Throughout History there have been countless wars and among them all those came victorious who were most powerful, most brutal, most aggressive and most of all were most cunning. There were times when larger number lost to a handful, and many won without firing a single arrow just by strategizing the war. These strategies are not only useful in real life but are also great to use in day to day life to come victorious over the others. Let's see how these stories were executed.
There are three categories of strategies—proactive, reactive, and desperate.
Proactive: preventive Measure; take care of situation before it turns problematic. Yet be prepared if the situation arises.
Reactive: call for immediate action; respond to the situation we are in and use resources that are available to us at that moment; little chance to modify this strategy once it is put into action.
Desperate: extreme measures that, once implemented, should be followed through at all cost; high-risk by nature, they require tremendous courage and absolute calmness in their execution.
There are 6 types of Strategies:
- Strategies for Winning: not only winning overwhelmingly but also efficient enough not to spend too much resources.
- Strategies for Deceiving Opponent: When opponent has advantage, distract their attention.
- Strategies for Attacking: Know “Who to attack”, “How to attack”, and “When to Attack”
- Strategies that take advantage of Chaos and Confusion: Panic destroys organization and when the ranks and lines are fallen, it is best time to attack.
- Strategies of Sabotage: when enemy is too strong, sabotage their supplies, their support and cause chaos and confusion among them. Note: All intentions of Sabotage must be hidden.
- Strategies for Desperate conditions: High risk strategies when failing might result in complete annihilation.
The Strategic Process – Two stages:
- Planning Phase:
- Gather and Analyze information: Know yours and your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses before making a plan.
- Assess Risk and Gain:
- Low Risk – High Gain: Most preferable
- High Risk – High Gain: Preferable
- Low Risk – Low Gain: Not Preferable
- High Risk – Low Gain: Not Worthwhile
- Evaluate the Situation: Do not be static and adapt to the situation
- Choose the type of Strategy
- Develop Counterstrategies: Find out strategy used against you and counter it with your own strategy.
- The Operation Phase:
- Transform the Strategy into Executable Components:
- Brake strategy into tactical components (executable activities)
- Assign Logistics: Personnel, resources, communication etc
- If it turns too complex, solve the problems one by one.
- Hide your intentions
- Adapt and Modify Operations: Not everything goes according to plan so adapt and modify the plan according to situation.
Strategies for Winning
1. Deceiving heaven to cross the sea: Fooling someone to do something they normally would not have done.
2. Besiege the state of Wei to rescue Zhao: Attack the soft spot where defenses are weakest.
3. Kill with a borrowed knife: Make your enemies fight against each other and weaken themselves.
4. Wait at leisure while the opponent labors: Wait for the right time and right conditions
5. Loot while fires are burning: Take advantage of Chaos to attain your Goal.
6. Make sounds in the east and strike west: create a diversion to attack to attack from a different direction.
Strategies for Deceiving the Opponent
7. Create something out of nothing: feed false information to opponent as true and make them believe it. You can either create lies or mix lies with truths.
8. Crossing into Chencang in secret: Hide your intentions by diverting your opponent’s attention to a false target.
9. Watch the fires burn from across the shore: Wait while the chaos is raining down on Opponent’s camp.
10. Hide a knife behind a smile: Lure enemy into a trap by seeming friendly.
11. Sacrifice the plum tree to save the peach tree: Sacrifice which is less important to protect what is more important. It should be last resort.
12. Taking the opportunity to steal a goat: When you see an opportunity, take it no matter how small they may seem. Small opportunities may led to large gains in future.
Strategies for Attacking
13. Stomp the grass to scare the snake: Create fear among the opponents.
14. Borrow a corpse to resurrect a life: If you can solve problems with limited resources and adapt creatively to adverse situations, you will be able to operate in almost any conditions.
15. Lure the tiger out of its mountain lair: Lure the enemy out of their advantageous position and attack.
16. To capture an enemy, you need to allow them to escape: Avoid driving an opponent into desperation. Opponents facing annihilation fight to the death. Even if you win, it would be a hard fight. Demoralize your enemy while gaining their respect.
17. Throw away a brick to gain a piece of jade: Lose something of a less value to gain something of a great value.
18. Defeat the enemy by capturing their leader: Attack the leader and not their subordinates.
Strategies that take Advantage of Chaos and Confusion
19. Removing the firewood from under the cauldron: Take away resources or cut the supply chain of opponent.
20. Stir the water to catch the fish: Cause panic amongst enemy camp and take advantage of that chaos.
21. Golden cicada shedding its shell: Be calm in Chaos, avoid panic, cover your retreat path, and discourage opponent from pursuing.
22. Shut the door to catch the thief: When the enemy has small numbers, weak leader and disorganized ranks, surround them and subdue them.
23. Befriend a distant state and attack an adjacent one: First deal with the problem at hand before solving a distant problem. Identify short term and long term concerns, and act accordingly.
24. Using safe passage to conquer the state of Guo: Principle of Divide and Conquer. When there is an alliance, befriend one and get their support to attack the other.
Strategies of Sabotage
25. Steal the beams and remove the pillars: If your opponents are too strong, don’t confront them directly. Remove their support piece by piece and they will collapse. There are two types of supports, i.e. Pillars that is Vertical support (Hierarchy) and Beams that is lateral support (Alliance)
26. Point at the mulberry tree while blaming the locust tree: Proud and powerful people don’t like to be criticized. To advice them you need to point at someone else committing similar crime and blame them. This way you can let the powerful person know their crimes.
27. Pretend to be insane while keeping your clarity: Play the fool. Deceive the opponent into thinking you are ignorant about something or you don’t know. Use this to let them lower their guard.
28. Remove the ladder after the opponent has climbed up: Lure opponent into an area of your advantage and cut of their escape routes.
29. Put false blossoms on the tree: Feed the enemy false information to deceive them, distract them and make them confuse.
30. Make the host and guest exchange roles: infiltrate the enemy ranks and reach up to the leadership.
Strategies for Desperate Conditions
31. Sexual enticement as strategy: Against a strong army with a weak general, attack the commander. Against an intelligent commander with a strong army, entice him with sexual favors. When a commander is distracted by sexual pleasure, troops will not be trained, and good squad leaders will leave. The enemy will capitulate without a fight.
32. The empty-fort strategy: In this a real situation is made to look false. Enemy must believe that what they are seeing in not the truth but it is a deception.
33. Counterespionage strategy: feed enemy false information, take enemy’s trap and turn it against them.
34. Using self-inflicted injury as strategy: Using self-inflicted injury to deceive the enemy is the ultimate sacrifice of oneself. Gaining sympathy of the opponent.
35. Interconnecting strategies:When the opponent has numeric advantage in troops and commanders, do not engage in a direct confrontation. Weaken them gradually. Wait until they break and panic, and then strike decisively. Use the combined effects of terrain and human factors to your utmost advantage.
36. Running may sometimes be the best strategy: Sometimes running away today can prevent your demise today and give you an opportunity to win some other day.