33 STRATEGIES OF WAR Paperback – Deckle Edge, 14 December 2007

I was first introduced to Robert Greene’s work when I laid my hands on his debut book- “48 laws of power”. On the surface, it was out and out mean and nasty. When you dig deeper, you find it much more practical and realistic. The book shakes you up and challenges your virtues. The experience took me to another book- “Mastery” from the same author. The treatment was however much lighter in comparison. In both the books, there are numerous real examples to substantiate his points. His view points and precepts looks believable. The experience has been so overwhelming and enriching that I have become his fan and all his remaining books are in my wish list.During our school days, we were taught by our teachers and parents about peaceful co-existence by being nice, sincere and honest. Is the world so rosy and hunky-dory? Are we trained for actual reality? The answer is no. We are prepared for peace but not trained for what confronts us in the real world and that is war, a very complicated and conundrum war. Not everything goes on expected line in this nasty and competitive world. Sometime life throws us in a muddle. What is the book all about? As far as the subject matter goes it’s similar to his earlier books. He treats every aspect of life as a conflict and suggests means to deal with them. Warfare used to be initially between tribes. It was brutal and violence. As these tribes expanded and evolved into state, strategy came into play. A war has many hidden and unforeseen costs. So waging it blindly can lead to mayhem and even self-destruction, irrespective of who wins the war. So war is fought strategically and rationally. War is not restricted militarily but has extended to political and social front as well. Enemies no longer appear upfront always but have learned to go underground and destroy indirectly. The irony is that enemies are not always on other side but can be supposedly on our side too. They may be friendly and agreeable but slyly they can sabotage us. The society as a whole has failed to live up to the ideal of peace, co-operation and selfishness. We are faced with daily battles. The book provides the ways to tackle, difficult situations and elusive warriors through skillful and intelligent maneuver.The book contains distilled, refined and timeless wisdom on principles of warfare, recorded in dossiers. The author classifies the book into five sections depending upon the types of warfare. These are self-directed warfare, organizational warfare, defensive warfare, offensive warfare and dirty warfare. Each chapter is illustrated with historical examples, not only from military but sports, culture, politics and business as well. The book is replete with innumerable examples. The exemplar used were of greatest generals like Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Hannibal, Erwin Rommel, Vo Nguyen and Genghis Khan. It also includes works of great strategies like Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi and T.E. Lawrence. Let’s pick up and discuss few of the strategies.In the mid-15th century, when Queen Elizabeth ascended throne, England was troubled by civil war and financial mess. To add to her woes, she was confronted with embittered and powerful enemies like France and Spain. To stabilize domestic situations, she made steps to improve trade and commerce. King of Spain, Philip II was planning to invade England with Spanish armada consisting of 128 ships. On the contrary, the queen dreaded war because maintaining a huge army and other hidden costs are likely to have devastating effect on country’s economy. Some of the caveats suggested that war was inevitable but she never provoked Philip II in order to buy time. Spain empire was expanding in the new world which made it powerful. To maintain profit, Philip II relied on large fleet of ships that he paid from huge loans from Italian bankers. His credit with bank was the safe passage for ships bringing gold from new world. The queen secretly engaged her greatest captain Sir Francis Drake, who appeared to the outside world as a pirate. He began to capture treasure ships. With each capture, the interest on Philip II’s loan increased. The armada was being built for invasion. Not only it consumed enormous finances but it’s launch was delayed due to capture of treasure ships. Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth spent her meagre resources on building a sophisticated spy network. This kept her informed about King Philip’s every move. Instead of taking on Spanish head on, her fleet of mobile ships sank Armada supply line and lit fire on some of the ships. This created total chaos and it had a devastating effect on Spanish morale and discipline. By the time Armada returned to Spain, it had lost forty-four ships. This is considered as one of the most cost effective victory by a second rate nation on a power house. Elizabeth’s intention all along was to exhaust Philip’s financial resources compelling him to abandon his designs on England altogether. It’s fool-hardy to admonish and take on people who are much more aggressive and crafty than you. In such scenario, you are going to lose. Instead of threatening them openly, take an indirect route.German army used a new form of warfare during World War-II. It was called blitzkrieg. They advanced with an incredible speed which culminated into devastating victory over France and other nations. The speed completely crippled nonplussed Allied forces and they could not react on time. By the time they thought of a counterstrategy the prevailing conditions have changed. The Germans were always one step ahead. People usually are indecisive and cautious. Striking first with speed can unnerve them. When you make swift moves, it’s likely to make others emotional, indecisive and prone to error. It completely throws them off guard. The action can provide you unimaginable momentum.In early 1930, there was a civil war between Chinese communists led by Mao Tse-sung and Nationalists. Mao campaign involved guerilla tactics with peasant revolution as a backdrop. Within the Communist party, Soviet influenced intellectuals advocated taking Nationalists upfront just like Bolsheviks did in Soviet Union. They considered guerilla warfare as a sign of timidity and peasant revolution as backward. These people known as 28B isolated Mao and stripped him of power. The nationalist led by Chiang Kai-Shek launched a campaign to kill every single communist and in their hunt, they captured cities after cities. The nationalists were more in number and better equipped. The open confrontation with the Nationalists led to killing of many communists. Still some managed to break out of the Nationalist encirclement and continued the fight. Mao joined them and questioned 28B futile strategy. He again emerged from obscurity and became de-facto leader of the party. He again spoke of creating a Chinese revolution based on peasantry. To accomplish that they needed time and freedom from Nationalist’s attack. They kept retreating to safer places until other circumstances compelled the Nationalists to drop their current campaign. Finally, in 1949, the Communists defeated the Nationalists and exiled them from mainland China. Retreating from a strong enemy is not a sign of weakness. It’s wise to buy time to recover, evaluate and taking your next course of action.Afghanistan is a nation which was rich in natural gas and other minerals. It also had ports on the Indian ocean. Soviet Union were training their army, built highway connecting their mainland with Afghanistan and had been trying to modernize the backward nation. The secret objective was however to make Afghanistan their satellite state. This continued for two decades after which during mid-1970, Islamic fundamentalism influence begin to grow and politically they were becoming a force. Soviet Union could sense two dangers. First, fundamentalists would come to power and cut off ties with them. Second, fundamentalist unrest may spread to Soviet Union Islamic dominated southern region. Soviet Union secretly staged a coup and bought Afghanistan Communist to power. They were sure that Afghanis would greatly benefit from modernism and embrace socialism. As it turned out the solution was more lateral in nature. However, mujahedeen power was growing in leaps and bound. To counter them, Soviet Union had sent forces to Afghanistan. The Unites States saw an opportunity to settle old score with their bete-noire and astutely started sending materials and money to mujahedeen. The mujahedeen bedeviled Soviet forces and always on the qui vive for conflict. The stubborn resistance by mujahedeen continued too long to Soviet Union’s liking. The ramification was that it drained Soviet Union both psychologically and financially. It ended in a major fiasco for Soviet Union. One should know the art when to stop. If it’s unnecessarily stretched, it’s not only going to create bitter enemies but also keeps you entangled in future conflicts. The objective is not only winning a war but winning it in a right manner which sets you up for next round of conflict. The wisdom of strategy says that avoid all conflicts where there are no realistic exits.The Prussian king Frederick the Great during his times introduced ingenious and new ideas, strategies and tactics in his warfare that provided immense success. His future generations were following his methods as precepts. After sometimes, it became stale. The French military tacticians came up with better and radical new ideas which was implemented by Napoleon when he crushed the Prussians in the battle of Jena-Auerstadt. Napoleon’s words and action became an axiom and he seems to be infallible. Later the Prussians studied Napoleon success, adapted his best practices with much more refinement. Later this played a key role in contributing to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. People expect your behavior to follow known patterns. Your earlier behavior becomes a precedent. Once your behavior conforms to unpredictability, it upset their calculations. An unorthodox strategy has a novelty factor, which may surprise your opponent. If repeated, the strategy becomes conventional and at times delusional in nature.There is a debate whether we human being are rational or emotional creatures. We would like to call ourselves rational creature because it sounds good. We love to maintain that illusion. We are calm, controlled and composed when we follow conventional daily routines. This is a sign of rationality. Once the routine is disturbed and circumstances place us in adverse condition, we react to pressure. We become debilitate, impatient and confused. The rationality goes for a toss and our emotional side comes to the forefront. We have inscrutable expressions. In real life when we are under attack our responses are that of anger, betrayal and confusion. In hours of adversity, our mind is weaker than our emotions. This is precisely the time when we need strength and presence of mind. How can we make our mind stronger? We can do it by controlling our emotions with discipline and mental toughness, and developing cognitive attributes. The review here includes only five strategies. Even mentioning every strategies is beyond the scope of the book. The author has beautifully placed each strategy in a modern and personal context. He has done so by reaching into rich treasure trove of history. He has a penchant for presenting knotty issues with his trademark sublime touch. This book is highly recommended.

War as we know is always a cliche that's fought on a battle field with mighty troops and heavy artillery. But the definition and perception of war has changed over the decentralisation of powers in the midst of the 21st century. Right from board rooms, political campaigns, Geopolitical scenarios to the emergence of a less restricted economy. War is something we all are gonna face or fight at various points in our lives. This book is a sure winner to prepare you for what's to come ahead.This book has completely changed my mental scape on strategy. Strategy as we know it from the very start is a predetermined set of rules one has to follow to formulate a path to reach to the goal . Rather the book broke this status quo and makes you view strategy not as a tool but as game plan that differs from individuals, societies, cults, and powerful realms of kingdoms. Your strategy is yours and yours alone. Ancient scripts or various books may help you formulate a base to build a strategy but the war is your and yours alone to fight. You cannot emulate strategy.This has to be added to the school syllabus.AND YES ROBERT GREEN IS TRULY THE - 'The Modern Machiavellian' !!!

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If you are thinking this book is only about war and generals, you are mistaken. This book is meant to be read by those who play in the company of men... grown up men, shrewd men, experienced men (no offence intended to women).Military men don't waste time in endless debates, but learn to manage difficult and life-threatening situations with speed, incisiveness, creativity and leadership. In the battle-field you either live or die, and there are no excuses for coming in second place. While at the same time the enemy is doing everything to make sure you fail.The assorted examples in this book are of a very high order of sophistication and geographical breadth. Good for casual reading but better for gaining valuable experience in dealing with difficult people and situations in life.

The 33 Strategies of War" basically assumes you're a member of the Borgias family--everyone you meet is an enemy or a stragtegic friend, and both groups will likely undermine you. I feel like Robert Greene has read way too much Machiavelli, and now sees his entire life in those terms.While I found the Game of Thronesy political/strategic angle entertaining, it becomes wearisome after 200 pages or so. Green's prose isn't awful, but he's very repetitive. On the plus side, he throws in a lot of interesting military history to illustrate his "principles".Read this if you're a high-powered exec. looking for a book to justify your amoral/psychopathic worldview.