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### Book:man cast his plough aside and watched that tree, hoping that he would

### Book:get another hare. Yet he never caught another hare and was himself

### Book:ridiculed by the people of Sung. Now supposing somebody wanted to

### Book:govern the people of the present age with the policies of the early kings,

### Book:he would be doing exactly the same thing as that man who watched the

### Book:tree.

### Book:HAN-FEI-TZU, CHINESE PHILOSOPHFR, THIRD CENTURY B.C.

### Book:A game of go—called wei-chi in China—can last up to three hundred

### Book:moves. The strategy is more subtle and fluid than chess, developing

### Book:slowly; the more complex the pattern your stones initially create on the

### Book:board, the harder it is for your opponent to understand your strategy.

### Book:Fighting to control a particular area is not worth the trouble: You have to

### Book:think in larger terms, to be prepared to sacrifice an area in order

### Book:eventually to dominate the board. What you are after is not an

### Book:entrenched position but mobility. With mobility you can isolate the

### Book:opponent in small areas and then encircle them. The aim is not to kill off

### Book:the opponent’s pieces directly, as in chess, but to induce a kind of

### Book:paralysis and collapse. Chess is linear, position oriented, and aggressive;

### Book:go is nonlinear and fluid. Aggression is indirect until the end of the

### Book:game, when the winner can surround the opponent’s stones at an

### Book:accelerated pace.Chinese military strategists have been influenced by go for centuries.

### Book:Its proverbs have been applied to war time and again; Mao Tse-tung was

### Book:an addict of wei-chi, and its precepts were ingrained in his strategies. A

### Book:key wei-chi concept, for example, is to use the size of the board to your

### Book:advantage, spreading out in every direction so that your opponent cannot

### Book:fathom your movements in a simple linear way.

### Book:“Every Chinese,” Mao once wrote, “should consciously throw himself

### Book:into this war of a jigsaw pattern” against the Nationalists. Place your

### Book:men in a jigsaw pattern in go, and your opponent loses himself trying to

### Book:figure out what you are up to. Either he wastes time pursuing you or, like

### Book:Chiang Kai-shek, he assumes you are incompetent and fails to protect

### Book:himself. And if he concentrates on single areas, as Western strategy

### Book:advises, he becomes a sitting duck for encirclement. In the wei-chi way

### Book:of war, you encircle the enemy’s brain, using mind games, propaganda,

### Book:and irritation tactics to confuse and dishearten. This was the strategy of

### Book:the Communists—an apparent formlessness that disoriented and terrified

### Book:their enemy.

### Book:Where chess is linear and direct, the ancient game of go is closer to

### Book:the kind of strategy that will prove relevant in a world where battles are

### Book:fought indirectly, in vast, loosely connected areas. Its strategies are

### Book:abstract and multidimensional, inhabiting a plane beyond time and space:

### Book:the strategist’s mind. In this fluid form of warfare, you value movement

### Book:over position. Your speed and mobility make it impossible to predict

### Book:your moves; unable to understand you, your enemy can form no strategy

### Book:to defeat you. Instead of fixing on particular spots, this indirect form of

### Book:warfare spreads out, just as you can use the large and disconnected

### Book:nature of the real world to your advantage. Be like a vapor. Do not give

### Book:your opponents anything solid to attack; watch as they exhaust

### Book:themselves pursuing you, trying to cope with your elusiveness. Only

### Book:formlessness allows you to truly surprise your enemies—by the time

### Book:they figure out where you are and what you are up to, it is too late.

### Book:When you want to fight us, we don’t let you and you can’t find us. But

### Book:when

### Book:we want to fight you, we make sure that you can’t get away and we hit

### Book:you

### Book:squarely … and wipe you out…. The enemy advances, we retreat; the

### Book:enemy

### Book:camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we

### Book:pursue.

### Book:Mao Tse-tung, 1893-1976General Rommel surpassed Patton as a creative intellect…. Rommel

### Book:shunned military formalism. He made no fixed plans beyond those

### Book:intended for the initial clash; thereafter, he tailored his tactics to meet

### Book:specific situations as they arose. He was a lightning-fast decision-maker,

### Book:physically maintaining a pace that matched his active mentality. In a

### Book:forbidding sea of sand, he operated in a free environment. Once Rommel

### Book:ruptured the British lines in Africa, he had the whole northern part of the

### Book:continent opened to him. Comparatively free from the hamstringing

### Book:authority of Berlin, disregarding orders even from Hitler himself on

### Book:occasion, Rommel implemented one successful operation after another

### Book:until he had most of North Africa under his control and Cairo trembling

### Book:at his feet.

### Book:THE ART OF WINNING WARS, JAMES MRAZEK, 1968

### Book:KEYS TO POWER

### Book:The human animal is distinguished by its constant creation of forms.

### Book:Rarely expressing its emotions directly, it gives them form through

### Book:language, or through socially acceptable rituals. We cannot communicate

### Book:our emotions without a form.

### Book:The forms that we create, however, change constantly—in fashion, in

### Book:style, in all those human phenomena representing the mood of the

### Book:moment. We are constantly altering the forms we have inherited from

### Book:previous generations, and these changes are signs of life and vitality.

### Book:Indeed, the things that don’t change, the forms that rigidify, come to look

### Book:to us like death, and we destroy them. The young show this most clearly:

### Book:Uncomfortable with the forms that society imposes upon them, having

### Book:no set identity, they play with their own characters, trying on a variety of

### Book:masks and poses to express themselves. This is the vitality that drives the

### Book:motor of form, creating constant changes in style.

### Book:The powerful are often people who in their youth have shown

### Book:immense creativity in expressing something new through a new form.

### Book:Society grants them power because it hungers for and rewards this sort of

### Book:newness. The problem comes later, when they often grow conservative

### Book:and possessive. They no longer dream of creating new forms; their

### Book:identities are set, their habits congeal, and their rigidity makes them easy

### Book:targets. Everyone knows their next move. Instead of demanding respectthey elicit boredom: Get off the stage! we say, let someone else, someone

### Book:younger, entertain us. When locked in the past, the powerful look

### Book:comical—they are overripe fruit, waiting to fall from the tree.

### Book:Power can only thrive if it is flexible in its forms. To be formless is not

### Book:to be amorphous; everything has a form—it is impossible to avoid. The

### Book:formlessness of power is more like that of water, or mercury, taking the

### Book:form of whatever is around it. Changing constantly, it is never