The effect to be sought is the dislocation of the opponent’s mind and dispositions – such an effect is the true gauge of an indirect approach.
B. H. LIDDELL HARTAir forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy’s economic and moral centres without having first to achieve ‘the destruction of the enemy’s main forces on the battlefield’. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means – hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.
More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes
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Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
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No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.
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If you wish for peace, understand war.
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If you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. It should, equally, be a principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down.
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The predominance of moral factors in all military decisions. On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation.
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The higher level of grand strategy [is] that of conducting war with a far-sighted regard to the state of the peace that will follow.
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The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
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[The] aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this. In other words, dislocation is the aim of strategy.
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The military weapon is but one of the means that serve the purposes of war: one out of the assortment which grand strategy can employ.
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In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there- a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender’s hold by upsetting his balance.
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The nearer the cutting off point lies to the main force of the enemy, the more immediate the effect; whereas the closer to the strategic base it takes place, the greater the effect.
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The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.
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Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
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While hitting one must guard … In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
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Inflict the least possible permanent injury, for the enemy of to-day is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future
B. H. LIDDELL HART