Liddell Hart Quotes

Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.

The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.

If you wish for peace, understand war.

For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.

A strategist should think in terms of paralyzing, not of killing. —Basil Liddell Hart

But time and surprise are the two most vital elements in war.

For Caesar met failure each time he relied on the direct, and retrieved it each time he resorted to the indirect.

It would seem that Caesar's recurrent and deep-rooted fault was his concentration in pursuing the objective immediately in front of his eyes to the neglect of his wider object. Strategically he was an alternating Jekyll and Hyde.

Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable-those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement. To men of the last type their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty, not the sham of insincere self-depreciation but the modesty of "moderation," in the Greek sense. It

Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.

The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace"-this sentence

The historian's rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug.

Guerrillas war is a kind of war waged by a few but dependent on the support of many." —B.H. Liddell Hart

Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished-by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach.

Epaminondas himself fell in the moment of victory, and in his death contributed not the least of his lessons to subsequent generations-by an exceptionally dramatic and convincing proof that an army and a state succumb quickest to paralysis of the brain.

Too sane also, to anticipate the World War habit of digging in and clinging on to a depressed and depressing foothold under the enemy's "command." When

For there is nothing more intolerable to mankind than suspense; when a thing is once decided, men can but endure whatever out of the catalogue of evils it is their misfortune to undergo.

Thus through the folly of a single hot-headed general, whose offensive spirit was not balanced by judgment, the Empire suffered a blow from which it never recovered-although it had sufficient power of endurance to survive, in a diminished form, for a further four hundred years.

No man of action has more completely attained the point of view of the scientific historian, who observes the movements of mankind with the same detachment as a bacteriologist observes bacilli under a microscope and yet with a sympathy that springs from his own common manhood. In

Thus an excess of directness and a want of art, in the second phase, robbed Caesar of his chance of ending the war in one campaign, and condemned him to four more years of obstinate warfare all round the Mediterranean basin.

Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth-for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.

The principle of compulsory service, embodied in the system of conscription, lias been the means by which modem dictators and military gangs have shackled their people after a coup d'état, and bound them to their own aggressive purposes. In view of the great service that conscription has rendered to tyranny and war, it is fundamentally shortsighted for any liberty-loving and peace-desiring peoples to maintain it as an imagined safeguard, lest they become the victims of the monster they have helped to preserve.

We must face the fact that international relations are governed by interests and not by moral principles.

Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.’ This saying, quoted of Bismarck,

But Polybius brought out the basic lesson in his reflection-'for as a ship, if you deprive it of its steersman, falls with all its crew into the hands of the enemy; so, with an army in war, if you outwit or out-manoeuvere its general, the whole will often fall into your hands'.

While many lessons can be found in Frederick's campaigns, the main one would appear to be that his indirectness was too direct. To express this in another way, he regarded the indirect approach as a matter of pure manoeuvre with mobility, instead of a combination of manoeuvre with mobility and surprise. Thus, despite all his brilliance, his economy of force broke down.

One direct approach had, by its vain cost, done much to undo the aggregate advantage which indirect approaches alone had built up. And it is not the least significant feature that the issue was finally settled, in the reverse way, by yet another example of the indirect approach.

But Quebec is an illuminating example of the truth that a decision is produced even more by the mental and moral dislocation of the command than by the physical dislocation of its forces.

It was a strategic victory as bloodless for the defeated as for the victor-and the less men slain on the other side, the more potential adherents and recruits for Caesar. Despite the substitution of manoeuvre for direct assaults upon his enemy the campaign had cost him only six weeks of his time.

the brilliant strategist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart came to a stunning conclusion: In only 6 of the 280 campaigns was the decisive victory a result of a direct attack on the enemy’s main army. Only six. That’s 2 percent.

... throughout the ages, effective results in war have rarely been attained unless the approach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponent's unreadyness to meet it. The indirectness has usually been physical, and always psychological.

Decisive results come sooner from sudden shocks than from long- drawn pressure. Shocks throw the opponent off his balance. Pressure allows him time to adjust himself to it. That military lesson is closely linked with the general experience of history that human beings have an almost infinite power of accommo-' dation, to degradation of living conditions, so long as the process is gradual.

Frederick consistently used his central position to concentrate against one fraction of the enemy, and he always employed tactics of indirect approach. Thereby he gained many victories. But his tactical indirect approach was geometrical rather than psychological-unprepared by the subtler forms of surprise favoured by Scipio-and for all their executive skill, these manoeuvres were narrow. The opponent might be unable to meet the following blow, owing to the inflexibility of his mind or his formations, but the blow itself did not fall unexpectedly.

When the campaign had opened the scales were heavily weighted and steeply tilted on the side of Antigonus. Rarely has the balance of fortune so dramatically changed. It would seem clear that Antigonus's balance had been upset by the indirect approach which Cassander planned. This dislocated the mental balance of Antigonus, the moral balance of his troops and his subjects, and the physical balance of his military dispositions.

the statesman will soon find himself thwarted in some way or other, will deduce from this opposition a menace first to his plans, then to national prestige, and finally to the existence of the state itself — and so, regarding his country as the party attacked, will engage in a war of defence.

Mechanized warfare still left room for human qualities to play an important part in the issue. ‘Automatic warfare’ cancels them out, except in a passive form. Archidamus is at last being justified. Courage, skill and patriotism become shrinking assets. The most virile nation might not be able to withstand another, inferior to it in all natural qualities, if the latter had some decisively superior technical appliance. (...)The advent of ‘automatic warfare’ should make plain the absurdity of warfare as a means of deciding nations’ claims to superiority. It blows away romantic vapourings about the heroic virtues of war, utilized by aggressive and ambitious leaders to generate a military spirit among their people. They can no longer claim that war is any test of a people’s fitness, or even of its national strength. Science has undermined the foundations of nationalism, at the very time when the spirit of nationalism is most rampant.

Water shapes its course according to the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.

The vital influences are to be detected not in the formal documents compiled by rulers, ministers, and generals but in their marginal notes and verbal asides. Here are revealed their instinctive prejudices, lack of interest in truth for its own sake, and indifference to the exactness of statement and reception which is a safeguard against dangerous misunderstanding. I

In his earlier campaigns his logistical strategy was direct and devoid of subtlety. The cause would appear to be, first, that in the youthful Alexander, bred to kingship and triumph, there was more of the Homeric hero than in the other great captains of history; and, still more perhaps, that he had such justifiable confidence in the superiority of his instrument and his own battle handling of it that he felt no need to dislocate preparatorily his adversaries' strategic balance. His lessons for posterity lie at the two poles-grand strategy and tactics.

In 1870, came the victory of the short-service troops of Prussia over the long-service troops of France, where conscription had but recently been reintroduced in a partial form and as a supplementary measure. That obvious contrast carried more weight into the world than all the other factors which tilted the scales against France. As a result, universal peace-time conscription was adopted by almost all countries as the basis of their military system. This ensured that wars would grow bigger in scale, longer in duration, and worse in effects. While conscription appeared democratic, it provided autocrats, hereditary or revolutionary, with more effective and comprehensive means of imposing their will, both in peace and war. Once the rulp of compulsory service in arms was established for the young men of a nation, it was an obvious and easy transition to the servitude of the whole population. Totalitarian tyranny is the twin of total warfare—which might aptly be termed a reversion to tribal warfare on a larger scale.

Hovering in the enemy's neighbourhood, cutting off stragglers and foraging parties, preventing them from gaining any permanent base, Fabius remained an elusive shadow on the horizon, dimming the glamour of Hannibal's triumphal progress. Thus Fabius, by his immunity from defeat, thwarted the effect of Hannibal's previous victories upon the minds of Rome's Italian allies and checked them from changing sides. This guerrilla type of campaign also revived the spirit of the Roman troops while depressing the Carthaginians who, having ventured so far from home, were the more conscious of the necessity of gaining an early decision.

The strategy of Fabius was not merely an evasion of battle to gain time, but calculated for its effect on the morale of the enemy-and, still more, for its effect on their potential allies. It was thus primarily a matter of war-policy, or grand strategy. Fabius recognized Hannibal's military superiority too well to risk a military decision. While seeking to avoid this, he aimed by military pin-pricks to wear down the invaders' endurance and, coincidentally, prevent their strength being recruited from the Italian cities or their Carthaginian base. The key condition of the strategy by which this grand strategy was carried out was that the Roman army should keep always to the hills, so as to nullify Hannibal's decisive superiority in cavalry. Thus this phase became a duel between the Hannibalic and the Fabian forms of the indirect approach.

To move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent's balance and thus increases his resisting power. In war, as in wrestling, the attempt to throw the opponent without loosening his foothold and upsetting his balance results in self-exhaustion, increasing in disproportionate ratio to the effective strain put upon him. Success by such a method only becomes possible through an immense margin of superior strength in some form-and, even so, tends to lose decisiveness. In most campaigns the dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance has been the vital prelude to a successful attempt at his overthrow.

The established German Army no longer had the physical power to overcome the uniformed private armies of Left and Right. This weakness was not due to a lack of rifles, machine guns, or artillery, or even to a lack of men, but to a shortage of trucks. The vital role of the truck had already been recognized by some military experts. In England Captain B. H. Liddell Hart greeted the six-wheel truck as a landmark in military evolution.

Looking back on the stages by which various fresh ideas gained acceptance, it can be seen that the process was eased when they could be presented, not as something radically new, but as the revival in modern terms of a time-honoured principle or practice that had been forgotten. This required not deception, but care to trace the connection-since 'there is nothing new under the sun'. A notable example was the way that the opposition to mechanization was diminished by showing that the mobile armoured vehicle-the fast-moving tank-was fundamentally the heir of the armoured horseman, and thus the natural means of reviving the decisive role which cavalry had played in past ages.

The destruction of the enemy's armed forces is but a means--and not necessarily an inevitable or infallible one--to the attainment of the real objective. The object of war is not to destroy the enemy's tanks but to destroy his will.

Basil Liddell Hart, the British author, called it the expanding torrent system tactic. He drew an analogy between an attacking army and a torrent of water: If we watch a torrent bearing down on each successive bank of earth and dam in its path, we see that it first beats against the obstacle feeling it and testing it at all points. Eventually, it finds a small crack at some point. Through this crack pour the first driplets of water and rush straight on. The pent up water on each side is drawn towards the breach. It swirls through and around the flanks of the breach, wearing away the earth on each side and so widening the gap. Simultaneously the water behind pours straight through the breach between the side eddies which are wearing away the flanks. Directly it is passed through it expands to widen once more the onreach of the torrent. Thus as the water pours through in ever-increasing volume the onreach of the torrent swells to its original proportions, leaving in turn each crumbling obstacle behind it.

The history of ancient Greece showed that, in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out—at any point short of the exhaustion and destruction of one or other of the opposing sides. Democracy is a system which puts a brake on preparation for war, aggressive or defensive, but it is not one that conduces to the limitation of warfare or the prospects of a good peace. No political system more easily becomes out of control when passions are aroused. These defects have been multiplied in modern democracies, since their great extension of size and their vast electorate produce a much larger volume of emotional pressure.

Then, in 333 B.C., he turned south through the Cilician 'Gates' on the direct route towards Syria, where Darius III was concentrating to oppose him. Here, through the failure of his intelligence service and his own assumption that the Persians would await him in the plains, Alexander was strategically out-manoeuvred. While Alexander made a direct approach, Darius made an indirect-and, moving up the higher reaches of the Euphrates, came through the Amanic Gates onto Alexander's rear. He, who had been so careful to secure his chain of bases, now found himself cut off from them. But, turning back, he extricated himself at the battle of Issus by the superiority of his tactics as well as of his tactical instrument-no Great Captain applied this unexpectedness of indirectness more in his tactics.

Belisarius had developed a new-style tactical instrument with which he knew that he might count on beating much superior numbers, provided that he could induce his opponents to attack him under conditions that suited his tactics. For that purpose his lack of numbers, when not too marked, was an asset, especially when coupled with an audaciously direct strategic offensive. His strategy was thus more psychological than logistical. He knew how to provoke the barbarian armies of the West into indulging their natural instinct for direct assault; with the more subtle and skillful Persians he was able at first to take advantage of their feeling of superiority to the Byzantines, and later, when they learnt respect for him, he exploited their wariness as a means of outmanoeuvring them psychologically. He was a master of the art of converting his weakness into strength; and the opponent's strength into a weakness. His tactics, too, had the essential characteristic of the indirect approach-that of getting the opponent off balance, so that a joint becomes exposed and can be dislocated.

Bismarck’s aphorism throws a different and more encouraging light on the problem. It helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience, direct and indirect and that, of the two, indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.

In the middle of the sixth century there was, however, a period when the Roman dominion was revived in the West-from the East. During Justinian's reign in Constantinople, his generals reconquered Africa, Italy, and southern Spain. That achievement, associated mainly with the name of Belisarius, is the more remarkable because of two features-first, the extraordinarily slender resources with which Belisarius undertook these far-reaching campaigns; second, his consistent use of the tactical defensive. There is no parallel in history for such a series of conquests by abstention from attack. They are the more remarkable since they were carried out by an army that was based on the mobile arm-and mainly compose of cavalry. Belisarius had no lack of audacity, but his tactics were to allow-or tempt-the other side to do the attacking. IF that choice was, in part, imposed on him by his numerical weakness, it was also a matter of subtle calculation, both tactical and psychological.

Alexander's succeeding campaigns, until he reached the borders of India, were militarily a 'mopping up' of the Persian empire, while politically the consolidation of his own. He forced the Uxian defile and the Persian 'Gates' by an indirect approach, and when he was confronted on the Hydaspes by Porus, he produced a masterpiece of indirectness which showed the ripening of his own strategical powers. By laying in stores of corn, and by distributing his army widely along the western bank, he mystified his opponent as to his intentions. Repeated noisy marches and counter-marches of Alexander's cavalry first kept Porus on tenterhooks, and then, through repetition, dulled his reaction. Having thus fixed Porus to a definite and static position, Alexander left the bulk of his army opposite it, and himself with a picked force made a night crossing eighteen miles upstream. By the surprise of this indirect approach he dislocated the mental and moral balance of Porus, as well as the moral and physical balance of this army. In the ensuing battle Alexander, with a fraction of his own army, was enabled to defeat almost the whole of his enemy's. If this preliminary dislocation had not occurred there would have been no justification, either in theory or in fact, for Alexander's exposure of an isolated fraction to the risk of defeat in detail.

Universal peace-time conscription was adopted by almost all countries as the basis of their military system. This ensured that wars would grow bigger in scale, longer in duration, and worse in effects. While conscription appeared democratic, it provided autocrats, hereditary or revolutionary, with more effective and comprehensive means of imposing their will, both in peace and war. Once the rule of compulsory service in arms was established for the young men of a nation, it was an obvious and easy transition to the servitude of the whole population. Totalitarian tyranny is the twin of total warfare —which might aptly be termed a reversion to tribal warfare on a larger scale.

Ostensibly it would seem that the further apart these enemy forces, the easier it must be to achieve a decisive success. In terms of time, space, and number, this is undoubtedly true. But once more the moral element intrudes. When the enemy forces are widely separated each is self-contained and tends to be consolidated by pressure. When they are close together they tend to coalesce and 'become members one of another', mutually dependent in mind, morale, and matter. The minds of the commanders affect each other, moral impressions are quickly transfused, and even the movements of each force easily hinder or disorganized those of others. Thus while the antagonist has less time and space for his action, the dislocating results of it take effect more quickly and easily. Further, when forces are close together the enemy's mere divergence from his approach to one of them may become an unexpected, and therefore truly indirect approach to another. In contrast, when forces are widely separated there is more time to prepare to meet, or avoid, the second blow of the army which is exploiting its central position.

Man seems to come into the this world with an inalterable belief that he knows best and that he can make others think as he does by force. (How else do we explain why leading men in government madly propose the use of nuclear weapons against the people of another nation because of a trade dispute?) Nations delight in having a militaristic leader represent them and thrive on enforcing their will on lesser powers with a view to the glory and plunder that will follow victory. Peoples are never so united as in the early days of war nor so determined to overcome once they see that a greater effort and more sacrifices will be demanded of them before success is won. All very noble and all fantasy. Has any war in the history of the world followed such a pattern? None on the Ship of Fools ever asks.

The enigma of history," thus we have styled him, though the title "Father of German unity," or again, "Father of grand strategy," would have been equally just--that is, if we can associate so homely a word as "father" with that cold unemotional mind, so utterly detached from the instincts and prejudices of normal humanity, soaring to a purely intellectual atmosphere too rarified for ordinary minds to breathe.

Instead of making any further attempt to press the siege, Caesar devoted his energies to the creation of an artificial ford which enabled him to command both banks of the river Sicoris, on which Ilerda stood. This threatened tightening of his grip on their sources of supply induced Pompey's lieutenants to retire, while there was time. Caesar allowed them to slip away unpressed, but sent his Gallic cavalry to get on their rear and delay their march..Then, rather than assault the bridge held by the enemy's rear-guard, he took the risk of leading his legions through the deep ford, which was regarded as only traversable by cavalry and, marching in a wide circuit during the night, placed himself across the enemy's line of retreat. Even then he did not attempt battle, but was content to head off each attempt of the enemy to take a fresh line of retreat-using his cavalry to harass and delay them while his legions marched wide. Firmly holding in check the eagerness of his own men for battle, he at the same time encouraged fraternization with the men of the other side, who were growing more and m ore weary, hungry and depressed. Finally, when he had shepherded them back in the direction Ilerda, and forced them to take up a position devoid of water, they capitulated.

Scipio asked Hannibal, “Whom he thought the greatest captain?” The latter answered, “Alexander . . . because with a small force he defeated armies whose numbers were beyond reckoning, and because he had overrun the remotest regions, merely to visit which was a thing above human aspirations.” Scipio then asked, “ To whom he gave the second place ? ” and Hannibal replied, “To Pyrrhus, for he first taught the method of encamping, and besides, no one ever showed such exquisite judgment in choosing his ground and disposing his posts; while he also possessed the art of conciliating mankind to himself to such a degree that the natives of Italy wished him, though a foreign prince, to hold the sovereignty among them, rather than the Roman people. . . .” On Scipio proceeding to ask, “Whom he esteemed the third? ” Hannibal replied, “Myself, beyond doubt.” On this Scipio laughed, and added, “What would you have said if you had conquered me? ” “Then I would have placed Hannibal not only before Alexander and Pyrrhus, but before all other commanders.

The principles of war are the same as those of a siege. Fire must be concentrated on one point, and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing.' Subsequent military theory has put the accent on the first clause instead of on the last: in particular, on the words 'one point' instead of on the word 'equilibrium'. The former is but a physical metaphor, whereas the latter expresses the actual psychological result which ensures 'that the rest is nothing'. His own emphasis can be traced in the strategic course of his campaigns. The word 'point' even, has been the source of much confusion, and more controversy. One school has argued that Napoleon meant that the concentrated blow must be aimed at the enemy's strongest point, on the ground that this, and this only, ensures decisive results. For if the enemy's main resistance be broken, its rupture will involve that of any lesser opposition. This argument ignores the factor of cost, and the fact that the victor may be too exhausted to exploit his success-so that even a weaker opponent may acquire a relatively higher resisting power than the original. The other school-better imbued with the idea of economy of force, but only in the limited sense of first costs-has contended that the offensive should be aimed at the enemy's weakest point. But where a point is obviously weak this is usually because it is remote from any vital artery or nerve centre, or because it is deliberately weak to draw the assailant into a trap. Here, again illumination comes from the actual campaign in which Bonaparte put this maxim into execution. It clearly suggests that what he really meant was not 'point', but 'joint'-and that at this stage of his career he was too firmly imbued with the idea of economy of force to waste his limited strength in battering at the enemy's strong point. A joint, however, is both vital and vulnerable. It was at this time too, that Bonaparte used another phrase that has subsequently been quoted to justify the most foolhardy concentrations of effort against the main armed forces of the enemy. 'Austria is our most determined enemy....Austria overthrown, Spain and Italy fall of themselves. We must not disperse our attacks but concentrate them.' But the full text of the memorandum containing this phrase shows that he was arguing, not in support of the direct attack upon Austria, but for using the army on the frontier of Piedmont for an indirect approach to Austria.

From Bourcet he learnt the principle of calculated dispersion to induce the enemy to disperse their own concentration preparatory to the swift reuniting of his own forces. Also, the value of a 'plan with several branches', and of operating in a line which threatened alternative objectives. Moreover, the very plan which Napoleon executed in his first campaign was based on one that Bourcet had designed half a century earlier. Form Guibert he acquired an idea of the supreme value of mobility and fluidity of force, and of the potentialities inherent in the new distribution of an army in self-contained divisions. Guibert had defined the Napoleonic method when he wrote, a generation earlier: 'The art is to extend forces without exposing them, to embrace the enemy without being disunited, to link up the moves or the attacks to take the enemy in flank without exposing one's own flank.' And Guibert's prescription for the rear attack, as the means of upsetting the enemy's balance, became Napoleon's practice. To the same source can be traced Napoleon's method of concentrating his mobile artillery to shatter, and make a breach at, a key point in the enemy's front. Moreover, it was the practical reforms achieved by Guibert in the French army shortly before the Revolution which fashioned the instrument that Napoleon applied. Above all, it was Guibert's vision of a coming revolution in warfare, carried out by a man who would arise from a revolutionary state, that kindled the youthful Napoleon's imagination and ambition. While Napoleon added little to the ideas he had imbibed, he gave them fulfilment. Without his dynamic application the new mobility might have remained merely a theory. Because his education coincided with his instincts, and because these in turn were given scope by his circumstances, he was able to exploit the full possibilities of the new 'divisional' system. In developing the wider range of strategic combinations thus possible Napoleon made his chief contribution to strategy.

Conservative estimates place the Persian casualties at some two thousand in less than twenty minutes, victims of the unforgiving geometry of the battlefield. Because of the limitations of anatomy, humans are evolved to act effectively only in the direction that evolution has pointed eyes and hands. The consequences of this simple fact for military tactics, from Caesar to Napoleon to Patton, are always the same: Troops are more vulnerable on either side than they are in their front, and terribly so in their rear. Virtually the entire library of tactics, as set down in classics from Sun Tzu to Liddell Hart, consists of ornate descriptions of the best way to apply force—clubs, arrows, or .50 caliber machine-gun bullets—from your front to your enemies’ flank. And, obedient to the Golden Rule of Soldiering, to do so to him before he does so to you.

If you wish for peace, understand war. —B. H. Liddell Hart in Strategy (1967)

this must surely be one of the most astounding documents ever presented to an Ally when engaged in a life and death struggle. For it imposed what was really a veto on the best opportunity of cutting the common enemy’s life-line and of protecting our own.” By acquiescing to such an outrage, Liddell Hart contended, the British General Staff were essentially “accessories to the crime,” that crime being that the British in Egypt had now been given no alternative but to await another assault on the Suez Canal, and to then launch their own attack against the very strongest point of the Turkish line—the narrow front of southern Palestine—an approach that was to ultimately cost them fifty thousand more casualties.

For those wishing to understand Sun Tzu’s work, the most significant developments have instead resulted from the integration of aspects of Chinese strategic thought into Western strategic thinking, with the work of Basil H. Liddell Hart and John Boyd being particularly important in this regard. Liddell Hart and Boyd, two of the most influential strategic thinkers of the twentieth century, redefined and re-theorized Western strategic thought in a way that made it more attuned to Sun Tzu’s ideas. In so doing, they in turn made Sun Tzu’s work more comprehensible to the Western world.

Where Liddell Hart saw victory always accruing from the application of the indirect approach, Boyd saw the process of action–reaction, of learning, anticipation, invention and counter-movements. Boyd searched not for one particular optimum, but instead acknowledged the contingent nature of war, and focused on the universal processes and features that characterize war, strategy, and the game of winning and losing. Thus Boyd took his audience to insights that he considered more important: a balanced, broad and critical view instead of the doctrinaire.

El hombre responde a dos lealtades supremas: a su patria y a su familia. Para la mayoría, la segunda es la más fuerte, dado que es la más personal. Por tanto, mientras sus familias estén seguras, pelearán por defender a su país, en la creencia de que ese sacrificio sirve para protegerlas también a ellas. Pero cuando la propia familia está en peligro, hasta lazos tan sólidos como el patriotismo, la disciplina y la camaradería acaban por resentirse. La ofensiva por la retaguardia que ejecutó Sherman fue absolutamente letal: no iba dirigida contra la retaguardia del ejército, sino contra la del pueblo en conjunto. Así fue como logró que las dos lealtades entrasen en conflicto, lo que impuso una tensión que destrozaría la voluntad de lucha de los soldados.

Para Francisco la acción sobre la curia requería un tiempo de desgaste. Siempre recomendaba el libro La estrategia de la aproximación indirecta, del capitán Liddell Hart, asesor de Churchill, que describe cómo ganar batallas sin planear nunca un ataque frontal, con movimientos de aproximación, pero sin hostigar al centro del poder ni obligarlo a defenderse.

All of us do foolish things, but the wiser realize what they do. The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error. That failure is a common affliction of authority.

A shrewd committeeman often develops a technique based on this time calculation. He will defer his own intervention in the discussion until lunchtime is near, when the majority of the others are more inclined to accept any proposal that sounds good enough to enable them to keep their lunch engagement. Sometimes he will wait long enough to ensure that formidable opponents have to trickle away before a vote is taken. It was Napoleon who said that an army marches on its stomach. From my observation, I should be inclined to coin a supplementary proverb, that "history marches on the stomachs of statesmen.

If you can doubt at points where other people feel no impulse to doubt, then you are making progress.

For the tendency of all "governments" is to infringe the standards of decency and truth; this is inherent in their nature and hardly avoidable in their practice.

Hence the duty of the good citizen who is free from the responsibility of Government is to be a watchdog upon it, lest Government impair the fundamental objects which it exists to serve. It is a necessary evil, thus requiring constant watchfulness and check.

We learn from history that democracy has commonly put a premium on conventionality. By its nature, it prefers those who keep step with the slowest march of thought and frowns on those who may disturb the "conspiracy for mutual inefficiency." Thereby, this system of government tends to result in the triumph of mediocrity, and entails the exclusion of first-rate ability if this is combined with honesty. But the alternative to it, despotism, almost inevitably means the triumph of stupidity. And of the two evils, the former is the less.

He may realize that the world is a jungle. But if he has seen that it could be better for anyone if the simple principles of decency and kindliness were generally applied, then he must in honesty try to practice these consistently and to live, personally, as if they were general. In other words, he must follow the light he has seen.

wars would continue until the makers of gunpowder became professors of Greek, and he here had Gilbert Murray in mind, or the professors of Greek became the makers of gunpowder. And this, in turn, was derived from Plato's conclusion that the affairs of mankind would never go right until either the rulers became philosophers or the philosophers became the rulers.

Since he will be following it through a jungle, however, he should bear in mind the supremely practical guidance provided nearly two thousand years ago: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

Those who have suffered most show their eagerness to suffer more.

Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach. Avoid a frontal attack on a long-established position; instead, seek to turn it by a flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth, for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.

It is strange how people assume that no training is needed in the pursuit of truth. It is stranger still that this assumption is often manifest in the very man who talks of the difficulty of determining what is true. We should recognize that for this pursuit anyone requires at least as much care and training as a boxer for a fight or a runner for a marathon. He has to learn how to detach his thinking from every desire and interest, from every sympathy and antipathy; like ridding oneself of superfluous tissue, the "tissue" of untruth which all human beings tend to accumulate for their own comfort and protection. And he must keep fit, to become fitter. In other words, he must be true to the light he has seen.

Lord Acton's famous dictum "All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In one of the more penetrating criticisms written on this subject, George Orwell expressed a profound truth in saying that "the energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions.

A model boy rarely goes far, and even when he does he is apt to falter when severely tested. A boy who conforms immaculately to school rules is not likely to grow into a man who will conquer by breaking the stereotyped professional rules of his time, as conquest has most often been achieved. Still less does it imply the development of the wide views necessary in a man who is not merely a troop commander but the strategic adviser of his Government. The wonderful thing about Lee's generalship is not his legendary genius but the way he rose above his handicaps, handicaps that were internal even more than external.

Truth is a spiral staircase. What looks true on one level may not be true on the next higher level. A complete vision must extend vertically as well as horizontally; not only seeing the parts in relation to one another but embracing the different planes.

When one gets a close view of influential people, their bad relations with each other, their conflicting ambitions, all the slander and the hatred, one must always bear in mind that it is certainly much worse on the other side, among the French, English, and Russians, or one might well be nervous. . . . The race for power and personal positions seems to destroy all men's characters. I believe that the only creature who can keep his honour is a man living on his own estate; he has no need to intrigue and struggle, for it is no good intriguing for fine weather.

The point was well expressed by Polybius. "There are two roads to the reformation for mankind, one through misfortunes of their own, the other through the misfortunes of others; the former is the most unmistakable, the latter the less painful . . . we should always look out for the latter, for thereby we can, without hurt to ourselves, gain a clearer view of the best course to pursue . . . the knowledge gained from the study of true history is the best of all educations for practical life.

I can conceive of no finer ideal of a man's life than to face life with clear eyes instead of stumbling through it like a blind man, an imbecile, or a drunkard, which, in a thinking sense, is the common preference.

Haig was an honourable man according to his lights, but his lights were dim.

The other main cause in diminishing moral courage, however, was a lack of private means that led commanding officers to wilt before their superiors because of concern with the problem of providing for their children's education.

We learn from history that those who are disloyal to their own superiors are most prone to preach loyalty to their subordinates.

I would add that the only hope for humanity, now, is that my particular field of study, warfare, will become purely a subject of antiquarian interest.

Any successful institution, bureaucracy, bank, business, medical, legal protects itself from change to it own eventual destruction.

Soldiers universally concede the general truth of Napoleon's much quoted dictum that in war "the moral is to the physical as three to one.

Our civilization, like the Greek, has, for all its blundering way, taught the value of freedom, of criticism of authority, and of harmonising this with order. Anyone who urges a different system, for efficiency's sake, is betraying the vital tradition.

the quick-ripening good fellowship of the powerless many is apt to obscure the intrigues of the powerful few,

the thinking man must be against authoritarianism in any form, because it shows its fear of thoughts which do not suit momentary authority.

Unless the great majority of a people are willing to give their services there is something radically at fault in the state itself.

have found in dealing with men of fine character that if they are devout and orthodox Christians one cannot depend on their word as well as if they are not.

A long historical view not only helps us to keep calm in a "time of trouble" but reminds us that there is an end to the longest tunnel. Even if we can see no good hope ahead, an historical interest as to what will happen is a help in carrying on. For a thinking man, it can be the strongest check on a suicidal feeling. I would add that the only hope for humanity, now, is that my particular field of study, warfare, will become purely a subject of antiquarian interest. For with the advent of atomic weapons we have come either to the last page of war, at any rate on the major international scale we have known in the past, or to the last page of history.

In terms of innovation in ideas, our nonstate foes leveraged the vast body of literature on guerrilla warfare (in particular Lind et al.’s 4GW) that was developed in the United States. It isn’t unusual that the people who develop these new theories of warfare live in the countries that don’t benefit from them. Advanced Western military theory has historically provided sustenance to our revisionist foes. For example, the British military theorists J. F. C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart provided the theoretical basis of armored warfare that Heinz Guderian and others, in the nascent German military before World War II, used to formulate the blitzkrieg. So while the image of al-Qaeda strategists squatting in Afghan caves reading Lind et al.’s 4GW theory may be hard to imagine, it shouldn’t be any more fantastic than Guderian practicing Fuller’s theories with cardboard tanks. Both happened.