S2 Book Club: 33 Strategies of War

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground today we're going to continue our book club by taking a look at our latest entry the 33 Strategies of War by Robert Green overall this book examines 33 different techniques for winning conflicts from a more intellectual and psychological standpoint each one of these Lessons Learned is broken down into its own chapter which uh is really easily segmented by the different sections within each chapter so this this really matters a lot which we'll get to in a moment the good news about this book is that even if you're not interested in Warfare or stuff like that a lot of these Lessons Learned can apply to say a corporate world or really anything where uh conflict even non-kinetic conflict like social conflict can come into play normally I like to start with talking about the author themselves because usually when it comes to books like this uh the author really does matter quite a lot and you have to understand the angle that they're coming at things from uh I'm going to kind of skip over that this time because it doesn't necessarily matter too much with this particular book this is sort of like an anthology of a lot of other historical books and historical Stories the author's history and personality and experience matters really when it comes to one specific uh topic which we'll talk about later when it comes to how easy this book is to read and the format itself uh this book is very easy to read uh it's not like uh extremely beginner level in some passages however this book can be picked up by anybody who has no idea about any kind of military strategy or anything like that this is directly related to the format choice for this book I would very strongly recommend picking up a physical copy instead of the ebook versions uh the reason being is that the ebook uh Port didn't really work too well so uh the Epub file that I purchased let me try to find an example here uh the UB file that I that I purchased did not uh work so well for instance uh one of the bigger things that you miss with the uh ebook version and for the audiobook version you miss this are these notes in the margins so this book uh in the printed version has notes in red uh on almost every single page uh quotes historical passages from other books stuff like that and also something that you kind of Miss with uh other formats of the book are these passages here again in red that are kind of bro that kind of break up the book a little bit uh sometimes they'll be in a very unique uh let me see geometric shapes here like this and it this does not Port over very well to the Epub file it was so bad that I actually thought that my uh book was like corrupted or something so uh if you are interested in this book you might want to get the physical version also when it comes to the physical versions this book is actually kind of hard to find because it has a somewhat common name there's also I did not know this until after I had bought this one but there is an Abridged version of this book as well I can't speak to that one but I can tell you and some of the other uh comments here that we'll get to at the end uh kind of indicate this as well this book could have been a lot shorter and kept the same meaning so if you want to get The Abridged version that would probably be a good idea as well if you're looking for more short read like I mentioned some of the more General thoughts about this book are that this is definitely worth picking up but maybe the reasons for doing so might vary depending on who you are and your expertise level for instance this book was absolutely geared towards a novice someone who is has no military experience but wants to learn some kind of some of the military experiences and uh Lessons Learned From history which is great uh the book itself like I mentioned when it comes to the format uh is broken up into chapters let me just give you a sample here uh it's broken up into chapters in which we have kind of the overview and moving through we have the historical examples a good historical narrative to read through um and then once we get down here we have interpretation sections so these sections are kind of an important part of the book and this is also where things can get very controversial depending on your Viewpoint basically the author has the history first and then his interpretation of it and then how it applies to Warfare itself uh some chapters have uh bounced back and forth between uh historical examples so it'll go historical example interpretation and then another historical example that kind of helps reinforce the first uh interpretation section uh if you have no idea about any of this stuff the interpretation sections are very helpful if you do have a history in studying uh Warfare kind of stuff you might find some of the interpretation uh passages to be completely off base so uh we'll get to that as we go along but just right up front I think it's very very refreshing to have the history separate from the interpretation so if you wanted to if you had more experience you could just use this book as a as a list of historical examples and kind of ignore the interpretation like likewise if you really are kind of new to this sort of thing you can read the whole book and it would be uh quite useful for you so let's go through each chapter very briefly and summarize uh the kind of contents of each chapter and we'll uh learn the 33 Strategies of War As Told by Robert Green the first one is to declare war on your enemies and this first chapter kind of sets the tone for the book uh in that the author is what I would consider to be extremely extremely aggressive uh the author basically has a Take No Quarter approach to pretty much every chapter here uh basically be ruthless be motivated and let nothing stop you not even pesky things like morality or social norms or anything like that this first chapter also kind of highlights something that is a common phrase in military circles but it's not mentioned in the book that not that I found and that phrase is that battles are usually fought on one square foot of real estate the one square foot of battle space between your ears basically Wars are fought on your mind more than any place else again as a slight spoiler the author not having military experience he would not have heard this phrase uh or if he did I guarantee you that would probably be the uh title of that chapter but we can see how longstanding military Doctrine kind of is interpreted very interestingly uh as we go along so first one declare war on your enemies number two is do not fight the last war and the author has the subheading of the Guerilla War of the Mind strategy so the author makes the the point that you should forget everything that happened in the last war and solely begin each War a new again we can start to see even just from chapter 2 that there's there going to be some criticisms of this kind of ideology but again the author is trying to stress the importance of not getting caught up by using Antiquated tactics when you've got a new modern battle space to work within moving on to number three this is more of a psychological thing as most of the chapters are uh chapter three is amidst the turmoil of advents do not lose your presence of mind and the author calls this the counterbalance strategy basically this is don't let your emotions rule over strategy don't let shell shock or anything like that or your lack of experience in combat don't let that affect your judgment during battle again I think we all can kind of agree that that's probably a generally good thing to do but again this is uh one of those points the author is trying to make that is a lot easier said than done number four is create a sense of urgency and Desperation this is the classic case of Cortez burning his ships or if you are a fan of Tom Clancy this is Captain Marco ramus's letter to Yuri padorin right this is explained in the very famous scene of the movie in which the leader of uh in this case a defection cites the case of Cortez burning his ships when he reached the new world basically removing all chances of going home and because of that it removes the motivation to stop charging forward in The Hunt for Red October Marco ramus does the same thing in effect by sending a letter to his Superior stating that he intends to defect this basically forces the officers on board his ship to go along with this plan because if they were to return well the the cat's out of the bag now right and they would be prosecuted for that so the author makes the same kind of point in many more words so that concludes the first part of the book uh this is is really just kind of getting started with getting in the right frame of mind for carrying out some kind of Warfare campaign or any kind of business strategy really part two is what we start to bring in the team element because this is touching on organizational or team Warfare so chapter 5 is to avoid the snares of group think very self-explanatory idea basically just don't fall into group think uh this chapter mentions uh my my first thought uh I think it does actually mention this but my first thought when kind of summarizing this chapter is Team of Rivals the concept of Abraham Lincoln and how he assembled his cabinet full of political enemies basically but because they were in the job and now held accountable for their actions even people who were at each other's throats and not really working as a team were forced to work as a team and the general idea being that people who don't really get along too well and have motivations to work against each other will also help keep each other accountable rather than having just a team of all the same people with the same idea set kind of an interesting idea it's debatable whether or not it worked for Lincoln or not uh but this is the the point the author is making in chapter 5 chapter six is titled segment your forces uh the author calls this the Controlled Chaos strategy and this I think is an underrated chapter because this is a very very powerful idea and I think that this applies to really the whole book you could probably have made the entire book on this one idea and and I think the author may have uh when it comes to other books basically the whole idea of grand strategy is not really to have some sort of last minute complete Hail Mary kind of plan one of the reasons why Napoleon in particular was considered to be a master of warfare is that he put himself in situations where he had more options than his enemies that was really all Grand strategy is about to be honest putting yourself in situations in which you have options when your enemy does not we've kind of touched on this indirectly with much of the other content that we've made here but this is really exemplified in this chapter the other thing that I thought when reading this chapter is the idea that the Insurgent always chooses the engagement this is one of the advantages that that an Insurgent Force has the Insurgent can choose to engage an enemy force or they can choose to slip away into the night to fight another day classic Viet Kong tactics right whereas the mainstream Force right the main body of troops of an enemy Force has to respond to an engagement if they get shot at they are required to return fire right that's just kind of how things work out so being able to use this to your advantage and having a more chaotic battle space but organized still organized but not organized to the point to where your enemy knows what you're doing this this is very very important and I think the author um does touch on this quite a lot but uh again putting this together in the context of a modern war is is very difficult to do so moving on to chapter 7 uh this one I'll refer to the actual text itself so the title of chapter 7 is transform your War into a crusade morale strategy so this is this chapter is about uh improving morale and I think that uh this is again one of those topics where every lieutenant in West Point has written a paper on this so uh I'm not sure if the author has read that or not or if this is more of just kind of cherry-picking from from others work uh so the first idea here is unite your troops around a cause make them fight for an idea uh step two is keep their bellies full right again citing Napoleon uh which isn't mentioned in this paragraph here but again an army marches on its stomach right a hungry people will not be inclined to support the people who are keeping them hungry step three is lead from the front classic step four is concentrate their Chi uh this is kind of a offset again showing the author's um unique perspective which which kind of I kind of appreciate sometimes uh this is again a really in terms of warfare and indefinable quality that uh I'm not really certain how this can apply very well in the real world instead of just in an ideological space like a book right uh basically uh the author just kind of cuts to the chase here it says keep your soldiers busy uh which again is very important um it keep them going on a sense of purpose moving in a Direction you know do not make them wait for the next attack propelling them forward will excite them and make them hungry for battle Yeah again that's not I don't know if that would really be considered to be some kind of ancient philosophical idea or not but anyway moving on to step five play to their emotions again starting to get into the kind of moral aspects of some of these topics I I will say uh before we go much further like I sort of touched on in the beginning I don't think morality and what is right and what is wrong has any place in this book in the real world it certainly does it colors what we do but it's just ruthlessness is the theme for this whole book and this is exemplified by number six which is mix harshness with kindness carried in the stick kind of approach to some degree but it's really harshly put in the book uh number seven is build the group myth again shared identity shared culture can start to get into to mythical territory again the author is is most certainly correct in this regard build the legend surrounding a military unit right and number eight is again be ruthless with grumblers right basically corporal punishment uh don't let any bad morale uh bring the rest of the unit down morale will kill a unit faster than any artillery shell that's for sure so chapter 7 is morale tips I appreciate them for sure but uh like I mentioned before if you read a lot more military kind of Doctrine you understand that it's not as simple as this sometimes so uh let's move on to chapter 8 which is the first chapter in the third part of the book which is defensive Warfare number eight pick your battles carefully it kind of makes sense but one of the the uh the parts of this chapter that really that I really like uh is where the author says to make your blows count but don't wear you out basically you need to strike a balance between Effectiveness and wearing yourself out too early on this again is one of those unspoken ideas that can really directly apply to what's going on in the world today where you want to be effective enough to stop the forces that are doing some really bad things in the world but you also don't want to burn yourself out too quickly to the point to where you're not not really going to be effective when the time comes that you need to be more effective striking a balance between combat Effectiveness is really really tricky and the author doesn't really talk about this too much but being okay with uh having less combat Effectiveness so that you're able to push forward into the long term it's not really it's not really something that is easily quantifiable in a book I mean I guess you probably could if I sat down and thought about it a lot but basically how many times in society have you said look why is nobody doing anything about this why why are we just sitting around and we're letting this bad stuff happen to our society well it's more complicated than that but when you're trying to explain it it sounds like you're a coward because you want your people and you want the people that are in your sphere of influence to stay good with their morale you want them to not look at things like the situation is hopeless but you also don't want them to go out and do something Reckless is going to get themselves thrown in jail or killed this is the epitome of pick your battles carefully in today's society we want action we see something bad happening and we want to immediately counter that with action the problem being is that we're using the wrong tools for the trade and the battle space has shifted so much that picking your battles really does look like and is perceived to be acts of cowardice you know so this is a very very important topic that is really hard to talk about but it's easier to talk about when you've got a a reference book to point back to so this can actually directly translate to the next chapter which is titled turn the tables basically Counterattack now what is the entire point of a Counterattack in terms of doctrinal warfare the whole point of a Counterattack is to put your opponents into a defensive posture before they have time to think someone attacks you you Rec Counterattack immediately when they have exhausted their resources they're tired they're hungry they have they're low on ammunition and you are now putting them on the back foot that's the whole point of a Counterattack the author makes the point of a Counterattack being basically an an exercise in disguising aggression looking weak when you were strong and looking strong when you are weak again sunu right the basics of warfare this is very very important because it does play into picking your battles carefully if you are able to pick your battles carefully you're able to more effectively Counterattack and especially in this book Counterattack doesn't necessarily mean a straightup military objective it doesn't mean you know the trenches of World War I A lot of times a lot of times the Counterattack is information Warfare it is fifth generation Warfare it is cultural Warfare things that aren't really bullets and bombs and bandages right but they're ideas so being able to Counterattack with ideas being able to counter a narrative immediately as soon as it comes out is very very very effective number 10 is all about deterrence uh this is creating a threatening presence again walk softly and carry a big stick some of these chapters can be summarized by very famous historical sayings and you don't really need to go much further which is that chapter chapter 11 same exact thing trade space for time in the military world this is a very very common phrase albeit it's sometimes used incorrectly when it comes to a larger military force trading space for time usually refers to something that an Insurgent Force might do and aside from being an Insurgent kind of idea this is really Russia's doctrine of warfare if we go back to some of the more ancient battles that Russia has fought you let your enemy come way deep into your country where they've overrun their supply lines they're in a foreign land and they are far from home then you hit them with a Counterattack now a lot of times we tend to over romanticize Russia's ability to do this for instance uh Russia claims exactly what they were doing at Stalingrad they were letting Germany Advance all the way to Stalingrad deep into Russia's territory before they sprung their surprise attack it's more complicated than that and Russia was definitely on the back foot and did not really voluntarily let the you know six Army Advance all the way to Stalingrad that wasn't really a voluntary thing a just happened right so they were definitely not like springing the trap at first uh but again that did happen later on but the bottom line is that trading space for time doesn't necessarily have to refer to geography it can refer to information as well make your enemy go through a lot of effort to get stuff that is not really that valuable to you but they think it is but while they're messing around with stuff that's not really that important you have used that time effectively to carry the fight F somewhere else one of the ideas that I kind of liken this to at least in the business world the corporate world is uh something that Elon Musk said and I I'm paraphrasing here of course but he said something to the effect of if you are innovating at the right pace your enemies will be copying what you were doing 5 years ago so basically by the time an adversary figures out what you're doing figures out how to copy your work figures out how to innovate the same stuff that you've already done you've already moved on to the next thing this is the same thing this is trading space for time your enemies are always going to try to use your tactics against you they're always going to be working against you but if you are moving at the right pace and if you are shifting your your forces to where they need to be by the time they've figured out what you're doing you're already on to something else we can see this with mimetic Warfare if that's the way that we want to talk about this kind of thing the war being fought in the information space with memes we all know that the for forces that that be in the world cannot meme we know this right so by the time like an official scops organization figures out how to make a meme that Meme format is from like 2 to three years ago if that I mean I think some of the first memes if you want to call it that that official scabs units put out were actually like remember the demotivational posters from like the early 2000s that's what they were putting out in like 2018 like no this is relatable to no one but but since they're pipeline for approval of any kind of information Warfare stuff on the American people is so long they're having a hard time catching up whereas memers are putting out memes every 30 seconds throughout the whole day right every day relentlessly in the middle of the night you've got fresh meme templates being dropped this is exactly what we're talking about trading space for time by the time people are trying to figure out how to counter some random meme without without a watermark even being on it we're already on to the next one so that's kind of an interesting way to think about this concept of trading space for time moving on to part four we start talking about offensive Warfare and chapter 12 exemplifies the whole chapter or the whole section really which is lose battles but win the war again the Viet Kong in a nutshell now there have been some historical uh arguments to this idea that the Viet Kong lost their battles but they won the war and likewise the Americans won the battles but lost the war there's been some debate to this over history but but basically the idea is to focus on the greater goal it's okay to keep losing battles because the cumulative effect of winning a battle every now and then doesn't directly translate to losing the war right if you if you have 10 battles in a war and you lose lose eight of them but you win two you might not lose the war because war is not as quantifiable as that you can't seem you cannot think well we're just winning all the time and we're we're constantly winning these battles and then you get to one day where the airport and Cobble is being overrun do you see how this works there are very few battles throughout Vietnam and throughout Afghanistan that the US actually lost uh if you look at you know technically you've got things like sure like the Ted offensive that I guess would be considered to be a loss even though we technically won I mean and with Afghanistan the same thing like I mean we smoked the Taliban throughout that country for 20 years and in a couple of months you know who was on the back foot then you know so the whole idea of losing battles but winning the war is such a very hard concept to to illustrate I appreciate the efforts of the author to do so but it's not something that's going to be really sound bitable into just a nice little nugget of information now moving on to chapter 13 this is where uh I hit my grand disappointment with this book because uh this chapter is on intelligence and I hate to say it I really do but almost this entire chapter is a complete swing and a miss at least in in my opinion uh the author seems to think what a lot of people think and I have not admittedly a good job at kind of explaining this in great depth maybe I should uh but the author seems to have a misconception of what intelligence actually is like what's the goal of it because the examples that he sites here don't really they're not really like good intelligence examples but you know without I don't want to dwell on it too much and just kind of Slam the book from this regard because I think that my own personal bias is definitely at play here because this is you know kind of my you know former life right this my sort of career I guess and uh I just kind of can nitpick this all apart especially when it comes to the author's uh interpretation sections um intelligence is very little about psychology uh when it comes to what the author is trying to say here and the author tries to make the idea of well just be smarter be better be more clever than your enemy again you know easier said than done uh but intelligence when it comes to military operations which is the context the author is talking about here is not just playing a game of uh psychological warfare with your enemy that's some scop stuff that's like information Warfare which is not I mean it's part of military intelligence but it's not really the whole goal Military Intelligence is used to drive operations find out where the bad guys are find out what they're doing find out where they're going to be and take them out that's the whole point of military intelligence it's not to play psychological games with your adversary that does happen and that is the romanticized part of military intelligence work but I guarantee you that you know we're talking about Napoleon here again it's the boring stuff you know Napoleon realizing that his his adversaries used a lot of baggage carts whereas his troops he had carry backpacks to march on Foot Right whole new kind of warfare for Europe this kind of thing this is an intelligence nugget right that is very very valuable and it actually ends up turning the tide of War it's not some kind of psychological thing of trying to get inside the enemy's head though that does happen I just feel like it's over romanticized a lot and how you outwit the enemy is by not sitting you know in your room just kind of brooding about things in some kind of Hollywood cut scene right the whole way of outwitting your enemy is a lot of boring data analysis uh it really is and that's kind of ignored here basically the author goes to the classic you know be a shadow kind of intelligence perspective and it's just it's just not how things work but anyway I don't want to dwell on that one too long uh because there's other stuff to talk about here so 14 is overwhelm resistance with speed and suddenness basically in a single word this chapter is about Blitz C the author also does not seem to have heard before the term violence action right if you are caught on the back foot if you're caught in a defensive posture overcome adversarial actions by violence of action what does that mean it means react suddenly react decisively react immediately and re react overwhelmingly against your Force even if the uh odds are not in your favor the sudden blitzk nature of driving forward into an enemy's position when you know you're supposedly at a disadvantage that can actually help quite a bit if we're bringing history into this I don't think it's cited in this particular chapter but when we're talking violence of action uh really we can think of things like pickets charge from the American Civil War right a hopeless assault an allout charge on an extremely fortified position that had very little hope of of working however Robert El ordered this charge because he thought that the violence of action would actually overcome all of the other factors in this war right in this in this particular battle now again we know from history this didn't work uh this was kind of a futile effort however Robert E Lee at the time probably one of the the most important military minds of the era did believe it would work and he was banking on violence of action doesn't always work but when it does the payoffs can be very very very well it's a very bold move move but uh violence of action is is usually what you have left when it comes to things like counterattacks and stuff like that chapter 15 is control the dynamic uh this is really where I'm not sure what the author's point is however some of the things that he mentions this in the chapter are forcing strategies basically ways to keep the enemy on their heels and to shift the battlefield to your advantage now again this is easier said than done and I don't think that Decades of military expertise in this regard can really tell you what to do right the whole point what is what is the whole point of military war colleges what's the point of West Point what is the point of the Naval Academy what's the whole idea here the idea of military acmis and the concept of Officer training in general really is to train officers and commanders to think for themselves using historical Doctrine and pre-establish general theories to Aid their own critical thinking and to allow them to be set up for success in a situation that cannot be predicted right that's the whole point of this and I think the author is trying to get at something and solve a problem that you know hundreds of years of military acmis haven't really been able to do the whole point of militarys is to again train people for the unexpected and because of that you have to have a broad view of things you can't really prepare for each little Keyhole engagement you're going to fight and uh I think that point kind of gets lost a little bit number 16 is Shifting uh tactics quite a bit number 16 is hit them where it hurts basically Target centers of gravity and I think that this chapter could have done well with an explanation of what is a center of gravity when it comes to military Doctrine centers of gravity that's not just a term that looks really really good in a term paper it actually means something quite significant and the definition changes depending on which nation's Doctrine you read but generally speaking a center of gravity is exactly like what it seems it is a point by which all things orbit it is a central usually like a location by which most of an enemy's economy Society military forces their whole civilization revolves again usually it's a big city because we first started seeing this idea of attacking centers of gravity come from the Middle Ages right Knights and shining armor riding their horses right up to the to the castle Gates Right medieval Siege Warfare is all about attacking a center of gravity think about it for a minute in you know feudal Europe if you've got a you've got a castle sitting in the middle of like a district and you've got the Farmland surrounding it what's the point in attacking the C Castle when if You' if you just surround the castle and put them under siege you've got the Farmland well it's not about the Farmland specifically it's about attacking the center of gravity the center of the civilization that whole society revolves around that one location and in feudal Europe it was a castle moving forward a little bit to uh World War I and World War II era we've got things like the magino line right where technically speaking you know the whole idea of you know Hitler going around the magino instead of you know actually like you know using this whole medieval concept of super fortresses covering each other right this is a big topic of course that's debated very hotly but the general theory with imagin o line is very similar to Medieval Europe you've got big fortresses that can dominate an area make it really really hard so that even if you do Advanced past places uh even going back to like Fort V in World War I Fort vo and fort damal in France they had really dominating views of the French Countryside and as long as they were there they were going to be a point of enemy contention so even if you Advanced past those forts those forts behind your enemy behind your lines would not be a good thing this is why the concept of the Fortress is very important in Warfare because even if you advance all the way around it right you've still got to go for that center of gravity this Point's not really made in the book but I thought it was a good way to talk about that kind of thing right now chapter 17 is defeat them in detail basically summarized divide and conquer uh this is also where the author starts talking about things like political unrest and uh he sort of dances around the idea but I read this and immediately thought okay this is where the author is trying to talk about getting enemies to fight other enemies and as soon as that thought hit my brain Parts I immediately thought oh okay this is exactly what's going on in today's world how many times have you turned on the news or opened up social media and found some group which just appears out of nowhere that appears to Target you and your political beliefs hm really weird it's almost like someone or something or some much more powerful group is trying to get groups to fight each other so that those groups are not fighting them this is why I think you see a lot of racial tensions in society today because yeah this is a huge debate that will get me canceled if I say the wrong thing but bottom line is I I personally think that look you know cultures are different and I think a lot of times when you try to get one culture to you know assimilate into another culture that's just that's just not going to work and when you do it you've got cultural clashes you know look at Europe right now it's on fire due to you know immigration stuff like that but that doesn't mean that we can't like generally inhabit the same Planet without killing each other over it however this is the narrative that's being pushed the US versus them well when someone's pushing the US versus them narrative you got to wonder wait a minute this is coming from somewhere so again that's a very hot button issue that you know I've really not wanted to talk about a lot and when I do talk about it I have to bury it in the bottom of content that nobody ever watches but anyway this is a good way to talk about stuff like that is look man if if somebody's after you that could be not necessarily cultural differences but somebody wanting you to take the bait again this doesn't mean that you know everything's hunky dory and everybody gets along you know swimmingly really getting shot at by you know gang bangers in a city is not exactly I don't exactly sit in my car and think you know what it's it's uh it's this group that's you know the government or whatever that's trying to to get these people to hate me you know when I'm getting shot at I don't really tend to think about that sort of thing I tend to think about the people shooting at me so um it's again not as simple as I make it out to be but I thought this is a very interesting way to highlight the fact that look man getting your enemies to fight other enemies is a very valuable battle tactic we've all heard the phrase You Know The Enemy of My Enemy is my friend well what if the friend of your enemy can be turned into the enemy of your enemy if that makes any sense if you can get the enemy's allies to fight amongst each other man that they're fighting each other instead of you that's brilliant right hard to do but very brilliant anyway number 18 is Expose and attack your opponent's soft flank the the author calls this the Turning strategy basically the whole chapter can be boil down to attack where your adversaries are weak right simple as that number 19 is almost the same thing uh it's uh envelop the enemy which is sort of the idea of encirclement uh now the author this is a chapter I would definitely read in detail because the author talks a lot about the Iran Contra affair and how that was used by Iran is basically a trap for the US government and though this definitely can be debated the author makes a lot of very good points regarding the uh the Iranians kind of ideas of getting the US sucked into this political um Honeypot basically and undermining the United States while getting the United States to to help them out right so it's kind of a very interesting uh little historical little historical note that I think is uh very interesting so moving on to chapter 20 we've got uh maneuver them into weakness uh basically the subtitle is ripening them for the sickle you know again maneuver Warfare this chapter wasn't really needed but it's in there uh number 21 is negotiate while advancing this is an important aspect right the Diplomatic war strategy is what the uh what the what the author claims it to be again bringing in uh the ever revered clous witz who most famously said war is a continuation of politics by other means well the author kind of dances around this again and basically mentions well let's bring War by other means as well not just a physical War but a war of politics and things like that so again it's it's important but I I didn't really find it be that interesting and number 22 is very important which is know how to end things basically exit strategy if you read chapter 22 you will realize that virtually everything the author recommends a force to do is what the US did not do in Vietnam or Afghanistan so it's just kind of a depressing read because you're like oh okay yeah good tip glad to see that we did not follow that uh basic Ultra basic uh Fisher Price level military strategy um really great that my uh tax dollars are going to that sort of thing and finally part five part five as soon as I turned to that chapter I thought oh man this is going to be good and I was a little bit let down uh part five is unconventional warfare uh dirty Warfare and the reason that I wanted this this section to be so powerful is because I'm not perfect and I really do uh tend to romanticize the concepts of asymmetric Warfare unconventional warfare the little guy right because I think that deep down all of us who are you know on this rock spinning around the Sun we want to be more powerful than we really are and in today's age where the average American feels utterly and completely powerless about the tiniest details in their life we really do enjoy an Underdog Story this is why unconventional warfare seems to be such a Hot Topic in like the Tactical Community today because everybody wants to figure out what's the magic here what's the secret to being able to use one guy against 500 right that 300 Spartans at thermopolymerization style that's not that different than unconventional warfare just to survive and it's sad I think um it's very stressful but it's what people feel and I think that's why unconventional warfare stuff is so popular now um and chapter 23 kind of highlights one of the Lesser known parts of unconventional warfare basically propaganda SL camouflage now again let me turn to this chapter because man I thought okay this author has no clue about this basically the author talks about um the grand military campaign the grand deception operation uh in the leadup to D-Day which is a classic classic uh classic historical example however the author kind of cherry-picks when it comes to deception now again I I don't want to to knock this too much uh because my own kind of I wouldn't say area of expertise but I've done a lot of reading a lot of research and a lot of work in the field of military deception and all we have to do is break out our handy dandy copy of the battle staff handbook to learn that there it's not just a the author's kind of cherry-picking things here so for instance the author mentions things like the false front or the decoy attack or camouflage or hypnotic patterns still don't know what that means uh but the concepts of camouflage and imp planted information what the author should have done here is talked about the ideas of ambiguity increasing operations and ambiguity decreasing operations planted information is doctrinally speaking what we call a ruse now a ruse is not just a a word you use in a tweet to make yourself sound smarter it actually means something a ruse is intended to be an ambiguity decreasing operation sometimes if we're talking about specifically the haversack ruse uh that is definitely an ambiguity decreasing operation we've all heard the story before because the havac ruse comes from well it predates World War I I think but most of the time we hear it in terms of World War I being fought against the Ottoman Empire right the British officer or the uh Arab separatist officer however you want to say it the messenger rides up close to the Enemy Lines the enemy shoots at him the the officer on the horseback pretends to drop his map case and rides off back to camp and of course the enemy who saw this whole thing happen goes out there captures the map case and lo and behold the whole plans for the enemy Advance is is contained within this map case so the whole point of that was to plant that information in that map case to make the enemy more sure right they want to decrease ambiguity we want the enemy to think aha I know what they're going to do without a shadow of a doubt now and the whole thing is based on aruse right it's a whole it's all just a plan a more contemporary I guess if you want to call it example of the haversat cruise was the case of operation minc meat which uh there's a fantastic book on it by Ben McIntyre if you want to check that one out but basically the whole idea is the same except they took a a corpse literally and handcuffed a uh briefcase to his risk you know super top secret spy briefcase and flung The Body out off the coast of I think Spain and that was supposed to be containing the plans for the whole operation Husky which was the uh Allied invasion of Italy again this is kind of a digression but it is very very important to understand that you know camouflag is is can be ambiguity decreasing or ambiguity increasing decoys are ambiguity decreasing because we want the enemy to look at our decoy and say aha there's the enemy tank they shoot at it now they realize wait we've just revealed our own position and now we can Target them so the whole concepts of military deception are very very complicated and it's it's just just not really done super well uh in this chapter but it's okay it's the basics are there but if you get to this chapter I would very strong even if you have no understanding of military operations or you have no desire to learn really I would still recommend getting a copy of the battle staff smart book um you can order that from the lightning press directly and and flip to the chapters on Military deception it's about I don't know five or six pages and it really really does help you from a staff officer's perspective understand what deception is all about uh but anywh who moving on to chapter 24 we get uh take the line of least expectation again the whole idea here is to work outside of your enemy's experiences if you're up against an anti-tank unit well maybe not use tanks and the assault use something else or use them in unconventional ways right basically the author correctly stat that you should be crazy like a fox right never really being able to be predictable in what you're trying to do again this this highlights the whole point of counterinsurgency Doctrine not really doing any of this uh nothing the United States did uh was was unpredictable uh during most of uh the counter Insurgency Wars that we fought over the past Century I guess but anyway that's I guess a talk for another day number 25 is a the odd man out in this entire book which is titled occupy the moral High Ground this chapter directly contradicts everything else in this book in which the author is advocating for being the most evil ruthless son of a gun that the world has ever seen and now suddenly in 20 chapter 25 we're supposed to occupy the moral High Ground because if our troops realize that they are literally being evil they're not going to want to fight super well so again I it's this is contradictory for like some of the chapters which are like you know like the first this contradicts the first chapter you know in which the author says you know be ruthless any who uh you know I think that it's kind of the ruthlessness could probably be toned down a little bit in the book I think but um yeah it's just just kind of the odd man out there uh chapter 26 again very simple now that we're getting to the end of the book these chapters get kind of simple which is deny them targets summed up in a single sentence don't be there if the enemy is going to Target someplace don't be there right to me I think of uh this being linked very strongly to trade space for time because you want to force your adversary to send 65,000 troops to their Capital Region without you ever actually being there you know that's that was a huge waste of time and it makes them look foolish sort of along these same lines don't be there basically if your enemy is trying to Target you in location if there is a false flag event or something like that putting things in our modern context don't be there now this doesn't mean to not do anything this just means be somewhere else number 27 is uh seem to work for the interests of others while furthering your own again contradictory to literally chapter 25 which says occupy the moral High Ground now we're trying to play our allies and get our allies to do our dirty work for us that's what this whole chapter is about so again very sneaky very underhanded I'm not saying that this doesn't happen and that there's not an element of this I'm just saying that you know there are times in this book where I think you know I I the author's not wrong um I just wouldn't go that far you know I wouldn't if this is what we have to do to win I don't want to win you know I thought that quite a lot uh throughout this book and in this chapter I think the same moving on to chapter 28 we have give your Rivals enough rope to hang themselves with again this is very strongly related to I think uh chapter 26 and a few others uh to be honest because it's kind of the whole idea of getting your adversary playing to their ego and making them do something stupid uh making them send soldiers here when you are here uh making them uh crack down on Peaceful protests when all you're going to do is create U more dissension in the whole world of Insurgency going way back to Vietnam and Way Beyond right for every Insurgent killed especially in a religious or ethnic War for every Insurgent killed you've created five more right so that's the whole idea here is that that kind of thing will lead to victory in the end you know maybe all things considered right things of course are not that simple but this is the idea for this chapter make your enemies do something that gets them in trouble in the long run sort of a good good like pallet cleanser after that is 29 which is take small bites basically slow and steady wins the race that's the whole point here right of of kind of unconventional warfare is take your time you've got time on your side and by the time anyone realizes that you have a lot of power as an Insurgent Force they've already lost right that's the whole point of things you want your enemy to be just as surprised uh as anyone else that uh they're they're at the gates uh after years of fighting sort of thing so so wrapping things up with the final three chapters here we've kind of got really quick thoughts because despite the fact that I was really excited to get to these three chapters it was kind of a let down when it comes to the interpretation section so uh Chapter 30 is penetrate their minds basically Communications is important and the power of interpretation of of communications is important too make your enemy question whether or not they heard things right um You can use the concept of communications to confuse confound and harass an adversary uh based on their simple understanding of what you really mean right so that's that chapter chapter 31 is destroy from within this is the whole um idea of an inner front strategy basically this is the idea that uh the author uses in in this chapter the example of the medieval castle you know by the time and this is a really good thought like I appreciate this uh because the theory is look we we all know about castles and medieval architecture and things like that uh and we know what castles do right if an enemy force is coming all the peasants and the you know feudal uh system basically moves inside to the castle inside the keep uh Behind the Walls for defense right people don't necessarily live in the castle except for of course the elite uh but the castle is a point of common defense it is a center of gravity right but here's the point by the time the actual enemy arrives at your gates at your city Gates By the time that happens you've really already lost because at that point you're not relying on diplomacy you're not relying on maneuver Warfare you're not relying on uh allies to come help you out at that point you're relying on the physical bricks and stones the physical architecture of the castle to protect you you have no diplomatic real ways out uh you have no real um defensive capabilities you're just relying on a fail safe which is stone walls now I don't agree with this totally because there are a a lot of things again castles can be used to trade space for time again A lot of times castles were made so that a a force could hold up inside the castle protect their people while other uh allies come to the aid of the sieging party then you can attack from the front and attack from the rear and attack from the flanks as well usually against an enemy who has sieged your Castle so they're now in hostile land again it's it doesn't make it doesn't mean that anytime you see a castle under siege that The Siege is going to that that the castle Under Siege is going to lose um which I think the author kind of Misses but this is an interesting idea that you don't want to get to the point to where you're relying on passive measures like physical defenses in order to win U because by that time you're on the back foot you're on the defense and it's it's a lot harder to dig yourself out of that hole likewise you could do the same to the enemy and uh force them to rely on Hardware concrete G geography architecture they've got to rely on these things because no other tool they have works very interesting concept though uh chapter 32 is dominate while seeming to submit again this chapter I I don't know if it was actually my note here says uh passive aggression that is absolutely the whole summary of that chapter passive aggression uh undermining uh non-committal attitudes uh pretending to be stupid stuff like that all of this kind of things the passive uh ways of resisting that's an effective Warfare tactic I mean it has worked quite well even if it's not really satisfying and it really can hurt your morale uh in the long term but hey you know it's in the book and it's definitely a valid addition for sure and chapter 33 perhaps the most exciting yet underwhelming chapter is SE uncertainty and panic through acts of Terror basically the bottom line is Terrorism works because well it just works there's a lot of ways that you can use terrorism as a tool to get what you want um the author and myself I guess doesn't really go into detail uh regarding the why and specific you know terrorism kind of ideas probably for legal reasons but you know in today's in today's climate this book was published not that long ago so yeah there would still be the sort of censorship and legal concerns I guess uh but yeah chapter 33 is basically terrorism um and uh that can kind of apply to pretty much every chapter I think so far so that pretty much wraps us up uh one thing that I did want to kind of note is that one of the things that I love to do usually even before beginning to read a book I will flip all the way to the back and I will look at the selected