To Win Without Fighting: Difference between revisions

* [[Gulf War|Operation Desert Storm]] had many instances of this as most of the Iraqi army surrendered to the Allied forces--despite predictions that they'd fight to the death, and that "body bags would be coming back full of American casualties". As comedian [[Bill Hicks]] mused, Iraq's "elite Republican Guard" were discussed in hushed tones, but shortly became just "the Republican Guard", until one was left wondering if there were any Iraqi guards ''at all''.

** There was also at least one instance of an Iraqi unit so desperate to surrender and avoid getting destroyed in battle, that they tried to surrender to an Italian film crew. Other units [http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/dstorm/ds5.htm surrendered to a UAV] (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle).

* In WWII [[wikipedia:Ghost Army|some American forces]] from a series of art schools got some German units to surrender without resisting, by approaching them with a fake army (inflatable tanks, speakers playing tank noises and radio sounds, inflatable infantry and even inflatable artillery!

* Epaminondos is famous for winning at Leuctra (by overweighting one wing to make the side opposed collapse before the Spartans could compensate, while pulling back, "refusing" the other to buy time). His greatest achievement though was to realize that Sparta's economy and military system was dependent on the labor of large numbers of Helots who had little reason to love Sparta and much reason not to. All he had to do was have an army-in-being for a long enough time in Spartan territory, large enough to survive, and the Helots would all run away at once knowing their masters were busy. No Helots, no Sparta. In retrospect it seems odd that someone didn't think of this earlier. Sparta could have recovered from losing Leuctra or any given battle. It could never recover from losing its Helots.