Military & Conflict

Asymmetric Warfare

Andrew Mack / Ivan Arreguín-Toft

Weaker forces use unconventional tactics to neutralize stronger opponents.

Blitzkrieg

Heinz Guderian

Concentrated rapid attack at the point of greatest vulnerability.

Fabian Strategy

Quintus Fabius Maximus

Avoid decisive battle to exhaust a stronger opponent through patience.

Fog of War

Carl von Clausewitz

Incomplete information makes reality impossible to see clearly in real time.

Mission Command

Specify intent and objectives; leave tactical execution to those closest.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Robert McNamara

Both sides can inflict unacceptable damage, making conflict irrational.

OODA Loop

John Boyd

Cycle through observe-orient-decide-act faster than competitors.

Red Team

Paul Van Riper

Structured adversarial challenge from the opponents perspective.

Scorched Earth

Destroy resources to deny them to an advancing adversary.

Trojan Horse

Embed offensive capability inside something targets willingly accept.

Alliances

Alliances are formal or informal coalitions formed when the cost of going alone exceeds the cost of sharing gains with others. In conflict and competition, isolated actors rarely...

Appeasement

Appeasement is the strategy of conceding to an adversary's demands in the hope that satisfaction will reduce their aggression. Give them something they want — territory, market...

Arms Races

An arms race is a competitive spiral in which rivals invest in capability to match or exceed each other, driving costs up and often leaving both worse off than before. Each side...

Attrition Warfare

Attrition warfare is the strategy of winning by exhausting the enemy's resources — men, materiel, morale, or capital — until they can no longer continue. Victory goes to the side...

Beachhead

A beachhead is a small, secured position from which to launch a larger advance. In military use, it is the patch of territory seized in an amphibious assault — enough to land...

Brute Force Solution

A brute force solution is one that achieves the objective by applying overwhelming resources rather than by cleverness or efficiency. When you cannot outthink the problem, you...

Burn the Boats

Eliminate retreat so advance is the only option. The image comes from legend: a general lands on hostile shores and orders the fleet burned. No evacuation. No fallback. The army...

Carrot & Stick

Reward and punishment shape behaviour. The carrot induces compliance by offering gain; the stick enforces it by threatening loss. Neither works alone for long. Pure reward without...

Choke Point

A choke point is a narrow passage through which flow must go. Control it and you control the flow. In military terms, it might be a strait, a bridge, or a valley — a place where...

Cold War

A cold war is sustained rivalry without full-scale hot war. Two or more powers compete for influence, territory, and alignment — through proxies, economics, ideology, and arms —...

Containment

Containment is the strategy of limiting a rival’s expansion without seeking total victory. You don’t invade or destroy; you block, resist, and constrain at the edges so that the...

Counterinsurgency

David Galula / Robert Thompson

Counterinsurgency (COIN) is the fight against an insurgency — a weaker party that refuses conventional battle and instead uses hit-and-run, terror, and political mobilisation to...

Defense in Depth

Defense in depth is the use of multiple, layered barriers so that a single failure doesn't compromise the whole. One line breaks; the next holds. The idea is military in origin —...

Deterrence Effect

Deterrence is the use of credible threat to persuade an opponent not to act. You do not have to fight if the other side believes that attacking (or defecting, or entering) will...

Discipline

Discipline is the capacity to act in line with your goals and standards despite temptation, fatigue, or short-term preference. It is not punishment; it is the structure that makes...

Empty Fort Strategy

Zhuge Liang

Empty fort strategy is appearing strong when you are weak: leaving the gates open, the walls undefended, and inviting the enemy to conclude that the position is a trap. The tactic...

Exit Strategy

Exit strategy is the plan for how you stop: how you withdraw from a position, a commitment, or a conflict without being destroyed in the process. In military usage it is the route...

Guerilla Warfare

Mao / Giap

Guerilla warfare is the strategy of the weaker side: avoid pitched battle, strike where the strong cannot concentrate, and turn time and terrain into advantages. The strong want a...

Intelligence

Intelligence is the collection, analysis, and use of information to understand an opponent, environment, or situation before acting. In military and strategic contexts, it...

Lead Domino

The lead domino is the one piece that, when tipped, knocks over the rest. In strategy it is the single action or condition that makes subsequent outcomes possible or inevitable....

Potemkin Village

Grigory Potemkin

A Potemkin village is a façade: something built or staged to look impressive while hiding the lack of substance behind it. The term comes from the story that Grigory Potemkin...

Proxy War

A proxy war is a conflict in which two or more major powers compete through surrogates rather than fighting each other directly. Each power backs a side — with money, arms,...

Shock & Awe

Shock and awe is the strategy of achieving rapid dominance by overwhelming the opponent with speed, scale, and psychological impact. The goal is to paralyse the enemy's will or...

Swarming

Swarming is coordinated action by many dispersed units that converge on a target or objective without centralised command. No single node directs the whole; the units share a...

Turning Movement

A turning movement is an attack that avoids the opponent's strength by going around it — not necessarily to hit the flank, but to threaten something the opponent must protect...

Two-Front War

A two-front war is fighting two separate opponents or commitments at once — and losing the advantage of concentration. The strong position is to face one threat at a time; the...

Win Without Fighting

Sun Tzu

To win without fighting is to achieve your objective by making the opponent concede, withdraw, or align without a direct clash. Sun Tzu called it the acme of skill: "The supreme...

Winning Hearts & Minds

Winning hearts and minds is the strategy of securing lasting support from a population or group by addressing their needs, beliefs, and loyalties — not only by force or material...

36 Stratagems (Master Page)

The 36 Stratagems are a Chinese collection of military and political tactics compiled from centuries of warfare, diplomacy, and statecraft. Each stratagem is a pattern — a...

Boots on the Ground

Boots on the ground means committing real, physical presence to a situation rather than managing from a distance. In military terms, it's the difference between airstrikes and...

Call Your Bluff

Calling a bluff means forcing an opponent to prove a claimed position or follow through on a threat — exposing whether their leverage is real or fabricated. In military terms,...

Confusion

Confusion as a strategic tool means deliberately disrupting an opponent's ability to understand the situation, coordinate responses, or make coherent decisions. In military terms,...

Crippling

Crippling means targeting the critical capability that an opponent depends on — not to destroy them outright, but to degrade their ability to compete effectively. In military...

Decapitation

Decapitation means removing the leadership or decision-making centre of an opponent, collapsing their ability to coordinate and respond. In military terms, it's a strike on the...

Demoralization

Demoralization means breaking an opponent's will to fight rather than their ability to fight. It targets psychology — belief in the mission, confidence in leadership, trust that...

Distraction

Distraction means drawing an opponent's attention and resources toward a secondary objective so the primary effort succeeds unopposed. In military terms, it's a feint — a visible...

Division

Division means splitting an opponent's forces, coalition, or resources so they can't concentrate their strength. In military terms, it's maneuvering to separate an enemy army into...

Erosion

Erosion is the strategy of gradually wearing down an opponent's resources, position, or resolve through sustained, low-intensity pressure rather than decisive engagement. In...

Fear

Fear as a strategic tool means leveraging an opponent's anticipation of loss, pain, or failure to paralyse their decision-making or force concessions without direct engagement. In...

Fighting the Last War

Fighting the last war means applying strategies, structures, and assumptions that worked in a previous conflict to a fundamentally different new one. In military history, generals...

Flypaper Theory

Flypaper theory holds that it's better to attract and concentrate threats in a single, controlled location than to fight them spread across many. In military terms, the idea is to...

Fortification

Fortification means building defensive structures that make a position extremely costly to attack. In military terms, it's walls, trenches, and strongpoints that force attackers...

Overwhelm

Overwhelm means concentrating so much force, speed, or complexity on an opponent that their capacity to respond collapses. In military terms, it's attacking on multiple fronts...

Provocation

Provocation means deliberately goading an opponent into an emotional, hasty, or poorly calculated response that damages their own position. In military history, feigned retreats...

Punching Above Weight

Punching above weight means a smaller force achieving disproportionate impact against a larger, better-resourced opponent. In military terms, it's a small nation or unit...

Rumsfeld's Rule

Donald Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld's Rule categorises knowledge into four quadrants: known knowns (things we know we know), known unknowns (things we know we don't know), unknown unknowns (things we don't...

Sacrifice

Sacrifice means deliberately giving up something valuable now to gain a larger strategic advantage later. In military history, it's trading a position, unit, or battle to win the...

Seeing the Front

Seeing the front means going to where the action is — the actual point of contact with customers, competitors, or operations — rather than relying on filtered reports and...

Siege War

Siege warfare means surrounding and isolating an opponent's position, cutting off their supplies, reinforcements, and options until they're forced to capitulate without a direct...

Speed

Speed as a strategic principle means that the rate of decision-making and execution is itself a competitive advantage — independent of the quality of any individual decision. In...

Stop the Bleeding

Stop the bleeding means immediately stabilising a deteriorating situation before attempting any recovery or improvement. In military medicine, you stop arterial bleeding before...

Terrorism

Terrorism as a strategic model describes the use of dramatic, high-visibility attacks designed to generate disproportionate psychological impact relative to actual damage. The...

Trench War

Trench warfare describes a competitive stalemate where both sides are deeply entrenched in their positions, neither able to gain meaningful ground, and every advance comes at...

Turtling

Turtling means retreating into an extremely defensive posture — prioritising protection and survival over any form of offensive action. In military terms, it's pulling forces...

Winning Battle but Losing War

Winning the battle but losing the war means achieving tactical victories that come at such a high cost — in resources, attention, relationships, or strategic position — that they...

Zero-tolerance Policy

A zero-tolerance policy means establishing absolute rules with automatic, severe consequences for any violation — no exceptions, no judgment calls, no grey areas. In military...