What Does Machiavelli State Regarding Princes and the Art of War Answers
Carl von Clausewitz, the famous military theorist, said, "War is the continuation of politics past other ways." He meant military means. Conversely, politics is the fine art of war cloaked in civility and procedure. Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in his volume, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), that politics is "ceremonious war carried on by other means."
Politicians need to study war, says Machiavelli, not only learn the fine art of fighting and defending through on-the-job training. That's like learning to play world-class poker in front of the Television cameras against skilled players. Y'all volition acquire many lessons, but yous'll lose a lot of easily, too.
Y'all may not carry a gun, or a sword, only every politician is a soldier still. The council table is our main battlefield, but we fight equally in the media, on the street, in java shops and in committees. Sometimes we're fighting for the community, sometimes for council at big; other times we're fighting for ourselves and our ain ideals.
Some of us are foot soldiers, others are generals. All of us need to know the rules of the battleground, however. Anyone who comes to office thinking politics isn't a battleground, or isn't willing to larn the rules of the fight, will lose – lose votes, face up, reputation, respect and award. Politics is war.
Machiavelli opens Chapter Xiv: That Which Concerns a Prince on the Subject area of the Fine art of War, with:
"A prince ought to dedicate himself to no other art, nor study anything other than state of war with its rules and discipline. This is the sole art that is expected of rulers. It is and so powerful that information technology not only maintains those who are born princes, but it ofttimes enables men to rising from a private citizen to that rank."
Power and noesis are linked. Yous demand knowledge to put the edge on your weapons. Similarly, Sun Tzu wrote,
"The art of war is of vital importance to the Land. It is a matter of life and decease, a route either to prophylactic or to ruin. Hence it is a field of study of research which can on no business relationship be neglected."
Sun Tzu: Book 1: Laying Plans
If you don't know the rules, Machiavelli warns, you lot volition lose your condition, your reputation and possibly more:
"When princes accept thought more of pleasure than of arms, they take lost their states. And the beginning reason you lose it is because you neglected the fine art of state of war; and the best mode to learn a state is to go main of that art."
What rules? How near your procedural bylaw? Do you know it well enough to derail an opponent with points of lodge, or well enough to defer a claiming? When can you phone call for a recorded vote, and why do you want one? Take you read your municipal and departmental policies? What nigh your strategic programme? Your mission or vision argument? Your code of conduct and confidentiality documents?
What about your provincial municipal human activity, the planning act, conflict of interest human activity, libraries act – these and like legislation all provide the ground rules. But they're not all yous need to learn.
Other Weapons, Other Tactics
Advice is a weapon, as well. Having a skillful advice strategy coupled with good relations with the media and then you lot can employ them to get your bulletin across can be a game changer. You need to know how and when to communicate, and what to say (and not say). You demand to know when to speak, and when to shut up, when to deflect questions, when to go 'off the record.'
Facebook, blogs, Twitter and other social media are a new battlefield you accept to empathize and use. Yous demand to know how to monitor cyberspace, and how to use it for your own reward.
Are you comfortable enough in internet to Google information to support your argument while your opponent prattles on trying to kill your motion? Tin can y'all email fellow councillors during a debate and round up support on-the-fly when necessary? Or do y'all believe it isn't proper to utilize the modern tools of advice to your reward?
Are you blogging yet? Practise you have a Facebook page, or a LinkedIn account? Practise you correspond with the media via email or Facebook updates? Yous can be sure your opponents volition be using these and other online services, and using them as weapons confronting y'all when they tin. Learn how to wield them for yourself.
If yous come to the table without a proficient knowledge of these rules and services, others in your council who do know them will take reward of your ignorance. They volition score points and they volition trick and belittle you. You, in plow, won't trust those who are able to employ procedure and legislation to their advantage (and likely to your disadvantage):
"Among other evils, being unarmed brings causes you to exist despised, and this is one of those ignominies confronting which a prince ought to baby-sit himself."
Like in any sport, the person who knows the rules controls the field and decides who plays on the team. Arm yourself with knowledge, he says, otherwise you're a casualty-in waiting:
"At that place is nothing comparable between the armed and the unarmed. Information technology is not reasonable that an armed man should willingly obey someone who is unarmed, or that the unarmed homo should be secure among armed mercenaries. Because, there existence in the armed man contempt, and in the unarmed man suspicion, it is not possible for them to cooperate."
The public and your supporters will retrieve yous a fool, too, and you lot will lose your base among the electorate if you frequently get tripped upwardly by those rules they await you to know:
"A prince who does non understand the art of war volition not be respected past his soldiers, nor tin can he rely on them."
And you will be easily fooled past staff, too. Staff will take advantage of your ignorance to get things past you that further their ain agendas.
Machiavelli recommends yous report all the relevant laws and bylaws, policies and procedures, and then you know how and where to fight:
"…to find out how the mountains rise, how the valleys open out, how the plains lie, and to sympathize the nature of rivers and marshes… The prince who lacks this skill lacks the essential trait that a captain should possess, for it teaches him to surprise his enemy, to select quarters, to atomic number 82 armies, to array the battle, and to successfully besiege towns."
We all know politicians who barely read their agenda, allow alone bylaws and policies. They come to the tabular array unprepared; they go off track because they don't follow proper process, they brand motions reverse to existing policies and bylaws, and they fumble with irrelevant questions during debates. Not just are they ineffective equally politicians, only they take council forth unnecessary detours that usually waste product time and sometimes resources pursuing their goals.
Knowledge is a weapon you need to be able to wield to be a successful politician. The better you know the rules, and the better informed you are, the more you are armed for the fight at the council table.
"Amidst other qualifications essential in a skillful helm is a knowledge, both full general and particular, of places and countries, for without such cognition it is incommunicable for him to comport out any enterprise in the best way. And while practice is needed for perfection in every art, in this information technology is needed in the highest degree."
The Discourses: III, 39
Written report your politics, report your history for examples from the past. Pay attention to contemporary news to learn how others rise and autumn so yous can imitate their success and avoid their failures:
"To do the intellect the prince should read histories, and study in that location the actions of illustrious men, to encounter how they accept conducted themselves in war, and detect the causes of their victories and defeat, so equally to avoid the latter and imitate the former."
Read and heed the local media, especially. Whether you concur or disagree with them, whether y'all have conviction in their objectivity or coverage, doesn't matter. It matters is that you keep abreast of local events and problems. Don't comment on a local issue you are ignorant of.
Always know what the editorials are saying about you. Too many politicians turn confronting the media when they get criticized in an editorial, or when a story wasn't as flattering every bit expected. That's unwise: if you don't deal with them, if yous don't do interviews, if you don't read or watch the local news, yous're like a general giving upward the field to the enemy after a small-scale skirmish.
You will make enemies of the media if you brand a signal of ignoring or dismissing them. Better to make them your allies or at the very to the lowest degree continue them neutral. Brand a evidence of greeting them, compliment them on their coverage; joke with them when you are criticized. If you bear witness them a friendly, human side, rather than take an adversarial stance, the media will develop at least a modicum of respect for you.
"When the lion fawns upon the lamb,
The lamb will never end to follow him."
William Shakespeare: Henry VI, Part three, Sc. IV
And grow a thicker skin if what they say bothers you.
Exist prepared, says Machiavelli, something he reiterates in Affiliate 25. Don't stand up idle. Don't await until problems occur – plan for them, programme for the worst, and be ready to respond when adversity arises:
"A wise prince ought to find some such rules, and never take things easy in peaceful times, but instead should vigorously employ the time to his advantage in such a manner that the resource may exist available to him in times of arduousness, and so that he is prepared to resist fortune's blows."
A skillful and farsighted mayor never stops studying the issues, never ignores the media reports, never stops observing his or her opponents to come across where they are headed. That style, when problem does enhance its head, the mayor is prepared to meet it.
If you don't already know it, acquire to play chess. Even if you never win a game, chess will teach you lot how to strategize, plan ahead and move your pieces in concert with the others; supporting and defending i another. There are many lessons in politics a wise mayor can learn from chess.
"To win or to lose a chess game against Machiavelli would be equally entertaining, equally either scenario would unfold as a tale of interesting interpersonal conflict, camaraderie, treachery, and above all, rich strategic thinking."
Playing Chess with Machiavelli, past Andrew S. Gordon,
IBM TJ Watson Inquiry Center, 2001
Look to the addendum for a summary of the rules of war Machiavelli presented in his piece of work on armed forces science, The Fine art of State of war.
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Source: http://ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/chapters-8-14/chapter-14-learn-the-rules-of-war/