The 33 Strategies of War (56 page)

There is neither point nor honor in seeking direct battle for its own sake. That kind of fighting, however, may have value as part of a maneuver or strategy. A sudden envelopment or powerful frontal blow when the enemy is least expecting it can be crushing.

The only danger in maneuver is that you give yourself so many options that you yourself get confused. Keep it simple--limit yourself to the options you can control.

People will always try to take from you in negotiation what they could not get from you in battle or direct confrontation. They will even use appeals to fairness and morality as a cover to advance their position. Do not be taken in: negotiation is about maneuvering for power or placement, and you must always put yourself in the kind of strong position that makes it impossible for the other side to nibble away at you during your talks. Before and during negotiations, you must keep advancing, creating relentless pressure and compelling the other side to settle on your terms. The more you take, the more you can give back in meaningless concessions. Create a reputation for being tough and uncompromising, so that people are back on their heels before they even meet you.

WAR BY OTHER MEANS

After Athens was finally defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War of 404
B.C.
, the great city-state fell into steady decline. In the decades that followed, many citizens, including the great orator Demosthenes, began to dream of a revival of the once dominant Athens.

In 359
B.C.
the king of Macedonia, Perdiccas, was killed in battle, and a power struggle emerged for his succession. The Athenians saw Macedonia as a barbaric land to the north, its only importance its proximity to Athenian outposts that helped secure their supplies of corn from Asia and of gold from local mines. One such outpost was the city of Amphipolis, a former Athenian colony, which, however, had lately fallen into Macedonian hands. A plan emerged among the politicians of Athens to support one of the claimants to the Macedonian throne (a man named Argaeus) with ships and soldiers. If he won, he would be indebted to Athens and would return to them the valuable city of Amphipolis.

Unfortunately, the Athenians backed the wrong horse: Perdiccas's twenty-four-year-old brother, Philip, easily defeated Argaeus in battle and became king. To the Athenians' surprise, however, Philip did not push his advantage but stepped back, renouncing all claim to Amphipolis and making the city independent. He also released without ransom all the Athenian soldiers he had captured in battle. He even discussed forming an alliance with Athens, his recent enemy, and in secret negotiations proposed to reconquer Amphipolis in a few years and deliver it to Athens in exchange for another city still under Athenian control, an offer too good to refuse.

The Athenian delegates at the talks reported that Philip was an amiable sort and that beneath his rude exterior he was clearly an admirer of Athenian culture--indeed, he invited Athens's most renowned philosophers and artists to reside in his capital. Overnight, it seemed, the Athenians had gained an important ally to the north. Philip set about fighting barbaric tribes on other borders, and peace ruled between the two powers.

A few years later, as Athens was racked by an internal power struggle of its own, Philip marched on and captured Amphipolis. Following their agreement, the Athenians dispatched envoys to negotiate, only to find, to their surprise, that Philip no longer offered them the city but merely made vague promises for the future. Distracted by their problems at home, the envoys had no choice but to accept this. Now, with Amphipolis securely under his control, Philip had unlimited access to the gold mines and rich forests in the area. It seemed that he had been playing them all along.

Now Demosthenes came forward to rail against the duplicitous Philip and warn of the danger he posed to all of Greece. Urging the citizens of Athens to raise an army to meet the threat, the orator recalled their victories in the past over other tyrants. Nothing happened then, but a few years later, when Philip maneuvered to take the pass at Thermopylae--the narrow gateway that controlled movement from central to southern Greece--Athens indeed sent an army to defend it. Philip retreated, and the Athenians congratulated themselves on their victory.

In the years to come, the Athenians watched warily as Philip extended his domain to the north, the east, and well into central Greece. Then, in 346
B.C.
, he suddenly proposed to negotiate a treaty with Athens. He had proved he could not be trusted, of course, and many of the city's politicians had sworn never to deal with him again, but the alternative was to risk war with Macedonia at a time when Athens was ill prepared for it. And Philip seemed absolutely sincere in his desire for a solid alliance, which, at the very least, would buy Athens a period of peace. So, despite their reservations, the Athenians sent ambassadors to Macedonia to sign a treaty called the Peace of Philocrates. By this agreement Athens relinquished its rights to Amphipolis and in exchange received promises of security for its remaining outposts in the north.

The ambassadors left satisfied, but on the way home they received news that Philip had marched on and taken Thermopylae. Challenged to explain himself, Philip responded that he had acted to secure his interests in central Greece from a temporary threat by a rival power, and he quickly abandoned the pass. But the Athenians had had enough--they had been humiliated. Time and time again, Philip had used negotiations and treaties to cover nefarious advances. He was not honorable. He might have abandoned Thermopylae, but it did not matter: he was always taking control over larger territories, then making himself look conciliatory by giving some of his acquisitions back--but only some, and he often retook the conceded lands later anyway. The net effect was inevitably to enlarge his domain. Mixing war with deceptive diplomacy, he had slowly made Macedonia the dominant power in Greece.

Demosthenes and his followers were now on the ascendant. The Peace of Philocrates was obviously a disgrace, and everyone involved in it was thrown out of office. The Athenians began to make trouble in the country to the east of Amphipolis, trying to secure more outposts there, even provoking quarrels with Macedonia. In 338
B.C.
they engaged in an alliance with Thebes to prepare for a great war against Philip. The two allies met the Macedonians in battle at Chaeronea, in central Greece--but Philip won the battle decisively, his son Alexander playing a key role.

Now the Athenians were in panic: barbarians from the north were about to descend on their city and burn it to the ground. And yet again they were proved wrong. In a most generous peace offer, Philip promised not to invade Athenian lands. In exchange he would take over the disputed outposts in the east, and Athens would become an ally of Macedonia. As proof of his word, Philip released his Athenian prisoners from the recent war without asking for payment of any ransom. He also had his son Alexander lead a delegation to Athens bearing the ashes of all the Athenian soldiers who had died at Chaeronea. Overwhelmed with gratitude, the Athenians granted citizenship to both Alexander and his father and erected a statue of Philip in their agora.

Lord Aberdeen, the British ambassador to Austria, proved even easier to deal with. Only twenty-nine years old, barely able to speak French, he was not a match for a diplomat of Metternich's subtlety. His stiffness and self-confidence only played into Metternich's hands. "Metternich is extremely attentive to Lord Aberdeen," reported Cathcart. The results were not long delayed. Metternich had once described the diplomat's task as the art of seeming a dupe, without being one, and he practised it to the fullest on the high-minded Aberdeen. "Do not think Metternich such a formidable personage...," Aberdeen wrote to Castlereagh. "Living with him at all times..., is it possible I should not know him? If indeed he were the most subtle of mankind, he might certainly impose on one little used to deceive, but this is not his character. He is, I repeat it to you, not a very clever man. He is vain...but he is to be trusted...." For his mixture of condescension and gullibility, Aberdeen earned himself Metternich's sarcastic epithet as the "dear simpleton of diplomacy."

A W
ORLD
R
ESTORED
,
H
ENRY
K
ISSINGER
, 1957

Later that year Philip convened a congress of all the Greek city-states (except for Sparta, which refused to attend) to discuss an alliance to form what would be called the Hellenic League. For the first time, the Greek city-states were united in a single confederation. Soon after the terms of the alliance were agreed upon, Philip proposed a united war against the hated Persians. The proposal was happily accepted, with Athens leading the way. Somehow everyone had forgotten how dishonorable Philip had been; they only remembered the king who had recently been so generous.

In 336
B.C.
, before the war against Persia got under way, Philip was assassinated. It would be his son Alexander who would lead the league into war and the creation of an empire. And through it all, Athens would remain Macedonia's most loyal ally, its critical anchor of stability within the Hellenic League.

Interpretation

On one level, war is a relatively simple affair: you maneuver your army to defeat your enemy by killing enough of its soldiers, taking enough of its land, or making yourself secure enough to proclaim victory. You may have to retreat here and there, but your intention is eventually to advance as far as possible. Negotiation, on the other hand, is almost always awkward. On the one hand, you need both to secure your existing interests and to get as much on top of them as you can; on the other hand, you need to bargain in good faith, make concessions, and gain the opposing side's trust. To mix these needs is an art, and an almost impossible one, for you can never be sure that the other side is acting in good faith. In this awkward realm between war and peace, it is easy to misread the opponent, leading to a settlement that is not in your long-term interest.

Philip's solution was to see negotiation not as separate from war but rather as an extension of it. Negotiation, like war, involved maneuver, strategy, and deception, and it required you to keep advancing, just as you would on the battlefield. It was this understanding of negotiation that led Philip to offer to leave Amphipolis independent while promising to take it for Athens later on, a promise he never meant to keep. This opening maneuver bought him friendship and time, and kept the pesky Athenians out of his hair while he dealt with his enemies elsewhere. The Peace of Philocrates similarly covered his moves in central Greece and kept the Athenians off balance. Having decided at some point that his ultimate goal was to unite all of Greece and lead it on a crusade against Persia, Philip determined that Athens--with its noble history--would have to function as a symbolic center of the Hellenic League. His generous peace terms were calculated to purchase the city's loyalty.

Philip never worried about breaking his word. Why should he sheepishly honor his agreements when he knew the Athenians would find some excuse later on to extend their outposts to the north at his expense? Trust is not a matter of ethics, it is another maneuver. Philip saw trust and friendship as qualities for sale. He would buy them from Athens later on, when he was powerful and had things to offer it in exchange.

Like Philip, you must see any negotiating situation in which your vital interests are at stake as a realm of pure maneuver, warfare by other means. Earning people's trust and confidence is not a moral issue but a strategic one: sometimes it is necessary, sometimes it isn't. People will break their word if it serves their interests, and they will find any moral or legal excuse to justify their moves, sometimes to themselves as well as to others.

Just as you must always put yourself in the strongest position before battle, so it is with negotiation. If you are weak, use negotiations to buy yourself time, to delay battle until you are ready; be conciliatory not to be nice but to maneuver. If you are strong, take as much as you can before and during negotiations--then later you can give back some of what you took, conceding the things you least value to make yourself look generous. Do not worry about your reputation or about creating distrust. It is amazing how quickly people will forget your broken promises when you are strong and in a position to offer them something in their self-interest.

Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against his interest.... If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them. Nor have legitimate grounds ever failed a prince who wished to show colorable excuse for the nonfulfillment of his promise.

--Niccolo Machiavelli,
The Prince
(1469-1527)

JADE FOR TILE

Early in 1821 the Russian foreign minister, Capo d'Istria, heard news he had long been awaiting: a group of Greek patriots had begun a rebellion against the Turks (Greece was then part of the Ottoman Empire), aiming to throw them out and establish a liberal government. D'Istria, a Greek nobleman by birth, had long dreamed of involving Russia in Greek affairs. Russia was a growing military power; by supporting the revolution--assuming the rebels won--it would gain influence over an independent Greece and Mediterranean ports for its navy. The Russians also saw themselves as the protectors of the Greek Orthodox Church, and Czar Alexander I was a deeply religious man; leading a crusade against the Islamic Turks would satisfy his moral consciousness as well as Russian political interests. It was all too good to be true.

Only one obstacle stood in d'Istria's way: Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister. A few years earlier, Metternich had brought Russia into an alliance with Austria and Prussia called the Holy Alliance. Its goal was to protect these nations' governments from the threat of revolution and to maintain peace in Europe after the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars. Metternich had befriended Alexander I. Sensing that the Russians might intervene in Greece, he had sent the czar hundreds of reports claiming that the revolution was part of a Europe-wide conspiracy to get rid of the continent's monarchies. If Alexander came to Greece's aid, he would be the revolutionaries' dupe and would be violating the purpose of the Holy Alliance.

D'Istria was no fool: he knew that what Metternich really wanted was to prevent Russia from expanding its influence in the Mediterranean, which would upset England and destabilize Europe, Metternich's greatest fear. To d'Istria it was simple: he and Metternich were at war over who would have ultimate influence over the czar. And d'Istria had the advantage: he saw the czar often and could counteract Metternich's persuasive powers through constant personal contact.