their power. When one party resorts to using its power and the other side in the dispute isn’t sufficiently
intimidated to knuckle under, there will be a war. A war is the testing of relative power. Wars can be all-out or
they can be contained; in either case they will be whatever is required to determine who gets what. A war will
typically establish one side’s supremacy and will be followed by a peace because nobody wants to fight the
clearly most powerful entity until that entity is no longer clearly the most powerful. At that time, this dynamic
will begin again. It is important to respect power because it’s not smart to fight a war that one is going to
lose; it is preferable to negotiate the best settlement possible (that is unless one wants to be a martyr, which is
usually for stupid ego reasons rather than for sensible strategic reasons). It is also important to use power
wisely. Using power wisely doesn’t necessarily mean forcing others to give you what you want—i.e., bullying
them. It includes recognizing that generosity and trust are powerful forces for producing win-win
relationships, which are fabulously more rewarding than lose-lose relationships. In other words, it is often the
case that using one’s “hard powers” is not the best path and that using one’s “soft powers” is preferable.1 If
one is in a lose-lose relationship, one has to get out of it one way or another, preferably through separation
though possibly through war. To handle one’s power wisely, it’s usually best not to show it because it will
usually lead others to feel threatened and build their counter-threatening powers, which will lead to a
mutually threatening relationship. Power is usually best handled like a hidden knife that can be brought out in
the event of a fight. But there are some times that, when push comes to shove, showing one’s power and
threatening to use it is most effective for improving one’s negotiating position and preventing a fight. It is
valuable to know what matters to the other party most and least, especially what they will and won’t fight for
and how they will fight. That is best discovered by looking at the types of relationships they have had and the
ways they used power in the past, by imagining what they are going after, and by testing them through trial
and error. Sometimes mutual testing leads to tit-for-tat escalations that dangerously put both parties in the
difficult position of having to choose between fighting and being caught bluffing. Escalating tit-for-tat wars
often take conflicts beyond where either side would logically want them to go. Knowing where the balance of
power lies—i.e., knowing who would gain and lose what in the event of a fight—should always be kept in
mind because it is essentially the equilibrium level that parties keep of in the back of their minds when
considering what a “fair” resolution of a dispute is—like thinking about what results a court fight would lead
to when considering what the terms of a negotiated agreement should be. Though it is generally desirable to
have power, it is also desirable to not have powers that one doesn’t need. That is because maintaining power
consumes resources, most importantly your time and your money. With power comes the burden of
responsibilities. While most people think that having lots of power is best, I have often been struck by how
happy less powerful people can be relative to more powerful people. When thinking about how to use power
wisely, it’s also important to think about when to reach an agreement and when to fight. To do that, it is
important to imagine how one’s power will change over time. It is desirable to use one’s power to negotiate
an agreement, enforce an agreement, or fight a war when one’s power is greatest. That means that it pays to
fight early if one’s relative power is declining and fight later if it’s rising. Of course there are also times that
wars are logical and necessary to keep or get what one needs. That brings me to my main principle about
war.
My main principle about war is:
When two competing entities have comparable powers that include the power to destroy the other, the risks
of a war to the death are high unless both parties have extremely high trust that they won’t be
unacceptably harmed or killed by the other. Imagine that you are dealing with someone who can either
cooperate with you or kill you and that you can either cooperate with them or kill them, and neither of you
can be certain what the other will do. What would you do? Even though the best thing for you and your
opponent to do is cooperate, the logical thing for each of you to do is to kill the other before being killed by
the other. That is because survival is of paramount importance and you don’t know if they will kill you, though
you do know that it is in their interest to kill you before you kill them. In game theory being in this position is
called the “prisoner’s dilemma.” It is why establishing mutually assured protections against existential harms
that the opponents can inflict on each other are necessary to avoid deadly wars. Establishing exchanges of
benefits and dependencies that would be intolerable to lose further reinforces good relations. Because a) most
wars occur when it isn’t clear which side is most powerful so the outcomes are uncertain, b) the costs of wars
are enormous, and c) losing wars is ruinous, they are extremely dangerous and must only be entered into if