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The more usual reason for adopting a strategy of limited aim is that of awaiting a change in the balance of force ... The essential condition of such a strategy is that the drain on him should be disproportionately greater than on oneself.

B. H. Liddell Hart

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B. H. Liddell Hart
Age: 74 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 31
Died: 1970
Died: January 29
Historian
Journalist
Military Historian
Writer
Paris
France
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart
Basil Henry Liddell Hart
Change
Essential
Drain
Reason
Essentials
Adopting
Oneself
Drains
Balance
Usual
Conditions
Limited
Military
Aim
Greater
Condition
Disproportionately
Force
Strategy
Awaiting

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With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
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If you wish for peace, understand war.
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It is only to clear from history that states rarely keep faith with each other, save in so far (and so long) as their promises seem to them to combine with their interests.
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The more closely [the German army] converged on [Stalingrad], the narrower became their scope for tactical manoeuvre as a lever in loosening resistance. By contrast, the narrowing of the frontage made it easier for the defender to switch his local reserves to any threatened point on the defensive arc.
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The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.
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Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
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The effect to be sought is the dislocation of the opponent's mind and dispositions - such an effect is the true gauge of an indirect approach.
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Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
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While hitting one must guard ... In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
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As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.
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A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
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Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
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It is folly to imagine that the aggressive types, whether individuals or nations, can be bought off ... since the payment of danegeld stimulates a demand for more danegeld. But they can be curbed. Their very belief in force makes them more susceptible to the deterrent effect of a formidable opposing force.
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If you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. It should, equally, be a principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down.
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The most effective indirect approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move - so that, as in ju-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his overthrow.
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The urge to gain release from tension by action is a precipitating cause of war.
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In a campaign against more than one state or army, it is more fruitful to concentrate first against the weaker partner than to attempt the overthrow of the stronger in the belief that the latter's defeat will automatically involve the collapse of the others.
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The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
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No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.
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[The] aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this. In other words, dislocation is the aim of strategy.
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