War, Power, Strategy

each year Microsoft Research hosts hundreds of influential speakers from around the world including leading scientists renowned experts in technology book authors and leading academics and makes videos of these lectures freely available to a welcome Robert Green author of the the 33 strategies of war in the previous 48 laws of power and art of seduction we arranged this as part of the MS are visiting lecture series because well strategy is important to Microsoft and I think it's it's great to get other viewpoints besides the ones that we typically see one of the things I've always really liked about Roberts books is the way he he brings in a lot of different perspectives historical as well as modern from you know a bunch of different cultural perspectives and on top of that the books are beautiful you've got it you got a admire anybody who within an hour of sitting around my office can have me coming down here in red high heels to give the introduction to his talk so I think I'm not quite sure what strategy that's part of but nonetheless I'm delighted to a welcome Robert Greene thank you well I'm very excited to be here I hope hello can you hear me no my switch yeah it's on I think you lot Reagan hello can you hear me now no no yes no well things are getting off to a good start here how about there No hello Roger one two three ten four hello over and out no here this thing oh good idea hello is that any better that is better how about that I don't know I can't tell any different oh there we go there we go ah voila okay thank you very much for coming I'm very excited to be here I hope you don't expect me to be talking about software development or anything like that 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 into 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 has 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 mass of 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 bed side he would read it he would share it with his closest advisers 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 strategy 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 we're 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 the infield 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 close derd military schools a hand of very small number of people mostly men which is the state basically the same situation that has prevailed for thousands upon thousands of years now I'm not suggesting that and 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 of 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 cultural prejudice that is in fact actually not based on the truth 2,500 years ago the great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu to find 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 the reality that we are dealing with day to day is very different there's a very big disconnect 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 as 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 what happens in a lot of groups is that people no longer have such strong ties to the company to the net 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 law is and of 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 in addition because 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 the 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 gives 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 is 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 learned 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 chapter 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 the 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 we saw she 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 Itachi judo he vowed to get revenge on Musashi for this and so he challenged Musashi to a duel musashi's friends smell the trap here and they warned him don't 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 they'll be probably be an ambush of course Musashi went to the duel alone in the last two duels with with the Yoshioka clan Musashi all we 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 of a couple minutes later mata shokudo showed up surrounded with an army of nine other samurai warriors and Musashi could hear them talking and one of them said haha that Musashi he always shows up late well that tricks are not going to work this time and the samurai warriors began to sit down and wait for Musashi to arrive a few seconds later and we saw she jumped out from behind of his tree holding his sword and he said I waited long enough mata she judo and he started coming at him Monta shokudo 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 after this Musashi roamed the countryside looking for challenges and he heard of this very famous warrior named by ken by Ken fought with this a 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 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 in the ball until it got a lot of momentum and then he would charge it 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 crossing about 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 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 we saw she carries 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 gan-ryu gan-ryu 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 the his opponent tremble with fear Musashi naturally challenges gan-ryu to a duel and gun Ryu accepts the duel is to take place on a very small island near Gondry's home at about 8:00 in the morning gan-ryu arrives at 8:00 in the morning and the island is packed with spectators this is the equivalent of Ali versus Frazier the two greatest summarize of the time of course gun Ryo is waiting no Musashi it's 9:00 a.m. no Musashi it's 10:00 a.m. he's still not there he's pacing the aisle in furious determined to just not only kill him but rip him to shreds around 10:00 a.m. 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 was kind of half asleep whittling a very large wooden or and as it get close gets close enough they all realize that it's Musashi he doesn't pay any 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 or no sword at all just a wooden or and he jumps off ready for the duel well gunner 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 or this is a mad mat before he has a chance to do what he's usually does gun Ryo which is charge him and impale him with his beautiful sword here is Musashi suddenly charging at him with a wooden or 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 we saw she's wooden or 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 use time and again and 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 now I see this is 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 large or whatever it is they depend on physical mechanical 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 Sun Tzu wrote that excuse me he wrote that in every bout 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've either won or Eve 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've already lost the war if on the other hand you try this other approach and you ground yourself and 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 I want to switch gears here a little bit go in a slightly different direction 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 is 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 stress gee and grand strategy we have a simple 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 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 meatus probably the baddest goddess of them all meatus had the power to change into any shape that she wanted and she was also the cleverest of all the Immortals now Seuss was 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 meatus was around but this was a very clever man so what he did was one night he seduced me to us 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 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 swallow 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 meatus 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 and 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 loved the glory that would come from killing Athena hated warfare what Athena liked was winning she decided though that to win being a 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 incredibly fluid in 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 now 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 9 years of futile endless blood Ares 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 theater 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 this very flashy but has a terrible foundation but we don't cross the sea successfully where we lose the war would lose the election so when these 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 that attachment that she always bring 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 that 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 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 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 from 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 with me that you saw 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 and 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 you ultimate goal is and you crea you craft a very powerful 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 essentially won over political humor in 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'd simply defeated them in battle this is the idea of grand strategy when I've looked at all of the greatest strategist in history your Napoleon's you're Hannibal you're Queen Elizabeth the first or Abraham Lincoln's 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 have 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 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 brand 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 strategic if you will President 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 if you know anything about George W he's a man who has a kind of almost Freudian or oedipal 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 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 that 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 a little bit of revenge in there it's not a question of whether he actually believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack it is the fact that he had a predisposition of 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 neo-cons the neoconservatives and the neoconservatives come to him with this incredible scenario of what will happen when you get rid of Saddam Hussein the 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 area experiences incredible stability oil interests are now secured Israel is no longer threatened on and on and on kind of a reverse domino effect it's an 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 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 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 talk to revenge resolve 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 has never had democracy that it's incredibly divided that was created in 1916 or whatever that may be the american-style democracy will will not take root you don't think that you see what you want to see instead of imagining that this scenario that you have painted of peace spreading could actually turn into the opposite you never see so I remember when 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 that weren't very many people who listened to me but I could not for the life of me see how this war would end and 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 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 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're going to do every damn thing they can to disrupt it which is exactly the situation that had happened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan the war that I think is the greatest parallel to this one and I talked about it in the book so scuse 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 strategist 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 at a strictly from strategy and I could make just as a 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 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 even social everybody thinks when they enter action that they have a plan that they have a strategy Mike Tyson said everybody has 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 assume that they have no strategy the problem is that inevitably emotions 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 this other is of bad strategy these are the results 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 were able to at least attach 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 very important the second section is on how you organize your group organize your army I maintain I follow the napoleonic ideal which is the structure of your organization is the most important strategic decision you can it 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 than offensive war and then it concludes with unconventional or dirty war it the beat of the book begins with the kind of the mental process the most primitive aspect of war and it ends in chapter 33 with terrorism 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 TE Lawrence Mouse a duel on and on the other half though I have stories that take place in in daily life and social what I call social warfare there's stories of great politicians who applied strategy like Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson I have artists writers Fyodor 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 as almost being a kind of a general and of course I tried to loosen up the stranglehold that men and masculinity has on war because it is a very male oriented environment and I try include as many stories as I can of women who I see is 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 would will prevail it's not the money the the influence you have the power that you might possess what always will prevail at 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 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 I'm really hoping I get some questions yes sure on your analysis of the bill and it seems to me that you know a lot of times from the mistakes of Aldous into maggots we could ascribe the motivations to our people analyzing or to opponents that we have ourselves yeah and I think it's kind of a you know I don't know if it's exactly accurate to think that the reason that we you know and I bases on unlocking people who are involved in situations I think it's simplistic kind of simplistic analysis to think that that decisions at that level are mates you know based upon emotions like I will agree that we went into Iraq you know and this is objectified known factor that's one of just an example as you could say but I think that it was a logical and rather than 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 exam 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 an 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 had you know I had to do this in a rather glib manner but please read a book called the assassins gate which came out about three months ago about the Iraq war 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 whole 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 basically stanzas said you know you know we're talking war we're just talking like a business compared to like that even in a business situation the problem with everybody strategy and Bismarck you know noted that basically the friction and the little of wars or the problem is that your opponent also has a strategy and your opponent is going to adapt his strategy based upon which why wouldn't you take that into consideration you know obviously I mean look I've been studying war since I was maybe ten 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 his 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 project you draw your enemy into a protracted struggle and you defeat him in an attrition style why would you at least consider that option I think it was I think you also have coming basically one of the you know the problem of the United States in fighting conflicts like this and this is the strategic problem it maybe you can look at also its 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 who our opponents will deliberately target innocent bystanders if they can kill but 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 I'm sorry I think I'm going to hola who is this privilege I think this is a really no guessing a topic but I think we usually wind up as a diversion from from the more general lot of things so I think good point good point okay but let's shift our attention away from okay yes sir I grassy modern Marwar friend and in the environment that if we working that we get it accomplished to do is there a way it seems like modern warfare and the workplace are places where you're expensive yeah question how much how much of military strategy unless you discard when working in a moral environment and how much has there been a great strategist and post-1945 there that you can identify this new world well it is a really good question and obviously if you're 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 the same way that a binge 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 sunsoo 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 an 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 you know guy talk about Gandhi in this I have a chapter on passive resistance which also segues into a chapter on passive aggression and you know Gandhi is a very moral fighter I analyzed it from a strategy strategic point of view 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 that 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 yes gentlemen can you comment on Tom Friedman's book the world is flat concept of globalization well you know I haven't really read the book I read his articles all the time 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 analyses of the Iraq war but I don't know if I ascribe to that maybe I have to hear more of it I had a friend recently who came back from India and he 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 that hasn't reached that's just anecdotal though was there a reason you're asking that her contained us in the last five years right century we seem to factor into a lot of speakeasy thinking went forward well yes but there will you know there will always be differences it's it would be kind of a temptation then to fall into the fallacy of everyone is just like us which is a fallacy I still think is kind of it 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 particularity zuv the culture and the social 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 yes I'm questioning how does the deployed said what in essence it is inhale now my question really is is that how do you drive that like with what we're talking about no no you don't understand trans math we finish the shirt flop okay so there's a school that says right now for instance in Iran fit uh most young people especially that al-qaeda might be a little worried about the changes occurring the twelve to sixteen eight year old group not infants of any one thing but I think he's usamos been quoted as saying that basically the twelve to sixteen year olds are his soldiers next generation uh-huh so the moral party how do you think that ties into to a grand session but thinking of where you get people behind it cetera et cetera rightly or wrongly how do you look well the one thing is I talk about that dictum of Napoleon's but the word moral in French is maja right you understand it's not morality right to understand okay to understand is what I mean is it you're getting an idea cross right money how does that fit in how does it fit in the sense of people let's say say even it's an emotionally based strategy what if people buy into that idea you know the great things have been caused by people yes believing yes I have a chapter in 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 is extremely extremely valid that examples throughout history of motivated armies defeating mercenary armies within credit or facing incredible odds and I don't know if I'm maybe I have to hear your question again but 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 it has been for a while and you have 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 where you have soldiers who are not on a police action and they're not this is not how soldiers are used to fighting now they don't like it and morale is actually quite low it is quite a problem and the general delivery 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 or al 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 which is that getting there getting path to the thing I had that hurts the old Davis thing switching the idea that they had an idea they pretended for a while that they were number two when they weren't remember six or seven and they sold this is years ago the classic history I think it ain't years ago now yeah they sold the idea everyone that they were number two and they were number seven and pretty soon they were number one or two and everyone bought into it they not advertised that way you may recall it yes I'm old enough to remember them around right question I'm old enough to remember interesting because they got people to buy into something that wasn't really fashionable right oh I see I see your point that's how ya know you're you yeah I was thinking about are there any scenarios in situations in which the principles that you outlined either don't apply or not as effective I thought about that Oh completely that's why I try to make the point of that do not fight the last war I try over and over again in my books it's not a formula it's not a matter of you know I have a chapter in there about the annihilation strategy the an envelope meant strategy you don't want to apply that to many of the situations that you were facing in life you know I have a chapter in the power book about crush your enemy totally you know you're not going to be doing that in your day to day affairs is it something for very specific circumstance and so Soviet move a point that he made which is you know thinking about situations in the moment yeah and thinking about it from different perspectives yes and try to in Fred things in u.s. I guess but I'm so I don't follow it your question Oh what do you mean they do not fight the last war approach where you're very alive - what is going on very fluid I don't know I mean I I kind of make trying to make the point that that is the foundation of any solid strategy that you're 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 the fluid person that only does what's in the moment I please don't misunderstand me I have a chapter in here about planning which I consider the secret to Napoleon success in warfare this was a man that planned to an incredible degree he planned an 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 the moment that's not strategy that's part of strategy I guess yes fella I've read both the year 48 laws of power in yards - books now excellent the examples were always ones that had happened a lot in through historical times I was wondering if you could take it on this book or what are those two books and how you apply one of the concepts air to your old life as someone whose instead of trying to defeat enemies in 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 a three or four people like your agent you know the your editor so it's very very close dirt and very unusual but yeah I'm having to apply strategy all the time I have a partner as you know on my book man named Yost elvers 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 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 understand you to say that the get out of there to civilians because tsutsu had six different Japanese editions a thousand years ago yes but who was reading those Japanese no I mean Jeff Japan had a very separate caste 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 citizen or a peasant or someone who wasn't in the Leafs they had no access to that book and what 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 touching up fresh that no matter how things on the ground it was a successful work in public perception says that we're being decisive and acted 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 we're successful follow maybe have to understand the question well war where what happened where the military operations fade mm-hmm yet some broader sense the war succeed well he just said it the Tet Offensive yeah it said offensive which I analyzed in there was probably one of the most brilliant bits of strategy in military time I think the Vietnam War for instance is 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 fridge now that's brilliant to me 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 Vietcong that they had been gathering for years this is the secret vietnam vietnamese sympathizers in the south were suddenly out in the open and were attacking places like saigon like the way and it was a massacre in 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 showed 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 Vietcong who were butchered in that when that but it ended up the Tet Offensive was the turning point of the Vietnam War it caused the Lyndon Johnson do not run for president and it was it was the beginning of the end yeah Eddie goes small-scale there were 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 did you know that the North who meets actually chronicles are suing for peace in 1968 but then he's trying to read the news from Kenton crisi American seat the guy's well there's the pave on that this debate on that I mean I could my take of it was that they they were aware of what was going on and Geoff's memoir say that they were considering surgeries and they realized that I've got a strategic victory on him out of a tactical defeat but there are also things like 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 that was after that basically no that was the tech that was part of Ted the whole attack on Saigon was was geared very tactic very strategically first places where they were Walter Cronkite was where well I mean he why did he want to have a very visible thing there's no doubt about that yeah but like they did take away because presses they do it way because it's a TV you know 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 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 and constructed all of their tunnels under the Citadel which is an amazing story they all he never intended to stay they never stockpiled enough weapons and never stockpiled enough supplies to stay their intention was always to leave that's how I read it also I think great talk thanks to everybody for the questions one of the things that comes out clear clearly is how complex and if there's what they could take away its Roberts point that the formulas are going to work because even the facts are very often ambiguous yeah things a lot for everybody for coming the questions is gonna be awesome okay

Channel: Microsoft Research

Views: 81,658

Rating: 4.8453331 out of 5

Keywords: microsoft research

Id: O_asN2Qib2w

Length: 75min 7sec (4507 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2016