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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  Know yourself and your enemy
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Know yourself and your enemy

Over history, there have been several instances when an unconventional threat emerged and engulfed vastly superior conventional forces

Osama bin Laden’s unbelievable attack on the most powerful country of the world drew the US into a battleground of his choosing. Photo: Reuters Premium
Osama bin Laden’s unbelievable attack on the most powerful country of the world drew the US into a battleground of his choosing. Photo: Reuters

Over 5,000 years ago, the great military strategist Sun Tzu penned the aphorism—“If you neither know your enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory you will also suffer a defeat. And if you know yourself and your enemy, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." This teaching forms the bedrock of strategy, but like many basic tenets is also often ignored.

Over history, there have been several instances when an unconventional threat emerged and engulfed vastly superior conventional forces. Genghis Khan, Hitler, Prabhakaran and the most recent addition to this ignoble list—Osama bin Laden—were all individuals who began insignificantly, yet altered history’s narrative within their own lifetimes. If we set morality aside and study these leaders, we would have to acknowledge their incredible organizational, innovative and strategic prowess.

Take Genghis Khan for example, who in just 20 years laid the foundation of the largest contiguous empire in the history of mankind. At its peak, the Mongols ruled one of every four humans on the planet and Khan’s influence was so pervasive that centuries after his demise, one in 200 humans on earth have traces of his personal DNA in them. Or Adolf Hitler, who rose from a lowly corporal in World War I into a führer who came close to world domination. During the zenith of the Third Reich, his remit stretched all over Europe and parts of Africa, and but for some strategic blunders, Hitler came close to achieving his ambitions of German supremacy.

Velupillai Prabhakaran, who reigned twice as long as the Third Reich, took on the Sri Lankan and the formidable Indian armed forces together. He could motivate his cadres to strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up while many corporate and political leaders struggle to get their employees to office on time!

And finally Osama, who cut his teeth against the mighty Soviet armies and then took on the last remaining superpower and beat them at their own game. Osama also laid the foundation for the franchise model of terrorism in which any local faction could obtain the motivation, training and technology from the Al Qaeda fountainhead and peruse their local variants of terrorism like the Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Boko Haram.

And in all these cases, their adversaries ignored the fundamental teaching of Sun Tzu. While these leaders were despised, detested and loathed by their enemies, they were never respected by them. Khan was painted as a cruel monster by his foes and this demonization overshadowed the immense technological changes that he had used to multiply the lethality of his troops. The Mongols gained an incalculable strategic advantage because of their mounted archers, a feat made possible because of the invention of the first composite material made by coupling yak’s horns with stiff wood. This made it possible to construct a shorter bow that could be operated by a rider and yet retain the lethality and range of a long bow. The Mongols leveraged the weapon with innovative tactics where mounted archers would foray into the enemy formations wave after wave firing arrows as they approached and retreated, leaving the enemy bewildered.

Hitler pioneered the concept of blitzkrieg or a lighting attack in which massed armoured formations would smash through light defences and bypass stronger ones like the Maginot Line, making them completely irrelevant. The Third Reich was way ahead of its times, bringing in concepts of supply chain, automation and even modern weapons like V1 rockets, Panzer tanks and the forerunner of the modern AK-47—the Schmeisser.

Prabhakaran had the unique distinction of creating the ultimate smart bomb in the form of a suicide bomber whom he leveraged for strategic attacks like eliminating heads of state. He was also able to create a militia consisting of hard-core women combatants—a feat few militant organizations have been able to emulate.

And finally, Osama, arguably the founding father of modern terrorism, conceived of strategic, organizational and technical innovations that were so audacious that the world was left stunned and reeling on 9/11. His unbelievable attack on the most powerful country of the world drew the US into a battleground of his choosing until several thousand body bags and trillions of dollars later, the Al Qaeda has become an omnipresent spectre that the world is struggling to contain.

In each of these cases, the antagonists were labelled as insignificant upstarts by the prevailing establishment whose hubris did not accord them respect until it was too late. And we are in danger of repeating the same mistake. Enemies of the state continue to gain initiative on technological, organizational and strategic innovations while the establishment lumbers with antiquated tools, processes and mindsets. Our “modernization programmes" congeal in pipelines, projects announced with fanfare stultify in bureaucratic parochialism and our generals are still fighting their previous wars. We spend time in knowing ourselves, but very little in learning how the nimbleness of our enemies is enabling them to run circles around us. And until that is corrected, as prophesied by Sun Tzu, our victories will be few and at very high costs.

The author is the former CEO of NATGRID and may be contacted at www.captraman.com

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Published: 26 Aug 2014, 08:03 PM IST
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