Tactics and Strategy (3)

Attempting to prevent the world system from expanding into areas that it wants to go may not be the best good objective. A wise general does not attack the enemy at the point where they are strongest. That tactic would generally lead to defeat. Likewise, a wise general does not let the enemy decide the battle tactics, as that will often lead to defeat. The world is confident and expanding rapidly. We can expose what they are doing and speak against it, but we should understand that we probably cannot prevent the expansion.

We need to be careful about the perceptions created by our tactics. Losing a lot of small operational fights can translate into a serious tactical defeat. We have lost every fight for the last twenty years, so we are not taken seriously. We now have the reputation of a losing team and hold the wooden spoon.

We have lost our last twenty operations fighting against the symptoms of social change, but we have missed the causes of the radical change in the shape of society. The social change that concerns us has more deep-seated causes, which we have not resisted. We have been fighting losing battles, while a more important war has been lost. Sometimes a tactical retreat may make more sense than a drawn out series of operational defeats.