BOOK 1 – CONSIDERATIONS AND ESTIMATIONS FOR WAR
PART 4
If warriors under your command follow your instructions you will have great success. Reward them well and reward them equally, but not too often. If you feel otherwise, for whatever reason, or they give you cause to suspect that their true natures are not sympathetic to yours, they should be disposed of immediately and in proper fashion. If they cannot be trusted with you, then for certain they cannot be trusted among your enemies. If you permit them to remain in your presence, they might rush to the other side and reveal your plans when it is least expected. Do not take this chance. War does not permit faltering personal belief. Never seek to assuage the non-sympathetic in an attempt to convert them to your way of thinking. Empathy will be seen as a sign of weakness among your loyal followers. Men who do not follow instructions can never lead as commanders. They serve no purpose other than to use up valuable resources and create dissension. Dispose of them.
Compassion must be reserved for those who truly need it, and it must be offered with leniency, not indulgence. It debilitates and weakens the strong in their resolve to fight for you. Never try to win someone over by changing your strategy in hopes of befriending them. Hope is nothing more than wishful thinking and must be avoided at all costs: it abrogates definitive focus and creates false friends who are worse than true enemies. It also brings about flatterers. You must truly believe in your own ideal. Preparations for war cannot be intellectual exercises.
Once these principles are understood and they are taken into a warlord’s heart, the next level of understanding can be approached; that of making war without hesitation and without second thoughts.
Correct strategies must be developed by methods that enable the warlord to bring about the implementation of his true beliefs. It does not matter how he does this. He must, however, make sure that his own house is protected before going into the field.
Going into the field means that all preparations are in place and effort can be minimized by using a primary tool of war-deception. The warlord must look busy doing something else when he is in fact positioning himself intelligently and with strength. Enemies must never see you in direct motion, such as coming at them. Enemies must never make sense of your actions.
In war it is essential to make the enemy think one thing while you deliver a strike from another direction. It is essential to keep the enemy off balance, even by feigning assistance to him. Make him think you are befriending him while you plan his demise.
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