khaosworks | Learning about war

It should be the aim of grand strategy to discover and pierce the Achilles' heel of the government's power to make war. And strategy, in turn, should seek to penetrate a joint in the harness of the opposing forces. To apply one's strength where the opponent is strong weakens oneself disporportionately to the effect attained. To strike with strong effect, one must strike at weakness.

It is thus more potent, as well as more economical, to disarm the enemy than to attempt his destruction by hard fighting. For the 'mauling' method entails not only a dangerous cost in exhaustion but the risk that chance may determine the issue. A strategist should think in terms of paralysing, not killing. Even on the lower plane of warfare, a man killed is merely one man less, whereas a man unnerved is a highly infectious carrier of fear, capable of spreading an epidemic of panic. On a higher plane of warfare, the impression made on the mind of the opposing commander can nullify the whole fighting power that his troops possess. And on a still higher plane, psychological pressure on the government of a country may suffice to cancel all the resources at its command - so that the sword drops from a paralysed hand.

To repeat the keynote of the initial chapter: the analysis of war shows that while the nominal strength of a country is represented by its numbers and resources, this muscular development is dependent on the state of its internal ogans and nerve-system - upon its stability of control, morale and supply. Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent - like snow which is squeezed into a snowball, the more compact it becomes, the slower it is to melt. Alike in policy and in strategy - or to put it another way, in the strategy of both the diplomatic and the military spheres - the indirect approach is the most effective way to upset the opponent's balance, psychological and physical, thereby making possible his overthrow.

The true purpose of strategy is to diminish the possibility of resistance. And from this follows another axiom - that to ensure attaining an objective one should have alternative objectives. An attack that converges on one point should threaten, and be able to diverge against another. Only by this flexibility of aim can strategy be attuned to the uncertainty of war.
Strategy, B.H. Liddle Hart, 2nd Revised Edition, 1967

Something the warriors against terrorism should remember.