Encyclopedia of stratagems.

Alexei Voevodin's Stratagems have been issued for the third time now. (1) Though the stratagem term has a modern European definition, its original meaning is associated with the Greek concept of "warfare," "ways of conducting military operations" and even "military deceit." At present, this term is applied to define the algorithm of a military commander's actions aimed at accomplishing assigned missions, as well as the rules (sometimes extraordinary ones) he has to follow or, vice versa, he has to neglect. The systematization of stratagems dates back to ancient China, where it turned out that military commanders used only 36 of them. The world has greatly changed since then, and as the author points out, he got to know much more stratagems due to long years of service in the elite of the Soviet special forces, namely KGB. The author could have suggested his own classification of stratagems, but he decided to use the Chinese methodology as a basis. Sometimes it is quite reasonable, but in some cases it makes the author give prolonged explanations while "bridging" definition gaps to present day.

The most ancient stratagem--"to raise a stink in the East, to advance in the West"--implies the diversion, the most well-known maneuver in the military art. To confirm the importance of this postulate the book demonstrates a concrete example from World War II history--Japanese sudden attack on the U.S. marine base in Pearl Harbor (on December 7, 1941). Nobody expected attack that morning, since Japan had been continuously demonstrating the build-up of its aggression against continental Asia. The contradictions with the USA didn't seem to be irreconcilable.

Moreover, the US State Secretary was holding negotiations with a Japanese Foreign Minister spokesman in the USA early in December. The negotiations seemed to lead to peaceful solution of all disputes or at least some aggravation only after the negotiations were completed. Meanwhile at 8 a.m. a group of Japanese aircraft including 21 torpedo-bombers, 15 ordinary and 30 diving bombers reached Pearl Harbor. The attack lasted 105 minutes (1h 45 min). As a result the American side lost about 2.5 thousand killed, nearly I thousand missed in action, 1.5 thousand wounded, all battle ships and most of others were put of action. Practically the US Pacific Fleet ceased to exist.

It's worth mentioning that by attacking the USA so perfidiously, Japan exercised another stratagem--that of Buridan's ass. As it is known, that ass found himself between two similar bundles of hay, but died of hunger because it failed to decide which bundle to start with, in other words it hesitated and couldn't make any decision. Similarly the leadership of the Naval Base in Pearl Harbor failed to make a decision to raise a combat alarm even though they heard distant signs of the approaching threat. In the military science it is practically impossible to give exact estimation of the arising situation.

The decision to start a combat (or to avoid it) has to be undertaken on the basis of incomplete information, estimation trends and even intuition.

Nevertheless it often occurs that the commander-in-chief (commander) drags out his decision-making thinking that there is no sufficient evidence of the coming threat yet. The telegram sent from Washington, D.C. in the morning on the day of the attack warned about the potential possibility of the Japanese attack. It could have halted hesitations of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base commanders. But it so happened that it was transmitted not through military or diplomatic channels, but through civil telegraph cable.

When it was delivered to the base by a native boy, the American sailors, ships, aircraft and shore facilities were being destroyed by Japanese bombs and torpedoes. It is known for sure that the telegram was delivered immediately on its receiving: the messenger boy returned a receipt signed by a receiver with indication of the time of the delivery to the telegraph office. Some years later, after World War II was over, the US Congress decided to investigate the circumstances of those fatal days. In the course of the investigation the above-mentioned telegram (for some reasons it turned out to be a piece of documented evidence of extreme importance) aroused interest of a special commission. A request for it was issued to the archives, but it so happened, that the 3-year period of storing such civil telegram had expired, and in accordance with the relevant instruction it had been destroyed.

The author of the book demonstrates great importance of the stratagem "to deceive an emperor to make him cross the sea," which implies fatal consequences of the underestimation of reconnaissance. For example, at the battle of Waterloo Napoleon ordered his cavalry to attack without proper reconnaissance.

It is true, however, that before the attack Napoleon had asked a native citizen who was his devoted and loyal guide, whether it was possible to cross the territory between the site of his cavalry concentration and the enemy. The answer was affirmative: the cavalry had only to cross a rather flat field with the only road which lay practically perpendicularly to the direction of attack not far from the enemy frontline. To Napoleon's misfortune, it had rained on the eve of the attack and the road turned into a moat. As a result, the first lines of the cavalry, already in move, saw the moat and tried to stop the horses, but the following lines of the cavalry without understanding what was happening continued their movement forward and pushed the first line into the moat. Only after the moat had been filled with dead French cavalrymen, the cavalry was able to move forward, but practically step by step, toward the enemy (the cavalry men were not able to gather momentum again to increase the force of their attack).

The stratagem of "sacrifice" is often used in the art of war. For example, in spring 1941, the German leadership found it strategically necessary to occupy the island of Crete, which had a key position for establishing control over the eastern Mediterranean. It was impossible to perform marine landing, since the British fleet had superiority at sea. Under such circumstances air dropping looked like a suicide, as the island was controlled by 32 thousand force of the British and Australian servicemen in full combat readiness, 11 thousand force of the Greek servicemen, artillery and even light armor stationed on the island. Still the occupation of Crete was a strategic goal, and the military and political leadership of the Germany decided to sacrifice their elite troops for it.

The airborne landing started on May 20, 1941. Having accomplished intensive air bombing of the sites for planned landing at the island of Crete, Germany dropped about 10 thousand of its paratroopers. During the very first 24-hours the position of the airborne party become critical, about 3 thousand people died, many were shot in the air or destroyed before they were able to reach the containers with weapons. Some groups were destroyed practically in full. After the first day of combat the attackers felt shortage of weapons, many groups concentrated and acted in small groups.

On the night of May 21 the airborne party would have been fully destroyed, if the alliance commandership, possessing the 6-time supremacy of manpower and overwhelming quantity of weapons, had conducted a counterattack in accordance with the stratagem of "creating hopeless (desperate) conditions for the enemy."

But it didn't happen because of the hesitation of the alliance leadership. The following day having received reinforcement and weapons the German paratroopers resumed violent attacks. They had the only chance--to provide a possibility for delivering reinforcement by landing aircraft on a runway occupied by them, but still under the hostile fire. Soon the paratroopers engaged in combat along the perimeter of the airfield, noticed the first groups of "Yunkers-53" with yagers on board approaching the airfield. The aircraft got badly damaged in the air, failed to reach the runway and fell to the ground crashing into already burning aircraft. Many yagers on board could not leave the burning aircraft and were shot dead inside or burnt alive. Within several seconds the airfield turned into the graveyard of the aircraft. Nevertheless the reinforcement, which arrived, determined the outcome of the operation. The total number of people the German leadership sacrificed in order to occupy the island of Crete--was approximately 4 thousand dead servicemen from the elite airborne troops. 40% of those who survived got seriously wounded. The losses were so huge that the Werhmacht issued an order not to perform large-scale airborne operations again.

The author of the book shares an opinion that if a leader is sure of personal friendly relations with the leader of a foreign state and uses them as a basis for estimating information and making political decisions, it can cause a national catastrophe. Under such circumstances it is necessary to remember the stratagem of "hiding a dagger with a smile", which was often used by Germans in the WW II operations. For instance, after Germany had invaded France, the Wehrmacht took quite unexpected, but effective measures to create such conditions which made redeployment and movement of the French troops impossible. A leaflet with alleged ancient prophecy of the Virgin was spread among the civil population. It contained quite probable information including a story about coming dreadful devastation caused by "flying fire machines" (the Yu-87 diving bombers arousing panic and fear of the civil population). But the most important thing about it was the information that the Virgin indicated the safe place--in the southeast of France. Besides leaflets, the German radio broadcasted in French regularly, and the population took those programs for transmissions of their own governmental radio station. It had an unexpectedly tremendous effect. In spite of all the attempts of the French civil and military authorities to prevent crowds of refugees from moving, huge masses of people rushed to the southeast. All the roads became blocked.

The army was not physically able to move along the roads jammed with refugees pulling their carriages, civil vehicles and cars.

As it is justly noted by A. Voevodin, the contemporary situation is demonstrating the increasing role of information influence on the potential enemy in order to mislead him. The computer processing of masses of harmless at first sight information enables one to find access to thoroughly kept and preserved military secrets. According to some specialists, up to 60% of secret military information and up to 95% important industrial data can be obtained from open sources. V.M. Troyanovsky, a famous politics specialist, proves the idea with an example from the history of the first flights of the Soviet cosmonauts. "At press-conferences which were held after the accomplishment of some successful launches, American journalists asked our cosmonauts a great number of questions. It is worth mentioning that the questions were quite harmless (family, school years, tastes, inclinations, so called hobby). But as quite naturally a person speaks about what he knows (and it is mainly their work that cosmonauts know well), soon it turned out that having filtered the answers the Americans learned astonishingly much about our space researches. Press conferences were soon abolished. Americans wouldn't have learnt anything had the cosmonauts turned to be twaddlers, who are unfortunately numerous." (2)

New information technologies make it possible for anyone to put into practice the modern stratagem of "computer information ambush"--only in other, virtual, plane. The probability of succeeding such a secret operation can be very little at first, but sooner or later it works, notably its effectiveness can be very high. It is extremely actual at present time, when the globe is covered with worldwide web--Internet, and bites of information (or, more exactly, disinformation) can be used as projectiles or high explosive shells. But besides working out and loading such information in Internet there is another problem: how to make it available for a wide range of users? In Internet there are thousands of sites, and ordinary input of information without further advertising is not effective. On the other hand, while advertising information, which discredits or misleads the enemy, you reveal yourself as his enemy. The author finds the following way out. A site is to be organized to hold all references to all (or nearly all) "juicy" facts (false facts) from mass media and Internet. It is to show its alleged independence. Moreover, sometimes it is to be subject to criticism and to plans of abolishment. Journalists are to defend it. An illusion of complete independence, unbiased and unprejudiced atmosphere is to be formed. At the appointed time a campaign to discredit somebody is to start somewhere out of the territory of Russia. The independent site is to provide announcements about it accidentally and to indicate the e-mail of the discrediting material.

When the campaign is over, the site is to pass over to duty regime.

Thus, Internet proves to be not only the biggest source of information, but at the same time the main channel of supplying disinformation, including discrediting data. The same ways can be used in order to create false impression about one's own military build-up, military-industrial complex' strategies of work. The author of the book thinks that it is performed in the following way. The analysts collect information from Internet and often come to the conclusions, which have been planned for them by others. For this purpose it is vital to know what, where and how the analyst will look for. Being aware of sites of probable searches and key words used to enter the search systems one can effectively help the analyst "accidentally" find the "unprejudiced" information that interests him. It can be performed in another way without distorting facts, but by suggesting a good original idea, evaluation of facts, tendencies. If it is used for the first time and it satisfies, it is unlikely to be rejected in the future. The analysts will never recognize the fact that they are being manipulated and used.

At this point the author touches the tricky border of what is allowed, as sophisticated disinformation is a double-edged weapon, and he has to interrupt himself by saying that his book contains only part of the stratagems known to him. Some of them are considered to be an extremely effective weapon to be available to a wide range of people, some stratagems reveal forms and methods of operational work, and hence their description is prohibited.

As a whole the Stratagems by A. Voevodin can be very useful for our military commanders (of different ranks) who are striving to win victories not by bloody battles and at the cost of huge losses, but thanks to the skill to perform creativity, to break standards and to achieve surprise, to use stratagems and to deceive the enemy under any, even hopeless, conditions on the battlefield.

NOTES:

1. A. Voevodin, Stratagems. Strategii voiny, biznesa, manipuliatsii, obmana, Moscow, 2004.

2. V.M. Troyanovsky, Razrabotka upravlencheskogo reshenia, Moscow, 2003.

Col. V.S. FROLOV (Ret.)

Candidate of Technical Sciences