Name: The 33 Strategies of War
Rating: 4.1 (201 reviews)
Author: Robert Greene

What’s in it for me? Insights into the human underpinnings of military strategy.

There are lots of ways to think about wars and how they are won – or lost. There’s technology, for starters. Superior bows, or rifles that can be reloaded more swiftly, can decide battles. Economic organization offers another perspective. A nation with a modern rail network and efficient factories will usually have an advantage against a nation which doesn’t.

Of course, neither technological nor economic power guarantee victory. As superpowers have discovered time and again when they’ve come up against guerrilla fighters, superior firepower alone can’t win you the hearts and minds of local populations.

There are lots of other factors we could add to that list of ways of thinking about wars, from discipline to ideology. Every factor matters. But they all depend on something else – strategy, or the art of planning and organizing the forces at your disposal. And strategy in turn comes down to human psychology. To organize your forces, you have to know how people tick. And that’s what we’ll be looking at in this Blink.

Unfortunately, we can’t cover all 33 of Robert Greene’s strategies. So we’ve cherry-picked a few of the best. Let’s get started.

Section 1: We realize the value of life when death is close.

December 22, 1849. It’s a bitterly cold morning in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s imperial capital.

It’s also the morning of an execution. Shackled convicts are led from their cells into a cobbled square lined with carts carrying coffins. Soldiers load their rifles and a priest performs last rites for the condemned. Finally, an officer reads the verdict: death by firing squad.

As the officer announces his fate, one of the convicts, a 28-year-old novelist, looks up. His name is Fyodor Dostoevsky. His gaze falls on the golden spire of a nearby church. It glitters in the sun. Then a cloud passes, extinguishing the gleaming light. The thought crosses his mind that he’s about to pass into darkness just as quickly – and forever.

Dostoyevsky hadn’t reckoned with death. A few years earlier, in 1845, his first novel, Poor Folk, had been published. It had earned him critical acclaim. As he put it in his diary that year, the whole of Russia was talking about it. Dostoevsky’s interest in the empire’s poorest subjects wasn’t just literary. A political radical, he looked forward to a day when they’d rise up and overthrow the monarchy and its aristocratic supporters.

In 1848, that day had seemed close at hand. A wave of uprisings had swept across Europe. Rebels called this continent-wide assault on conservative monarchies the “springtime of peoples.” The mood had been infectious. Dostoevsky had attended meetings and called for revolution. It was time to topple the tsar and liberate the empire’s long-suffering peasants. But there’d been no uprising in Russia. The tsar’s spies had also attended the meetings and they’d given the list of names they’d gathered to the police. Dostoevsky had duly been arrested and thrown in jail.

Political dissidents were usually sentenced to hard labor in Siberian work camps. Dostoevsky had expected a similar punishment. But then, eight months after his arrest, he’d been taken from his cell on this cold morning and led into a square where he can now see empty coffins and soldiers loading their rifles. As he looks at the church spire, a second thought goes through his head. If he somehow escapes death, he thinks, his life will seem endless. It’ll be as if he has an eternity ahead of him. Each minute will feel like a century.

Luck’s on his side. A carriage comes flying into the square. A messenger passes an envelope to the officer. The tsar has commuted the convicts’ death sentences; there’ll be no executions. Instead, the convicts will be sent to Siberia for hard labor. That’s nothing compared to death. Later that evening, Dostoevsky writes to his brother. Looking back at all the time he has squandered, he says, is torture. Now, though, it’s as if he’s been reborn. He vows never to waste another second.

When Dostoevsky returned from Siberia in 1854, he got to work. Writing had been a painful process before his imprisonment. Every sentence was a struggle; it took him months to complete a single page. Now, though, it was effortless. The words poured out of him. He maintained that frantic pace until his death in 1881. In just over 25 years, he wrote a series of epochal novels that included Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov.

Dostoevsky’s peers sometimes said that they pitied him for hardships he endured in Siberia. But Dostoevsky felt no bitterness. He was grateful. As he saw it, he’d have wasted his life if it hadn’t been for that morning when he felt death looming over him.

Section 2: We act with greater clarity and urgency when there’s no escape.

Life’s full of possibilities. That freedom can be a burden. We can devote our lives to creating something meaningful and beautiful like a great novel. But we’re also free to waste our time. As Dostoevsky knew all too well, it’s much easier to spend your days drinking and gambling than it is to do something difficult and important.

The thing is, most of the time, no particular option seems essential. There’s rarely a clear answer to the question of what we ought to be doing. Freedom, in other words, is often a source of unease: the sense that everything is possible is, frankly, pretty vertigo-inducing. So we try not to think about it. We bury that big question under layers of comforting habit and routine.

Section 3: Pick your battles carefully – sometimes victory costs more than defeat.

Let’s fast forward a couple of centuries for one last strategic insight. We’ll leave fifth-century China behind and travel to third-century Italy.

Rome isn’t yet the great empire it will become. In fact, it’s still a breakout power. As it expands down the Italian peninsula, it comes up against the city of Tarentum.

Final Summary

One of the greatest obstacles in life is complacency. When we assume we have endless time, we fail to act with swiftness. When we know we can retreat, we fail to fight with resolve. When we only see victories, we fail to anticipate the costs of our campaigns. That’s where strategy, the art of planning, comes in. To think strategically is to take the long view. Is this war really worth fighting? If so, should we press ahead now or wait? It also tells us how we should fight: with urgency and clarity. When we take to the battlefield of life, we must place our backs against the wall and give ourselves no option for escape. When we know that our only choice is to move forward, we fight with much greater determination.

Key ideas in The 33 Strategies of War

About the Author

Robert Greene is an author, playwright, and editor based in Los Angeles. He studied Classical Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Greene is the author of six best-selling books including Mastery, The 48 Laws of Power, and The Art of Seduction.