

Mata stood up to try to defend himself. Musashi killed him in an instant. The other nine men were so surprised by this that they had no time to think about surrounding him, which would have been the only solution. Instead, they came. towards him charging at him in a sort of broken line and he followed the line and killed every one of them. This is perhaps the most famous duel in the history of Japanese samurai. It was immortalized by Kurosawa on film. Look at this. Musashi was wandering the countryside looking for challenges and he heard about this very famous warrior called Ken by Ken he thought with this really strange and unusual weapon that no one had ever seen.

Basically, he had a very sharp long sickle and at the end of the sickle was a chain and at the end On the chain was a very heavy steel ball and what Baiken would do was start spinning the chain around the ball until he got a lot of momentum and then he would charge at his opponent and when his opponent thought about defending himself he would throw the steel ball at him. the opponent's face and the opponent would naturally raise his sword to parry the blow, at which point the sickle would cross and strike. cross his neck and kill him, no one had ever come close to defeating him for Ken, so naturally Musashi challenged him to a duel and Ken happily accepted and shows up to the duel and has a short sword in his left hand and a sword long in his hand. his right hand no one had ever fought with two swords like that.

Ken had never seen anything like it. It was very strange before. Kent gets his usual opportunity to charge his opponent. Musashi is charging at him on the other hand, so he backs away and does the same. The only thing he knows how to do, the only way he's fought all his life, he starts spinning the ball back and then throws it at Musashi's face. Musashi parries the blow with the short sword and then kills him with the right sword and finally defeats him. This unbeatable man a few years later Musashi finds out about a very famous summer.

He perhaps the best warrior of all in Japan. A man named Gandry You Gonrio is not only a brilliant fighter and a very powerful man; He possesses the longest sword anyone has ever seen. and this sword is so long and so beautiful that he has all these engravings on it that just seeing it drawn is enough to make his opponent tremble in fear. Musashi naturally challenges Gonrio to a duel and Ryu accepts the duel. It's going to take place on a very small island near Gonryu's house around eight in the morning it arrives at eight in the morning and the island is full of spectators this is the equivalent of Ali against Frazier the two greatest samurai of the time, of course, gunrio is waiting no musashi it's 9 a.m. no Musashi it's 10 a.m.

He's not there yet, he's walking around the island Furioso determined not only to kill him but to destroy him around 10 a.m. you can see a small wooden boat approaching the island and as it approaches everyone can see that there is a man sitting in the back who is half asleep carving a very large wooden oar and when I get close, I get close enough, everyone notices realizes it's Musashi. I'm paying attention to anyone, finally the boat takes its course. sweet moment and finally he reaches the island he gets off the boat the first thing he does is take a dirty towel that is in the boat and he ties it around his head and jumps off the boat carrying this wooden oar without a sword just a wooden ore and jumps ready to duel Montgomery, you can't believe it, this is a man who comes to the biggest fight of his life and is wearing a dirty towel as a headband, which is a sign of extreme disrespect and carrying a big paddle of wood, this is a madman before he has a chance to do what he usually does, gunrio, which is charge him and impale him with his beautiful sword.

Here's Musashi, suddenly charging at him with a wood ore, the only thing he does. knows how to do it, he hits back with his sword but misses by an eighth of an inch and cuts the towel in half and falls, at which point Musashi's wood ore falls on his skull and kills him, after that the name of Musashi is made forever and becomes, like I said, the greatest samurai who ever lived When analyzing Musashi and why I think he is important, I have to look at the two different ways of fighting here. Musashi's opponents always tended to do the same thing, which is they depended on his incredible weapon that they had this unusual sickle or the beautiful sword they depended on this technique that they used over and over and that they repeated for each battle what I say is the equivalent of fighting the last war something very physical and very The mechanical Musashi was exactly the opposite, he never did the same thing twice every time he fought an opponent, he looked at that opponent, studied him and determined that this is that person's weakness and so on. is how I'm going to attack him in the moment he adapted each and every one of his strategies to the particular characteristics of his opponent, you expected him to be late, he arrived early, you expected him to have a sword, he had two, you expected him to show up in this incredible duel in a very respectful way.

Disguised, he arrived as a dirty, drunken peasant. I see this as a sort of metaphor for the difference between strategic thinking and non-strategic thinking and how many people operate in life, most people in any type of situation depend on something that everyone depends on. something when they go into battle usually what people depend on is something very physical they depend on the fact that they have more money than the other side they depend on the fact that they have more friends more power more influence their company is bigger the that is depend on mechanical physical things a person who uses strategy does not depend on mechanical physical things a person who depends on strategy depends on his creativity his creativity in the moment learning what he can win in that particular battle an advantage of using the weaknesses of the person, whatever it is, he wrote that, excuse me, he wrote that in every battle you win or lose before fighting and basically what he meant is that something is happening in the mind, the strategy itself. that is right or wrong and when you come to the battle you have won or you have lost, but the battle he is referring to is the battle in your mind if your mind is full of all kinds of ideas from the past if you repeat the same formulas that you have used over and over again you have already lost the war if on the other hand you try this other approach and rely on this idea of ​​not fighting the last war which I maintain is the basis of All sound strategic thinking, you have already won the war even before happen now.

I want to change the subject here a little, go in a slightly different direction. I mentioned before that I talked about tactical hell and in that scheme you can imagine it. strategy as something that elevates you to purgatory. Well, I'm here to say that there is actually a heaven above this purgatory and heaven is what is known in military terms as grand strategy and I want to turn you back for a moment. to ancient Greece I hope you don't mind where Grand Strategy as a particular philosophy originated. I'm going to take you to the cult of Athena, who is the Greek goddess of war of strategy and Grand Strategy, just take a sip. of water now in ancient Greece, when a carpenter was about to build a house or an architect was about to design a temple or a navigator was about to cross the sea or a politician was about to run for office, all these men or women were going to look for or find a temple to Athena and they would go there and pray when Alexander the Great crossed hell to begin his conquest of the Persian Empire, the first thing he did was dedicate his weapons to Athena and build a beautiful temple in his honor and go to that Temple and pray to her night and day now what these men were praying or the women what they were praying for was not some kind of superstitious luck or for her to intervene in their affairs what they were praying for was that the spirit of Athena of suddenly they would inhabit them and they would build a house with solid foundations they would cross the sea successfully they would win the elections or the war to understand the spirit of Athena however you have to understand a little about her lineage Athena's mother was the goddess Meetus, probably the most The baddest of them all, she had the power to change into any form she wanted and was also the most intelligent of all the Immortals.

Now Zeus was another God who had ambitions to become the main God on Mount Olympus, but he could not become the main God as long as Medus was present, but Zeus was a very intelligent man, so what he did was one night seduce Meatus then got her to marry him and then a few weeks into the marriage he started challenging her. her about her powers to change into different shapes, he said, I bet you can't turn into a lion and sure enough, she transformed into a lion and roared, he pretended to be scared and then said, well, I bet you can't change your shape.

In a drop of water, indeed, she transformed into a drop of water, at which point he grabbed the drop of water and swallowed it in one fell swoop. Zeus had gotten rid of his main rival and incorporated her powers and intelligence into himself, but he did not realize at that time that Medus was actually pregnant with a child and then one night Zeus heard a terrible noise in his ears and a metallic noise in his head and he had a horrible headache and suddenly the baby goddess Athena was born from his forehead wearing full body armor and clanking her sword and shouting a war cry, so obviously with this lineage Athena became the Greek goddess of war, but there was another God of war on the scene, the other God of war on the scene was Aries. his half brother he was also the son of Zeus Aries is a different type of god of war Ares loved war loved violence aggression the opportunity to simply kill him and he loved the glory that would come from killing Athena hated war what Athena liked to win, she decided that winning by being aggressive and fighting was not the answer what was the answer was being smart and intelligent the animal associated with the goddess Athena is the owl and the owl is a symbol of wisdom and The owl was bought at the branch of a tree and has the ability to turn its head in all directions.

It also has the most powerful vision of all birds. You can simply see further and wider than any other creature like an owl. any type of battle Athena would not rush into battle like Aries would, but rather she would step back from the situation and look at everything that was happening around her, she would look deeper into the past, further into the future, she would see everything throughout. And width. What was happening around him didn't have his mother's shape-shifting powers. His mind had the power to shift into different shapes. He had an incredibly fluid and dynamic mind.

He could make his mind work with whatever was around him and somehow. way she sees every circumstance, so when you combine this ability of hers to see more of everything that is happening around her in a very dynamic mind, she was very powerful and in this way she was considered the goddess of strategy now in The Iliad Ares . and Athena fight on many occasions and every time Athena beats him up and Aries goes crying to Zeus on Mount Olympus complaining about his sister Athena, it is Athena who inspires the idea of ​​the Trojan Horse, a small ploy that ends nine years of endless feudal Aries like Bloodshed just a clever little idea now to the ancient Greeks all human beings are part Aries and part Athena the Aries part of us is our animal nature is our tendency to react to the immediate things around us and To get very emotional, Athena represents our Consciousness, our rationality, what makes us Superior to other animals, the Aries part of our nature tends to always dominate, so even if we are in a situation where we think we are being very intelligent and very strategic and we have the perfect idea, the perfect plan.

In the heat of the moment, when things get stressful, when our feet are in the fire, Ares rears his ugly head and we get excited and we get impatient and we get greedy and we go off course and we build a house that is very flashy but It has terrible foundations or we do not cross the sea successfully or we lose the war we lose the elections men and women went to a temple to pray to the goddess Athena what they were praying was that her spirit would come and defeat this very ugly part of Aries of her nature and that with her spirit they would have this calm and detachment that she always brings to people in times of stress, in times of battle, that they would have her ability to see more of what was happening around them than their opponents, who They would literally grasp more around them and they would have their mental powers very fluid and dynamic, in addition, all this is what I refer to and is known as Grand Strategy.

Strategy is a military term that refers to a very particular way of thinking. Most often in any type of situation, when we face an opponent of any size, we tend to look at what is most immediate around us. It is human nature. The battle is very visceral issue and because of that we tend to react to what is most in front of us and although we can plan and strategize when we are, when our vision is fixed on that immediate battle, we lose something andwhat great strategy is is simply this. You step away from the battlefield for a moment and force yourself to distance yourself and try to see more of what is happening around you than when you saw it before, you avoid the temptation to react and look at the real thing. physical components of your opponent you force yourself, for example, to look deeper into history about the history of the conflict you think about the future you can sit instead of usual in Warfare you think about politics and you think about culture and you think about The social aspect of the battle you take it all you can and by thinking and planning in this way you create what is known as a campaign that most people fight in terms of battles and their immediate battles.

The idea in Grand Strategy. As I talk about in my chapter, it is losing battles but winning the war, you think in terms of several years later what your final objective is and you create a very powerful system, very rational campaign. The icon of grand strategy is Alexander the Great himself, probably the first great strategist. Of all Alexander the Great was a man who prayed most fervently to the spirit of Athena when Alexander the Great crossed into Persia to confront the Persian Empire. army of about 40,000 men and was about to face an army of 750,000 men, seemingly impossible odds, but what Alexander the Great did instead of rushing into battle and fighting the Persians, which is what almost any other general would have fact, he did it.

To fight them he worked very carefully to understand Persian culture and Persian politics. He went from city to city winning them over and introducing them politically to a new type of world that was the Alexandrian Empire, creating a new culture. He did this for several years and basically, he had politically gained a large part of the Persian Empire without having fought a single battle when he finally faced the Persians in battle. He had already absorbed all of the Empire from him. They had nothing to depend on. They had no economy. They had nothing left. and then he simply defeated them in battle.

This is the idea of ​​grand strategy. When I looked at all the greatest strategists in history, your Napoleons, your Hannibal, you're Queen Elizabeth, the first, your Abraham Lincoln, I determined that they all possessed this. Great strategic spirit in abundance, this was actually the source of his success, not necessarily his knowledge of strategy, but the fact that they now had this power of vision. I believe this is a power that lies latent in each and every one of you. It's no longer a matter of praying to Athena, although you can if you want, it's more a matter of doing a simple process every time you're about to enter a battle and there's an important decision to make or there's a crisis.

Instead of rushing forward like we normally would, you take a step back, this is literally what Napoleon would do before any of his big battles and completely re-evaluate your strategy, you tell yourself that my ideas are probably very limited because I don't I've been looking at the whole situation you trash your strategy and you think in these terms, you think that if I had actually implemented what I had planned to implement, how this pop would probably lead to some kind of disaster? You think about how you think more broadly about what might be the consequences of this strategy that you've come to think of as brilliant?

You break it and simply determine that you are going to think about something else and literally force yourself to take in more of the environment around you. Think more deeply about the social circumstances of this battle, something that is extremely important and was the key to the Napoleonic War. You decided to take more into account cultural circumstances. You look deeper into your enemy. You look through the eyes of your enemies and see how they see. you and with this intensified perspective, you will then find a completely new strategy that has so much more vision and so much more fluidity that you will naturally make a great strategic decision.

Now, as I was writing this book, there was a war being fought. It was being planned and fought in Iraq and it was very interesting to follow this war while I was writing the book because I saw it as a confirmation of everything I was thinking and everything I was writing about and, in fact, what I'm talking about tonight. Today I want to look very briefly at the Iraq war and how I see it or how I was looking at it, but I want to do it by getting into the mind of the person who planned and executed this war. goes into the strategy, so to speak, of President Bush's president now most people when they look at the Iraq war they think of the Iraq war and start there I looked I went further back in time I looked at the Desert Storm experience now , if you know anything about George W, he is a man who has a kind of almost Freudian or edible obsession with his father, he will not repeat any of the mistakes his father made, he is determined to go in a completely new Direction and, obviously, the greatest The mistake that his father made was supposedly not ending the Iraq war, not getting rid of Saddam Hussein so well before the Iraq war that it was ever a problem.

George W. Bush had the idea that he wanted to be the one. Who would correct his father's mistake that he would be the one to get rid of Saddam Hussein? Well, the next thing that happens obviously is the 9/11 attack, clearly in the wake of this, as we all did, the tendency is to become very emotional. and for the president there was obviously a sense that America was showing itself weak and vulnerable, a desire to prove that America was not weak, that we are strong, and even an unconscious desire to get revenge of some kind now in dealing with an enemy that is so vaporous as Al Qaeda that it is difficult to determine exactly who to attack, so after the invasion of Afghanistan, naturally, eyes would fall on Saddam Hussein, he could provide precisely that kind of enemy who could show our resolve and get that little of revenge, that bit of Revenge in the question of whether you really believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack is the fact that he had a predisposition and a desire to see a connection between the two things.

He had a predisposition to believe that there was some kind of peripheral connection. participation and as we know in the history of war, you will end up seeing what you want to see in any type of intelligence now, at the same time, George W is surrounded by these what are the neoconservatives? The neocons and neocons come to him with this. It's an incredible scenario of what will happen when we get rid of Saddam Hussein. This scenario is that democracy is now anchored in Iraq in the Middle East. The first time this kind of new democracy suddenly spread like a virus to Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, suddenly the area. experiences incredible stability oil interests are now secure Israel is no longer threatened again and again a kind of reverse domino effect incredibly seductive scenario with a small sacrifice from Saddam Hussein this incredible peace is created that spreads throughout the Middle East, which The last thing you need to know about George W is that he is a man who values ​​determination and loyalty above anything else.

He thinks that the most important thing is that when he decides a course of action, you follow it to the end and so do all the people around you. you are on board, you don't know any kind of objection, there is no disloyalty, you finish the job you started now, when you add all these factors. I think you see an incredible degree of emotion infecting his strategic decisions now. I don't see anyone really commenting. In this, maybe it's because when you look at these people like Bush or particularly Cheney, you don't really think there's emotion, but when you look at the strategy, there's a predisposition to wanting to be the one to take out Saddam.

Hussein, there is a desire to show our determination to get some revenge, etc., the whole notion of showing your determination to finish your job to the end is a very important thing in war, a very important quality, but if it is not combined with intelligence and cunning, it just turns into stubbornness, which is actually another emotional quality, so when a person comes to a strategy with all these emotions clouding the mind, the moves I talked about, revenge are resolved. . I also forgot to mention the belief in this incredibly rosy scenario that almost borders on wish-fulfillment. When you have all these emotions running around in the back of your mind, you tend to create strategies that aren't really related to reality instead of looking at Iraq and saying hmm, this is a country that has never had an incredibly divided democracy that was created in 1916. or whatever American-style democracy may not take hold, don't think you see what you want to see instead of imagining that this scenario you've painted of spreading peace could actually turn out to be the opposite. that you never see.

I remember when the war was first planned, I was yelling at the TV, I was yelling at anyone who would listen, there weren't many people who could hear me and for the life of me I couldn't see. how this war would end and I didn't mean it in a political sense. I can't see how this war would end if you signal your intentions that democracy will spread throughout the Middle East through this type of virus and that you would really want to get rid of the regimes in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, you were indicating to these people who intend to get rid of them, if you have this timeline where you want to get out of the Middle East in three or four years, you're going to get out of the Middle East with this kind of fragile-as-a-band-aid democracy, why don't you imagine that Countries like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia have all of this at stake in this battle and if this is not successful, they are We are not going to want Iraq to remain a democracy and as soon as you leave, they are going to do everything they can to disrupt you. , which is exactly the situation that happened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the war that I think is the biggest parallel to this and I talk about it in the book, so excuse me, if on the other hand you decide that you are going to stay for 10 or 15 years, you create a whole series of problems, so whatever you do no matter what you do, you can never have a logical and rational ending, so this was a group of strategists or strategists who entered into a war with a very confusing ending, a very confusing exit strategy and they are paying a very high price for that.

Now, I do not mean this analysis in a political sense. I was looking strictly from strategy and I could do such a ruthless analysis of John Kerry's disastrous campaign in 2004. It's more on the level of strategy and I don't do it. I think of this as an isolated incident. I don't think of this as a war because I think that war is related to society and that the problems we see here are problems that go beyond and are even social, everyone thinks about when they come into action. They have a plan They have a strategy Mike Tyson said everyone has a plan Until they get their face smashed in Then you get into a battle Every leader thinks he knows what's going on He has a strategy He has a plan in his hand and everything will work out no one is stupid no one thinks they assume they have no strategy the problem is that inevitably emotions are coloring what you see of the world and how you are creating your strategy you want to see results with certainty you want to believe that this is what your enemy is like and you see very subtly how this infects very subtly how you make your plan how you make your strategy and then if I had a wish, I would like Iraq The war would serve as an incredible lesson for Our Generation for all of us who are alive now that this is what happens these are the results of a bad strategy these are the results you know what happens when you allow emotions to color your ideas of the world this is what happens when you detach yourself from reality, that strategy is only successful to the extent that you are in tune with exactly what happens around you and you are able to at least disconnect from your emotions to the smallest degree of inclusion.

I just want to say a couple of quick things about my book. The book is structured into several different parts. The first part talks about your mind and how you prepare it for battle, which is a very important section on how you organize your party, organize your army. I maintain that following the Napoleonic ideal, which is the structure of your organization, is the most important strategic decision you can make. It has poor organization or dysfunctional structure. You will never be able to execute a good strategy. the third section is defensive war, then offensive war and then concludes with unconventional or dirty war, the book begins with the type of mental process, the most primitive aspect of war, and ends in chapter 33 with terrorism, um , and as you know from my other books, my method is to include stories to illustrate. everything and of course half of the stories have to do with war and my favorite strategists obviously people like Napoleon Bonaparte Hannibal T.E Lawrence Mao Zedong, and the other half although I have stories that take place in everyday life and social, uh, what.

I call social war, they are stories of great politicians who applied strategies like Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson. I have artists, writers, Theodore Dostoevsky and many stories are actually aboutHollywood because I've worked in Hollywood and I see the role of a director is almost kind of a general um and of course I've tried to loosen the stranglehold that men and masculinity have on war because it's a very male-oriented environment. men and I try to include as many stories as I can. of women who I see as great strategists like Queen Elizabeth the first, but also actresses like Mae West.

I know it's a little contradictory to have Mae West in a war book, but she actually was a brilliant strategist, so in conclusion, I just like to say one thing. If there is anything you can learn from this book it is that in any type of battle, in the end it is not the physical that will prevail, it is not the money, the influence you have, the power you might possess. will always prevail in any type of conflict strategy is creativity and the mental aspect that you bring to battle you can lose everything you have you can lose your money your influence your power but if you know the art of war it will prevail in every conflict, that is basically what I wanted to say and I really hope to get some precise foreign questions to think that the reason you and I rely on talking to people who are involved in situations, you know, I think it's simplistic in simplistic analysis to think that decisions at that level they are taken, you know, based on emotions like: I agree that we went to Iraq, you know, and this is obviously a known factor that one of the people who went to Iraq were to set an example, like you would say, but I think it was a logical decision and more than an emotional one to decide that maybe when you need to give an example of something like that, you do it for a good reason. for deterrence revenue, well maybe you misunderstood me, I'm not saying that emotions drove us to Iraq, what I was saying is that emotions colored our strategy, so start with a logical idea which is deterrence against terrorists, an idea that Israel, for example, has used.

To great effect, you start with ideas that are very rational and very logical and on the surface they seem logical, but what I'm saying is that these supposedly very rational and logical ideas are very infected with all kinds of emotions and you can see. It's the fact that if there is any book that I can ever recommend that you read and I know I had to do it in a rather simplistic way, but please read a book called The Assassin's Gate that came out about three months ago about Iraq or a brilliant book look at this the incredible mistakes that were made in this war from the beginning they literally believed that they would be greeted by the Iraqis with flowers in their hands that democracy would take hold they were going to be gone in three months that's as long as they thought it would take now I you're saying that's logical and rational, on the surface it seems that way, but something else is going on, you know, that's basically what I think is that you know we're talking about War versus talking like a business comparison like that or even in a situation of business, the problem with everyone's strategy and Bismarck, you know, noted that basically the friction of wars or problems is that your opponent also has a strategy and your opponent is going to adapt his strategy. based on why you wouldn't take that into consideration, you know, obviously, I mean, look, I've been studying War since I was maybe 10 years old, but I don't know, I probably haven't studied it as in-depth as, say, Colin Powell. he has, but why wouldn't you assume that before entering the war and why wouldn't you think about your opponent's strategy?

It was very clearly indicated in the documents that were discovered that Saddam Hussein planned a guerrilla war from the beginning. That's how he was going to defeat the United States in this, why wouldn't you consider it? why would you consider the fact that the enemy is trying to drag you into a prolonged fight, which is the goal of any type of guerrilla warfare? You draw your enemy into a prolonged fight and defeat them with an attrition style, why would you even consider that option? Oh, I think it was considered, but I think you've done it too.

I'm basically talking about one of the greats. You know the problem with the United States. In fighting in conflicts like this, and this is a strategic problem that perhaps you can also consider as business, is that we apply certain rules to the game that our opponents do not apply, for example, we will deliberately risk the lives of our combatants so as not to risk lives. of innocent bystanders where our opponents will deliberately target innocent bystanders that they can kill. That war is the ultimate amoral environment. It doesn't matter if you have good intentions and if your opponent doesn't.

You have to think about what is going to happen. I have to think about what is happening on the ground and it is difficult. I think I'm going to take advantage of this privilege as a host and I think this is a really interesting topic, but I think it could easily end up as a distraction from the More Stuff in general, so I think it's a good point, good points, okay, but Let's divert our attention from okay, okay, yes sir, it seems that modern warfare and the workplace are where we are expected to have moral obligations, so there is a two-part question: how?

How much of a military strategy should you discard when working in a moral environment and how much has there been a great strategist in the post-1945 era that you can identify in this new morality? Well, it's a very good question and obviously if you're your aggressive or military tactics are causing all kinds of problems in the office, but I told you that the art of war is to win with a minimum of bloodshed and a minimum of violence, so you are trying to resolve conflicts in a sensible way that eventually if you go into a very aggressive style you don't give a damn about others, that you are not going to get very far, that is not an effective way of fighting and war It's about having an effective way of fighting that suits your environment, so this idea from Sun Tzu can be adapted to any environment and if this is an environment you have to be very careful with this and rightly so. act morally, then this is definitely a component of how you go about doing it. struggles and what you contribute, you know, I'm talking about Gandhi in this.

I have a chapter on passive resistance that also segues into a chapter on passive aggression, and you know, Gandhi is a very moral fighter. I analyze it from a strategic point of view, not from good or evil, but yes this was a brilliant strategist who used the strategy of passive resistance that he believed in, but he was also very, very brilliant and very adapted to the circumstances of India at that time. I don't know if I'm answering your question, okay, um, yeah, can you comment on Tom Freeman's book, uh, the world is flat, the concept of globalization?

Well, you know, I haven't really read the book. I read his articles all the time on the New York Times opinion page, I'm quite aware of his ideas and I read about his analysis of the Iraq war; he actually has very good analysis of the Iraq war, but I don't know if I attributed that to maybe needing to hear more about this. I recently had a friend come back from India and he said that book is a load of nonsense because India has nothing to do with the world now that we know it, it's still a totally different world, it's not flat at all and globalization it may have reached certain elites in certain big cities in India, but it hasn't reached millions and millions of people, that's just anecdotal, although is there any reason you're asking that or describing changes in the last five years, Just a century ago, it seemed to influence a lot of strategic thinking in the future, well, yes, but you know there will always be differences.

It would be a kind of temptation, then, to fall into the fallacy that everyone is like us. Which is a fallacy. I still think that, if I may go back to the Iraq war, the idea that people in Iraq simply want what we want and I think that a strategist must take into account the particularities of the culture and social environment around him . he is the one he is dealing with and that is a trap that many people fall into, they ignore him and only look at the technical aspects of a fight. I don't know, yes, Mr.

Napoleon, said one of those masses. Yes, now my question really is. How do you handle that? What were we talking about? No, no, no, you don't understand, okay, so there's a school thought that says right now in the prison in Iraq that, among young people, especially, okay, it might be a little bit. concerned about the changes of Koreans, the 12-16 and 18-year-old age group, not for anything in particular, but I think Osama has been quoted as saying that basically 12-16 year olds are his next generation, so the moral part. I remember how I do it. Do you think that relates to great strategy?

Well, thinking about, will you get people behind it, etc., good or bad? You understand, yeah, it's not morality, right, I don't understand, okay, understanding is what it means if you look at it properly, how does that fit? If people accept that idea, we know that people have achieved great things, so that's believing, yes, I have a chapter. and that a chapter on morale because it is a big topic in war and Napoleon rightly says that if your army is motivated and you have inspired it, you have three times the strength of another army. I literally had a formula for that and I think.

It's, I think, it's extremely valid that, um, examples throughout history of motivated armies defeating mercenary armies, uh, with Incredibles facing incredible odds and I don't know if maybe I have to listen to your question again, but I think that there is a real problem in Iraq, you have an enemy that in many ways is more motivated than we are, you have been for a while, it has been for a while and this was the problem that ended up happening in Afghanistan among the Soviet soldiers, who en I don't want to exaggerate, it was much worse for them than the current war, but there are soldiers who are not in police action and that is not how soldiers are used to fighting, no, they don't.

I like it and morale is actually pretty low, it's a big problem and as a generalization I totally agree and there's a very political environment right now in the Pentagon where a lot of people don't want to talk about it, but someone like a Jack Martha, who talked about it, it's a real problem. Morale isn't very high among a lot of people, but it is among motivated terrorists, so it's a real, terrible problem, getting there and getting out quickly. It hurts the old Curtis Davis trade, but the idea that they had an idea, they pretended for a while that they were number two when they weren't, you remember six or seven and they sold this years ago, it's a classic story, years ago, now , Yeah.

They sold everyone the idea that they were number two when they were number seven and pretty soon they were number one or two and everyone believed it. They advertised that way. Maybe you remember it. Yes, I'm old enough to remember it. Old enough to remember that way is interesting because they made people buy something that wasn't really real, right. Oh, I see, I see your point. Sorry, yes, okay, no, yes, you, yes. I was thinking if there is any scenario. where the principles you describe do not apply or are not as effective. I don't know anything about that, oh, completely.

That's why I try to make it clear that I didn't fight in the last war and I try again and again. in my books it's not a formula, it's not a matter of, you know, I have a chapter in there on the annihilation strategy, the envelopment strategy, you don't want to apply that to a lot of the situations that you face in life. I know I have a chapter in the power book about totally crushing your enemy. You know you're not going to do that in your everyday affairs. Is it something for very specific circumstances? So, uh, it refers to the type of movement.

The point you made is that you know how to think about situations in the moment, yes, and think about it from different perspectives, yes, and try to approach things with infrared in new ways. I guess I don't understand your questions, don't fight in the last war. I'm very aware of what's happening, uh, very fluid, I don't know, I mean, I try to make it clear that that is the basis of any solid strategy that, to me, literally, the strategy can be summarized. The closer your mind is to reality, the closer your mind is to reality, the better your strategy will be.

If you exist in your little bubble in your head with your own ideas, your strategy will fail unless you get very lucky, so to be realistic you have to do it. merge your mind with exactly what's going on around you, that doesn't mean you're just the fluid person who just does what's in the moment, please don't get me wrong. I have a chapter here on planning that I consider the secret. For Napoleon's success in the war, this was a man who planned at an incredible level, planned in incredible detail and then, once he came up with a plan, made sure that the plan had all kinds of flexibility to be able to go in different directions.

I'm not saying just go free-flowing and go for a non-strategy, part-strategy moment. I guess so, I have read the two Laws of Power from Year 48 in your seduction books and they were excellent, the examples were always Some that had happened a lot in historical times. How did I wonder ifCould you take an example from this book or one of those two books and how would you apply the concepts there to your own life as someone who, instead of trying to defeat enemies? on the battlefield but someone who is trying to publish or sell books. Wow, they never ask me about my own life.

I don't think I'm ready for that. Well, you know, as a writer, life is very different because you're not in a group, you're alone a lot and your access to the world is only through three or four people like your agent, you know your editor, so it's very, very cloistered and very unusual, but yeah, I'm happy to be able to apply strategies to everyone. The time I have a partner, as you know in my book, a guy called Yoastelfers, who's the designer and all that, and he can be a little contentious sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm taking too big a cut. it's just between you and me um and I have to I have to calm down and I have to do it it's always a struggle not to get emotional and say this is a business and if I get emotional and I get angry, it's going to have consequences that I don't want and that's why I always find a way of not letting that influence very important decisions in my life, I guess if that could answer that in any way, but I'm not someone who goes around being Machiavellian with every person I meet, that kind of thing, yeah, you understand that you say that, especially those that were kept out of the hands of civilians because Sun Tzu had six different Japanese editions.

A thousand years ago, yes, but who reads those Japanese? No, um. I mean, Japan had a very separate cast of samurai warriors and fighters. A merchant would not be reading those books nor would a common citizen. I could be wrong, maybe Japan is a special country. circumstance, but what I was thinking about the main point is that someone in China, a citizen or a peasant or someone who was not on the slopes, did not have access to that book. The Art of War was never printed or published until recently. It was on bamboo sheets, in fact, they lost it for a long time and the only way people knew it was by word of mouth and some general would comment on what he heard and that would be written down, so there was no book about Him. war art. people passed by Reading I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

One more question, touching up the rest, I would say that no matter how things go on the ground, it was a successful job in public perception, it says that we are being decisive. and active with that in mind, can you think of any strategic historical example where there was a decisive defeat on the ground and yet in a broader sense the war was decisively won and successful? Maybe you have to understand the question of war, where is it? happened where the military operations were doing well and yet in a broader sense the war was quite successful, just put it, the Ted Offensive, the Ted Offensive, which I analyze there, was probably one of the most brilliant strategies in military times.

I think the Vietnam War, for example, is an incredible laboratory of ideas because you take a country that had communications and technology that were basically from the 19th century and they beat up the Americans and the French, that's brilliant to me, but the Ted's offensive is one of the smartest and most brilliant strategies and basically Ted's offensive was a kind of suicide. All the Viet Cong members they had been gathering for years. These North Vietnamese sympathizers in the south suddenly came to light and we are attacking places like Saigon. like the way um and it was a massacre um the worst massacre because the Vietnamese strategy was always to avoid battles this was the first battle they went into but they did it on purpose because they knew it at the time and now we have documents to show you that the American support The war was diminishing to the point that if they showed Americans at home and watching on television that it was a war, that they were not making any progress, that winning that kind of political and cultural war was far away. important that unfortunately sacrificing the lives of what ended up being thousands of Vietcong that were massacred in that, but it ended, the Ted offensive was the turning point of the Vietnam War, caused Lyndon Johnson not to run for president, um, and it was It was the beginning of the end, yes, I had to do it on small scales, yes, well, I think it was actually a fluke because when they launched the attack, they actually had the intention, they thought they would get a big victory and they didn't .

Did you know? that the north of me is actually strongly considered to sue for peace in 1968, but then he began to read the news of God, Christ said, the Americans say they got it right, there is a debate about that, there is a debate about that, I mean, I couldn't accept it. was that they were aware of what was going on and the Memoirs say that they were considering Foods and realized that they had won a strategic victory from a tactical defeat, but there are also things that Job talks about that he was aware of. that this was was their strategy that they were literally aiming for, I mean, why would he choose places where all the media in Saigon were located?

He was very tactically, uh, very strategically oriented to the places where they were where Walter Cronkite was or well, I mean, he, well, I think. They wanted to have something very visible, no doubt about that, yes, but they got in the way because the press took it away because of the teaching, no, no, I don't agree with that because there are some really good books on serum and they took it strictly for propaganda purposes, they never intended to hold the road, they never wanted to hit it for six weeks, um, because they wanted to make a point, they wanted to make a point that way, it was vulnerable and if you look at how They had created everything, they had built it. of its tunnels beneath the Citadel, which is an incredible story.

They never intended to stay. They never stockpiled enough weapons. They never stored enough supplies to stay. His intention was always to leave.