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{{trope}}
== War ==
=== General ===
* War in general. All warfare exists around this trope, as does the development of any new tactics and technology. Despite all the hubbub about honor and glory, the point is to win, and that is done by making it unfair to your side's advantage. Yes, there are rules, and there are standards of honor (or, more accurately, professionalism) that are followed, but even when these are adhered to, the overall point is to still make things unfair to your advantage. A fair fight just means you give more chances for your enemy to hurt or kill you and/or your comrades.
** Belligerents can make arguments about fighting "honorably" or "like gentlemen" all they want. They only make the accusations of dishonor and cowardice when it's the [[Double Standard|other]] [[Hypocrite|side]] doing it. Even if they don't resort to equally "dirty" tactics immediately when the war starts to tip in the other side's favor, eventually there will be a breaking point of desperation in where they don't care anymore. If they don't, it clearly means that the [[War Is Glorious|the glory and honor of battle]] itself was more important to them than actual victory.
** Colonel Jeff Cooper on the "Fair Fight": "''If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!''"
* Contrary to the [[You Fail History Forever|popular image]], the knightly warfare wasn't exactly chivalrous. The usual means of Medieval warfare was [[Indirect Warfare]] - instead of attacking the enemy army, the knights attacked the enemy's ''means'' of waging war. This is known as ''chevauchee'' and meant [[Rape, Pillage and Burn|attacking the enemy's agriculture]], his peasants - yes, they were prime targets, as they were crucial for producing food! - his supplies, his logistics, assassinating his leaders, and arranging ambushes whenever possible. Field battles were considered as an erratic and uncertain way of winning battles, and most field battles occurred when one of the armies had trapped the other and the other had no way of averting it. Attacking castles and cities was considered as the worst possible option.
* Most armies will start a large war doing the complete opposite of this trope, or [[World War
* [[Values Dissonance]] and [[Rule of Symbolism]] can have a large effect on this. What is and is not considered "fair" or "honorable" in war can be a matter of culture and time. For example, during World War I, the German Empire vowed to execute any American POW found to have fought with a shotgun for war crimes because the shotgun was the weapon of the hunt (for game), and the Germans found it insulting. (American soldiers were using shotguns because they were ''very'' effective in clearing out trenches.) As for time, it used to be a war crime to drop bombs from the air (the Hague Convention of 1899).
* Pretty much every air force in the world that gets the chance would rather destroy the enemy air forces on the ground, before they get in the air, rather then let them get in the air and have a fighting chance. A preferred tactic is to hit the runway first, preventing the planes from escaping, and allowing you to destroy them at your leisure.
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** Combat engineers take this trope [[Up to Eleven]]. They are trained in mine warfare, booby trapping and improvised munitions. The classical boobytrap is to tilt a picture on the wall slightly, then rig an explosive charge with a mercury trigger behind it. When an enemy soldier - usually an officer - attempts to right the harmless-looking picture on the wall --- KABOOM!
* Note, however, that adhering to certain rules in warfare can be a form of [[Combat Pragmatism]] as well. There is a good reason for NOT allowing troops to attack civilian targets at will, achieve objectives through deception, treachery and sheer terror, alter action plans unpredictably to increase personal safety at any cost, ignore command structure and loot their own army's supplies for additional resources. Arguably, in the course of the war, the troops must be kept controllable and sane. If methodical application of combat pragmatism turns one's own men into dangerous killing machines, and enemy's civilian population into desperate fighters for survival, the long-term perspectives are not very bright.
**Then too, you want to end the war sometime, preferably with your objective secured without to much expense. If your enemy is too anxious to get even or thinks you have some trick in mind he won't negotiate. At a lower level, the enemy is more likely to surrender if he knows you treat prisoners well.
* This ''is'' guerrilla warfare. If the dedication is there, an irregular fighting force will do ''anything'' it takes to demoralize a militarily superior foe.
* Snipers in general either are this trope or on the receiving end of this trope. Many snipers try to have a consistent pattern when killing the enemy, such as shooting the first in line, to make no one want to lead a patrol, to ruin enemy moral. Of course, snipers are often attacked with artilerly barrages.
* The normal form of combat between tribal peoples is a function of thievery or assassination. When they fight honorably they have elders waiting to call it off if things get to hot. In other words it is a duel or a tournament rather then a battle.
== Specific ==▼
** More complex societies with professional feudal (loosely organized armies of warriors who are payed by rent to train in martial arts) or bureaucratic (the kind we think of that is kind of like a factory in it's emphasis on collective efficiency) armed forces are no exception. Armies are effectively giant siege trains designed to occupy cultivated land and cities. To do that you have to be capable of fighting face to face as well as reducing strongholds and holding them (even if you decline to do these things on this or that occasion) and there is no getting round it. But no sensible army gives up [[Hit and Run Tactics|the basics]] though they might relegate that to scouts and spies and other specialists.
* Sun Tzu, general during the Warring States period in China, not only was a warfare pragmatist to put others to shame, but quite literally wrote the book on it. It's worth noting that the same book, ''The Art of War'', is ''still'' used to teach tactics and strategy (fighting dirty on army scale) to this day.▼
* One reason frontier warfare is so brutal is that people are fighting for their own purposes rather then those of their governments. That is they are interested in direct possession of land, portable property, mates, slaves, etc. Those have two common settings:
*# Not serious. Low-risk petty raids, especially cattle rustling, or what amounts to skirmishes between neighbor gangs venting steam and showing off. Nobody is interested in fighting to the death or wants to wind up in a vendetta, so it's mostly limited to hit-and-run and warning shots. Occasionally someone is killed, but this may go on indefinitely with less than one fatality per fight on the average. The rest of time these groups may trade (one variant was described as "the townies cheat the nomads, the nomads steals back in raids about as much"), and neither wants the relations to sour too much.
*# Dead serious. The level of actual armed conflict varies greatly with circumstances, but the goal is to uproot or annihilate an opponent. Often goes on forever, until the third party intervenes, and/or ends in a genocide (or rounding up the survivors and selling them into slavery somewhere far away, which also removes them permanently).
** Likewise rulers are interested in controlling realms not in personally farming them. And corpses [[Captain Obvious|can't pay taxes.]] While soldiers are just fighting either because it is a job (for privates) or because it is the [[Family Business]] (for officers especially aristocrats). Thus the reason they fight comparatively honorably is that it is in their interest.
**And equally when that tacit agreement wears thin it is sometimes because of an import of concepts from the frontier like race paranoia or "living space" or whatever.
▲=== Specific ===
▲* [[Sun Tzu]], general during the Warring States period in China, not only was a warfare pragmatist to put others to shame, but quite literally wrote the book on it. It's worth noting that the same book, ''[[The Art of War]]'', is ''still'' used to teach tactics and strategy (fighting dirty on army scale) to this day.
* George Washington was a warfare Pragmatist. Launching a major attack on ''Christmas morning'', when the enemy was sure to be drunk/sleeping/both, is only his most infamous act of dishonorable warfare. Many historians have attributed the American victory to this.
** One wonders how else you'd expect to beat a town-full of [[Badass]] [[Mercenaries]]. They also had heard the Americans were coming, and didn't care. Bad idea.
*** Actually, the Hessian commander put his men on
* The North Vietnamese also took advantage of a day that was a holiday when they launched the Tet Offensive on January 30th, 1968. That was Tet, the first day of the New Year, probably the most important holiday of the Vietnamese calendar. On top of that, they had previously announced that they would honor a two-day ceasefire to allow the celebration of the holiday. Given the scope of the attack, they never had any intention of honoring that ceasefire. Worse still, they didn't attack soldiers: they attacked ''camera crews'', hoping that the footage sent back to America would lessen morale at home. It was at that point that the war really started to be perceived negatively by the public.
** They also used many other effective tactics. Littering the woods with booby traps designed to wound soldiers so when the others came to rescue them the Vietnamese would shoot them. The tunnel system drew a platoon of Americans with a small force and then had reserves pop up out of the ground and destroy them. They also [[Honey Trap|used prostitutes as spies]].
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** On the third hand, it is probably better for the Arab nations that they lost, as Israel is the ultimate combat pragmatist, and had they lost the war they would have used [[Nuclear Weapons Taboo|nuclear weapons]] on the [[Taking You with Me|Arab nations]].
* Speaking of Egypt vs. Israel, Israel's actions during the Six-Day War are all about this. Israel attacked first, even though they had not (yet) been attacked. A large-scale surprise air strike that was the opening of the Six-Day War, with Israel destroying about the entire Egyptian air force, which guaranteed Israeli air superiority for the rest of the war.
* The reason for the crushing defeat of the French by the English during the [[Hundred Years' War|Battle of Crécy]].
** Well, one of them anyway. The main one was that the French knights were [[Blood Knight|too gung-ho for their own good]], [[Leeroy Jenkins|and started the battle before their army was anywhere near ready]].
** Various battles of the Hundred Years War, particularly Agincourt, have earned this reputation for the English. The French expected a civilized battle with knights on horseback and everything, and the English just [[Annoying Arrows|shot a lot of arrows at them]]. Whether that's the reality or not, the reputation still stands.
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* Likewise, the Japanese were certainly no strangers to these tactics during the war. This was the reasoning behind the Pearl Harbor attack, both the attack being by surprise and the way the Japanese didn't break off diplomatic relations with the US until minutes before the attack began. During the war, the Japanese used extremely aggressive tactics against Allied troops; [[Booby Trap|booby traps]], [[Suicide Attack|suicide bombings, kamikaze attacks]], [[I Surrender, Suckers|pretending to surrender]], using civilians as shields, attaching bombs to civilians, and telling their civilians that the Allies would do horrible things to them if they were taken prisoners. It's no wonder that the Allied invasion of Japan was estimated to take another two years and one million Allied casualties.
** At some point, however, their over dependence on those tactics ended up losing what pragmatism there was. Their refusal to retreat and desperate suicide attacks just ended up depleting their forces of experienced veterans faster.
**Also a lot of the resentment of the Japanese stemmed from the fact that it really wasn't combat pragmatism but simple meanness on many occasions. A lot of the tortured prisoners were tortured, less for [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique|information]] but so that they could [[Take That|demonstrate to their enemies]] that they tortured people.
* Russian militaries have used their country's harsh winter, immense size, and destroying of supplies left behind to aid in invasions; from Charles XII of Sweden during the [[Great Northern War]], Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars, and [[Adolf Hitler]] during [[World War II]]. Rather than fully engaging the enemy immediately, the Russians retreated back slowly, luring the enemy deeper and deeper into the country, causing the invaders to overextend their supply lines, the "Scorched Earth" policy of destroying supplies left behind to prevent the enemies from using them, and waiting for the winter (nicknamed "General Winter") to set in which would greatly slow down the enemy's advance, badly damage enemy morale, and cause huge amounts of cold weather injuries and deaths.
** During [[World War II]], [[Joseph Stalin]] issued Order 270, which made it a treasonable offense for a Soviet soldier to be taken prisoner, allowing officers to shoot soldiers even suspected of trying to desert, and made the soldiers' families susceptible to arrest. He also issued Order 227, which required the establishment of penal battalions comprised of soldiers with disciplinary infractions who were ordered to be shot if they retreated.
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* Perhaps surprisingly, Tai Chi, that meditative martial art like exercise that old people and hippies do in the park? That's based on a Chinese martial art. Recall that big, flowing, windmill motion you make with your arms where you sink into a crouch as you sweep your hands across and out from you? What you're actually doing is grabbing dirt... and throwing it in your enemy's eyes.
* The specialty of the Sardinian military and its Royal Italian successor was more fighting dirty than fighting fair. The Sardinian Army had little money or space for actual cavalry, so they trained the Bersaglieri, fast running light infantry trained to quickly form an infantry square, repeal cavalry charges and then ''charge the cavalry as it pulled back to regroup, [[Up to Eleven|possibly on the flank]]'' (they actually charged Russian cavalry busy attacking French infantry at the Battle of the Chernaya, routing the Russians). During [[World War II]], the Italian Alpini (mountain troops) ski troops got a scary fame in Soviet Union due their habit of popping out of nowhere in the middle of the night, gunning or bombing down everyone and everything they saw and run away. During [[World War II]] the Italians infiltrated the American embassy at Rome as soon as they heard of Pearl Harbor to steal the American diplomatic codes before the local copies were destroyed, with a radio interception unit giving Rommel an edge due a very talkative American military aide at Alexandria (part of the reason Rommel lost at El Alamein was that the British found out, kicked the military aide out of Egypt and had the Americans change all their codes at once). The Italian Navy during both World Wars had a nasty habit of torpedoing or mining enemy ships in harbour (the Austrians during [[World War I]] didn't suffer damage as they knew about Italians loving to fight dirty and were prepared. The Royal Navy didn't expect that, and lost two battleships, a tanker and a destroyer, the latter as collateral damage, in a single raid before wising up) and arming patrol motorboats with torpedoes ([[Crowning Moment of Awesome|they sank the Austrian flagship after stumbling on it, with another Austrian ship filming what had happened]]). Oh, and that part about dropping bombs from air being originally a war crime? The Italians pionereed the art of bombing enemy troops while knowing that.
*One weird subversion was in the great Truk raid preceding the [[World War II|Marianas Campaign]]. After the striking power of Japan's Truk base had been eliminated and a pitiful convoy was fleeing, [[The Spock|Admiral Spruance]] [[Out of Character|of all people]] took off after them personally in a battleship like a [[New Meat|wet-behind-the-ears]] Ensign [[Glory Hound|starving for glory]] even ordering bombers away so he could have his kill. No logical explanation seems to have been given other then that Spruance thought he had achieved enough dominance in the battle area to indulge a little sentiment.
* Themistocles in Ancient Athens was not only a [[Combat Pragmatist]] but a shining example of a [[Sleazy Politician]]. He was perfectly willing to trample the reputation of rivals by rumor mongering in a way fammmiliar to modern Westerners. From the martial (or the "minervan" to reference the goddess of Athens known for smart fighting) point of view, Themistocles turned away from the tradition of bronze clad hoplites killing each other on foot in a [[Let's Fight Like Gentlemen|manly manner]] armed with gear they had paid for. He thought that kind of thing was still all very well in its place but had to be augmented for an enemy [[Outside Context Villain|like the Persians]] with the Middle Eastern style of bureaucratized warfare. So he used a [[Deus Ex Machina|lucky silver strike]] to buy a fleet. The trick? A fleet costs gobs of money-but when you have gobs of money you can spend it on anything you want which is less true about olive farms. Not only that but it could utilize the landless simply by putting them on an oar. This became a force multiplier because it made all of Athen's citizens, and even hired foreigners military assets. Finally it was an operational force multiplier because once sea control was gained (a bit of a bother as Phoenicians and Medized Greeks were [[Worthy Opponent|no slouches]]) the Persian army ashore was trapped with a limited amount of supplies. While the Greeks could cruise all around the Eastern Mediterenean, pillaging, supporting would-be rebels, and basically just making trouble.
*[[Combat Pragmatism]] was the cause of a lot of social changes in US history. As manpower has to be gotten somehow an appeal has to be made to minorities. And while discrimination often persisted it had to be downplayed to attract recruits and get them to fight well. Even the Confederacy discussed freeing and recruiting slaves on the grounds that they A) disliked invaders more than they disliked slavery (not likely but an interesting wager) and B) that they were willing to fight over the issue (probably delusional). Of course by that point the South was at a point that they might as well play with highly improbable ideas. In the meantime the North had been recruiting fugitive slaves for a long time as aside from providing extra manpower it was great propaganda.
== Martial Arts ==
* One of the better examples is a Self-Defense class. Since other forms of martial arts are either done for discipline or fitness, they tend to be much more elaborate. Since self-defense classes are done simply to save your life, they prune away all the extra bits and basically boil it down to "Kick them in the crotch/poke them in the eye and run the hell away."
* Humanity's advancement is a decent amount of testament to this trope, honestly. If there's no way you can kill a larger animal with your bare hands, use a sharp rock. When your opponents are using sharp rocks, lash a sharp rock to a stick to create a spear. When your opponents are using spears, ''throw'' the spear, making it a javelin. When your opponents are using javelins, attach feathers and shoot them out of a bow, making them arrows. And so on...▼
* [[wikipedia:William E. Fairbairn|Major William E. Fairbairn]]. Taught, among other things, sentry elimination to commandos. See [[Combat Pragmatist/Quotes|the quotes page]].
**By the way the combat style ''he'' invented was learned as a cop on the [[Wretched Hive|streets of Shanghai.]] Figure the rest out.
**As in similar examples, Fairbairn was teaching boys who used [[Good Old Fisticuffs]] for status-sorting how to kill (and of course girls who had their own ways of status sorting). His methods were disliked because they simply did not belong in a schoolyard.
* [[Miyamoto Musashi]]. Musashi probably would have used a gun if he had one available and the other guy didn't. "Fight FAIR!" is never really emphasized in his book.
** He'd have been willing to use a gun as though it were surprising. History shows that Samurai generally were pretty pragmatic on this and many other points.
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*** You hear about how Musashi deliberately showed up late to his duel with Kojiro? in order to psychologically unnerve him? People are still debating whether or not, in doing so, Musashi "cheated."
*** The legend goes that he not only showed up late, but came with a wooden sword and looked about as well-kept as a hobo. This made Kojiro so mad he began screaming out insults, which Musashi just laughed at. This continued to piss off Kojiro so much that he blindly charged at Musashi, who proceeded to knock him down and kill him with a blow to the ribs. Kojiro's supporters--watching the fight--were so incensed that they tried to kill Musashi for his dishonorable conduct right there and then, forcing Musashi to run for his life.
*** Which, some say, could be the ''actual'' reason Musashi showed up to the duel late: Had Musashi come at sunrise as was agreed, the unfavorable tide would have prevented him from beating a hasty retreat on his boat, which he used to escape Kojiro's supporters. At sunset, however, the tide was going out, thus giving Musashi his means of escaping having to fight a very dire battle.
** His first kill was at the age of 13, when he signed up for a duel with a swordsman who came to the local village looking for duels. When his uncle found out, he arranged to formally apologize to the swordsman for wasting his time. As said uncle was apologizing, the young Musashi charged him with a bo (also called a quarterstaff or "a 6-foot-long stick"), knocked him to the ground, dazed him with a blow to the head, and then beat him to death. [[Captain Obvious|That is not how duels are typically supposed to go.]]
* Suio-ryu kusarigama-jutsu, which is focussed on the sickle and chain ("kusarigama") includes one very memorable technique in its curriculum: facing a sword-wielding opponent, the kusarigama-ka first uses the chain to ensnare him and then (in contrast to the usual technique of giving the killing blow with the sickle) draws the enemy's own short sword from its sheath and stabs him to death with it.
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* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8icoCU2AGs This] video of a Vale Tudo fight between Gary Goodridge and Pedro Otavio. ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s Seanbaby best described it with this quote: "Gary Goodridge was finding more uses for a human dick than I did during two years of puberty. And I grew up on a farm." Goodridge, incidentally, had complained before the match that two of his favorite techniques, biting and eyegouging, were banned.
** Goodridge won that match by decision. That match also held quite a bit of responsibility for the end of the "no rules" days in MMA.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110808065944/http://jkdtalk.com/showpost.php?p=12683&postcount=10 This poster] on the Jeet Kune Do Talk forum used one of the [[Squick|grossest]] and [[Humiliation Conga|embarrassing]] but effective [[Improvised Weapon]] ever when he was attacked while using the urinal: [[Urine Trouble|his own piss]].
* [[Capoeira]]. [[Depending on the Writer|Depending on who you learn it from]], Capoeira can encompass anything from the standard showy but slow acrobatics, sweeps and kicks to slapping opponents' ears to disorient them, headbutts to the groan, concealed weaponry, tackles, takedowns, and more. "Cheapshots" just before a match proper aren't unheard of from savvy Capoeiristas who see an opponent without his guard up at all times.
* Many, many times in nature. Its rare to see an "even" fight between two animals bent on killing each other. Often, a predator will use ambush tactics or superiority in numbers, with some smarter animals taking advantage of their environments. Prey animals meanwhile will often counter this with their own advantages in numbers, or develop self-defense mechanisms such as eating poisonous plants or animals and letting the poison build up in their bodies so that when they are eaten [[Taking You with Me|the predator becomes violently ill or even dies]].▼
== Other Forms of Combat ==
▲* Humanity's advancement is a decent amount of testament to this trope, honestly. If there's no way you can kill a larger animal with your bare hands, use a sharp rock. When your opponents are using sharp rocks, lash a sharp rock to a stick to create a spear. When your opponents are using spears, ''throw'' the spear, making it a javelin. When your opponents are using javelins, attach feathers and shoot them out of a bow, making them arrows. And so on...
▲* Many, many times in nature. Its rare to see an "even" fight between two animals bent on killing each other. Often, a predator will use ambush tactics or superiority in numbers, with some smarter animals taking advantage of their environments. Prey animals meanwhile will often counter this with their own advantages in numbers, or develop self-defense mechanisms such as eating poisonous plants or animals and letting the poison build up in their bodies so that when they are eaten [[Taking You with Me|the predator becomes violently ill or even dies]].
* Politics is full of insult, blackmail, and what not. Ever wonder why people assume all politicians are [[Sleazy Politician]]?
**That is [[Up to Eleven|just the politics]] of civilized states where there is a such thing as rule of law and orderly succession. In autocracies when there is not the comparatively honorable civil warfare, there are assassinations, mutilations, and tortures to decide who will rule. And that does not exclude ones close kin.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Combat Pragmatist]]▼
[[Category:Real Life]]
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