Applying Military Strategy in Life - Microsoft Talk

This is not a book about strategy. There are thousands of other books out there on that subject.

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 kinds of situations that we encounter in everyday life. But there's something very peculiar about military strategy, something that I don't think is ever really commented on. And what I mean is the following: Over the centuries, all kinds of brilliant ideas have evolved about how to fight wars in the most efficient manner. And these ideas have been collected to form a kind of body of military knowledge. And on occasion, these ideas have actually been written down into various pamphlets and manuals, the most famous of which is Sun Tzu's Art of War.

But this knowledge was never studied in universities, and these books were never read by the public at large. Instead, this massive information on The Art of War was jealously guarded and hoarded by the elites who ran a country. So, for instance, a king or ruler of a country would have a copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War. He would keep it by his bedside, he would read it, he would share it with his closest advisors and with his top military men. And these a handful of men would meet on occasion and discuss the ideas and how to apply these ideas and strata on strategy to the wars and situations they were facing.

The officers and soldiers in an army, they would study tactics. Tactics, basically being the art of how you deal with the immediate needs and problems of an army. But they were rigorously excluded from any study of the broader subject of strategy. The same thing prevailed in the culture in the country at large. Educated elites could read books on all kinds of abstract spiritual matters and philosophy and whatever, but they could never, ever get their hands on books like The Art of War. I can think of no other form of knowledge that has had such a deep and lasting impact on history that has actually been studied by so few people. And I think, of course, obviously, this begs the question: why?

At first glance, you might think, well, military strategy, it's a very technical, arcane subject. But I don't think it has anything to do with that. I think it's a power issue. You see, contained in these, in this knowledge, in these books, were all kinds of brilliant ideas on how to take any kind of negative situation and turn it around into a positive situation. How to identify the particular psychological weaknesses in your opponent and how to play on those weaknesses and literally get the enemy to defeat themselves. Ideas on how to organize your army and inspire it to fight. Essentially, military strategy is a kind of bridge between an idea and its transformation into reality. It is what I call the ultimate practical philosophy. And this kind of very practical knowledge, in the hands of citizens and soldiers, could be very dangerous. It could lead to change. It could lead to revolution. And so the information was kept away from them.

In in 1801, when the slaves on the island of what is now known as Haiti revolted against their French masters, the first thing they did was get their hands on books on military strategy that had been left behind, and they studied these manuals night and day. 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 they desperately needed this knowledge to be able to fight Napoleon's army in in the field. But there was something else going on, something a little more fundamental.

This was kind of the ultimate battle, the ultimate stressful environment. It was a choice between preserving the slender little thread of freedom that they had, or returning to slavery. And in this kind of situation, the tendency was to become very confused, very emotional, and to make mistakes and lose control of the situation. Military strategy represented for them a kind of stairway that they could climb to elevate themselves above this very stressful, very confusing situation and get a kind of perspective on the entire battlefield and everything that was going on. Have some clarity about the situation, act with some purpose and direction, and get control of the situation. And of course, the leaders of this revolt, it was very appropriate that they studied strategy because they became the very first army in history to defeat 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 that, but what does that have to do with us now? We don't live in times like that. This is an enlightened modern era, and everything has changed. Well, I'm here to report that in fact, nothing has changed. Military strategy remains a subject that is really only studied in depth by specialists in very cloistered military schools, a hand, a very small number of people, mostly men, which is the same, basically the same situation that has prevailed for thousands upon thousands of years.

Now, I'm not suggesting that there are elites in this country who are controlling access to this information on military strategy. I think there's 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 a lot of conflict or confrontation. These are values of peace. War, on the other hand, is seen as something rather dark and sinister, a relic of our, of our barbaric past. Now, for a modern democracy, a superpower, war is a necessary evil. And as a necessary evil, we have a military, a group of specialists who study and wage wars for us. It's almost as if we erect 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 that is contained in the Art of War and would actually try to apply it in a social situation, like an office, for instance, that such a person would bring a lot of aggression, a lot of conflict and confrontation to this sort of delicate social environment.

This is a, a, a cultural prejudice that is in fact actually not based on the truth. 500 years ago, the great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu defined The Art of War in a way that I think will never be surpassed. He said, "The Art of War is to win with the minimum bloodshed and the minimum violence. That if to win a war you have to shed a lot of blood, you must not fight that war." That the closest that an artist of war tries to get as close to this ideal as possible. So, in fact, a person who is steeped in The Art of War knows how to resolve a conflict in a sane and rational manner. A person steeped in The Art of War knows how to avoid petty entanglements, how to choose his or her battles very carefully. A person who knows the Art of War actually creates less conflict around him or her, less resistance, and less problems.

Now, at the same time that there is this kind of cultural prejudices that I'm talking about against war, there is something else going on on the ground. Uh, the reality that we are dealing with day-to-day is very different. There's a very big disconnect. I, I think we would all agree that compared to the lives of our parents and grandparents, the world that we inhabit is much more competitive, is even a lot nastier than anything they ever knew. Society has splintered into all sorts of groups. We have all of these wars, these business wars, culture wars, internet wars, political wars. Um, excuse me, what happens in a lot of groups is that people no longer have such strong ties to the company, to the, to the nation, or to whatever group that they belong to. People inevitably, in this very competitive environment, think first and foremost about themselves, about their own agendas, their own interests. And at times, this clashes with the interests of the group. When you spread this out over the globe, and you have millions upon millions of people who are now having a hunger for power and control over their lives and over their destinies, you create an unprecedented moment in history where a lot of people are creating power struggles in environments like a company that never existed before. Something like office politics, for instance, 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 frowns upon overt aggression. A lot of people revert to a kind of passive aggression to get what they want. They become very sly and very manipulative. They operate like sort of guerrilla warriors in a social environment. So when you add all of this up, you add the newness of this phenomenon, you add the confusion of all these different battles going on in our lives, and you add the subtlety with which a lot of people now fight, you have a very dangerous kind of a very difficult environment for us to navigate. And what tends to happen to people when they are facing a situation where there are a lot of battles coming at them in many different directions is that we all tend to become very tactical. Tactics, in this sense, means we do the best that we can to deal with immediate problems that are happening around us. We are reacting to what people are giving us. And I call this basically tactical hell. Once you get into tactical hell and you're constantly reacting to what people are doing around you, it's extremely difficult to get out of it. You get locked into this mode.

We could benefit immensely now, more than ever. We could get incredible benefit from this from a kind of mental transformation where we could get our minds above all of this confusion, all of this battle going on, and have a kind of heightened perspective of what is 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 gave elites for centuries, and that the slaves who revolted in Haiti got their hands on. My book is an attempt to liberate military strategy from this prison that it has inhabited for thousands of years and to release it out to each and every one, so that you can do with it what you want, so that you can become your own master strategist. My discussion of war in this sense, it is not a moral issue. It is not a question of what I'm doing is good or evil. It is a power issue. Will people who have been traditionally been excluded from this kind of information, let's say women, let's say minorities, well, they have suddenly now have more access to this information, or will they not? My book is also an attempt to give you a very clear way to get out of what I'm calling tactical hell. This idea, this my solution to getting you out of tactical hell, however, is based on a premise. And the premise is the following: strategy is not formulaic, which is what most people tend to think of it. Most people think of strategy as, I have to memorize these certain points, A, B, and C, one, two, and three. I learn what the master says about strategy, I memorize it, and I apply it here, there. That's formulaic thinking. That's tactical thinking disguised as strategy. Strategy is, in fact, a philosophy. It is a way of looking at the world, a different way of looking at the world, a viewpoint, a philosophy. I happen to find very beautiful and very fascinating. And once you absorb the basic ideas in this philosophy, they become internalized. You start seeing things differently. And from the inside out, you begin applying these strategies to your own circumstances. You adapt it to your own life, as opposed to the other way around. And this can be very liberating and very empowering.

Now, I am, I want to kind of make a little bit clearer my whole approach to strategy. And I want to discuss one of the chapters in my book, a chapter, a strategy that I think is perhaps the most fundamental, the most important of all of them, which is called "Do Not Fight the Last War." And I want to talk to you about that by telling you a story that I recount in the, in that particular chapter. This story concerns 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 at around the turn of the 17th century in Japan.

Now, when Musashi was around 21 years old, he fought and killed two members of the Yoshioka clan in duels. The Yoshioka family was very famous for its sword fighting skills. One of the youngest members of this clan, a young man named Mata shichiro, he vowed to get revenge on Musashi for this. And so he challenged Musashi to a duel. Musashi's friends smelled the trap here and they warned him, "Don't take, don't accept this, this duel." Naturally, Musashi accepted it. He would never listen to anybody. They said, "Well, you better not go to this duel alone because it'll be probably be an ambush." Of course, Musashi went to the duel alone. In the last two duels with the, with the Yoshioka clan, Musashi all had arrived late. That was a favorite technique of his to make his opponent, to put them off their game and get them upset. This time, he arrived early and he hid himself behind a tree. Sure enough, a couple minutes later, Mata shichiro showed up, surrounded with an army of nine other samurai warriors. And Musashi could hear them talking, and one of them said, "That Musashi, he always shows up late. Well, that trick's not going to work this time." And the samurai warriors began to sit down and wait for Musashi to arrive. A few seconds later, Musashi jumped out from behind of his tree, holding his sword, and he said, "I've waited long enough, Mata shichiro," and he started coming at him. Mata scrambled to his feet to try and defend himself. Musashi killed him in an instant. The other nine men were so startled by this that they had no time to think about surrounding him, which would have been the only solution. Instead, they came at him, charging at him in a kind of broken line, and he went down the line and he killed every single one of them. This is perhaps the most famous duel in Japanese samurai history. It was immortalized by Kurosawa in a film.

Look at this. Musashi roamed the countryside looking for challenges, and he heard of this very famous warrior named By Ken. By Ken fought with this really strange, unusual weapon that no one had seen. Basically, he had this long, very sharp sickle, and at the end of the sickle was a chain, and at the end of the chain was a very heavy steel ball. And what By Ken would do was he would start twirling the chain and the ball until it got a lot of momentum, and then he would charge at his opponent. And as his opponent thought of defending himself, he would hurl the steel ball at the opponent's face. And the opponent would naturally lift his sword to parry the blow, at which point the sickle would come cross-striking across his neck and kill him. No one had ever come close to defeating By Ken. So naturally, Musashi challenged him to a duel, and By Ken happily accepted. He shows up for the duel, and he's got a short sword in his left hand and a long sword in his right hand. No one had ever fought with two swords like that. By Ken had never seen such a thing. It was very strange. Before By Ken has his usual chance to charge his opponent, Musashi is charging him. The opposite, so he's backing up. And he does the only thing that he knows how to do, the only way he's ever fought his whole life. He starts twirling the ball, backing up, and then he throws it at Musashi's face. Musashi parries the blow with the short sword and then kills him with the right sword, finally defeating this unbeatable man.

A few years later, Musashi hears of a very famous samurai, perhaps the greatest warrior of them all in Japan, a man named Ganryu. Ganryu 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 it is so beautiful, it's got all these carvings on it, that just the sight of it, seeing being unsheathed, is enough to make his opponent tremble with fear. Musashi naturally challenges Ganryu to a duel, and Ganryu accepts. The duel is to take place on a very small island near Ganryu's home. At about eight in the morning, Musashi arrives at eight in the morning, and the island is packed with spectators. This is the equivalent of Ali versus Frazier, the two greatest samurai of the time. Of course, Ganryu is waiting. No Musashi. It's 9 AM. No Musashi. It's 10 AM. He's still not there. He's pacing the island, furious, determined to just not only kill him but rip him to shreds. Around 10 AM, a little small, small wooden boat can be seen approaching the island. And as it gets closer, everyone can see that there's a man seated in the back who's kind of half asleep, whittling a very large wooden oar. And as I get close, gets close enough, they all realize that it's Musashi. Not paying attention to anybody. Finally, the boat takes its sweet time, and it finally arrives on the island. He gets off the boat. The first thing he does is he takes a dirty towel that's in the boat and he ties it around his head, and he jumps off the boat, carrying this wooden oar, no sword at all, just a wooden oar, and he jumps off, ready for the duel. Ganryu, you can't believe this. This is a man who's coming to the biggest fight of his life, and he's wearing a dirty towel for a headband, which is a sign of extreme disrespect, and he's carrying a large wooden oar. This is a madman. Before he has a chance to do what he's usually does, Ganryu, which is charge him and impale him with his beautiful sword, here is Musashi suddenly charging at him with a wooden oar. He does the only thing that he knows how to do. He strikes back with his sword, but he misses by an eighth of an inch, and he cuts the towel in half, and it falls down. At which point Musashi's wooden oar comes crashing down on his skull and kills him. After that, Musashi's name is made for good, and he becomes, as I said, the greatest samurai who ever lived.

Now, in analyzing Musashi and why I think it's important, I have, you 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 their incredible weapon that they had, this unusual sickle or the beautiful sword. They depended on this technique that they used time and again, and that they repeated for each battle. What I say is the equivalent of fighting the last war. Something very physical and very mechanical. Musashi was the exact opposite. He never did the same thing twice. Every time he fought an opponent, he looked at that opponent, he studied him, and he determined, "This is what that person's weakness is, and this 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 arrive late, he arrived early. You expected him to have one sword, he had two. You expected him to show up at this incredible duel in a very respectful costume, he arrived as a drunken, dirty peasant. Um, I see this as a kind of a metaphor of the difference between strategic thinking and non-strategic thinking, and how a lot of people operate in life.

Most people, in any kind of situation, depend on something. Everybody 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, that their company is larger, whatever it is. They depend on physical, mechanical things. A person who uses strategy does not depend on physical, mechanical things. A person who depends on strategy depends on his creativity, his or her creativity in the moment, learning about what it is in that particular battle that he can gain an advantage of through using the weaknesses of the person, whatever it is. Wrote that, um, excuse me, he wrote that in every, every battle is won or lost before it is ever fought. And basically, what he meant was something is going on in the mind, the strategy itself, that is either right or wrong. And by the time you arrive for battle, you have either won or you've either lost. But the battle he's referring to is the battle in your mind. If your mind is filled with all kinds of ideas from the past, if you repeat the same formulas that you've used again and again, you have already lost the war. If, on the other hand, you try this other approach and you ground yourself in this idea of "Do Not Fight the Last War," which I maintain is the foundation of all solid strategic thinking, you have already won the war before it even happens.

Now, um, I want to switch gears here a little bit, go in a slightly different direction. Um, I mentioned earlier that I talked about tactical hell, and in that scheme, you can kind of imagine strategy as something that sort of lifts you up to purgatory. Well, I'm here to say that there is actually a heaven above this purgatory, and the heaven is what is known in military terms as grand strategy. And I want to take you back for a moment to ancient Greece, I hope you don't mind, where grand strategy originated as a philosophy. In particular, I'm going to take you to the cult of Athena, who is the goddess, the Greek goddess of war, of strategy, and grand strategy. You just have 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 of these men or women would go hunt out or find a temple to Athena, and they would go there and they would pray. When Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont to begin his conquering of the Persian Empire, the first thing he, he did was dedicate his arms to Athena and build a beautiful temple in her honor and go to that temple and pray to her night and day. Now, what these men were praying for, or women, what they were praying for, was not some kind of superstitious luck, or that she would intervene in their affairs. What they were praying for was that Athena's spirit would suddenly inhabit them, and they would build a house with a solid foundation, they would cross the sea successfully, they would win the election or the war.

To understand the spirit of Athena, however, you have to understand a little bit about her lineage. Athena's mother was the goddess Metis, probably the baddest goddess of them all. Metis had the power to change into any shape that she wanted, and she was also the cleverest of all the Immortals. Now, Zeus, another god who had ambitions to become the chief god on Mount Olympus, but he couldn't possibly become the chief god as long as Metis was around. But Zeus was a very clever man. So what he did was, one night, he seduced Metis and then got her to marry him. And then a few weeks into the marriage, he started challenging her about her powers to change into different shapes. He said, "I bet you can't change into a lion." And sure enough, she changed into a lion and she roared. He feigned being afraid, and then he said, "Well, I bet you can't change your shape into a drop of water." Sure enough, she changed into a drop of water, at which point he grabbed up the drop of water and swallowed it in one fell swoop. Zeus had gotten rid of his main rival, and he incorporated her powers and her cleverness into himself. But he didn't realize at the time that Metis was actually pregnant with a child. And so one night, Zeus heard this terrible noise in his ears and this clanging in his head, and he had a horrible headache. And all of a sudden, the baby goddess Athena was born from his forehead, wearing full body armor and clanging her sword and yelling out 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 Ares, her half-brother. He was also the son of Zeus. Ares is a different kind of god of war. Ares loved warfare. He loved the violence, the aggression, the chance to just kill. He, and he loved the glory that would come from killing. Athena hated warfare. What Athena liked was winning. She decided, though, that to win, being aggressive and fighting wasn't the answer. What was the answer was to be smart and intelligent. The animal that is associated with the goddess Athena is the owl, and the owl is a symbol of wisdom. An owl perches itself on the limb of a tree, and it has the capacity to turn its head around in all directions. It also has the most powerful vision of all the birds. You can simply see farther and wider than any other creature. Like an owl, whenever there was any kind of battle, Athena would not rush into the battle like Ares would. Instead, she would step back from the situation and she would look at everything going on around her. She would look deeper into the past, further into the future. She would see far and wide everything that was going on around her. She didn't have the powers of her mother to change into shape. Her mind had the power to change into different shapes. She had an incredibly fluid and dynamic mind. She could make her mind go with whatever was around it and sort of see every circumstance. So when you combine this ability of hers to see more of everything that was going on around her, in a very dynamic mind, she was very powerful. And so, in this way, she was considered the goddess of strategy.

In The Iliad, Ares and Athena do battle on many occasions, and each and every time, Athena beats the living hell out of him, and Ares goes crying up to Zeus on Mount Olympus, whining about his sister. Athena it is Athena who inspires the idea of the Trojan Horse, one little stratagem that ends nine years of feudal, endless, Aries-like bloodshed, just one little clever idea. Now, to the ancient Greeks, all human beings are part Ares and part Athena. The Ares part of us is our animal nature. It is our tendency to react to the most immediate thing around us and to get very emotional. Athena represents our consciousness, our rationality, what makes us superior to other animals. The Ares part of our nature tends to always dominate. So even if we're in a situation where we think we're being very clever and very strategic and we have the perfect idea, the perfect plan, in the heat of the moment, when things get stressful, when the feet are to the fire, Ares rears his ugly head, and he makes us emotional, and we become impatient, and we become greedy, and he pushes us off course. And we build a house that has that's very flashy but has a terrible foundation, or we don't cross the sea successfully, or we lose the war, we lose the election. Men and women went to a temple to pray to the goddess Athena. What they were praying for was that her spirit would come and vanquish this very ugly Ares part of their nature, and that with her spirit, they would have this calmness and the 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 going on around them than their opponents, that they would literally take in more around them, and that they would have her very fluid and dynamic mental powers as well. All of this is what I refer to and is known as grand strategy.

Grand strategy is a military term that refers to a very particular way of thinking. Most often, in in any kind of situation when we are facing an opponent of any size, we tend to look at what is most immediate around us. It's human nature. Battle is a very visceral affair, and because of that, we tend to react to what is most in front of us. And even though we might plan and strategize, when we're, when our vision is locked in on that immediate battle, we lose something. And what grand strategy is, is simply this: you move away from the battlefield for a moment, and you force yourself to detach, and to actually try and see more of what is going on around you than you have when that you saw it before. You avoid the temptation of reacting and of looking at the actual physical components of your opponent. You force yourself, for instance, to look deeper into history, about the history of the conflict. You think further into the future. You can sit, instead of the usual thing in warfare, you think of politics, and you think of culture, and you think of the social aspect of the battle. You take in everything. You take in as much as you can. And by thinking and planning in this way, you create what is known as a campaign. Most people fight in terms of battles and their immediate battles. The idea in grand strategy, as I talk in my chapter, is "lose battles but win the war." You think in terms of several years down the line, of what your ultimate goal is, and you create, you craft a very powerful, a very rational campaign.

The icon of grand strategy is Alexander the Great himself, probably the first grand 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 take on the Persian Empire, he had an army of about 40,000 men, and he was about to take on 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 done, he didn't fight them at all. He worked very carefully to understand Persian culture and Persian politics. He went from city to city, winning them over politically, introducing them to a new kind of world, which was the Alexandrian Empire, creating a new culture. He did this for several years, and he had essentially won over politically a huge chunk of the Persian Empire without ever fighting a single battle. By the time he finally met the Persians in battle, he had already absorbed their entire empire. 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've looked at all of the greatest strategists in history, your Napoleons, your Hannibals, you're Queen Elizabeth the First, your Abraham Lincolns, I determined that all of them possessed this grand strategic spirit in abundance. This was actually the source of their success, not their necessarily their knowledge of strategy, but that the fact that they had this power of vision. Now, I believe that this is a power that lies dormant in each and every one of you. It's not a question of praying to Athena anymore, although you can do that if you want. It's more a question of doing a simple process whenever you're about to enter into a battle, and there is an important decision to make, or there is a crisis going on. Instead of rushing forward as we normally would do, you take a step back. This is literally what Napoleon would do before any of his large battles. And you completely reassess your strategy. You tell yourself, "My ideas are probably very limited because I have not been looking at the whole situation." You tear up your strategy, and you, and you think in these terms. You think, "If I had actually enacted what I had planned to enact, how would this pop, probably lead to some kind of disaster?" You think of how you think in in larger terms about what could be the consequences of this strategy that you've come to think is brilliant. You tear it up, and you just determine that you're going to think about something else, and you force yourself, literally, to take in more of the environment around you. You think of more deeply about the social circumstances of this battle, something that's extremely important and was the key to Napoleonic warfare. You determine to take more of the cultural circumstances. You look more deeply at your enemy. You look through your enemy's eyes and see how they are seeing you. And with this heightened perspective, you then hit upon a completely new strategy that has so much more vision and so much more fluidity to it that you will naturally hit upon a grand strategic decision.

Now, while I was writing this book, there was a war that was being planned and waged in Iraq. And it was very interesting to follow this war as I was writing the book, because I saw it as a confirmation of everything that I was thinking and everything that I was writing. And in fact, what I'm talking about tonight or today. So I want to kind of very briefly look at the Iraq War and how I, how I see it, or how I was analyzing it. But I want to do that by kind of going inside the mind of the person who planned this war and executed it, go inside the, the strategy, if you will, of President, of President Bush.

Now, most people, when they look at the Iraq War, when they look at the Iraq War, they think of the Iraq War and they begin there. I looked at, I went further back in time. I looked at the Desert Storm experience. Now, if you know anything about George W, he's a man who has a kind of almost Freudian or edible obsession with his father. He will not repeat any of the mistakes that his father did. He is determined to go in a completely new direction. And obviously, the greatest mistake that his father ever made was supposedly not finishing the Iraq War, not getting rid of Saddam Hussein. So, well before the Iraq War, it was ever an issue, George W. Bush had this idea that he wanted to be the one who would right this wrong of his father, that he would be the one to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Okay. The next thing that happens, obviously, is the 9/11 attack. Clearly, in in the wake of this, as we all did, the tendency is to become very emotional, and for the president, obviously, there was a sense of America being shown as weak and vulnerable, a desire to show that America wasn't weak, that we are strong, and even an unconscious desire to get revenge of some sort. Now, with dealing with an enemy that is so vaporous like Al Qaeda, it's hard to pinpoint 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 that could show our resolve and get that little bit of vengeance, that little bit of revenge in there. Question of whether he actually believes Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack, it is the fact that he had a predisposition, a desire to see a connection between the two things. He had a predisposition to believe that there was some kind of peripheral involvement. And as we know, in the history of war, you will end up seeing what you want to see in any kind of intelligence.

Now, at the same time, George W. is surrounded by these, what are the neocons? The neoconservatives. And the neoconservatives come to him with this incredible scenario of what will happen when you get rid of Saddam Hussein. This scenario is: democracy is now anchored in Iraq in the Middle East. The first time this kind of new democracy suddenly spreads like a virus to Iran, to Syria, to Saudi Arabia. Suddenly, the, the area experiences incredible stability. Oil interests are now secure. Israel is no longer threatened. And on and on and on, kind of a reverse domino effect. Incredibly seductive scenario. With one little taking out of Saddam Hussein, you create this incredible peace spreading across the Middle East. The last thing to know about George W. is that he is a man who values resolve and loyalty above anything else. He thinks that the most important thing is when you decide on a course of action, you follow it all the way through to the end, and that all the people around you are on board, no kind of quibbling, no disloyalty. You finish the job that you started.

Now, when you add up all of these factors, I think you see an incredible degree of emotions infecting his strategic decisions. Now, I don't see anybody really ever commenting on this. Maybe it's because when you look at these people like Bush, or particularly Cheney, you don't really think that there's emotion going on. But when you look at the strategy, there is. There is a predisposition to want to be the one to take out Saddam Hussein. There is a desire to show our resolve, to get some, some vengeance, etc. The whole notion of showing your resolve, of finishing your job to the end, resolve is a very important thing in warfare, very important quality. But if it's not allied with intelligence and smartness, it merely becomes stubbornness, which is actually another emotional quality. So when a person comes to strategy with all of these emotions clouding the mind, the motions that I talked about, revenge, resolve, I, I also forgot to mention the belief in this incredibly rosy scenario, which almost borders on wish fulfillment. When you have all of these emotions swirling in the back of your mind, you tend to create strategies that are not really related to reality. Instead of looking at Iraq and saying, "Hmm, this is a country that's never had democracy, that's incredibly divided, that was created in 1916 or whatever, that maybe the American-style democracy will will not take root," you don't think that. You, you see what you want to see. Instead of imagining that this scenario that you have painted, a peace spreading, could actually turn into the opposite, you never see.

So I remember when the, when the war was first being planned, I would be yelling at the television. I would be yelling at anybody who would listen to me. There weren't very many people who listened to me. That I could not for the life of me see how this war would end. And I, I didn't mean it in a political sense. I could not see how this war would end. If you signal your intentions that democracy will spread through the Middle East by this kind of virus, and that you would really want to get rid of the regimes in Iran, in Syria, and Saudi Arabia, you were signaling to these people that you have the intention of getting rid of them. If you have this timetable where you want to get out of the Middle East in three or four years, you get out of the Middle East with this kind of very fragile, band-aid-like democracy there. Why wouldn't you imagine that countries like Iran and Syria and Saudi Arabia have all of this, um, their stake in this battle, and in this not succeeding? They're not going to want Iraq to remain a democracy. And as soon as you leave, they are going to do every damn thing they can to disrupt it, which is exactly the situation that ha, that happened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the war that I think is the greatest parallel to this one, and I talk about it in the book. Um, so excuse me, if you decide on the other hand that you're going to stay for 10 or 15 years, you create a whole other slew of problems. So anything that you do, no matter what you do, you can't ever have a logical, a rational end game. So this was a group of strategists, or strategists, who entered a war with a very hazy end game, a very hazy exit strategy, and they're paying a dear price for that.

Now, I don't mean this, this analysis in a political sense. I was looking strictly from strategy, and I could make just as, uh, just a ruthless analysis of John Kerry's disastrous campaign in 2004. It's more on the level of strategy. And I don't think of this as an isolated, uh, incident. I don't think of this as war, because I think war is related to society, and that the problems that we see here are problems that go deeper, that go, are even social. Everybody thinks when they enter action that they have a plan, that they have a strategy. Mike Tyson said, "Everybody has a a plan until they get their face smashed." So you enter into a battle. Every leader thinks that he knows what's going on, that he's got a strategy, that he has a plan in hand, and that it's going to work out for the best. Nobody is stupid. Nobody thinks that they assumes that they have no strategy. The problem is that inevitably, emotions are, are coloring what you see of the world and how you're creating your strategy. You want to see certain results. You want to believe that this is what your enemy is, is like, and you very subtly see what this, very subtly infects how you make your plan, how you make your strategy. And so, to me, I would like, if I had one wish, is that the Iraq 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 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 get detached from reality. That strategy only succeeds by the degree that you are keyed into exactly what is going on around you, and you are able to at least detach yourself from your emotions to the slightest degree.

In conclusion, I just want to say a couple of brief things about my book. The book is structured into various different parts. First part, it talks about your, your mind and how you prepare your mind for battle, which is a very important section. Is on how you organize your group, organize your army. I maintain, I follow the Napoleonic ideal, which is, structure of your organization is the most important strategic decision you can make. You have a bad, dysfunctional organization or structure, you're never going to be able to execute a good strategy. The third section is defensive war, then offensive war, and then it concludes with unconventional or dirty war. It, the book begins with the kind of the mental process, the most primitive aspect of war, and it ends in chapter 33 with terrorism. Um, and as you know from my other books, my method is, I include stories to illustrate everything. And of course, half of the stories have to do with war, and my personal favorite strategists, obviously people like Napoleon Bonaparte, Hannibal, T.E. Lawrence, Mao Zedong, on and on. On the other half, though, I have stories that take place in in a daily life and social, what I call social warfare. They're stories of great politicians who applied strategy, like Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson. I have artists, writers, Theodore Dostoevsky, and then a lot of things, stories are actually about Hollywood, because I've worked in Hollywood, and I see the role of a director is almost being a kind of a general. Um, and of course, I've tried to loosen up the stranglehold that men and masculinity has on war, because it is a very male-oriented environment. And I try and include as many stories as I can of women who I see as great strategists, such as Queen Elizabeth the First, but also actresses like Mae West. I know that's kind of counterintuitive to have Mae West in a war book, but she was actually a brilliant strategist.

So, in conclusion, I just like to say one thing. If there's one thing that you could take away from this book, it would be that in any kind of battle, it is not in the end the physical that will prevail. It's not the money, the influence you have, the power that you might possess. What always will prevail in any kind of conflict is the strategy, is the creativity, and the mental aspect that you bring to the battle. You can lose everything that you have, you can lose your, your money, your influence, your power, but if you know the Art of War, you will prevail in every conflict. That's, that's basically what I wanted to say. Um, and I'm really hoping I get some questions.

[Applause]

accurate to think that the reason that we, you know, and I based on on talking to people who are involved in situations, you know, I think it's simplistic in

The simplistic analysis to think that decisions at that level are made, you know, based upon emotions. I will agree that we went into Iraq, you know, and this is obviously a known factor, that one of the people who went into Iraq was to set an example, as you would say. But I think that it was a logical rather than an emotional decision to decide that perhaps when you need to make an example of something like that, you do it for a good reason, for the income, for deterrence.

Well, maybe you misunderstood me. I'm not saying that emotions drove us into Iraq. What I was saying is emotions colored our strategy. So you begin with a logical idea, which is deterrence against terrorists, an idea that Israel, for example, has used to great effect. You begin with ideas that are very rational and very logical, and on the surface, they look logical. But what I'm saying is these, these supposedly very rational and logical ideas are very much infected with all kinds of emotions. And you can see it in the fact, if there's any book I could ever recommend you read, and I have, you know, I had to do this in a rather glib manner, but please read a book called "The Assassin's Gate," which came out about three months ago about the Iraq. A brilliant book. Look at this, the incredible mistakes that were made in this war from the very beginning. They believed literally that they would be greeted by Iraqis with flowers in their hand, that democracy would take hold. They were going to leave in three months. That's as long as they thought it would take. Now, you're telling me that that is logical and rational? It, on the surface, it appears that way, but something else is going on.

You know that basically, I think that, you know, the, you know, we're talking war versus talking like a business. Comparison like that, or even in a business situation, the problem with everybody's strategy, and Bismarck, you know, noted that basically that the friction of wars, or the problems, is that your opponent also has a strategy, and your opponent is going to adapt his strategy based upon why wouldn't you 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, probably I haven't studied as in-depth as, let's say, Colin Powell has. But why wouldn't you assume that before you go into war? And why wouldn't you think about your opponent's strategy? It was, it was very clearly indicated in documents that were discovered that Saddam Hussein planned a guerrilla-style 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 protracted struggle, which is the goal of any kind of guerrilla war? You protect, you draw your enemy into a protracted struggle, and you defeat him in an attrition style. Why would you at least consider that option?

Oh, I think it was considered. But I think you also have, I mean, basically, one of the big, you know, the problem with the United States in fighting conflicts like this, and this is a strategic problem that maybe you can look at also as business, is that we apply certain rules to the game that our opponents don't apply. For instance, like we will deliberately risk our combatants' lives in order to not risk innocent bystanders' lives, where our opponents will deliberately target innocent bystanders that they can kill. That war is the ultimate amoral environment. It doesn't matter whether you have good intentions and whether your opponent doesn't. You have to think of what's going to happen. You have to think of what's going on on the ground. And it's hard. I think I'm going to, uh, pull, uh, host this privilege, and I think this is a really interesting, uh, topic, but I think you could easily wind up as a diversion from from the more general thing. So I think good point, good points. Okay, but, but, uh, let's shift our attention away from.

Okay, okay. Yes, sir. It seems like modern warfare and the workplace are we are expected to have moral obligations. [Music] Um, so there's a two-part question. How much, how much of a military strategy must 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 moral?

Well, it's a really good question. And obviously, if your aggressive or your military tactics are causing all kinds of problems in the office. But I told you that that "The Art of War" is winning with minimum bloodshed and minimum violence. So you're trying to resolve conflicts in a sane way. That eventually, if you go in in a very aggressive style, you don't give a damn about other people, that you're not going to get very far. That's not an effective way of fighting. And war is all about having an effective way of fighting that is that is adapted to your environment. So this, the Sun Tzu idea can be adapted to any environment. And if this is an environment where you have to be very careful about this, and rightly so, and and act in a moral way, then this is a definitely a component of how you have, how you fight, and what you bring to it.

Um, you know, I talk about Gandhi in this. I have a chapter on on passive resistance, which also segues into a chapter on passive aggression. Um, and, you know, uh, Gandhi is a very moral fighter. I analyze it from a strategic point of view, um, from not from a right or wrong, but if this was a brilliant strategist who used the strategy of passive resistance that he believed in, but there 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. Uh, um, yes.

Can you comment on Tom Friedman's book, "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 in the in the New York Times op-ed page. I'm kind of aware of his ideas, and I read about his analysis of the Iraq War. He actually has a really good analysis of the Iraq War. Um, but I don't know if I ascribe to that. Um, maybe I have to hear more of it. I had a friend recently who came back from India, and he's, he said that that book is a load of bunk because India has nothing to do with the world now that we know of. It's still a really totally different world. It's not flat at all. And globalization may have reached certain elites in certain large cities in India, but millions upon millions of people, it hasn't reached. That's just anecdotal, though.

Was there a reason you're asking that or describing making changes in the last five years, right? A century? It seemed to factor into a lot of strategic thinking going forward.

Well, yes, but there will, you know, there will always be differences. It would be kind of a temptation then to fall into the fallacy of everyone is just like us, which is a fallacy. I I still think is kind of, if I may go back to the Iraq War, the idea that people in Iraq just want what we want. And I think a strategist must take into consideration the particularities of the culture and the social, uh, environment that he's, that he's dealing with. And that that's a trap a lot of people fall into. They, they ignore that and they only look at the technical aspects of a struggle. I don't know.

Yes, sir. Napoleon said one of those masses. Yeah. Now my question really is, is that how do you drive that like with what we, what were you talking about?

No, no, no. You don't understand. Okay, so there's a school of thought that says right now in prison, Iraq, that, uh, amongst young people, especially, that, okay, it might be a little worried about the changes. The Koreans, the 12 to 16, 18-year-old group, not because of any one thing, but I think he's Osama has been quoted as saying that basically the 12 to 16-year-olds are his next generation. So the moral part, I, I remember. How do you think that ties into a grand strategy? Well, thinking of will you get people behind it, etc., etc. Rightly or wrongly, how do you feel it?

Okay. Well, the one thing is, um, I talk about that addictive of Napoleon, but the word moral in French is "moral," right? You understand? Yeah. It's not morality, right? No, understand. Okay, to understand is what it means. If you view across, right? How does that fit in? If people buy into that idea, we know the great things have been accomplished by people. So that's believing.

Yes, I I have a chapter and that, a chapter on morale, because it's a huge issue in in war. And Napoleon does rightly say that if your army is motivated and you've inspired it, you have three times the force of another army. He literally had a formula for that. And I think it's, I think it's extremely, extremely valid. That, um, examples throughout history of motivated armies defeating, uh, mercenary armies with incredible, facing incredible odds. And I don't know if I'm, maybe I have to hear your question again. But I think, but I mean, there's a real problem in Iraq. You have an enemy that in many ways is more motivated than we are. You have, for a while, it has been for a while. And you have, uh, this was the problem that ended up happening in Afghanistan among the Soviet soldiers, which is, I'm not mean to exaggerate, it was much worse for them than the current war, but, um, where you have soldiers who are not, who are on police action, and they're not, this is not how soldiers are used to fighting. No, they don't like it, and morale is actually quite low. It is quite a 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 up about it, but someone like a Jack Martha, who did talk of it, is a real problem. Morale is not very high among a lot of people, but it's very high among your motivated terrorists. So it is a real, it's a terrible problem.

Getting there, getting out fast, too. The thing like that is that hurts. The old Curtis Davis thing switching, 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 is years ago. It's a classic history. Years ago now. Yeah. They sold the idea to everyone that they were number two when they were number seven. And pretty soon they were number one or two. And everyone bought into it. They advertised that way. You may recall this. Yes. I'm old enough to remember that way. It's interesting because they got people to buy into something that it wasn't really factual.

Right. Oh, I see. I see your point. I'm sorry. Yes. Okay. No, yeah. You, yeah. I was thinking about, are there any scenarios, situations in which the principles that you outline either don't apply or are not as effective?

I don't know about that. Oh, completely. That's why I try to make the point of the do not fight the last war. And I, I try over and over again in my books. It's not a formula. It's not a matter of, uh, you know, I have a chapter in there about the annihilation strategy, the envelopment strategy. You don't want to apply that to many of the situations that you're facing in life. You know, what I have a chapter in the power book about "Crush Your Enemy Totally." You know, not going to be doing that in your day-to-day affairs. Is it something for very specific circumstances? And so, so the, referring to the, the kind of movement point that you made, which is, you know, thinking about situations in the moment, yeah, and thinking about it from different perspectives, yes, and trying to infer things in new ways. I guess I don't follow your questions. Do not fight the last war approach where you're very alive to what is going on, uh, very fluid. I don't know. I mean, I, I, I kind of make trying to make the point that that is the foundation of any solid strategy. That you're, uh, really literally strategy to me can be boiled down to how close your mind gets to reality. The closer your mind gets to reality, the better your strategy. If you exist in your little bubble in your head with your own ideas, your strategy will misfire unless you have great luck. And so to be realistic, you have to meld your mind with exactly what is going on around you. That doesn't mean that you're just the fluid person that only does what's in the moment. Please don't misunderstand me. I have a chapter in here about planning, which I consider the secret to Napoleon's success in warfare. This was a man that planned to an incredible degree. He planned in incredible detail. And then once he hit upon a plan, he made sure that the plan had all kinds of looseness within it so he can go in different directions. I'm not saying you just be all be free-flowing and just go with a moment. That's not strategy.

Part of strategy, I guess. Yes.

I've read both of the "Year 48 Laws of Power" and your "Seduction" books, and they were excellent. The examples were always ones that had happened a lot in historical times. How was wondering if you could take an example from this book or one of those two books and how you would apply what are the concepts there to your own life as someone who's instead of trying to defeat enemies on the battlefield, but someone who's trying to get published or sell books?

Wow, I never get asked 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 by yourself a lot, and your access to the world is only through like, three or four people, like your agent, you know, the your editor. So it's very, very cloistered and very unusual. But yeah, I'm happy to to apply strategy all the time. I I have a partner, as you know, on my book, a man named Yoast Elfers, who's the designer and all that. And it can sometimes, it can be a little bit contentious. Sometimes I'm wondering whether he maybe is taking a little too large of a cut. It's just between you and I. Um, and I have to, I have to calm myself down, and I have to, I have to, it's always a struggle to not get emotional and to say, this is business. And if I get emotional and get upset, it's going to have consequences that I don't want. And so I always sort of find a way to not let that influence very important decisions in my life. I guess if that could answer that in any way, but I'm not, I'm not someone going around being Machiavellian with every person I meet, kind of thing.

Yes, it understands you to say that, especially who were kept out of the hands of civilians because Sun Tzu had six different Japanese editions a thousand years ago. Yes, but who is reading those Japanese people? No, no. Um, I mean, Japan had a very separate cast of warriors and samurai fighters. A merchant wouldn't be reading those books, or a common citizen. I could be wrong, maybe Japan is a special circumstance. But what I was thinking of the main point is somebody in China, a a citizen or a peasant or someone who wasn't in the elites, they had no access to that book. It was "The Art of War" was never printed and published until recent times. Okay. It was on bamboo sheets. In fact, they lost it for a long time. And the only way people knew about it was word of mouth, and some general would comment on what he heard, and that would get written down. So there was no book "Art of War" that people were passing around and reading. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

One more question, touching up rests briefly. I would argue that no matter how things go on the ground, it was a successful work in public perception says that we're being decisive and active. With that in mind, can you think of any historical strategic example where there has been a decisive defeat on the ground, and yet in some broader sense, the war was won decisively where it was successful?

Maybe I have to understand the question of war where what happened where military operations, okay, and yet some broader sense, the war succeeded. Well, he just said it, the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive, which I analyze in there, was probably one of the most brilliant bits of strategy in military time. I think the Vietnam War, for instance, is an unbelievable laboratory of ideas because you take a country that had communications and technology that was basically from the 19th century, and they beat the butts out of the Americans and the French. Now, that's brilliant to me. Um, but the Tet Offensive is one of the cleverest and most brilliant strategies. And basically, the Tet Offensive was kind of suicide. They, all of the Viet Cong that they had been gathering for years, these, these secret North Vietnamese sympathizers in the South were suddenly out in the open and were attacking places like Saigon, like the way, um, and it was a massacre. Um, the worst massacre because the Vietnamese strategy was always avoiding battles. This was the first battle that they, that they went into, but they did it on purpose because they knew at the time, and we have now documents that show it, that the American support of the war was diminishing to a point that if they show to Americans at home and watching on television that this was a war that they were not making any progress, that winning that kind of political and cultural type war was far more important than unfortunately sacrificing the lives of what ended up being thousands of Viet Cong who were butchered in that, in that. But it ended up, the Tet Offensive was the turning point of the Vietnam War. It caused Lyndon Johnson to not run for president. Um, and it was, it was the beginning of the end.

Yeah, I had to go in small scales. Yeah. Well, I think it was actually serendipitous because when they actually launched the attack, they actually intended, they thought they would win a big victory, and they didn't. And did you know that the North of me is actually strongly considered suing for peace in 1968? But then he started reading the news from God said Christ, the Americans say they got it. Well, there's debate on that. There's debate on that. I mean, I, I couldn't, my take of it was that they, they were aware of what was going on. Memoirs say that they were considering peace, and they realized that they had got a strategic victory out of a tactical defeat. But there are also things that Job talks about where he was aware that this was their their strategy that they were literally aiming. I mean, why would he choose places where all the media was located? Well, back on Saigon was was geared very tactic, uh, very strategically for places where they were, where Walter Cronkite was. Or well, I mean, he, well, I think they wanted to have a very visible thing. There's no doubt about that. Yeah. But like they did take over the way because the press was it took away because of the teaching. No, no, I disagree with that because there's some really good books on way, and they took way strictly for propaganda purposes. They never intended to hold way. Never. You wanted to hit it for six weeks. Um, because they wanted to make a point. They wanted to make a point that way was was vulnerable. And if you look at how they had created, constructed all of their tunnels under the Citadel, which is an amazing story, they all, they never intended to stay. They never stockpiled enough weapons. They never stockpiled enough supplies to stay. Their intention was always to leave.