Military Strategy
MILITARY STRATEGY: Principles of Warfare
By Robert Ensor
This book is dedicated to God, Athena, the Archangel Michael and the fallen.
‘Hear, Israel, you draw near today to battle against your enemies. Don’t let your heart faint. Don’t be afraid, nor tremble, neither be scared of them; for the Lord your God is he who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.’ (Deuteronomy 20:3–4).
‘Yahweh is a man of war. Yahweh is his name.’ (Exodus 15:3).
‘People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.’ – Richard Grenier.I am God the Father’s son.
Copyright © 2026 Robert Ensor
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. The author’s moral rights have been asserted. First Published 2026.
All Bible quotations, unless otherwise stated or referenced, are taken from the online World English Bible, which is in the public domain. It is available at the following link: https://ebible.org/eng-web/index.htm. English language Bibles are translated from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. I am no linguist, and I don’t know any linguists, so I have had to rely on others’ translations and romanizations of the Hebrew and Greek texts. Occasionally, I have examined the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek of the Bible, zeroing in on key words where the received English translation is debatable or misses the full meaning of the original.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Strategy is derived from the word strategos, meaning leader. Tactics are short term actions to contend with situations on or off the battlefield. Strategies are long term plans. Strategy is also more concerned with the big picture of the entire conflict, whereas tactics are implemented at the level of the individual soldier and the unit. Maintaining the overall goals and the broad strategies for achieving them is a good way to select the optimum tactics on a moment-by-moment basis, whether on the battlefield or in the office. This book is about applying the principles of military strategy and espionage to modern warfare, one’s daily life, including some business contexts, and spiritual warfare against the ‘forces of wickedness’ that Saint Paul identified as the real enemy.
A just war is a war sanctioned by God. Ethics in warfare are crucial to avoid karmic backlash; the unwarranted invasions of Russia in 1812 and 1942 led to Russian invasions of France and Germany respectively, with comparable levels of devastation and atrocities. A just war also ensures that God is on your side, which is crucial. One must not only consider the outcome of the conflict in the material world, but the fate of the fallen after death, which is far more important than transient victories.
This book is divided into four parts: the history of military strategy, including an overview of the key texts; 55 military maxims or strategic principles and accompanying explanations, with some historical examples; practical recommendations for contemporary militaries around the world; and a manual on spiritual warfare.
‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’ (Leon Trotsky). There are psychopaths and bad actors out there who will use strategies for ill, on the individual and state levels, so it is imperative to be aware of them, and, on occasion, to counteract them with our own strategies.
Part 1: A History of Military Strategy
To the ancient Greeks, Athena represented wisdom in war, whereas Ares stood for the aggressive and brutal nature of war. Both aspects of warfare are necessary, but it is generally preferable to use wisdom to minimise bloodshed and win an efficient victory. One of the first recorded instances of strategy came when Odysseus had the idea for the Trojan Horse, a wooden horse left on the beach before Troy, as an offering by an army that had seemingly retreated. The Trojans brought the horse within their walled citadel as a token of victory, and twelve Greek warriors emerged from her belly, opened the gates and let the rest of the army in to sack the city and win the war. Even this cunning stratagem was presented in the Odyssey as being somewhat dependent on the favour of Athena for its success. From the very outset, the success or failure of strategy was perceived as being in the hands of the divine and spiritual beings, factors that modern strategists have by and large neglected, to their detriment, because the spiritual is above the mental and material in the chain of causation. To plan and strategize on the mental and material levels alone and neglect the highest plane of existence known to man, the spiritual, is to leave far too much to chance. Genghis Khan was always wary of foreign gods and permitted freedom of religion, partly for this very reason. Before setting out on campaign, he would worship Tengri, the sky spirit, in solitude on his mountain, Burkhan Khaldun. Having God on your side is critical to success in warfare, because God decides the outcomes.
In the Bible, God is presented as being crucial to the outcome of wartime strategies. When Abraham learned that his ‘relative had been taken captive’ (Genesis 14:14) he divided his forces against the men of Sodom and Gomorrah in a night raid and defeated them (Genesis 14:14).
Espionage and reconnaissance are used in the Bible. For example, Moses sent Joshua and eleven other spies forward to reconnoitre Canaan (Numbers 13), and Joshua sent two spies to Shittim (Joshua 2:1). The spies returned from Canaan with mostly dire reports about the size and strength of the enemy, that resulted in the conquest of Canaan being delayed by years. This underlines the importance of accurate intelligence reports.
There is a classic example of a feigned retreat, envelopment and ambush in the Book of Joshua. There was sin in the Israelites’ camp; one of the soldiers had stolen one of the ‘devoted things’ (Joshua 7:1). The wrongdoer was identified and punished, and God’s wrath was satisfied. God then gave Joshua, the leader of the Israelites, a better strategy for how to overcome the city of Ai. Joshua approached the city of Ai at night with a relatively light force, and the men of Ai charged out to meet them in battle. Joshua’s men fled before the men of Ai. Meanwhile, a force of 30,000 Israelites lay in wait behind the city. They stormed into the city and razed it (Joshua 8). Joshua’s men then turned around to face the soldiers of Ai, who were caught between the two forces and dismayed by the destruction of their homes. The Israelites won a total victory.
The lesson here is that an army that behaves itself and adheres to the laws and ethical precepts will be more likely to win God’s favour and receive superior strategies from him, that are not only more intelligent and far-seeing than human-generated strategies, but are also guaranteed to succeed under certain conditions, because of the immense power of God.
Gideon and three hundred warriors blew trumpets, held torches and shouted at the Midianites, who were behind the walls of Jericho, ‘“the sword of the Lord and of Gideon”’(Judges 7:20). The noise and lights startled the Midianites and caused them to turn against one another and against the army, which fled the city. This is an early instance of divinely inspired and directed psychological warfare; as a strategy, it was highly unconventional, but Gideon and his warriors were willing to obey God and implement the plan regardless.
King David famously demonstrated the superiority of projectiles and the advantages of underestimation when he slew the giant Goliath with a stone hurled from a sling. He also utilised a commando force to capture Jerusalem from the Jebusites, sending a small unit led by Joab through a water tunnel to infiltrate the walled city, which helped to conquer it (2 Samuel 5:8).
David asked the Lord, ‘Shall I go up against the Philistines? Will you deliver them into my hand?’ (2 Samuel 5:19). David regularly made such inquiries of God, as a means of guaranteeing success in his military and political ventures by ensuring
to God’s will. David initially met the Philistines head on at Baal-Perizim and defeated them (2 Samuel 5:20). Then, according to God’s instructions, he shifted tactics and flanked them from behind, attacking them in front of some mulberry trees and again won a decisive victory (2 Samuel 5:23). The timing of the attack, to coincide with the moment David heard marching in the tops of the trees, was critical, and this was a prearranged signal between David and the Lord, which underscores the vital importance of divine communication – in warfare, and life in general. Heaven is the ultimate ops centre. David was able to shift his tactics, making him a very formidable and unpredictable opponent. At the core of David’s character was this streak of unpredictability; it was very difficult for people to read David and gain a correct estimate of his abilities.
The Chinese statesman and general Sun Tzu (544–496 BC), author of the Art of War, emerged during the Warring States period, a time of upheaval and conflict as different factions struggled for control of China. Sun Tzu believed that the ultimate goal of strategy was to win without fighting by encircling the enemy, psychologically dominating him and reducing the will to fight by making victory seem impossible. He wrote the famous line: ‘If you know yourself and know your enemy, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’ This underscores the importance of self-knowledge and intelligence gathering and analysis in warfare. He also understood the importance of choosing advantageous terrain and weather conditions, having a strong and wise military commander, with loyal troops, and the necessity of deception in warfare, to make yourself appear weak when you are strong, to invite a rash attack, and strong when weak, to deter an unwanted offensive.
Alexander the Great revolutionised warfare by organising his army into phalanxes and utilising his cavalry to rapidly punch through weak points in the enemy’s flanks and encircle them. The Greek Historian and soldier Thucydides wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War in the late 5th century BC about the conflict between the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, headed by Sparta. The Thucydides trap describes the tension that is created when a rising power (for example, Athens) threatens a ruling power (in this case, Sparta), and how this scenario often leads to armed conflict.[i]
Genghis Khan revolutionised the battlefield via fast moving cavalry archers, organising his military into a decimal system (with unit sizes of 10, 100, and 1000). Promotions were based on merit rather than birth. Logistics and communications were also rapid thanks to a horse relay system for post, intelligence and supplies. Genghis also stole innovations and specialist personnel from defeated enemy populations, borrowing their battle tactics where expedient. Khan was a master of psychological warfare, terrorising the enemy with his reputation and other ingenuous tactics. He practiced biological warfare by catapulting plague-ridden corpses into enemy cities and used human shields captured from previous battles and sieges to soak up enemy arrows.
The next significant work on military strategy was Machiavelli’s The Art of War, published in 1520 in Florence, against the backdrop of the warring and conniving city states of the Italian Renaissance. In Il Principe, Machiavelli underscored the fact that typically, but not always, fortune favours the bold, and it is generally preferable to attack than defend. Machiavelli cautioned against overreliance on mercenaries, whose loyalty was dubious and preferred the use of native or local troops. Machiavelli also observed that whoever endures much hardship in training, will have greater hope for victory; an early version of the motto, ‘train hard, fight easy’, which originated with the Russian General Suvorov.
Machiavelli was cautious, and firmly believed that one should never lead men into battle unless one was convinced of their courage, optimism and readiness. He also observed that it’s better to hold a force in reserve, behind the front line, than to have a long, strung-out front. He emphasised the importance of organised and disciplined routing, when an enemy has been defeated and is on the run, in order to truly finish them off; often the rash impulse to seize plunder and spoils has led to missed opportunities to crush the enemy completely. Machiavelli always counselled secrecy, especially concerning battle plans, and that plans should be changed if the enemy were to get hold of them.
The next historical landmark in the realm of strategy is Carl von Clausewitz’s On War (Vom Kriege), published in 1832. Clausewitz was a Prussian officer and writer whose theory is still studied by officers to this day and has had a profound influence on warfare. Clausewitz defined war as ‘an act of force that compels the enemy to do our will’ and believed that war is a continuation of politics by other means.[ii] In other words, war is a method of achieving political objectives defined by the political leadership. But there are occasions where specialist military knowledge places senior officers in a unique and important position to advise the political leadership of the best course of action, that may not be politically expedient. That said, the chain of command must always be respected.
Clausewitz saw war as a strange melange of hatred/aggression, the play of probabilities and a calculated political tool. ‘War is the province of danger, and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior.’ [iii] The German theorist saw tactics as the theory of the use of military forces in combat, and strategy as the theory of the use of combats for the object of the war. Clausewitz also underlined the importance of the law of unintended consequences in war, and the confusion and uncertainty that often reign in the heat of battle, which he called ‘the fog of war’.[iv] In war, so much information is false or doubtful that it is extremely difficult to get a clear picture of what is going on and a proper idea of what to do. This is encapsulated by the phrase, ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’. [v] Accordingly, Clausewitz prized decisiveness; the ability to make quick, accurate decisions, on the battlefield. For this reason, the Prussian officer believed the fear of dithering replaced all other fears in strong minds. As a decision-making heuristic, Clausewitz recommended that commanders and officers should go with their first instinct, and stick to it for the sake of consistency, unless they became convinced that a change was necessary.
Antoine-Henri Jomini wrote the Summary of the Art of War in 1838, taking numerous examples from the campaigns of Napoleon. The work included a series of maxims that are still taught at the US military academy. The book focuses on war policy, Jomini saw defeat of the enemy army as the ‘only effective means of accomplishing a war of invasion.’[vi]Jomini, like Clausewitz, believed the key to victory was to concentrate forces at the decisive point; that is, generally the weak link in the enemy’s front.
Jomini may have coined the term logistics and emphasised the importance of choosing proper routes of movement and supply. He favoured interior lines of supply, which feature a central position that abridges the distance needed to supply, feed and deploy troops around a circular, curved, convex or semicircular perimeter. He also advocated striking scattered enemy positions before they have time to unite, a classic Napoleonic move. Jomini clarified strategy as major decisions about the campaign and tactics as short term manoeuvres on the immediate battlefield. According to Jomini, logistics comprises the means and arrangements that work out how to move an army, including the planning and ordering of marches, the selection and establishment of communication and supply lines, quartering troops, building roads and bridges and conducting reconnaissance.
Later in the 19th century, Hermann von Moltke revolutionised warfare by incorporating the recently constructed railways, and making mobilisation hinge upon the rapid shuttling of supply trains to the front line. Moltke and his thinking were instrumental in Bismarck’s victories in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars leading to German Unification in 1871.
The key strategic shift of the Second World War was the move to Blitzkrieg or ‘lightning war’, from the more static trench warfare of the First World War. This was pioneered in practice by German General Heinz Guderian and the German General Staff, particularly during the invasions of Poland and Frace. Blitzkrieg entailed surprise attack, air strikes, followed by tanks and mechanized infantry moving rapidly to seize terrain and key objectives, covered by mobile artillery.
Blitzkrieg was based on the thinking of Liddell-Hart and J.F.C Fuller, whose ideas about manoeuvre warfare were largely ignored in the inter-war period. Manoeuvre warfare is a military theory centred on defeating the enemy through rapid, unpredictable movements rather than destroying their physical forces via attrition. Fuller prioritised taking out the enemy’s command and control centre – their operational ‘brain’ – over attrition warfare designed to destroy or break the enemy’s forces; without the ability to make decisions, the enemy’s numerical force is less relevant and they become a headless chicken, unless they adopt a mosaic strategy, and delegate independent authority to battlefield commanders, as the Iranians recently did during the opening salvoes of Operation Epic Fury.
The idea of Blitzkrieg was to move so rapidly the enemy could not keep pace with developments on the battlefield, smash through the enemy’s lines of defence quickly, plough deep into enemy territory with speed and aggression and defeat the enemy decisively in a battle of annihilation, or vernichtungschlacht. The idea was to smash through the lines and encircle the enemy. This was used to devastating effect by the Germans during the invasions of France and Poland. Soviet deep battle, developed in the 1930’s by Vladimir Triandafillov, who worked with others to create a military strategy, deep battle was about breaking the enemy’s forward defenses via combined arms assaults, followed up by fresh operational reserves.
More recently, full-spectrum dominance, another form of manoeuvre warfare, has risen to prominence in US military circles. The US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan forced a shift to Irregular Warfare strategies such as winning the hearts and minds of the local populace via humanitarian efforts and seeking to avoid atrocities and behaviours that may alienate them. Full spectrum dominance seeks to dominate all spheres of military action: cyber, electromagnetic spectrum, air, space, sea and land and to coordinate operations across all domains. Speed in modern manoeuvre warfare is also about, making decisions faster than the enemy.
Robert Greene’s 33 Strategies of War is perhaps the best book written on the subject of warfare and strategy. It applies to everyday life, sports and other forms of competition, people’s careers, as well as military strategy. Greene’s strategies are: self-directed warfare, to develop emotional control and discipline, identify and confront your enemies, do not fight the last war, which involves jettisoning regret, keep a present mind during chaos, avoid groupthink via command and control, breaking your forces into groups, to gain speed and autonomy in decision making, motivating the group by making your cause into a moral crusade against injustice, choosing your battles wisely, baiting your enemy into an attack before launching a counter-attack, deterring enemy action via a menacing reputation, retreating when faced with a strong enemy, giving you time to regroup, focus on winning the war: grand strategy, by focusing on the overall objective of the campaign and how to achieve it, use speed to your advantage, target the centre of gravity; find out what is most valuable to your opponent and undermine it, divide and conquer, unexpected attack from an unexpected direction, weaken your opponent, negotiate while advancing, control other people’s perception in order to surprise them with a different strategy, be unpredictable, appear moral to gain public support for your cause, disengage; remain silent and see how your enemies respond, further your own interests by pursuing alliances and continuously calibrating that nexus of alliances like Bismarck did with his Three Emperors League, which maintained the peace in Europe and kept France isolated for decades, and finally, aim for small victories, which make your enemy akin to the frog in a pan of boiling water, unable to notice or oppose incremental shifts for a period of time due to the gradualism of your progress.Modern doctrine is a series of flexible principles for modern warfare: coordination across air, land, sea and cyberspace domains via network-centric warfare; armies connect weapons, sensors and commanders via digital networks and share data instantly. AI can help shorten the decision -making loop by processing data and identifying targets faster. Modern doctrine also underlines the importance of hybrid and asymmetric warfare, including cyber-attacks, economic sanctions, and social media disinformation. Low-cost drones are a gamechanger in modern warfare; they have done more damage than some traditional air and land assets such as fighter jets and tanks and are much cheaper. The deployment of batteries of electromagnetic weaponry is the best response to drone warfare. Drone swarms communicating via AI without human commands can overwhelm SAM’s (Surface to Air missiles) and air defences.
The essence of warfare is the struggle to attain your objectives, typically against some form of armed opposition. Success is simply defined as achieving your objectives. Otherwise, we are entering murky and subjective waters whereby success is defined as what the generality of people or senior officers believe is successful, and there may be endless disagreements, unless we simply restrict success to what the individual concerned considers to be success; that is, what they truly want from the situation, which may well differ from what they consciously desire and set as an objective. The key, therefore, is to set realistic and advantageous objectives (militarily and otherwise). A military objective is advantageous if it is useful to the state, if it benefits the people of the state, or the faction concerned. The object can be attained without bloodshed: politically, diplomatically, technologically, militarily, operationally, or spiritually. It can even be attained without the enemy realising; the enemy may even come away believing they are the victor, or the beneficiary. Better yet, they never even knew they were at war with you, and never saw you as an enemy, and possibly never knew you existed, and yet you achieved your goals anyway, perhaps with their voluntary cooperation. ‘As soon as you aim for results, you are in the realm of war and strategy.’[vii]
So, the question arises. How does one achieve an objective that runs counter to the goals of other parties without them knowing of your existence? Stealth, spiritual force, and/or the use of proxies. Typically, however, the enemy is defeated militarily via some form of combat. The objective may be territory, the financial domination of a country, the control of a leader, the destruction of the enemy’s forces, the capture of a town or city, the retrieval of a hostage or VIP, the destruction of some military capacity or weapon of the enemy’s, or any other conceivable military objective.
Part 2: 55 Military Maxims
Plan. ‘Proper planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance’ is a classic British military adage. It’s an obvious yet necessary reminder of the importance of planning in military operations. A classic example is the precise planning of the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars by Otto von Bismarck and the Prussian General Staff, led by Helmuth von Moltke. This enabled rapid and precise railway mobilisation, well-organised logistical operations, the use of telegraphs for long distance communications, and coordinated attacks with well-selected strategic allies such as Italy and Bavaria. Operation Overlord, the Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy, was another instance of excellent planning that required over two years of preparation, espionage, counterintelligence, multinational and multi-service coordination, deception (see point _), and the construction of a pipeline for fuel under the British channel. Another instance of planning that paid off was Operation Desert Storm. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. The U.N demanded Iraq leave Kuwait, but Saddam let the deadline lapse. On January 17, 1991, a massive air and naval campaign destroyed Iraqi’s defences, supply lines and communications infrastructure. This was followed up a ‘left hook’ led by stormin Norman Schwarzkopf, a rapid armoured mechanized assault to outflank and crush Iraqi forces. The end result was America and her allies liberated Kuwait 100 hours after the ground offensive commenced; there were minimal coalition casualties, but the Iraqi’s suffered losses in the tens of thousands. The entire conflict began January 17th 1991 and was over by February 28, 1991. The Inchon Landing, also known as Operation Chromite, led by General Douglas McArthur, was the American attempt to seize the Korean port of Inchon during the Korean War in 1950. Inchon was a heavily fortified port city, there were narrow and treacherous channels, dangerous tides and mudflats, making a successful large scale naval assault almost impossible. The North Koreans did not expect a landing there because of the difficulty. MacArthur succeeded by timing his landing perfectly to coincide with a high-tide window; the landing split enemy forces and led to the recapture of nearby Seoul. A prominent example of a failure in planning is Operation Market Garden in 1944, when allied forces attempted an ambitious airborne and armoured assault to seize key bridges in the Netherlands. Planners, including general Montgomery, failed to account for local intelligence regarding entrenched German armoured divisions and terrain updates. The paratroopers were trapped, there were coordination issues between allied forces, and massive allied casualties, as well as a failure to capture the final bridge at Arnhem necessary to move allied forces across the Rhine River, that proved a bridge too far.
Retreat. The Russian General Suvorov won the war of 1812 against Napoleon by adopting a simple scorched earth policy and retreating into the vast interior of Russia, delaying a decisive battle against Napoleon’s well-trained, battle-blooded troops for as long as possible. Suvorov even went so far as to yield the capital Moscow to Bonaparte, only to have arsonists burn the city, denying Napoleon’s troops food and supplies. This was in September, and Napoleon’s troops were forced to retreat by the harsh Russian autumn and winter. George Washington defeated the British by withdrawing from the coast and forcing the British to engage in a prolonged conflict, with extremely lengthy and difficult supply lines (across the Atlantic Ocean). Resisting the temptation to face the enemy head-on, simply being patient and retreating are a solid option when you have a great deal of land to withdraw into, especially if weather conditions are adverse. Clausewitz also described the qualities of a military genius and a good commander; in addition to the aforementioned decisiveness twinned with high intelligence, so that decisions are made not only well, but quickly, the military genius must also possess courage, which underwrites his ability to make quick choices despite uncertainty and risk. The commander must also be determined, able to stick to a decision once made, and strong enough to endure the poor living conditions and challenges of life on campaign. All the pressure falls on the commander’s shoulders when things go wrong, and all the men under him look to him for decision, so the commander must be of very strong character. Clausewitz believed in the concentration of forces at the enemy’s weakest point, and in fighting as a means of victory, as opposed to Sun Tzu, who thought that the best victory involved the total surrender of the enemy without any bloodshed. He saw attack as superior to defense, all else being equal. The preservation of one’s own forces simply prolongs the conflict without by itself bringing anything to an end.
Stealth. The ultimate victory is by stealth; the enemy never knew you were there, and never knew you existed, and yet your objective is attained anyway. Playing two rival nations against one another to destroy one is another way to win without your influence being detected. An example of a stealth victory would be the capture of political power by western banking houses and corporations over the course of generations, primarily achieved via lobbying, credit, and information, and the engineering of the First World War by the European armaments industry via the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which sucked Austria into war with Russia, and Russia with Germany, and Germany with England and France. A more conventional stealth victory was Project Azorian. In 1968, the soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 sank in the pacific. The CIA dispatched the Hughes Glomar Explorer, an ostensibly private salvage vessel controlled by the tycoon Howard Hughes, to retrieve the submarine, its missiles and codebooks. The mission was a success, and the Soviets were unaware about what had happened for years. Sophisticated cyber-attacks, such as Operation Stuxnet, in which Iran’s nuclear program was successfully sabotaged without their knowledge, constitute a modern example of stealth victories. Weather weapons such as microwave arrays are also a perfect ‘deniable’ means of achieving victory, since most of the public throughout the world have no idea they exist. Accordingly, pursuing economic power, military power for the purposes of deterrence, and espionage operations to gain an informational advantage over potential adversaries is crucial to winning without firing a single shot. The Bletchley Park outwitted the Germans by not only breaking the enigma code but allowing some German movements to go without interception and attributing the actions to a fictional spy network called Boniface, so that they could remain undetected by the Germans and continue to exploit the enigma codes. If they’d shown their hand too many times, the Germans would have revised their entire cryptographic program and the Bletchley boffins would have had to crack the code all over again.
Use Proxies is another means of achieving objectives without getting your hands dirty. The Byzantine Empire routinely bribed warring Hunnic or Germanic tribes into fighting one another. The French financed the American revolutionaries and thereby weakened their rival Great Britain without entering direct conflict with the British Empire. And in the Cold War, the US funded and supplied the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, who defeated the Soviet occupation forces.
Fuck Fear. The best way to eliminate or control fear is to understand that, rather than protecting you, which only occurs on rare occasions, fear typically engenders what is feared; the less fear you indulge in, the better life gets. The soldier, especially if he is in a combat role, has perhaps the most dangerous job of all. Accordingly, the soldier’s main enemy is fear. Fear of injury, fear of delay, fear of pain, privation, suffering, toil. Fear of death. As Suvorov wrote in his military handbook, The Science of Victory, ‘The one who is scared is half-beaten’. Fear can be useful under certain emergency conditions, where it can provide the adrenaline to carry you through. These conditions are more common on the battlefield than off the battlefield, but they are not exactly routine in war, and even then, fear is not the optimal mindset. This is completely counterintuitive, but hope, certain confidence in victory and a brighter tomorrow, and a relaxed, even joyful attitude under duress are superior to the tense, cortisol-fuelled rampage that comes from an anxiety driven fight or flight. When he fought in the trenches as a captain during the First World War, Winston Churchill was absolutely cavalier, he would refuse to take cover and would stand defiantly before enemy snipers, chomping his cigar with a cheerful attitude, totally certain that a man of his talents would not be squandered in the trenches, that he had a deeper purpose to fulfil. Robert Duvall’s character Colonel Bill Kilgore, who played Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries from his helicopters and was totally unconcerned by the chaos of war, was based on John Stockton. Choosing hope, total confidence and even relaxation over fear leads to a certain cavalier, devil may care attitude. Devil may care is a good phrase, because the deceiver is the source of many cares and anxieties – the origin is the idiom, ‘the devil may care, but I do not’ The deceiver is an innate inner archetype or personality, a part of the mind that tries to mess people up. It exacerbates symptoms, anxiety, and tempts people to sin. The deceiver has a hand in almost all fear. This is where spiritual warfare against the ‘forces of darkness in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 6:12) meets conventional military strategy and tactics. When pushing yourself to the limit in almost any endeavour, but particularly a timed run, you will notice that the more fear-driven effort you apply, the more sloppiness creeps in, the worse your form gets, and you actually run a little slower, than if you simply continued with full effort in a more relaxed manner, assured of victory. The key with fear is to remind oneself that victory is assured, whatever victory is to you; if you fear death or injury that much, reassure yourself that you will pass through the challenge unscathed or alive. Faith in and knowledge of God is crucial here. God can provide that confidence where it is lacking and possibly give you those assurances about your future. If not, and you are fated to be injured or die on the battlefield, it is possible that you may be able to make some other sacrifice to ameliorate the situation and you can participate in decisions regarding your fate in advance with the Father. You can also look forward to heaven. God respects the military profession, because it is tough and it requires discipline, obedience and courage, good solid Christian traits, and sin is weakness, just as weakness is sin, and fear is a large part of weakness. If you can condition yourself to actually enjoy danger, extreme effort and duress, then you will be incredibly effective, because very few people can do that. God can help with this, human biology rewards intense effort with endorphins, and you can reward yourself with treats such as cakes and waffles afterwards. Another key technique to deal with fear is to simply debunk your fears one by one using logic and evidence and statistics and then just ignore the fear through an effort of willpower. Ignoring fears is best done by focusing on the task at hand or your recreation. Simply tune out the fear voice in your head, knowing that those fears are false and ill-founded.
Flank. To flank an enemy, you attack on the sides or rear of their force. Hannibal deployed a classic flanking manoeuvre at Lake Trasimene by luring the enemy into a narrow defile with the lake on their right and ambushing them from the woods on their left. During the Battle of Chancellorsville, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson marched for 12 miles through tough terrain to flank the Union forces.
Attack. All else being equal, it is better to attack than defend, to seize the initiative and set the agenda for the enemy to react to. Attacking puts the enemy on the back foot, unless they were well-prepared, and a conventional war cannot be won without an attack; defence merely protects resources, buying time for an effective attack. The German blitzkrieg against France in 1940, slamming through the Maginot line, absolutely set the French reeling, and made them reactive, shellshocked and weak.
Focus. Focus is imperative in the military and prevents countless mistakes. Focus can be mental concentration, and concentration of forces. The best way to develop mental focus is simply to practice concentrating and blocking out distracting thoughts and especially anxious thoughts and remain focussed on your work. It’s easier to focus when you are doing something you enjoy. The OODA loop helps fighter pilots stay focused during missions. It was developed by John Boyd (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) when Boyd noted that American pilots performed better than Korean fighter pilots because they had a wider field of view from the cockpit, and were better able to observe, decide and act than their opposite numbers. Making faster decisions based on more accurate data was crucial in those Korean War aerial dogfights. Fighter pilots have to compartmentalise during flights, so that any regrets, anxiety or irrelevant, distracting thoughts or emotions are simply pushed out of consciousness to be dealt with later, and shift focus to the immediate concerns of the mission. At the Battle of Austerlitz in Poland, between Napoleon’s French and the Austrians, Bonaparte weakened his right flank to lure the Austrians from the Pratzen heights. Napoleon then launched a concentrated assault on the undefended centre on the Pratzen heights. Napoleon split the Allied army in two, encircled the left flank and drove the centre into retreat, winning a famous victory. A classic example of a lack of focus in warfare was the Axis forces’ engagement in a two-front war against the British Empire, America and Russia, which divided their forces and stretched their resources to breaking point. The fundamental principle of military strategy is derived from Von Clausewitz’s On War and that is the concentration of forces, preferably at the enemy’s weakest point. This can enable victory over opponents with superior numbers, if you can concentrate more manpower at the decisive point than your enemy, or your men are fewer at that point but have higher morale and ability. The classic example of this was the Battle of Gaugemela, in which Alexander the Great rode his cavalry in a triangular wedge formation straight into the Persian’s weakest point on the left flank, broke through their lines and encircled them, causing the Persian king to flee. During operation Barbarossa, Hitler split his forces between Moscow and Ukraine, which weakened his offensive. While Hitler won the Battle of Kiev, this delayed his reinforcements from arriving for 30 to 40 days, giving the Russians time to regroup receive manpower and left the germans exposed to worsening weather conditions, resulting in the German army being driven from the gates of Moscow.
Provoke, Counterattack. Provoking an enemy into making a mistake The classic example of provocation in warfare came when Otto von Bismarck provoked Napoleon III’s France into the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 by editing a telegram known as the Ems dispatch, to make it seem offensive to France. In 1964, the US government reported skirmishes between Vietnamese torpedo boats and US destroyers, to escalate their involvement in the Vietnam war. At least one of these reports was false. The Americans enacted an economic embargo against Japan in the 1940’s, which was interpreted by the Japanese as provoking the Pearl Harbor attacks. These in turn provoked an overwhelming counterattack from the USA, culminating in their victory over Japan in August 1945.
Be Patient. A classic example of patience in warfare is the Finnish sniper Simo Häyha, a.k.a ‘the white death’, who entered a sniper duel with a Russian sniper. Hayha crawled into position in the snow and waited for hours until he caught a glimpse of his target. Then he waited even longer until the target rose from his position and dispatched him with a clean headshot. It is not unheard of for snipers to wait for up to 72 hours without bathroom breaks, eating warm food or changing position. During the Battle of Stalingrad, soviet forces soaked up relentless German attacks, waiting for the cold to weaken the enemy before finally launching a counterattack that ended in a decisive encirclement and Russian victory called Operation Uranus. In 1871, the French lost Alsace-Lorraine to the Germans during the Franco-Prussian war. The French military establishment were obsessed with recovering the lost territory and revenge against the Germans, a tendency called revanchism and finally got it with the outbreak of war in 1914. Market Garden was driven by a desire to end the war quickly. Guy of Lusignan rashly engaged Saladin’s forces at the Battle of Hattin in 1187.
Make Self-fulfilling Prophecies. The leadership must understand that our material circumstances are shaped by the will of God, the spirit and the mind. Our beliefs are crucial for determining outcomes on the physical level. For that reason, it doesn’t really help when conducting training and selection processes to haze recruits too much, insult and demean them because there is a risk this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and actually compromise their effectiveness not only in training, but in battle.
Of course, if certain recruits are clearly hopeless, and unable to make the grade, hazing and insults can help to weed out time wasters efficiently, but in those who are actually capable enough, it is a double-edged sword at best. Hazing is defined as an activity that humiliates or demeans someone who is joining or maintaining membership in a group. It includes physical harm, such as heavy exercise, beatings, sleep deprivation, substance abuse, including consuming unpleasant substances (such as bodily fluids) or drugs unwillingly, ritual humiliation such as public nudity, or personal servitude, and psychological abuse such as threats, ridicule and insults. It is quite common in military units, particularly during training and selection, and especially in special forces units where standards are high.
The Army Commandos of World War Two endured tough training in the highlands of Scotland, with live firing and several unfortunate fatalities, but they encouraged and helped each other when they struggled. The instructors for the most part permitted and encouraged this approach, because it built team spirit and was good for morale, and actually developed the toughness and stamina of the unit more effectively than the hazing, beasting and ritual humiliation of modern special forces training.
If you hate your comrades and your instructors because they humiliate you, on some level you will be less inclined to give your all not only in training, but in battle, and perhaps less willing to sacrifice yourself for your brothers. There is a way to counteract this tendency, which is to make the training and hazing so severe and painful that a kind of Stockholm syndrome develops, a strange sympathy or identification with the captor, but nonetheless an unconscious resistance will persist and manifest in all kinds of ways, physically, tactically and psychologically. And if your training process is too demeaning, you may be selecting not for the toughest but for masochists and sadomasochists. The former are self-destructive and may compromise the unit on missions, and the latter will revel in continuing the cycle of hazing with the next batch of new recruits, taking out all their rage on those lower down the chain of command. These types will disproportionately apply to be instructors. First impressions are critical with human beings, and selection is the warrior’s first impression of his unit, and it to some extent sets the tone for his service with that unit.
All of this is bad for morale and leads to self-division, whereby a part of most soldiers who pass through such selection processes actually resents the unit. Typically, soldiers consciously love their unit, out of the fear of admitting that they made a mistake by joining, and conformity, the fear of not fitting in with one’s new pals. The alternative is to be simply broken. Extremely tough but spiritually broken so that you simply follow orders and conform to your unit’s mores, which entails a loss of individuality.
So the resentment from all the torment endured during selection is repressed into the unconscious, and manifests unconsciously, through unintentional acts of sabotage, unnecessary rivalries, especially against people who remind one of one’s worst instructors, risky bar fights and other reckless behaviours that endanger the reputation and functioning of the unit. Some of these acts of unconscious sabotage may occur on mission or during deployments, which is especially dangerous. Special forces soldiers have all had their asses kicked and are sort of pissed off about it.
With a certain kind of person, hazing does develop mental toughness, but there is a danger it can turn into violent aggression to prevent suffering that kind of treatment ever again, which comes with obvious dangers, including court martial, or that it is converted into a somewhat careless, blasé attitude, wherein the individual loses some of his or her faith in humanity and is not as committed to helping their teammates and the nation as they were before. Hazing and tough training comes with advantages however, such as being totally unfazed by insults, threats and rough treatment, but only in those who are strong enough to endure. Hazing can also condition people out of bad habits and slacking, but only if it is administered properly, and rebellious types who cannot be broken will simply defy. This is a shame, because proud, independent minded people with spirit will simply drop out if they are hazed too much, and they could make the best soldiers and the best leaders, but either quit selection or never enlist because of hazing or the potential for hazing. They simply think, ‘Fuck this, I’m doing something better’, and leave.
The toughness of the training and the physical standards do not have to be compromised, but the attitude of the instructors and the camaraderie of the candidates should be carefully calibrated to foster group cohesion and morale, not only among candidates, but the entire unit. Failed candidates may still be part of the same service branch, after all. Believe a higher percentage of recruits will pass training, tell them that confidently, encourage them, and you will have a better success rate not only when it comes to the number of recruits passing selection, but in combat scenarios and throughout their time in the service.
Beyond training, it is imperative that officers understand the power of self-fulfilling prophecies to rule behaviour and mentality – not only their own, but that of their troops. It is absolutely imperative that total belief in victory is maintained at all times among the leadership, and as far as possible among the rank and file. Merely understanding and being thoroughly briefed on the power of the mind over matter and SFP’s will boost morale immeasurably and thereby increase the odds of victory dramatically. Great emphasis ought to be placed upon the importance of mindset during training, both during basic selection and further specialist training. Belief even affects levels of intelligence, wiliness, strategic thinking, tactical aptitude and any other ability you care to name, including toughness and fighting skill; believing you can find a solution makes the solution possible, much more likely or inevitable, depending upon the level of conviction. Believing you are more intelligent or cunning will likewise increase those abilities; draw upon memories where you were smart and forget those in which you were not, then simply lock the belief in and move on with your day and your life, nullifying and batting aside doubts as they may arise, until they cease. Napoleon believed morale was three times as important as physical factors, including stamina and manpower. Napoleon here was exhibiting his hermetic training, which is largely about the power of spirit and mind over the physical world; Napoleon emerged from the esoteric milieu, he had contacts with the freemasons and was of the Merovingian line of kings, hence his sigil was the bumblebee (the insignia of the Merovingians), and hence his rapid rise to power from artillery lieutenant to first consul, within a mere decade.
Napoleon Bonaparte always emphasised the importance of morale in warfare. That is why he spent so much time writing bulletins claiming inordinate enemy losses. In the HBO TV series, based on Stephen Ambrose’s nonfiction account of the 101st Airborne’s European Campaign, Band of Brothers, Lieutenant Spears explained the key to his courage and toughness to Private Blythe; he regarded hope as the enemy, because it instilled fear. To have no fear, Spears decided he was already dead, and that allowed him to do his job more effectively. The ultimate example of this is the samurai, who adhered to the code of Bushido, a creed which included being totally au fait with death, ready to die or even expecting death in battle. The samurai Saigo Takamori led a band of rebels against the modernising Japanese government. His last stand at the Battle of Shiroyama marked the definitive end of the Satsuma Rebellion and the samurai era. Leading a band of 500 warriors against a force of around 30,000 government troops, Takamori chose death over dishonor, preserving the traditional samurai code of Bushido. His force fought with swords, bows and muskets against a modern army with artillery and advanced firearms. This bushido mentality can be effective, but it is a dangerous road to go down, and limits motivation – when all you have to look forward to is violent death, there are untapped wellsprings of motivation concerning a brighter future, and there is a risk of self-fulfilling prophecies.
Winston Churchill understood the power of hope during his nation’s darkest hour, when Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, and France and the Low Countries had fallen to Hitler, Churchill roused the country with speeches that instilled a fighting spirit and never say die attitude after years of appeasement under Chamberlain. ‘We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them on the landing grounds, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence; we shall never surrender. And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated or starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by a British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the old.’[viii]
On the battlefield, former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell kept hope alive during his ordeal in the Badlands of Afghanistan. During Operation Red Wings, Luttrell’s four man reconnaissance element was identified by locals; the team let them go, knowing the risk of attack. The team was ambushed and only Luttrell survived. The SEALs were attacked from multiple directions by mortors, RPK’s, RPG’s and AK47’s. Luttrell was left unconscious with numerous fractures, a broken back and shrapnel wounds. Luttrell found refuge with a local Afghan and was eventually rescued by Army Rangers and Afghan forces. Luttrell was kept going by his mental toughness instilled by his Navy SEAL training, a need to honour his fallen comrades and an overwhelming desire to see his family again.
The world religions know how to access the power of hope. Christianity’s promise of the Kingdom of God, a paradise on earth and then upon a new earth, in which there is no pain or crying or death, is an amazing motivational force, that has inspired martyrs to suffer unimaginable torments, including being burned alive, stoned to death, crucified, eaten by beasts, and cut apart with knives. Saint George was a Roman Army officer, sentenced to severe torture and death during the persecutions of Diocletian in 303 AD for his refusal to worship the pagan ‘gods’. George miraculously survived seven years of torture. He was lacerated on a spinning wheel of swords, thrown into a pit of quicklime that would ordinarily have burned and dissolved his body, beaten with sledgehammers, cast into boiling oil and cauldrons of fire, and he was forced to drink molten lead and deadly poisons. This was one of the greatest feats of endurance of all time. Saint George eventually died on April 23rd when he was beheaded outside the walls of Nicomedia. It was the hope of the kingdom of heaven, resurrection and eternal life that kept George going through his numerous ordeals, and his will was strengthened by God. A prime example of a feint came during the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The Norman king William the Conqueror pretended to run away in panic from the Anglo-Saxons under Harold Godwinson, who had a solid defensive position on a hill and a firm shield wall. As the English charged after the fleeing Normans, they broke rank and exposed themselves. The Norman cavalry turned around and routed them.
Deceive. Military deception is an effort to gain a strategic or tactical advantage by misleading the enemy. The essence of deception is unpredictability. The lie must make you unpredictable, whilst making your opponents predictable. It’s all about moving pieces on the board. There are a few basic types of military deception: diversions, to draw the enemy’s attention away and lead them to misallocate resources at the wrong time and place; feints, an attack that is intended to deceive the enemy about the time and/or place of the main assault; a demonstration is intended to induce the enemy to misallocate resources based upon a misleading show of force.
One of the first recorded military strategies is the Trojan Horse. Circa 1200 BC, towards the end of the Bronze Age. After ten years of battle for control of Troy between the Achaeans (early Greeks) and the Trojans, Odysseus and his guardian deity Athena came up with the idea to construct a wooden horse and leave it on the beach for the Trojans to find and let inside their gates. The horse was constructed by the Achaeans, an effort led by Epeius, and guided by Athena. Twelve of the bravest Achaeans, including Odysseus, Neoptolemus (Achilles’ son) and Menelaus, concealed themselves inside the belly of the horse and were left on the beach. A man called Sinon, a relative of Odysseus’, stayed outside the horse. The other Achaeans and Danaans got in their ships and sailed out of sight. Sinon was discovered by the Trojans and told them that the Greeks had sailed home, and the horse was left there as an offering to Poseidon. The Trojans, with the notable exceptions of Cassandra and Aeneas, believed that they had won the war and believed Sinon’s tale about how the horse would help them with divine favour, if they allowed it into the citadel of Troy. The Trojans, led by King Priam, moved the horse into their citadel and began to revel and celebrate their supposed ‘victory’. While Odysseus and his men waited, and endured Helen of Troy, an excellent mimic who called out to the concealed Achaean men in their wives’ voices to try and lure them into revealing themselves, the Achaean fleet returned to the beach and crept into position. Come nighttime, Odysseus and his men descended from the horse, stealthily dispatched sentries at the gatehouse, and opened up the gates for the waiting Achaean army. The army ran amok through Troy, and sacked and burned the city with unparallelled brutality for that time and place. The victory was total, but it came at great cost. Almost all the victors were beset by misfortune; Odysseus endured ten years at sea, including all manner of strange adventures and trials; the commander of the Achaeans, Agamemnon, returned home to be butchered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, a calamity eventually avenged by his son Orestes; Ajax, who raped Cassandra in the temple of Athena, was shipwrecked by Athena and Poseidon.
The message of the Trojan War is that deception can win wars, but it can also lower moral standards and usher in an ethical ‘race to the bottom’, which has been ongoing in western warfare ever since that horse was left on the beach more than 3,000 years ago. There are also spiritual and practical ramifications to dirty warfare; karma, or divine justice, is a real factor that must be reckoned with, as is the golden rule, ‘as you would like people to do unto you, do exactly so to them.’ (Luke 6:31). Odysseus wanted to get home, so he did whatever was necessary to achieve the objective, and he paid the price. Word of the horse stratagem spread, largely through the poems of the bard Homer, who was Odysseus’ grandson, and an advance in strategy came at the cost of a blow to ethics. All too often the case.
A more ethical example of deception comes from the Second World War, a just war from the Allies’ perspective. During Operation Bodyguard, the Allies fed disinformation to the Axis through a Catalan agent called Pujol that the landings would be at pas de Calais. This conformed with Hitler’s expectations, because Calais was nearer the British landmass than the true landing sites in Normandy. Hitler was notoriously inflexible and rigid, especially where his instincts were concerned; the man survived and lived on his intuitions, and was loath to go against them. The British exploited this tendency perfectly by positioning troops in misleading locations and using inflatable tanks to deceive the Germans into believing they would land at Calais.
Then there was Operation Mincemeat, derived from an idea by Ian Fleming, in which the body of a deceased Welsh miner was dressed in the uniform of an RAF airman and dropped off the coast of Spain with a false message stating that the British were going to invade the mediterranean via Greece, when actually the main thrust was through Italy. The Germans fell for this deception hook, line and sinker as well.
In 1204, Genghis Khan came up against the Naiman tribe. At night, he ordered his soldiers to light five campfires each. The Naiman saw an immense amount of fires and concluded they were outnumbered, which broke their morale and spread panic among their ranks. The Mongols won the subsequent battle.
In 1669, after plundering the towns on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, Morgan set sail across the lake and found his exit blocked; a coastal fortress had been manned by the Spanish, blocking the narrow passage back to the Caribbean. Morgan rigged a large merchant ship with explosive, erected fake ‘scarecrow’ pirates on the deck to trick the Spaniards into believing it was his warship. A skeleton crew sailed the ship into position, set it alight and jumped overboard. The fireship set the Spanish flagship Magdalena ablaze. A second ship ran aground to escape, and a third was captured by Morgan, who feigned a troop landing to get the fortress gunners to shift their focus away from the water, where he sailed his main force safely past the fortress with its deadly guns, and out to open water.
Pick Your Enemy Well. If necessary, have a clearly defined enemy. This clarity is motivating and attracts followers and increases group cohesion. Having a common enemy can help to unite disparate factions in a shared purpose. For example, Otto von Bismarck united the German states, including then-independent Bavaria, against France, when he provoked the French into attacking German territory. The war was successful for Germany, and led to German unification in 1871. Margaret Thatcher was renowned for picking her enemies well. Her premiership was not going well in 1982, until Argentinians invaded and attempted to seize the British territory, the Falkland Islands, gave her an ideal opportunity to flex her muscles. Thatcher knew there was a chance of a quick, relatively easy victory, and she dispatched a naval task force of 8,000 men, the conflict lasted only 74 days, and it cemented her ‘Iron Lady’ image with the British public. Argentine forces surrendered at Port Stanley on June 14, 1982. Margaret Thatcher threatened the French President with launching a nuclear strike on Argentina if he didn’t provide a backdoor into the guidance systems of the French-made Exocet missiles that the Argentines were using. Thatcher’s bluff was successful, and the missiles were neutralised thereafter.
Napoleon picked a terrible enemy when he decided to invade Russia in 1812 to maintain his Continental System, a trade embargo of Britain that the Russians were flouting. The Russian people were and are incredibly tough, the winters are brutal, and the entire geography of Russia lends itself to failed invasions, including the vastness of the country.
He Who Hesitates Is Lost. In any fight, hesitation can prove fatal, since the first blow is often decisive. Frequently, making a quick decision, based on first instinct, is better than dithering and hemming and hawing. Of course this depends upon the quality of your instincts. If your intuitions are bad, then you had better think things through a bit more carefully, rely on facts, logic and expert advice. But once a decision has been made, do your best to stick to it. At Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces were ranged against the British and the Prussians. Napoleon delayed his attack against the Duke of Wellington’s army. He waited hours for the muddy ground to dry, which gave the Prussian army, who were allied with the British, time to arrive. The French army was thereby caught between two allied forces and destroyed. The union commander George Mclelland hesitated too much on campaign and it cost him dearly, enabling Robert E Lee and confederate forces to drive him back from Richmond.
At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, Henry V’s army was tired and drained. He faced a large, fresh French army and quickly ordered his archers to advance, take up position and open fire, which decimated the French ranks and led to an English victory. Combining intelligence with decisiveness is crucial for command.
Mission Impossible. To totally wrongfoot the enemy and be unpredictable, it sometimes pays to do something crazy that is believed to be impossible. ‘Impossible is a word in the dictionary of fools’ said Napoleon, and it was the example of Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca that he had in the forefront of his mind when he uttered those words. In 218 BC, to start the Second Punic War, Hannibal caught the Romans off-guard by attempting and accomplishing the totally unexpected and near impossible task of transporting his army, including elephants, across the Alps to invade Italy from the north, when the Romans were expecting a seaborne assault across the Mediterranean or a more conventional land-based attack. Hannibal took the long way around to preserve stealth, landing in Hispania and traveling overland through Gaul. It took him 16 days to cross mountain passes in Cisalpine Gaul, what is now Switzerland and northern Italy, with an army of 40 to 50,000 men, and 37 war elephants, many of whom were lost in the rough terrain and autumn snows. Undertaking this expedition in late September and October was incredibly risky given the potential for adverse weather conditions at high altitude in the Alps during that season. Hannibal lost nearly half of his forces but retained the element of surprise. This led to victories at the Battle of Ticinus, in which the Roman general Scipio was wounded, and the Battle of the Trebia.
Another example of unexpected audacity carrying the day came when the privateer Captain Henry Morgan led his 1400 men on a gruelling nine day jungle march to reach Panama City and defeat a Spanish garrison. The Spanish knew that Morgan was active in the vicinity but were expecting a seaborne assault, not an attack from land, given the thickness of the jungle and the inhospitable terrain. Morgan’s men arrived tired and starving. The Spanish panicked and deployed their forces outside the city, instead of using the fortifications of the city walls. Morgan’s men defeated the Spanish force easily and seized a great deal of treasure from the city.
Condition Your Troops. During Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (Sea Air and Land) Training, recruits endure tough physical challenges but are rewarded and refuelled with good food including pork chops, omelettes, bacon, toast, pasta, chicken nuggets and fruit. It is imperative to reward good work during training and in the field where possible, and food and drink is an integral part of that. This is all part of basic conditioning – pleasant stimuli (good food and drink) in response to a desired behaviour, eliciting the response of increased motivation. Being stingy with compliments works to an extent, in that if a genuine atta boy is delivered by a hard-ass drill instructor it means more, but to be honest, good work and performance of any kind should be rewarded proportionately (all else being equal), and excellence ought to be rewarded even more, taking into account the abilities and effort-level of the individual. ‘To whomever much is given, of him much will be required; and to whom much was entrusted, of him more will be asked.’ (Luke 12:48). Further rewards include having more time for rest and recreation, watching favourite movies (including action classics like Rambo II, Rambo III, Hot Shots: Part Deux, Speed, Die Hard, The Rock, Con Air, which are very good for morale) and TV shows (SEAL Team, 24, Homeland).
Punishments must be meted out, but only when warranted; to this end, it is better not to leave too much to officer’s and NCO’s discretion, lest personal enmities and individual harshness cloud judgement, but to have a detailed military code with pre-assigned punishments laid out for infractions. This will include different gradations of misdemeanour and penances outlined in detail. Punishments include stress positions, extra workouts (pushups, runs, marches with packs), missing meals, onerous duties such as laundry and toilet cleaning. Collective punishments, when they are not warranted, are a bad idea that serves to either turn the group against an individual or against their leadership. Neither is good for morale – even when they scapegoat a culpable or innocent party, there will be unconscious guilt about what they do. Class detentions should be avoided at all costs.
No Regrets. Your effectiveness as a leader will be compromised if you are continually regretting past mistakes and reliving old battles. Compartmentalising during battle helps enormously. The best way is to simply never make mistakes; the second best is to learn that to dwell upon mistakes and let them weaken you is almost always an even bigger mistake than the original mistake, and to simply learn whatever forward facing lesson there is to be learned from the error, forget the mistake, and move on. After losing the campaign of 1812, Napoleon was a spent force. He had too much regret about launching that invasion of Russia to be truly effective again as a commander; the momentum of the glory days of the 1800’s was gone. He felt his star had abandoned him, and he lost the unshakeable belief in his inevitable victory that was the key to his success. He said, ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step’. He made mistakes; he lost Waterloo.
Use Momentum. When you’re on a winning streak, keep it going. Keep doing it well. Try your damndest not to slow down. And when things get tough, which they always do, do not give up, keep the winning momentum going. It’s an endless battle, but it pays off.
R&R. Take a Break. It may sound weak to grizzled military men, but the fact is, everyone needs a rest every now and again. God rested on the seventh day, underlining the importance of a rest period. Taking a break enables you to come back refreshed and relaxed and provides more endurance, stamina and self-control. When you are at war for months at a time, there is a danger of getting stale and bleak. An example of a strategic pause is the Fabian strategy against Hannibal Barca. Following Hannibal’s victories at Trebia and Lake Trasimene, Rome made Quintus Fabius dictator. Fabius’ strategy was to refuse to engage Hannibal in any major battles, but only engaged in the odd skirmish here and there while Hannibal marched around Italy. This waiting period allowed Rome time to train and rest and finally take the war to Carthage, a move which culminated in victory. After George Washington’s Revolutionary Army were defeated at Philadelphia, he, he withdrew from active campaigning, established a base for the winter at Valley Forge, where his men could rest and regroup and retrain under Baron von Steuben, and inoculated his men against smallpox.
Control Yourself. The ability to perceive the situation objectively and dispassionately is critical in warfare. Fear invites attack and advertises weaknesses to the enemy; it can even turn friends into enemies, because showing fear to a human being is like showing blood to a great white shark; it is a temptation not everyone can resist, a temptation to do evil. Anger can lead to recklessness. Excessive pride goeth before the fall. One has to account for the distorting effect of emotion. Welcome combat and face fears instead of evading them, when prudent and necessary. In the 1940’s the American psychologist Murray Bowen developed the concept of self-differentiation. Self-differentiation is basically a measure of emotional control and maturity, a concept that is crucial here, the ability to stand your ground and not be swayed by your feelings or other people. The way to develop it is to gain insight into your psychological state, learn to recognise runaway emotions and nip them in the bud. Experience dealing with people is key here. Believing that you have high self-differentiation is also crucial. Simply believing it, increases self-differentiation or any attribute. You can also pray to God for more SD, in the faith you will get a good result, but don’t be surprised if it requires experience dealing with people, some of whom may be difficult, to develop the necessary attribute. The mind controls the body, and it obviously controls mental faculties. The other way is to gain insight from reading Godmindfamily and Michael Kerr’s books about Bowen Theory, then gradually come to the realisation that there is a need for greater SD, which may be had by simply applying the lessons and behaving and thinking less emotionally.
Judge by Actions, which speak louder than words. Look at the actual track record and the facts of what has occurred. Napoleon routinely exaggerated enemy casualties and downplayed his own casualties in his bulletins, sometimes by tens of thousands.
Arm Yourself. Do not be dependent upon foreign powers, technology or other people for help, armaments, supplies and assistance. For example, Switzerland has months of reserves of food and drink, numerous fortifications, bunkers and anti-aircraft emplacements, a good army bolstered by conscription, and domestically constructed arms and armour. Rome was also self-sufficient during its peak, and was funded by Roman taxes and did not rely on foreign powers for its military machine to function.
Be Confident In Victory. The core principle of all strategy is to believe you are superior to your opponent, which will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it is believed sufficiently. The key to Napoleon’s success was unerring self-confidence in victory. He just knew he’d find a way, and implement it, and he always did…until he made a big mistake (the invasion of Russia in 1812) and lost confidence. The means will follow the belief twinned with the firm resolution to win, and the means includes the correct strategy.
There are several keys to believing you are superior to your opponent: 1) Have experience in that field, 2) Be better than your opponent already and know it. 3) Pray to God for the necessary confidence, which requires the willingness to use that confidence for good. 4) Put enough work and effort into developing your abilities that the belief in their increase becomes more plausible. And possibly be willing to make sacrifices for that confidence and/or strategic ability.
Meritocracy. The best system for promotions and rank in the military is to assign everyone a rank based not on connections, race, gender, or even experience, so much as their ability to do the job. To that end, military selection for all roles should focus on detailed simulations of the job in question. This is already the case for fighter pilots and to some extent, special forces soldiers, who undergo escape and evasion exercises and mock interrogations, but should be the case for all roles in the military, especially senior officers. Now, ‘office politics’ and people skills are an integral part of the job, so the quality of interactions with potential colleagues should be taken into consideration too. In practice, this would result in more and younger high IQ individuals taking up the highest ranks in the military. It would unleash a tidal wave of mini-Napoleons rising rapidly through the ranks and cause an upheaval in the command structure. Obviously, it is preferable for talented second lieutenants and privates to jump through the ranks to positions where their abilities can be used rather than waiting years or decades to be in a position of real authority.
Compartmentalise your personal life. The breakdown in Napoleon’s marriage to Josephine seemed to undermine his confidence; his confidence was tied up with her, and once she left his life, he was weakened and began making strategic blunders and behaving emotionally. How to deal with loved ones back home is a perennial problem for a warrior and obviously the best solution for a warrior is to have no spouse and children, but this is only a viable solution for relatively few people. The next best option is to have an incredibly supportive wife who can take care of the homefront almost single-handed and is willing to make sacrifices. Such women are vanishingly rare. With a rocky marriage or divorce, the best outcome that can be hoped for is that the warrior is able to leave his baggage at home and focus almost exclusively on the mission when he is deployed, but this will have a tendency to eat away at him. A man who wants a family should just build a family, otherwise the lack of fulfilment and self-denial, combined with the spartan discipline of military life, may simply be too much to bear.
Neutrality and Balance Alliances. The best way to avoid defeat in war is simply never to engage in a conflict, by maintaining a balance of alliances. The Swiss have been doing this successfully for centuries via their policy of neutrality, which has been underwritten by difficult terrain, a high degree of self-sufficiency, emergency preparedness, mandatory conscription and disproportionate military strength. Kaiser Wilhelm IV completely destroyed fin de siècle Europe by breaking the Three Emperor’s League, the alliance between Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia that kept the peace in Europe. Without Germany keeping Austro-Hungary and Russia from going to war, conflict between these two empires became inevitable, especially when Wilhelmine Germany effectively sided with the Austrians, who rashly started a war with Serbia – allied with Russia – over Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.
Speed. Moving faster than your enemy is an easy way to defeat them, enabling you to defeat their forces before reinforcements arrive, break their militaries into pieces that can be taken down one by one, and simply increase the power of the attack through improved velocity. Napoleon and Genghis Khan owed many of their victories to superior mobility and speed. Napoleon’s army routinely marched 20 miles per day, and Genghis Khan’s cavalry could cover 60 to 100 miles in a day; they thundered across the steppe faster than their opponents and materialised seemingly out of nowhere; all thanks to speed. Khan’s horde would slit their horses neck’s and drink the blood while riding and survive off curdled horse’s milk without stopping to aid their speed and mobility. Blitzkrieg was devastating in the Second World War because it relied on fast-moving tanks and infantry combined with overhead bombing campaigns to break the rigid pattern of trench warfare endured in the previous war.
Logistics. Food, Drink and Supplies. An army marches on its stomach. It is absolutely imperative that an army is properly supplied with food, drink and equipment. And that supplies keep pace with the army. The modern US Armed Forces have the best logistical system in history, with strategic airlift fleets and auxiliary naval fleets. It is possible to simply clone animal and plant cells and grow meat and wheat in a lab or via 3D printing, using incubators. Cell-based meat is not legal in the UK or EU, so this would have to be US-led. Lab-grown meat is another interesting possibility, in which cells are taken from an animal and matured in a bioreactor, leading to a finished product within 6 to 8 weeks. 3D printing could help with this process. 3D bioprinting involves taking a safe biopsy from an animal to collect stem cells, the cells are matured in a bioreactor, fed with nutrients to multiply into millions of cells, then the cells are mixed with a liquid to make bio-ink, and a 3D printer stacks layers of the bio-ink to form the muscle fibres and texture of a cut of meat. Indoor wheat cultivation is also very efficient with yields up to 26 times higher than standard field crops, using LED lighting and soilless production. I'll provide another example of how maize can be 3D printed. Scientists extract zein, the main protein in maize seeds, they dissolve the zein powder so it can be used as a 3D-printable paste or ink, before printing porous, edible structures out of maize protein. Indoor wheat cultivation is also very efficient with yields up to 26 times higher than standard field crops, using LED lighting and soilless production. This could be crucial during the tribulation, when concentrations of extreme weather events and temporarily reduced sunlight may disrupt the harvest. The military could pursue these innovations via military-owned, affiliated or part-owned corporations, like the Knights Templar, who had agricultural and viticultural divisions of monks dedicated to providing food and drink for the brotherhood and selling the surplus to civilians at a profit. DARPA already has access to advanced 3D printers which would give the US military a running start on this kind of project.
Hydrogen and oxygen are naturally present in the air and the atmosphere. Combining hydrogen with oxygen creates H20 molecules, which is effectively water; this could be done via a 3D printer or via fuel cells. Atmospheric water generators that extract hydrogen from the air and convert it into clean, drinkable water are another avenue. In many cases, there is no access to clean water, but there is access to contaminated water which can be purified with simple, often cheap water filtration devices such as the LifeStraw or larger scale water filters.
Advance While Negotiating. During a negotiation it is important to gain as much ground as rapidly as possible. The North Vietnamese did this during negotiations with the Nixon administration, continuously advancing and thereby strengthening their hand when it came to talks with Kissinger. The NVA ended up winning the whole of Vietnam, when the Americans left Saigon in 1975. The signing of the Treaty of Versailles was aided by the threat of Allied advances. The Treaty of Utrecht which concluded the War of the Spanish Succession was influenced by events on the battlefield. The Grand Alliance (Great Britain, Prussia, The Holy Roman Empire and The Dutch Republic) advanced along with the French and Spanish forces to gain leverage at the negotiating table. The French in particular capitalised on the British withdrawal to seize Barcelona, defeat the Dutch-Austrian army and take several fortresses in northern France. The result was a compromise, with Philip V retaining the throne of Spain but France and Spain were prevented from merging on a permanent basis under Bourbon rule, and Philip had to renounce any claim to the throne of France.
Army of God. Soldiers with the Holy Spirit are able to fight much better in just wars, because they have the power of God behind them. In a description of the final Battle for Jerusalem between Christ and Antichrist, the prophet Zechariah wrote: ‘He who is feeble among them at that day will be like David, and David’s house will be like God, like Yahweh’s angel before them.’ (Zechariah 12:8). ‘God’, also called ‘Yahweh’s angel before them’ is Jesus, who in his preincarnate state was known in the Bible as the Angel of the Lord, or ‘Yahweh’s angel’ (Genesis 16:7;22:12), and as God: Jacob was called Israel, meaning ‘he who struggles with God’ after their wrestling match in the desert (Genesis 32:28).[ix] Samson received the Holy Spirit and gave him strength to defeat large numbers of enemies (Judges 15:14–17). The Holy Spirit can bestow superhuman strength, fitness, marksmanship, fighting skill and overall combat ability, even in the absence of training. The spirit can enable you to fast for days on end without feeling very hungry, it can help you to minimise thirst. It is the ultimate resource for warriors to draw upon. The prophet Elisha struck the Syrian army with blindness by the power of the Holy Spirit (2 Kings 6). The clear implication of these biblical episodes is that Holy Spirit can be used not only for healing and protection, but offensively, too. The New Testament is not all about turning the other cheek. The introduction of Christianity to the world, in addition to reaping countless benefits, has brought division and conflict to the world, and God is prepared to support those who fight for him. ‘Don’t think that I came to send peace on the earth. I didn’t come to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at odds with his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. He who doesn’t take his cross and follow after me isn’t worthy of me. (Matthew 10:34).
Combat Groupthink. One of the biggest dangers (and strengths) of a military organisation is excessive conformity. This can come from one of two directions: above and below. Groupthink is a social psychological phenomenon whereby a group’s desire for conformity and harmony produces irrational decisions and collective behaviour. The group agrees at all costs. The term groupthink was coined by William H. Whyte.[x] Whyte focused on the deleterious effects of groupthink in the context of American corporations in the 1950’s. Groupthink also has very important political consequences. In his book, Victims of Groupthink, Irving Janis cited the US’s lack of preparedness for the Pearl Harbor attacks and the US invasion of Vietnam as three prominent examples of groupthink in the foreign policy arena, all of which had disastrous effects.[xi] Subsequently, the Watergate scandal,[xii] the Nazi’s decision to invade Russia in 1941, that led to their total demise, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and social media echo chambers have been (correctly) identified as instances of groupthink. It should be noted that while groupthink played a role in all the above examples, not all of the aforementioned disasters were disadvantageous to everyone...The invasion plan for the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco was provided by the CIA, and uncritically accepted by the Kennedy administration. Objections were dismissed by the government, and the objectors, including Arthur Schlesinger, began to self-censor. Unquestioned assumptions were made about the weaknesses of the Castro regime and its military defences, that led to the CIA-backed paramilitaries being easily defeated shortly after landing on the Bahía de Cochinos. Irving Janis intended that the word groupthink should deliberately evoke the ‘doublethink’ concept from George Orwell’s novel of totalitarianism 1984, defined as the ability to believe two contradictory propositions at the same time.
A). Obedience is absolutely necessary to maintain order and drill, however, taken too far, especially at the level of senior officers, it can lead to bad decisions. Either because the commanding officer wants to appease his subordinates, or because the subordinates are too afraid of their C/O to stand up to him when they believe he is wrong. Excessive conformity and obedience can also be dangerous at the small group (squad, team, platoon) level, particularly in the special forces. There is more of a burden of responsibility on special forces operators to think and act independently due to the nature of their missions. in two contradictory positions at the same time.[xiii]Self-differentiation is the antidote and must be developed in the military. It is a concept borrowed from family therapy, but the military, especially on the small unit (squad, platoon and company) scale, effectively functions as a family. People’s sibling profile should be taken into account when considering promotions to leadership positions, with a tendency to favour elder brothers. Obedience was key to the Spartans military successes, including holding the pass at Thermopylae and to Rorke’s Drift, in which 150 British Army soldiers successfully held off a large number of zulu warriors thanks in part to their obedience to their officers’ orders and their willingness to stay at their posts.B). Groupthink is also a danger if the leadership is too democratic and the senior officers trust too much in their subordinates’ insights. The wisdom of crowds is the exception; the madness of crowds is the rule, and many minds are not better than one, when that one is intelligent.
Show no weakness. Showing weakness to the enemy invites attack; do not advertise shortcomings, but always seek to project strength, unless you are trying to lure the enemy into a rash assault with the aim of a devastating counterattack. General Gamelin openly panicked to Winston Churchill about his lack of strategic reserves with which to fight the German blitzkrieg. Gamelin’s show of despair trickled down the armed forces and contributed to the French surrender in June 22, 1940. Conversely, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviets stationed nuclear-equipped ICBM’s (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) on Cuba, President John F. Kennedy showed great strength by establishing a naval quarantine around Cuba to prevent supplies and weapons from reaching the country, as well as placing its military on high alert (DEFCON 3 and DEFCON 2). He resisted the temptation to invade Cuba, and communicated with Soviet Premier Nikhita Kruschev via confidential backchannels. The two leaders came to an agreement; Kennedy would not invade Cuba, and would withdraw the US’s aging ICBM’s from Turkey, and Khruschev would publicly withdraw the missiles from Cuba.
Divide and Rule. Playing adversaries or rivals against one another can increase your power. A classic example is the Roman Empire, which backed certain barbarian factions over others, played the barbarian tribes against one another, made peace treaties with multiple foreign factions, and gave citizenship and other perks to certain city states and regions. The British ruled India with a skeleton crew of civil servant s and military by exacerbating caste, ethnic and religious differences and playing different groups against one another to strengthen their own authority as peacemakers.
Develop and Help Your Conquests or ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’. The British also developed the country industrially and provided key infrastructure, including railways, a postal service, a centralised bureaucracy and civil service, motorcars, roads, which went a long way to appeasing the populace. The Romans built excellent long, straight roads, provided clean drinking water via a sophisticated system of acqueducts, an appealing and practical architectural style, building techniques, including indoor plumbing and underfloor heating. Having excellent and well-trained engineer corps is crucial here for the construction of roads, as well as military-affiliated corporations. The advantages of Roman civilization were extremely appealing to various non-subject peoples. For example, in 133 BC King Attalus III of Pergamon died without an heir and simply beqeauthed his kingdom to Rome, knowing they would prevent civil war and turn Pergamom into a prosperous province. King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia gave his kingdom to Rome so that the Roman Republic would protect it from Mithridates of Pontus. In 376 BC, the Thervingi Goths, fleeing the Huns, gathered on the Danube River and requested to be integrated into the Roman Empire. They wanted to farm Roman lands and serve as soldiers in the Roman military. The Romans totally bungled this overture, placing too many goths in too small an area, resulting in famine, and they wound up in conflict with the Goths. Many central Asian peoples wanted to be part of Genghis Khan’;s Mongol Empire, not only because they were afraid of attack, and wanted his protection, but because his empire offered numerous economic and legal benefits, such as just laws. Genghos ran a tight ship. For example, a nomadic tribe, the Uyghurs voluntarily surrendered to Genghis and were absorbed into his empire. They avoided destruction, maintained some local autonomy, and benefited from the trade of the silk road, economic growth from participating in the mongol empire’s frtee trade zone, and a standardized currency. It is important to make membership of the empire a no-brainer with benefits that obviously outweigh the detriments. In God’s kingdom, the spiritual benefits will be accompanied by material advantages.
Trust No One. Trusting allies and people in general is typically a bad idea, unless they have proven their trustworthiness, but even then, prudence is wise and information should be on a need-to-know basis. In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders allied with the Byzantine Empire, with the aim of retaking the Holy Land. There were political disputes, and the crusaders sacked Constantinople thoroughly, massacring the inhabitants. Then there was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1938, in which the Russians and the Germans agreed not to go to war. The pact was broken by Hitler when he launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941.
Deterrence. Deterring an attack is often preferable to dealing with an attack. Deterrence is the act of discouraging an action or behaviour by instilling fear of punishment, retaliation or negative consequences. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union practiced deterrence due to the threat of using their nuclear arsenals, which prevented a Third World War. This was called Mutually Assured Destruction; the power of the nuclear weapons possessed by both the USA and the USSR was so tremendous, and the threat of retaliatory escalation so plausible, that most of the world population would be destroyed should it have come to open conflict between the two superpowers. So destruction of both nations was mutually assured in the event of a direct conflict. Both superpowers also developed ‘second strike’ capability, to ensure that if the enemy launched a first strike, a powerful response could not be prevented. This included a formidable array of nuclear warhead delivery options, including bombers, land-based missile siloes and nuclear submarines patrolling the seas around the world. he deterrent effect of NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) has been preventing a Third World War for decades, because article 5 of the alliance states that an attack on one member means an attack on all. The Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact was a similar alliance that saw the world split into opposing camps, too afraid to directly confront one another. Another example of deterrence came in the Second World War when the western Axis and Allied powers agreed not to use chemical weapons against one another. Both sides possessed chemical weapons stockpiles but feared the devastating effects on the human body, and on logistics and mobilisation, based on their experience of the First World War. There are examples of failed deterrence; for example, when the Russians invaded South Ossetia in Georgia in 2008, disregarding the warnings of western powers, and the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, despite threats from the EU and the US. In the case of the South Ossetia incursion, western powers relied on vague diplomatic warnings that didn’t carry enough weight in the Kremlin, because western powers simply did not see a Russian invasion of Georgia as a realistic possibility. There were no sanctions afterwards. When it came to Crimea in 2014, the threat was to kick Russia out of the G8, and to impose economic sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes for Russian elites, which were carried out in due course. In both cases, the deterrence factor was insufficient to prevent the Russian incursion. Richard Nixon’s ‘madman theory’ has its utility; Nixon would deliberately manipulate his public image as a loose cannon and a weirdo to make other world leaders fear his sanity sufficiently that they thought he may actually use a nuclear bomb, if pushed too far. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger went along with the theory, deeming it expedient.
Never reveal your secrets to the enemy. The more of your secrets an enemy (or friend) knows, the easier it is for them to sabotage or betray you, because they know you better. As the Second World War propaganda poster read, ‘Loose lips sink ships.’ A prominent example of revealing secrets to the enemy came when the German physicist Klaus Fuchs, who was working on the UK’s atomic bomb at Harwell, betrayed atomic secrets to the KGB by handing over classified files at Uffington White Horse. In America, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spied on the Manhattan Project and betrayed top-secret information to the Soviets, including American radar, sonar, jet engines and nuclear weapon designs. They were tried and convicted and executed in Sing Sing Prison, New York, in 1853, as part of the dragnet that started with the arrest of Klaus Fuchs in southern England. The Soviets developed the A-bomb in 1949, years ahead of western scientists projections, due in part to the work of these spies. Indeed, prosecturos even laid the Korean War at the door of the Rosenbergs, as they believed the Korean War would have been impossible in a unipolar world with one nuclear power. During the First World War, the Dutchwoman Mata Hari seduced her targets, gained information and revealed it to the Germans and the French. She was a double agent. Then there is the Cambridge Five, a group of five highly placed Russian moles within the British gobernment and intelligence community, recruited from the University of Cambridge in the 1930’s. Kim Philby was in charge of MI6’s anti-soviet desk. The Cambridge Five betrayed the identities of hundreds of agents and undermined trust between the British and the American intelligence agencies for decades. Kim Philby compromised numerous British intelligence operations. MacLean passed on thousands of western policy documents and disucssions about the formation of NATO. Guy Burgess, who infiltrated MI5, passed on many documents about wartime and post-war planning. Anthony Blunt of MI5 shared counterintelligence secrets with the Soviets. Philby eventually defected to Russia, where he lived as a hero of the people until 1988. Colonel Alfred Redl, the head of Austro-Hungary’s military counterintelligence agency, the Evidenzbureau, passed on the Austro-Hungarian war plans to the Russians after being recruited as a Russian agent prior to the First World War.
Cyber Warfare. Attack the enemy’s infrastructure: electricity, power plants, internet. The new frontier in cyber warfare is hacking into cyborg soldiers’ AI augmentation systems and also their nanomachines, to control enemy combatants remotely. Hacking into robotics systems is also a huge advantage for the future of warfare. The most efficient way to conduct cyber warfare is to use machine learning and AI algorithms to conduct cyber-attacks. AI is a major problem in the intelligence community, particularly AI hacking. The solution for AI Cyber Security is to write an AI algorithm that basically reverses whatever the offensive AI is attempting; a mirror AI. Advanced encryption is also essential; machine learning encryption would enable the encryption to keep pace with hackers organically without much human input. Keeping sensitive data in analogue format is another means of protection against hackers. If intelligence agencies ceased to weaken commercial encryption to provide back-doors for investigations and surveillance, that would also be a major boost to cyber security. Another main problem with espionage is keeping secrets in the information age. Analogue copies and backups are crucial; the use of physical files and floppy disks.
Know Your Enemy. Sun Tzu wrote: Know yourself, know your enemy, win a hundred battles. Knowledge of the enemy can be crucial to victory, as it enables you to learn their weaknesses and strengths and prepare a detailed battle plan to exploit those weaknesses for your own ends. Prior to the Battle of Midway in 1942, the US Navy broke the Japanese code for encrypted naval communications and discovered the Admiral Yamamoto’s detailed battle plan. The US Navy learned that the Japanese attack on the American Midway atoll was a feint and sent dive bombers to sink four Japanese fleet carriers, a heavy cruiser, and hundreds of Japanese planes, resulting in an American victory that turned the tide of the pacific theatre of World War Two. The Athenian General Themistocles had studied Persian warships prior to the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. He lured the massive fleet into the narrow strait of Salamis near the Greek mainland. Knowing that large Persian ships lacked manoeuvrability in tight spaces, Themistocles enabled the smaller Greek fleet to destroy them. The British codebreakers at Bletchley Park managed to decode the German enigma device, recovered from Polish intelligence, the Norway campaign (including a seizure of typographical codebooks during the Lofoten raid) and captured German U-boats such as U-110 which gave them precise intelligence on German troop movements, U-boat positions, supply lines and Luftwaffe raids. Communications intercepted via enigma codebreaking led to the double cross operation, whereby all German agents in England were compromised and/or turned to provide misinformation to the Germans, a part of the D-Day deception campaign Operation Fortitude. It also furnished vital intelligence on the V-weapons at Peenemunde, enabling the allies to prepare countermeasures for the V-1 and V2 rocket campaigns. It is estimated that the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the forerunners of Britains GCHQ, shortened the war by two to four years.
Spiritual Warfare in conjunction with Conventional Warfare. The key figures in spiritual warfare are God, the Archangel Michael, and Athena, as well as the deceiver. Spiritual warfare has obvious applications for spying on the enemy, and reconnaissance. The use of spiritual warfare to observe and influence key political and/or military decision makers can prevent or end wars efficiently without the need for conventional force deployments. A remote viewer with Project Stargate witnessed a new type of Soviet submarine, later confirmed by satellite data. The Soviets were conducting ‘remote influence’ experiments. Subjects were instructed to concentrate on foreign leaders and induce mental or physical distress. There were rumours they were trying to make American Presidents nauseous. Georgy Rogozin the deputy head of Russia’s Presidential Security Service, claimed to be able to read the minds of foreign officials like Madeleine Albright, which informed his briefings to Yeltsin.
Drone Warfare – Drones are extremely dangerous, as the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine have proven. They can be very cheap, mass produced and may be used to flood the enemy’s defences and attack critical infrastructure. The openness of the skies and the expendability of drones makes them exceedingly difficult to defend against. The best method for dealing with drones is electromagnetic warfare tools such as anti-drone rifles and large scale strategic deployment of directed energy weapons relying on microwaves to disrupt the electronics of drones. The use of specific radio frequencies can protect nearby friendly electronics.
Do not worry overmuch about being liked. When commanders worry about being liked, and about their reputations, it can come at the cost of military effectiveness. Stand your ground, and be willing to upset people if it is right to do so. During the American Civil War, General George McClellan loved his troops and enjoyed his own popularity so much that he was pathologically cautious with their lives, which ultimately cost him victory. He was eventually fired by Abraham Lincoln for not being swift or decisive enough. The popular Athenian demagogue Alcibiades responded to a request for aid from Sicily in 415 by delivering rabble-rousing speeches to the Athenian assembly, promising that an invasion of Sicily would bring unimaginable riches to Athens. The public voted in favour of the Sicilian expedition, which was an unmitigated disaster that resulted in the annihilation of thousands of troops and a lasting weakening of the city. All of this was because Alcibiades wanted more public approval to feed his ego, and put that ahead of realistic military considerations.
Burn your bridges. Sometimes it is necessary or helpful to cut off all possibility of retreat to commit yourself fully to victory, by having no other option except death. Such scenarios are literally win or die. The most famous example of burning your boats came when Alexander the great landed across the Hellespont and set fire to his own vessels. He told his troops they would return home in the ships of their enemies. Hernan Cortes famously burned his boats upon landing in Veracruz, Mexico. Cortes had 500 men with him and the lack of any option for retreat gave them a single-minded focus on the task at hand and forced them to win against tens of thousands of enemies. He made alliances with local tribes, providing thousands of extra troops, made use of his guns, cannons, steel and cavalry, innovations unknown to the Aztecs that shocked them. His soldiers also brought unfamiliar diseases with them, which devastated the Aztecs. Cortes built ships in pieces from local timber, transported them overland and assembled them to sail on Lake Texcoco, enabling a naval assault on the island of the island capital, Tenochtitlan. He also cut off the city’s food, fresh water supplies. This sort of ‘all in’ strategy can absolutely backfire. For example, the insane German invasion of Russia in 1941 was pretty much an all or nothing bid for world domination that failed miserably and resulted in defeat for Nazi Germany. As Part of the great Northern War, King Charles XII of Sweden decided to invade Peter the great’s Moscow with a full troop commitment. He marched deep into the Russian heartland, rejecting the olive branch of peace negotiations multiple times, and fell prey to a scorched earth stratagem whilst suffering the misfortune of the great frost of 1709. His bedraggled force was defeated at the Battle of Poltava. Sweden never recovered her status as a European great power.
Have God On Your Side. The Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British Empires were Christian, and missionary in nature, even if their primary goals of their aggressive expansion were economic exploitation and military glory. After the sword came the crucifix. They were instrumental in spreading the gospel, the Bible, churches, Christian ethics and Christianity to India, China, South America, Central America, Africa. Joan of Arc was clearly divinely inspired. A 14-year-old girl with no battle experience who seized control of the French Army during the 100 years war against the English, she inspired the Dauphin Charles VII, her troops, who generally believed that she was an instrument of divine vengeance. In 1429, Joan of Arc led French forces that seized a number of fortresses in the Loire valley, before the Siege of Orleans was broken by forces led by Joan. The city was besieged by the English under the Earl of Salisbury; English forces captured surrounding strongholds and blockaded the city to gain control of the Loire River. Joan led her armies to retake Orleans with aggressive attacks on key strongholds like Saint-Loup and Tourelles. For a child to demonstrate such battle savvy, courage and resilience would be impossible without help from God. Joan’s main contribution was in terms of morale, her very age and gender, combined with her rapid rise to military power and her effectiveness, persuaded the French that she was fighting for God, and that God had taken their side.
Be Good. There will be less penances than there is for bad military behaviour, when a just war is waged without atrocities according to ethical standards.
Be totally ruthless. Total ruthlessness prevents your enemy from getting revenge and sends a message to other potential rivals. When a city annoyed Genghis Khan, he massacred everyone inside. For example, at the Siege of Nishapur citizens killed Genghis Khan’s son in law, and he retaliated by ordering the complete destruction of the city. The skulls were stacked into high pyramids. During the Second Punic War, Hannibal decided not to march on Rome after his total victory at Cannae, which saw him kill up to 70,000 Roman soldiers in a single day. His hesitation cost him the campaign, because Rome was vulnerable after Cannae. By contrast, when the Romans defeated their longtime maritime rival Carthage in the Third Punic War, they razed the city to the ground and sewed the soil of Carthage with salt, so that nothing could grow there again. There was no fourth Punic war.
Control the dynamic – proactively question your opponent and set the agenda, give them tasks, challenges, dilemmas and options, instead of reacting constantly to another person’s agendas. The way to do this is to go on the offensive and to be fast so that the enemy is always on the backfoot.
Toughness. Toughness is crucial in warfare. Enduring lice, danger, fatigue, hunger, thirst, starvation, wounds, pain, injuries, cardiovascular exhaustion…all of it requires mental toughness. The easiest and safest way to develop this toughness is to apply maximum effort through simple exercise, such as running, marching and calisthenics or weightlifting. Running is the simplest means. Continually push beyond your limits day in day out on interval sprints, with recovery jogs in-between and you will see your toughness and stamina improve. A mix of pushing yourself via sprints and long distance runs for endurance is best. Fighting – boxing and martial arts – is the most exhausting form of exercise, so sparring can definitely help. Again, if you can condition yourself to enjoy extreme effort, and you will be tougher than almost anyone, because it is rare to find someone who really enjoys giving 100% or more.
Courage. Courage is one of the basic requirements to be a warrior. Von Clausewitz believed it was the most important attribute, other than intelligence, which was and is significantly more important for officers than enlisted men, especially senior officers. There are numerous examples of extreme courage under fire. Father Joseph O’ Callahan was the chaplain on the carrier USS Franklin when it was the subject of a Japanese bombing raid in March 1945. The priest ran through fire, smoke and exploding ammunition to fight the fire and rescue trapped and burning men and administer last rites. Father O Callahan received the Medal of Honor for his valour on that day. The Reverend Theodore Hardy was a British Army Chaplain during the First World War who rescued wounded men and retrieved British corpses in no-man’s land on multiple occasions, receiving the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross, as well as the Victoria Cross in 1918. In 1918, during the First World War, Sergeant Alvin York’s unit was pinned down under heavy fire. He single-handedly flanked a machine gun nest, gathering 35 machine guns, killing 25 enemy soldiers and capturing 132 prisoners, earning him the Medal of Honor.
Aggression. Soldiers must be aggressive and not hesitate to deliver maximum force in a fight. They need killer instinct. A good way to develop this killer instinct is to spar and practice fighting under controlled conditions. In the parachute regiment, ‘milling’ is part of training, whereby recruits fight each other without the ability to defend themselves. It is a minute or two of total aggression, and injuries are frequent. Recruits have to learn to attack, without blocking, because it is usually the best form of defence and is essential in combat scenarios. You learn to attack without hesitation, with full commitment, and that leads to less pain overall in a fight. Mike Tyson at his peak was the best boxer of all time, precisely because he had unrivalled aggression, which gave him energy and frequently unstoppable attacking momentum for his combinations.
General George S. Patton was an extremely aggressive commander of the US Third Army, known for his combative and bombastic style and rhetoric, who frequently sent his tanks forward on violent, fast surges that struck the enemy’s rear. He believed in ‘speed and violence of action’ as life-saving forces on the battlefield. During Operation Cobra, the Normandy breakout, rather than advancing slowly, Patton’s armoured columns advanced continuously and rapidly, preventing the enemy from adopting an entrenched position or constructing proper defensive lines. He covered over 600 miles in just 281 days of combat, outpacing the German blitzkrieg across France in 1940. Patton was the most talented American soldier in the Second World War. During the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944, when the Germans launched their last major Western Front offensive in the Ardennes forest of Belgium, Allied forces were almost encircled (hence the ‘bulge’) and the strategically vital town of Bastogne was surrounded by German forces. Patton moved over 250,000 men through difficult winter conditions and broke through the German lines with amazing speed and aggression, relieving the American forces in Bastogne, including the 101st Airborne of Band of Brothers fame.
Think Outside the Box. In an environment of rules and regulations, where a premium is placed upon conditioned obedience, that attracts a certain kind of personality who is drawn to discipline, it is sometimes difficult to think laterally and be creative, especially when such thinking is frowned upon. But paradigm shifts in warfare, be they tactical, technological, psychological or spiritual, are the single biggest advantage that a military can attain. For example, the guns and steel weapons of the conquistadors gave them a huge advantage over the Incas and the Aztecs. Another prominent example of out of the box thinking causing a paradigm shift in warfare is the Battle of Castillon in 1453, during the denouement of the Hundred Years War. This was the first significant recorded use of guns and cannon in a conflict. The French commander John Bureau defended his camp with around 300 cannon, which blasted through the English ranks and killed the commander, John Talbot. Likewise, at the Battle of Cerignola in 1503, fought between Spanish and French forces in the Kingdom of Naples, the Spanish force under the command of Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba defeated the French forces, largely owing to the use of infantry wielding arquebuses, primitive rifles, which proved superior to the Swiss pikemen and the French cavalry. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery believed Cerignola was the turning point in the history of warfare, away from cavalry and toward infantry power. The pioneering use of radar in 1940 was instrumental in securing victory against the German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, because it enabled the Royal Air Force to locate the enemy’s planes to a high degree of accuracy.
Beware excess obedience and conformity. The military requires obedience to function properly. But, taken too far, obedience can be the absolute biggest liability for the military. Conformity is the act of matching attitudes and behaviours to the norms of a particular group in order to fit in. If the appalling records of human history and everyday experience are not enough, psychology has provided abundant evidence of the destructive effects of social conformity and misplaced obedience to authority figures. The Nazi’s atrocities would have been impossible without the widespread German military attitude of the time; ‘an order is an order’. The conditioned obedience and fear-driven conformity of that particular military. The same could be said for most war crimes and atrocities, including the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, Mao’s purges, Stalin’s Great Terror, Pol Pot’s massacres of intellectuals. It’s all based on fear of being the odd one out and cowering amidst the warmth and safety of the herd.
A classic example of excess obedience to authority is the famous 1951 study by Solomon Asch, in which groups of eight male students were selected. Seven of them were actor-confederates. One was a genuine test subject. The groups were given a simple question with an obvious correct answer (which of these lines is the same length as the line on the other chart?). The actors gave deliberately wrong answers. 36% of the subjects also answered incorrectly.[xiv]Then there was the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, directed by Philip Zimbardo and funded by the US Navy. The goal was to evaluate how people conformed to their assigned roles. Zimbardo accepted volunteers from the Stanford University student body and split them into two groups, guards and inmates. They were given uniforms. The guards wound up tyrannising, abusing and humiliating the inmates and the experiment had to be called off on the sixth day.[xv]Stanley Milgram also conducted an experiment on obedience to authority, an important part of conformity, since it is normally the leader who sets the tone for the group. Milgram placed subjects in a room with a ‘learner’, actually an actor, and had a white-coated researcher order subjects to electro-shock the learners when the learners gave a wrong answer. There weren’t really any electro-shocks, but the actors simulated the effects, including slumping over on their desk, apparently unconscious. The experiment was replicated throughout the US and other countries. In a meta-analysis, it was found that an average of 61% of subjects were prepared to administer a fatal voltage.[xvi]
Part 3: Practical Recommendations for Contemporary Militaries
1. Spiritual Warfare, Surveillance and Espionage. Intense dedication to spiritual warfare and conventional espionage for the prevention of warfare on the political level, reconnaissance and total victory without a shot being fired. This is to be achieved via observation and influence upon the political and military leadership. For more on spiritual warfare, see my book Spiritual Warfare: Battling the Forces of Darkness.
2. Stealth. The ultimate victory is to achieve your objectives without ever engaging in a war or battle. This is typically achieved via stealth – the use of proxies or deniable operations. Sometimes it is even possible to conceal your role in events, so that the enemy has no idea about your involvement. Cyber-attacks, covert operations, ‘sneaking missions’ and weather weapons are crucial to this end.
3. The China Playbook. The pursuit of economic influence by using one’s corporations to invest capital in a variety of potentially threatening nations. The protection of one’s own economy via tariffs, regulation and making rival nations dependent upon your economy. Making the economy independent of other nations – or as close to total self-sufficiency as possible – is also crucial in warfare. Preparing the civilian population via the installation of bunkers, SAM batteries and the preservation of rations and reserves, as demonstrated in Switzerland, is also a shrewd precaution. ‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’
4. Disinformation campaigns online and offline to spread confusion amongst the enemy and the civilian populace. Modern technology enables such a proliferation of disinformation tactics that it can be practically impossible to anticipate the exact nature of an attack. The main thing is to mislead the enemy about the location, nature and timing of any attack. Once the assault is underway, every effort should be undertaken to exaggerate enemy losses in manpower, materiel and territory to demoralise the enemy.
5. Drone Warfare. As the Iranians have demonstrated, swarms of thousands of cheaply made drones can overwhelm enemy air defences. They can also be used to distract from more sophisticated bomber drones and other valuable air assets such as stealth bombers, B1 bombers and fighter jets. Drones could swiftly overcome resistance via bombing campaigns and capture territory by airdropping armed robots. The Ukrainians have recently demonstrated the effectiveness of this strategy by dropping ground systems such as the ARK-1 platform from hexacopter bomber drones, bypassing difficult terrain. The drone and robotics element should be in the vanguard of any conventional assault force, followed by conventional mechanized and manned elements. This enables not only the rapid capture of enemy territory, it also facilitates encirclements of enemy ground forces.
6. The Corps System. Following the use of drones and air-dropped robotics systems, a more conventional force deployment is envisioned. The rapid capture of territory via manoeuvre warfare – air strikes, targeted special forces operations, drone swarms, paratrooper drops, electromagnetic warfare and cyber infrastructure strikes, followed by rapid deployments of tanks and mechanized infantry divisions, moving in carefully spaced yet independent diamond shaped corps across the battlefield to capture land as fast as possible, according to a modernised version of Napoleon Bonaparte’s battalion carré system. The system involves a vanguard for reconnaissance to scout and make first contact with the enemy, two units to protect the flanks, a rearguard and reserve and the Corps commander in the centre of the diamond. A heavy weapons or artillery element could also bring up the rear. The army should be organised on the basis of units of 10, 100, and 1,000.
7. Deterrence. Mobile missile launchers would follow close behind the shifting frontline to capture territory rapidly and in all probability, on a lasting basis. These launchers would include fuel-air bombs and tactical nuclear weapons, with a firm warning issued that any attempts by the enemy to retake land already captured will result in a missile launch, the nature of which may be left ambiguous or plainly stated. One could even automate the process or allow the enemy to believe that a nuclear launch is automatic should they make incursions beyond a certain point. Russian President Vladimir Putin successfully deployed mobile nuclear missile launchers following his annexation of Crimea in 2014 and this deterred armed Ukrainian attempts to retake the peninsula. This tactic prevents loss of territory already gained and the associated lengthy engagements. Strategic nuclear weapons would of course be maintained in readiness as an additional deterrent. The objective is to deter prolonged conflict, not to trigger a nuclear war, although the military should be prepared for all scenarios.
8. The Future Warrior. Warfighters making use of advanced uniforms and nanomachines for rapid communications, increased endurance, higher intelligence, easier access to information, superior resistance to enemy weaponry, and synchronised military manoeuvres. The use of robotics systems will also play an increasing role in the future of warfare; there is less risk to human warfighters, making such systems more politically feasible.
9. Counter-Insurgency. Counter-insurgency can be facilitated via the use of advanced population surveillance and electromagnetic radiation directed via personal devices to prevent attacks, followed up by precision drone strikes and military raids. It is also possible to ward off insurgencies via the use of military affiliated corporations to disseminate innovations to the populace (at a profit) and issue stronger, inflation-proof currencies, perhaps backed by captured public assets of the enemy nation, winning hearts and minds. Combined with religious freedoms and an occupation that respects local cultural and political norms, the desire for resistance will diminish significantly. Better yet, the target is simply eliminated without a ground invasion and a lengthy occupation, with the concomitant alienating influence on the local population, is avoided altogether. This is what should have occurred in Afghanistan in response to 9/11.
10. Military Financing. It is possible to finance the military via entrepreneurship and innovation. But the military can also take a leaf out of the Knights Templar’s book and have a business and finance division whose goal is to generate funds for the military and its personnel, including veterans. Canvassing donations and simply starting businesses related to military technology including civilian applications such as diverting military aeronautics technology into commercial aircraft, improving GPS systems, body armour, private security, management consultancies, personal training, hostage rescue, defensive and advanced driving skills, vehicle and computer repair, IT, cyber security, martial arts instruction, marksmanship and licensed gun vendor and shooting range ownership (in the United States), medical devices, private hospitals. So you’d need a hybrid corporate structure that is part owned by the military and part private, to enable IPO’s. One central parent company could control and finance (via a form of venture capitalism), a variety of smaller subsidiaries offering various products and services. The discipline, toughness, focus, work ethic, and specialised skills of military personnel and the out of the box thinking encouraged in the special forces make them well suited to working in private industry, provided there is proper leadership. The executives of these military companies could be furnished from the private sector or by generals and colonels. The private business division could be an ideal place for military personnel approaching retirement and ease the transition into civilian life that many veterans find so difficult. In the UK, the Defence Academy as a hub of knowledge and skills across service branches, would be crucial to this enterprise. The military could even pay its own wages by collateralising its assets and issuing a currency or cryptocurrency that would have superior purchasing power to most national currencies, because it would be backed fully or partially by those assets (preferably the latter). The total assets of the US military are around $3 trillion. The UK military has around £200 billion worth of assets. For most militaries, the combined assets represent a strong amount of collateral for a new currency. This could be issued to soldiers in lieu of conventional currency and exchangeable with conventional currency at a favourable rate of exchange, given how conventional currencies are reliant on the petro-dollar since 1973, that would enable the military to finally pay its personnel generously. This measure, taken together with the military entrepreneurship, would also help to finance proper care for the families of wounded and deceased servicemen and women, and organisations such as the Veterans association.
The military can utilise its new funding structure to found a bank and other private corporations, which can have deniable links to the state, and practice stealthy subversion throughout the world and the ability to finance proxies.It would reverse the dynamic of private corporations, some of whom are partially foreign owned, using the US military as a cat’s paw, and fuelling the military industrial complex, since the USM would have its own corporate structure with which to stealthily undermine its enemies. A covert military bank could easily corrupt enemy currencies via mass counterfeiting operations, causing inflation.
11. US Military Overspending. The US ‘Military Industrial Complex’ that President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke of so ominously in his parting address is fuelled by oligopolies in the private defence sector, resulting in wasteful overspending on weapons programs. The simple solution here is to simply break up the oligopolies and introduce more competition in the defence sector, or, failing that, to shop around and buy more weapons and military equipment from trusted allies.
12. Win the Homefront: Strategy for the UK’s Armed Forces. Emergency preparedness should be top priority, because a series of natural catastrophes, some of which will affect the UK, are on the horizon. On the basis of Bible prophecy, it is possible to predict civil unrest, inflation, a rain of hail, fire and blood (Revelation 8:7), an asteroid impact, a third of the Mediterranean turning to blood (Revelation 8:8–9), a third of the rivers and springs turning bitter either in the Middle East (Revelation 8:10), Israel, or globally, and a rampaging demonic army, among other horrors. In a nutshell, the UK military should stop playing global sheriff’s deputy and focus on addressing the country’s many dire domestic problems. This would include: policing the border effectively to tackle illegal immigration (if for no other reason, to prevent terrorists and hostile state actors from entering the country), supporting ambulances and the groaning NHS (National Health Service) with their transport vehicles, medical officers and medics, reinforcing the police with military police to maintain law and order in crime-ridden cities, supplementing MI5, counterterrorism police and GCHQ with military intelligence and infantry boots on the ground in UK cities to tackle the growing future threat of terrorism and using the Royal Engineers to boost and repair vital infrastructure and build emergency structures like flood defences and bunkers, to be supplied by the Logistics Corps, all of which would require considerable investment and expansion of the armed forces. The investment can be provided via the venture capital strategy above. Personnel would rotate between conventional military duties like training and deployments, with their new role, so that they do not lose their edge as a fighting force. This strategy could be applied to other nations who are struggling with similar problems.
13. Decimal Reorganisation. The military should be reorganised into units of 10's, 100's, and 1000's for simplicity, like Genghis Khan’s military. Logistical supply issues can be resolved through increased funding via other mechanisms outlined in this book. Buying new transport ships and planes will be crucial. The managerial and inefficiency issues can be resolved via the system for screening job candidates (Peter Rowland, 2026).
Part 4: Spiritual Warfare
Spiritual warfare is the struggle between the powers of good (God, the saints, good Christians and angels) and evil (the devil, Satanists, sinners and demons), conducted on the spiritual plane, with effects in the material world. There are two broad categories of spiritual warfare: 1) spiritual warfare against specific evildoers, whether they be human or demon, 2) everyday spiritual warfare such as overcoming aches, pains and temptations. There is definitely some degree of overlap between the two categories, in that evildoers can create temptations and suffering for the spiritual warrior.
‘For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of darkness in this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.’ (Ephesians 6:12). Every human evildoer has spiritual forces of wickedness influencing him or her, often without his or her knowledge, and bringing the individual to understand how they have become the plaything or unwitting accomplice of demons and dark desires can be helpful in some cases. The spiritual level is above the mental and physical in the order of causation.
A good technique for dealing with demons or evil spirits is to erect a fortress around your mind or body. The mindguard technique protects thoughts from observers. Imagine a military base or bank vault with sophisticated defences including armed guards, angels, drone patrols, automated machine guns, electromagnetic and sonic weaponry and force fields. Force fields can be reinforced by willpower. Another defence is to ‘put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the devil and his wiles’ (Ephesians 6:11). The armour is described thusly: including ‘the utility belt of truth’ and ‘the breastplate of righteousness’ and ‘the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the darts of the evil one’ (Ephesians 14:16). All that’s needed to protect yourself is the iron-clad belief that you cannot be harmed by the enemy’s spiritual warfare, but putting effort into some form of mental or physical process makes it easier to believe that you will have the desired result. The more effort applied, the more plausible the desired outcome is; this principle explains the effectiveness of much magic, with pentagrams, animal sacrifice, disembowelling, reading of entrails for auguries, incantations, magic circles, etc. It’s all the placebo effect, reinforced by spiritual entities.
There are two broad approaches to the Christian lifestyle: being tough, disciplined and proactive in the war against sin, which involves taking penances from God or oneself. This comes with the advantage of developing hardiness against the caprices of fate.
The other approach is to understand that it is better to allow yourself harmless indulgences and enjoy life, provided you have done some good, truly believe that you deserve an easy time, and continue to help others. Depriving oneself of the joys of life unnecessarily is not essential, and efficient work can easily beat hard work. The latter approach requires a great deal of wisdom and the knowledge that the self-division that comes about from doing things you really, deeply don’t want to do is not always worth it: this is a generally applicable principle, but is especially true of stubborn or wilful personalities.
Receiving the Holy Spirit and using its power is the best way to dominate in spiritual warfare. Receiving the spirit is as simple as asking God for it, with a willingness to be a servant, and an understanding that the spirit will take up residence in the body. Just remember that Jesus is much stronger than the devil, ‘But no one can enter into the house of a strong man to plunder unless he first binds the strong man; then he will plunder his house.’ (Mark 3:27). Have faith in total victory. Knowledge of the truth sets you free and strengthens faith; indeed, knowing and believing that demons and the devil on one level simply do not exist, that they are to a certain extent illusory, removes their influence from you entirely. The deceiver is a part of the mind that wants to mess people up by tempting them and making them anxious and sick. Recognising this psychological factor, and then realising its effects, and knowing that it is illusory, and only exists to the extent it and its effects are believed in, is an easy way to vanquish the adversary with understanding alone.
Paul exhorts his readers in Ephesus to ‘take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; with all prayer and requests, praying at all times in the spirit’ (Ephesians 6:17). These defences can prevent enemies (such as black magic practitioners) or demons from reading your thoughts, and offensively. It sometimes makes sense to erect a separate forcefield around your home. If a demon or enemy manages to breach your fortress and enter your mind, home or body, you can simply kick them out using your imagination and will. It is possible to adopt a different form or disguise your spirit; you can wear a mask to hide your identity when performing reconnaissance on the enemy. Or with a decisive mouth chomp, combined with concentration of willpower. Better to simply believe they cannot invade your body, with iron-clad conviction, and the strength of God behind you, and your temple will remain inviolate.
Demons, angels and humans can communicate with spiritual hearing. Spiritual vision enables people to see with their spirit. You can study your assailant for weaknesses or read minds using spiritual vision. Blocking out spiritual vision should be prioritised during private, confidential and intimate moments. Having sex with demons can be damaging to the spirit. You can block hazing from Satanists and anyone who wants to mess with you. Also, a lot of mental hazing can simply be prevented by willpower and belief. Hazing can lead to a negative spiral or cycles of retaliation. You can obstruct or prevent this sort of spiritual attack with a visualised force field or shield. Or simply believe that you cannot be affected by it. Regular people and materialists who do not believe in demons or psychic powers are actually well-protected from spiritual attack by their lack of belief in demons, ghosts or paranormal phenomena. Ironically, Christians and other religious types are more vulnerable to spiritual warfare by virtue of their beliefs, but Christians have a tremendously valuable resource to help them with spiritual oppression: God. Do not let anyone compromise your discernment or weaken you. You can block these attacks by simply willing it. Be wary of attacking someone with your spiritual power; it can be done but is best avoided. Turn the other cheek is a good policy, but it is to some extent context-sensitive, and there are noteworthy exceptions to the rule. Destroying your adversary mentally can prove highly effective in spiritual warfare; even demons are personalities with pasts, regrets and inner conflict. Some of them may even partially desire to do good; it is possible for the souls of demons to incarnate in human bodies, and this is a potential pathway to salvation, or to greater torment, depending on how they handle the temptations of the flesh. You can also provoke your enemy into making a rash mistake by pushing their buttons, typically pertaining to their biggest fear or worst error; appropriate and well-timed insults have their place here, preferably if they are understated.
Attributes pertaining to spiritual warfare such as strength, endurance and discernment can be developed by simply working hard to improve on those areas, or praying to God for them to be enhanced. Self-fulfilling prophecies are incredibly powerful when they are believed. So make self-fulfilling prophecies for your adversary that benefit you, and are in accordance with God's will and the ethical precepts of the Bible.
Fear is a terrible force in spiritual warfare, and one used by demons frequently. The best way to eliminate or control fear is to understand that, rather than protecting you, which only occurs on rare occasions, fear typically engenders what is feared; the less fear you indulge in, the better life gets. This is completely counterintuitive, but hope, certain confidence in victory and a brighter tomorrow, and a relaxed, even joyful attitude under duress are superior to the tense, cortisol-fuelled rampage that comes from an anxiety driven fight or flight. Choosing hope, total confidence and even relaxation over fear leads to a certain cavalier, devil may care attitude. Devil may care is a good phrase, because the deceiver is the source of many cares and anxieties – the origin of the term is the phrase, ‘the devil may care, but I do not’. When pushing yourself to the limit in almost any endeavour, but particularly a timed run, you will notice that the more fear-driven effort you apply, the more sloppiness creeps in, the worse your form gets, and you actually run a little slower, than if you simply continued with full effort in a more relaxed manner, assured of victory.
The key with fear is to remind oneself that victory is assured, whatever victory is to you; if you fear death or injury that much, reassure yourself that you will pass through the challenge unscathed or alive. ‘We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.’ (Ephesians 8:37). It is better psychologically for many people to push themselves for a reward than to avoid a dire eventuality. Faith in and knowledge of God is crucial here, it leads to the ultimate certain hope of resurrection and the glorious New Jerusalem (Revelation 22). God can provide that confidence where it is lacking and possibly give you those assurances about your future.
Another key technique to deal with fear is to simply debunk your fears one by one using logic and evidence and statistics and then just ignore the fear through an effort of willpower. Ignoring fears is best done by focusing on the task at hand or your recreation. Simply tune out the fear voice in your head, knowing that those fears are false and ill-founded. The deceiver is an innate archetype, part of the mind that wants to harm people through fear, suffering, pain and temptation. The deceiver is able to help generate various aches and pains and symptoms throughout the body, which you can overcome by learning about TMS (The Mindbody Syndrome) and ignoring the fear, believing in total healing victory, and resuming normal activities. For more on this subject, see my books, The Mind Solution: Healing TMS Pain with Doctor Sarno, The Simple Solution, Godmindfamily: The Human Mind, Behaviour, Symptoms, The Family, Society, Politics and God’s Kingdom Explained, and Godmindbody: The Bible, Prophecy, Miracles and TMS Healing Explained. You can eliminate the deceiver from your head by recognising its effects, and then realising that it does not exist, and ceasing to believe in it or expect trouble from it. Or you can simply locate the deceiver in your head via spiritual vision and remove it via an act of will. Union with Christ is the cornerstone of victory against the forces of darkness. This requires receiving the Holy Spirit, as a 'pledge' and guarantee of eternal life. The indwelling Spirit of God bestows tremendous powers of endurance, faith, virtue, piety as well as the ability to attack the enemy. For example, Paul made a sorcerer called Elymas blind when he tried to turn the proconsul of Paphos against the Christians there, and he did this by the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:11).
Spiritual warfare against the ‘forces of darkness in the heavenly places’ can combine with conventional military strategy and tactics. For example, the Russians and the CIA made extensive use of psychic spies in the cold war to remotely view enemy missile siloes and bases and gather intelligence. The documentary Third Eye Spies covers Project Stargate in some detail, as does the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson. Hal Puthoff of SRI International, the CIA’s remote viewing program, located a nuclear submarine and Plutonium in North Korea in 1994. In his book Psychic Warrior, David Morehouse revealed that he searched for a Soviet jet that crashed in the jungle carrying an atomic bomb. Ingo Swann managed to accurately remote view and describe the rings of Jupiter before they were observed by Voyager. The Soviets had their own program, which had been operational in some form since the 1920’s. If you want to attain an objective, you can have a picture in mind, chomp and get it done, with sufficient belief. Or just believe it is done. Materialisations at a distance are possible. The use of spiritual warfare to observe and influence key political and/or military decision makers can prevent or end wars efficiently without the need for conventional force deployments.
It is imperative to not allow spiritual warfare to compromise your moral standards. Do not lower yourself to the enemy’s level; there is a tendency in any warfare for the win at all costs mentality to lead to a lowering of the bar in search of any advantage over the opponent; this is dangerous when fighting demons, who are morally compromised by their very nature. Resist the temptation to do so, unless absolutely necessary. Turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:38–39) is a good general principle, but there are exceptions and biblical precedents for them; such as Saint Paul’s advice to engage in spiritual combat against the forces of darkness, the wrath of God during the tribulation and the blood-soaked glory of the Second Coming in Revelation.
In spiritual warfare, it can be advantageous to control the dynamic – proactively question your opponent and set the agenda, give them tasks, challenges, dilemmas and options, instead of reacting constantly to another person’s agendas. This is especially useful when dealing with demons, who are constantly seeking power.
The best option normal people have who are the subject of spiritual attacks is to pray to God for help. Another option is to develop your willpower and simply will an outcome. Prayer and commanding. ‘For most certainly, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’ (Matthew 17:20). The main factor in spiritual warfare is belief in a successful outcome; high confidence can increase other attributes via the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. You can also believe that your adversary is totally unable to harm you; this is very useful in spiritual self-defence. The means of developing this level of confidence are threefold: 1) you can actually demonstrate some talent at spiritual combat or in some other area, generating self-belief, 2) you can simply will yourself confident, 3) you can pray to God for the confidence, and 4) you can obtain it by detailed knowledge of the power of belief, through detailed study of the Bible and the relevant books. Some people may wish to ‘pay’ in advance for their confidence by pledging to use it for good deeds or actually doing good in the world, so that they feel they deserve it. There are too many confident evil people out there enjoying themselves at the expense of others; it is about time God’s spiritual warriors stopped relaxing, being overly nice and took a stand in the spiritual struggle against the forces of evil.
Conditioning is a learned association of a stimuli (some food), with a response (salivation). Conditioned responses are difficult to control; if you have been continually attacked by an adversary, it’s hard to cease to expect them to continue coming after you, and you may accidentally suck them into your home via conditioning. Conditoning plus fear may also make some form of attack easier for the enemy to repeat, in a given location.
Physical and mental toughness can be vital when engaging in spiritual warfare; this attribute can be developed through conventional means such as running, swimming, crossfit, boxing and sports or it can be developed via meditation, presence and other forms of mental discipline such as intense concentration or not thinking. It’s important to truly push yourself to 100% effort or more for increasing periods to develop toughness and stamina. Interval runs are useful in this regard. Being physically fit can help with spiritual warfare, which may be quite gruelling if you come under a prolonged attack. Learning to shut out thoughts is a very important skill in spiritual warfare and can be developed with God’s aid. So much of spiritual war is intelligence gathering, with the potential to set up a physical-world attack. Fasting is a biblically endorsed (Acts 13:2–3; Matthew 4:2) means of developing fortitude and resistance to temptation, that also demonstrates a willingness to make sacrifices to God; it is not always necessary to attain the desired outcome, however. Simple prayer will often suffice. Fasting was the cornerstone of Jesus' forty days in the wilderness, and a key demonstration of his conquest of temptation (Matthew 4:2).
Demons are fallen angels, many of whom had sex with humans. They can be male or female. Because their bodies are not flesh and blood, they are able to shapeshift and take different forms. Demons on one level have their bodies and personalities, but on another, they do not exist. Persuade them they don’t exist, and see how much weaker they become. They were more corporeal farther back in time; hence the tales of ancient Greece featuring more 'physical' demons, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Demon’s bodies can be attacked by visualising assaults with fists, feet, and weaponry. The fallen angels broke God’s commandment, given in Enoch, not to have sex with human women and men and their punishment was to be relegated to the status of demons. Some demons may incarnate in human souls; this explains why some people are very sinful. Demons have personalities of their own, and spiritual bodies capable of feeling some measure of pain and pleasure and are generally dedicated to the pursuit of shallow sensual gratification and sadistic gratification arising from the infliction of suffering. Some are much worse than others.
There is a hierarchy of demons. It is possible for demons and other people’s spirits to enter one’s body or body parts or influence bodily functions and movements from a distance. The best policy in such scenarios is simply to push or kick them out mentally via an animation, the more forcefully the better when it comes to hostile actors. Attack is usually the best form of defence.
Angels are spiritual beings created by God to carry out his will. God speaks, and it is done, but the angels take care of the details. Angels can fulfil diverse functions including helping and healing and engaging in spiritual warfare. Archangel Michael is the highest-ranking warrior angel and may be prayed to by soldiers, especially the wounded and struggling veterans. There are many different levels to the hierarchy of angels, but the highest-ranking angel is Archangel Gabriel, who chiefly serves as a messenger for God and a leader of the angels. Archangel Raphael is known as a great healer and companion to travellers. Archangel Uriel is the angel of wisdom and truth, who helps people find mental clarity. It is permissible to pray to archangels.
Often when facing a spiritual attack, turning the other cheek is the best response. It can prevent unnecessary cycles of revenge that have potential to spiral out of control. This depends on your combat readiness level and strength, as well as the power, knowledge and endurance of your opponent. If you do engage in spiritual combat with a psychopath or formidable opponent – go all in. Fight to win, quickly, and be ruthless. When dealing with a human or even demonic opponent, it is vital to explain that being good is in everyone’s self-interest in the long run, maybe not the short term, and the way to get there is the knowledge that good people are saved and go to heaven. The proof of Christianity is contained in my other books, Godmindfamily: The Human Mind, Behaviour, Symptoms, Society, Politics and God’s Kingdom Explained, and Genesis Revealed: The Creation Explained.
Ghosts are the souls of the dead who remain on earth to haunt certain individuals, objects or locales; they definitely exist; however, more often the danger when entering locations said to be haunted is that the mind comes to expect some sort of ghostly manifestation and actually generates such phenomena via the power of fear and belief. The deceiver also plays a role in these manifestations, mainly by amplifying fear. Quite often ghosts are mischievous nuisances, but they are sometimes quite dangerous. You can improve ghosts by simply ordering them to leave you alone, praying for their souls to enter heaven or hell, helping them yourself with willpower, or simply understanding the reason they are tarrying on earth and resolving their underlying psychological dilemma, often rooted in the history of the locale. Be very imperious and confident when dealing with people or other spiritual entities, and advertise no fear or weakness.
Penances are punishments or activities undertaken to show remorse for a sin or mistake. Penances can toughen you up, render you more obedient to God, and make you feel more deserving of the joys of life, but there is a no penances option sometimes, which necessitates that you simply say, ‘no penances’ and refuse to accept any that are offered: only take penances from God. Taking a penance, voluntarily or otherwise, can definitely make people feel less guilty, and more like they have atoned for their sins and mistakes, and therefore more deserving of the good life. Penances may strengthen you spiritually.
Do not listen to or act upon spiritual voices of other people and beings too often; learn from experience to discern which voices and communiques should be listened to and which ones should be ignored. Judge a tree by its fruit. Don’t be bossed around or bullied by spiritual entities. Demons are generally best ignored completely; they are notorious liars, who sometimes tell the truth. It’s sometimes better not to listen to voices discerned with spiritual hearing. Discernment is the ability to tell good from bad and true from false. Discernment is extremely important in order to know what to do, and you can pray for it. Instincts are also vital; they are less reliable than high discernment, but they are faster when it comes to making snap decisions. The way to hone instincts is to practise making quick choices well. Avoid or cease teeth chundering as a mode of communication; it’s not a good idea. Sometimes it weakens your discernment. Staying silent and/or ignoring people is often the best policy when communicating with anyone, but especially when it comes to spiritual communications.
In terms of spiritual warfare, satanists, witches and black magicians are notorious for malicious and sadomasochistic acts; they enjoy hazing each other in disgusting ways, enacting various hazing rituals and devising elaborate punishments, temptations and devising ways to blackmail each other into obscene or humiliating acts. They are generally best avoided and ignored. If you do engage in a spiritual battle with a Satanist, fight to win and be prepared to go all in. If someone places something in your body via spiritual means with ill intent, say, ‘eliminate negative effects’ and do not be conditioned into expecting a repetition; so much black magic relies on the victim being conditioned into associating a stimuli with a negative response, and conditioned responses can be broken by simply not expecting the response to kick in.
Thinking outside the box is an important skill in spiritual warfare. The only real limits are the imagination and your level of self-belief. There is almost always a way to devise a clever solution to outwit your enemy, and planning can help. Paradigm shifts in conventional warfare are often decisive, such as the move to drone warfare, and the introduction of bomber planes.
Anticipate your opponent’s attacks and countermeasures. Observe patterns of behaviour and attack and consider how to counterattack. Many world leaders have managed to avoid assassination by simply being incredibly erratic and unpredictable. Breaking your routine can help to avert spiritual attacks from malign entities.
[i] Allison, G. 2018. Destined for War: can America and China escape Thucididyes’ trap? Scribe UK.
[ii] Clausewitz, C. 2024. On War. Grapevine.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Derived from Helmuth von Moltke the elder. Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften.
[vi] Jomini, Henri. 2017. The Art of War: A New Edition with Appendices and Maps. Aegitas.
[vii] Clausewitz, C. 2024. On War. Grapevine.
[ix] He came to Abraham in human form, with he and two angels being described as ‘men’, yet this figure is nonetheless called by Abraham ‘Yahweh’ and ‘my Lord’ (Genesis 18:1–3). God the Father, who is in heaven, did not take human form; it was his Son that appeared to Abraham. Further Old Testament support for the existence of the preincarnate Word/Son of God comes from ‘Then Yahweh rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from Yahweh out of the sky’ (Genesis 19:24) with the first Yahweh being the one who had previously spoken to Abraham. The second Yahweh implied to be in the sky is the Father. In addition, Proverbs 8:22 is written from the perspective of wisdom: ‘Yahweh possessed me in the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old.’ It was to this proverb that John was alluding when he wrote, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ (John 1:1). There is also: ‘Your throne, God, is forever and ever. A scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.’ (Psalm 45:6–7). The God whose throne is forever (Christ) has a God who anointed him with oil, making him Mashiach, the anointed one. Therefore, I rest my case that the Son/Word of God was described in the Old Testament.
[x] Whyte, W H Jr. March 1952. Groupthink. Fortune.
[xi] Janis. I.L. 1982. Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascos. Boston: Houghton Miflin.
[xii]Ibid.
[xiii] Orwell, G. 2013. 1984. Penguin Classics.
[xiv] Cardwell, Mike & Flanagan, Cara (2009). Psychology A2: The Complete Companion. Folens. ISBN 9781850082897.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Ibid.
Comments