Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey
Compared with the chicken, the monkey is much more difficult to kill, but it can be scared into submission by the killing of the chicken.
A military commander can scare two kinds of people into submission: his own troops or power groups without formal allegiance.
In the latter case, he must have an advantage over the people he wants to frighten. For instance, when a leader of an alliance of bandit groups wants to bring the various group leaders into total submission, he can pick out the most powerful of those groups and destroy it completely. He will not choose to destroy all of them, partly because they are useful to him, but mainly because it is beyond his capacity to fight with all of the at once.
The strategy may also be used to strengthen military discipline, when the commander severely punishes someone whose high connections make him irreverent of military rules and defiant of the commander.
When fighting with the enemy, our soldiers will advance and dare not back up if they are more afraid of us then the enemy. If they dare back up but not advance, that is because they’re afraid of the enemy but not of us.
Authority and rigor compel the soldiers to go through fire and water without disobedience. The principal goes, “when severity surpasses solicitude, victory is certain.” In warfare, make our soldiers dare advance but not retreat when encountering the enemy. Those who retreat for a single step must be severely punished. In this way, victory can be achieved.
The principal goes, “use execution to prohibit fear. When fear is excessive, refrain from execution but treat the troops kindly and inform them of the way of survival.” There will be a victory in the soldiers are more afraid of their commander then the enemy, and defeat if soldiers are more afraid of the enemy than of their commander.
The way to predict victory or defeat is to compare the soldiers’ fear for the commander and for the enemy.
Fin
