Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

I am enjoying The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene. It is no real guide as to how to win, but rather, a compendium of successful strategies. You need to be wise enough to both choose your goals well and also pick your strategies well.

Each strategy is discussed with quotes and examples.

For example, Strategy 10 is Create a Threatening Presence - Deterrence Strategies. I have seen a lot of this between Trump and the press over the past couple of years. The mainstream media got accustomed to lightweight presidents playing within the establishment rules for thirty years. Presidents who wanted to work with the establishment parties in a fashion that left the politicians better off, but not necessarily the citizens.

Trump seems to be simply working his list of campaign promises, quietly (well, not so quietly) achieving his promises one-by-one. His reelection campaign seems built on, "I deliver what I promise". And he seems to be relying on strategies which are pretty standard and routine in a commercial environment, certainly recognizable, but which perhaps haven't been seen often in the international old-boy environment of the establishments which are now being upended by citizens.

One of those strategies is essentially bluster. Create in the mind of your opponent a sense of uncertainty as to what you are willing to do and a reputation for doing the unspeakable. Time and again the establishment and the mainstream media are appalled by his apparent bull-in-the-china-shop approach. "You can't do that" and then off he goes and does it. It appears unsettling and unpredictable and they are aghast. And it is not an uncommon strategy in war and business.

Getting inside one's opponent's head is the vernacular. And, as the internet meme goes, he is living rent free in the heads of his political (Democrat and Republican) opponents as well as his media opponents.

Greene Describes Strategy 10 as:

The best way to fight off aggressors is to keep them from attacking you in the first place. To accomplish this you must create the impression of being more powerful than you are. Build up a reputation: You're a little crazy. Fighting you is not worth it. You take your enemies with you when you lose. Create this reputation and make it credible with a few impressive--impressively violent--acts. Uncertainty is sometimes better than overt threat: if your opponents are never sure what messing with you will cost, they will not want to find out. Play on people's natural fears and anxieties to make them think twice.

Germany, China, France, North Korea, Iran - he is creating a threatening presence for all of them and the mainstream media are doing all the heavy lifting for him. He breaks one no-longer effective convention after another and the media lose their mind. The wailing and gnashing of teeth by the media delivers a direct message to Bonn, Beijing, Paris, Pyongyang, and Tehran - here is a man who is nearly crazy as demonstrated by the panic he is creating among the press.

If it were not so absurd, you might consider it an elaborately choreographed performance between the White House and the press. Instead, it seems to be a deliberate White House strategy. And it is not new for Trump. His career has been built on braggadocio alternating with charm and thunderous noise. Think of all those years bragging about his fortune, the audacity of his deals, the size of his buildings, his willingness to take risks. And yet there are interviews where he is charming and reflective. There are friends of longstanding. As a stranger, you never know with which Trump you might be dealing.

Greene elaborates:

Inevitably in life you will find yourself facing people who are more aggressive than you are--crafty, ruthless people who are determined to get what they want. Fighting them head-on is generally foolish; fighting is what they are good at, and they are unscrupulous to boot. You will probably lose. Trying to fend them off by giving them part of what they are after, or otherwise pleasing or appeasing them, is a recipe for disaster: you are only showing your weakness, inviting more threats and attacks. But giving in completely, surrendering without a fight, hands them the easy victory they crave and makes you resentful and bitter. It can also become a bad habit, the path of least resistance in dealing with difficult situations.

Instead of trying to avoid conflict or whining about the injustice of it all, consider an option developed over the centuries by military leaders and strategists to deal with violent and acquisitive neighbors: reverse intimidation. This art of deterrence rests on three basic facts about war and human nature: First, people are more likely to attack you if they see you as weak or vulnerable. Second, they cannot know for sure that you're weak; they depend on the signs you give out, through your behavior both present and past. Third, they are after easy victories, quick and bloodless. That is why they prey on the vulnerable and weak.

Deterrence is simply a matter of turning this dynamic around, altering any perception of yourself as weak and naive and sending the message that battle with you will not be as easy as they had thought. This is generally done by taking some visible action that will confuse aggressors and make them think they have misread you: you may indeed be vulnerable, but they are not sure. You're disguising your weakness and distracting them. Action has much more credibility than mere threatening or fiery words; hitting back, for instance, even in some small, symbolic way, will show that you mean what you say. With so many other people around who are timid and easy prey, the aggressor will most likely back off and move on to someone else.

This form of defensive warfare is infinitely applicable to the battles of daily life. Appeasing people can be as debilitating as fighting them; deterring them, scaring them out of attacking you or getting in your way, will save you valuable energy and resources. To deter aggressors you must become adept at deception, manipulating appearances and their perceptions of you--valuable skills that can be applied to all aspects of daily warfare. And finally, by practicing the art as needed, you will build for yourself a reputation as someone tough, someone worthy of respect and a little fear. The passive-aggressive obstructionists who try to undermine you covertly will also think twice about taking you on.

The following are five basic methods of deterrence and reverse intimidation. You can use them all in offensive warfare, but they are particularly effective in defense, for moments when you find yourself vulnerable and under attack. They are culled from the experiences and writings of the greatest masters of the art.

I have seen instances where Trump seems to do something completely irrational, or is certainly represented as such by the press. And yet if you look at it, is usually around a matter of little consequence. I suspect he has picked a fight on an inconsequential matter in order to act ostentatiously irrational simply in order to bolster the credibility of his deterrence strategies. Again, with the press as an obliging handmaid.

Greene highlights five types of actions which help build a threatening presence. The following are the headlines, he has much detail in the book.

Surprise with a bold maneuver. [Think the Jerusalem announcement]

Reverse the threat [China trade]

Seem unpredictable and irrational [Paris Treaty]

Play on people's natural paranoia [Build the Wall]

Establish a frightening reputation [ICE]

Check, check, check, check, check.

Perhaps it is crediting him with way too much sophistication and talent. Maybe. But whether he is doing these things consciously or instinctively, it sure seems to match what he is doing.

Greene litters his book with both examples and illustrating quotes. Here are a few of the quotes pertinent to Deterrence Strategies.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
RULES FOR RADICALS, SAUL D. ALINSKY, 1972

Injuring all of a man's ten fingers is not as effective as chopping off one.
--Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976)

Brinkmanship is...the deliberate creation of a recognizable risk, a risk that one does not completely control. It is the tactic of deliberately letting the situation get somewhat out of hand, just because its being out of hand may be intolerable to the other party and force his accommodation. It means harassing and intimidating an adversary by exposing him to a shared risk, or deterring him by showing that if he makes a contrary move he may disturb us so that we slip over the brink whether we want to or not, carrying him with us.
THINKING STRATEGICALLY, AVINASH K. DIXIT AND BARRY J. NALEBUFF, 1991

When opponents are unwilling to fight with you, it is because they think it is contrary to their interests, or because you have misled them into thinking so.
--Sun-tzu (fourth century B.C.)