Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Fight Or Flight, Give Your Opponent The Choice

Fight Or Flight, Give Your Opponent The Choice
Fight or flight becomes instinctive when we are put in any stressful situation.

You get confronted and you have only two choices.Right?

But what happens when a person – or an army – is left without a choice?

I mean, if retreating is not an option, fighting is all that is left.

And funny things can happen when you make someone fight for their life.

For a better chance of ending a conflict, it seems like there should be as many options for peace as possible.

In my limited experience, it seems like most aggressors want to walk away when they know that the battle is lost.

An entire fight – an entire war – can turn on a small shift in momentum.

I guess this could all me wrong.

But sometimes, the best choice might be giving a bully the opportunity to back down and save face.

The Romans knew about this idea.

Without a way out, tensions only increase and combatants have no choice but to fight on. Scipio Africanus, the general who defeated Hannibal, would say that an army should not only leave a road for their enemy to retreat by, they should pave it. The Romans had a name for this road, the Gallic Way.

-Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy

What Is Russian Maskirovka?

What Is Russian Maskirovka?
Russian Maskirovka is the warfare of deceit and disguise.

In fact, I can only think of two strategies of warfare.

The first is Maskirovka.

Confuse, conceal, mask, and surprise.

The second is strength and total annihilation.

For if a force is bigger, stronger, and more intelligent, deception can be unnecessary.

“We are here. Dare to attack us. You have no chance.”

Of course, even with a commanding force, this does not always work.

And more than one army in history has been wrong about the dominance of its size, strength. and intellect.

The point is that the more you can make the military objectives of your opponent less clear, the better chance you have to win.

There’s an old line that in war the truth is so precious that it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies. A good strategy, for its part, must be flanked by feints and disguises. Otherwise, the counterstrategy becomes too easy to deduce. The Russians call this maskirovka—the art of deception and confusion. It is as old as strategy itself. Undermine your enemy, Sun Tzu advised 2,500 years ago. “Subvert him, attack his morale, strike at his economy, corrupt him. Sow internal discord among his leaders; destroy him without fighting him.” Call down the fog of war, he was telling conspirators and generals and swordsmen, let it descend on your opponent until they cannot see what is right before them. Because “all warfare,” Sun Tzu reminds us, “is based on deception.” Not just keeping secrets—that’s the first part, the passive part, a refusal to reveal your true intentions—but active, outwardly focused deceit intended to disorient and weaken the enemy.

-Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy (Amazon)

Sterling Terrell