4 Principles of Maneuver warfare
1. Craft a plan with branches
A plan with branches lets you out-maneuver your enemy because your responses to changing circumstances are faster and more rational.
2. Give yourself room to maneuver
Consider the ability to move and keeping open more options than your enemy has as more important than keeping territories or possessions. You want open space, not dead positions. This means not burdening yourself with commitments that will limit your options. The need for space is psychological as well as physical; you must have an unfettered mind to create anything worthwhile.
3. Give your enemy dilemmas, not problems
But a dilemma is different; whatever they do, however they respond, retreat, advance, stay still-they are still in trouble. Make every option bad; if you maneuver quickly to a point, for instance, you can force your enemies either to fight before they are ready or to retreat. They constantly are put in positions that seem alluring but are traps.
4. Create maximum disorder
The goal of your maneuvers should be to make sense of your intentions only to yourself, to send the enemy on a wild goose chase for meaningless information, to create ambiguity as to which way you are going to jump. The disorder you create is controlled and purposeful, at least for you. The disorder the enemy suffers is debilitating and destructive. So to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence, the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy's army without fighting at all. Keep it simple-limit yourself to the options you can control.
A plan with branches lets you out-maneuver your enemy because your responses to changing circumstances are faster and more rational.
2. Give yourself room to maneuver
Consider the ability to move and keeping open more options than your enemy has as more important than keeping territories or possessions. You want open space, not dead positions. This means not burdening yourself with commitments that will limit your options. The need for space is psychological as well as physical; you must have an unfettered mind to create anything worthwhile.
3. Give your enemy dilemmas, not problems
But a dilemma is different; whatever they do, however they respond, retreat, advance, stay still-they are still in trouble. Make every option bad; if you maneuver quickly to a point, for instance, you can force your enemies either to fight before they are ready or to retreat. They constantly are put in positions that seem alluring but are traps.
4. Create maximum disorder
The goal of your maneuvers should be to make sense of your intentions only to yourself, to send the enemy on a wild goose chase for meaningless information, to create ambiguity as to which way you are going to jump. The disorder you create is controlled and purposeful, at least for you. The disorder the enemy suffers is debilitating and destructive. So to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence, the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy's army without fighting at all. Keep it simple-limit yourself to the options you can control.
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