As U.S. Navy strategy enters a new phase of revival it would be wise to prepare ourselves for future debates. However, writing about strategy is a daunting task, so I took as an exercise and example something that could be treated more lightly, especially during summer months. I asked myself, “What helped Eastern Europeans effectively resist communism?” and whether there was any strategy behind it. After a short conversation with friends, what emerged was that the important factor in defeating communism in Poland was a sense of humor. And yes, there was a sort of strategy behind it, which is even more interesting considering the lack of any structure or organization that would have supported it. Everything began as a simple self-defense against the overwhelming frustration from the inability to control one’s own life under the ruling Communist Party. The Party had almost total control over our material lives. Yet a sense of humor and laughter quickly evolved into a kind of massive resistance, and the last years of so-called “real” socialism in Poland was even a time of true renaissance of cabaret. Now let’s apply military language to this phenomenon: we essentially observed groups of insurgents (such as the audiences of cabaret performances, or even just friends making jokes about the Party) creating ad hoc and unpredictable patterns using humor as a weapon. The weapon was widely available and its nature very asymmetric. An official ban on humor only, and immediately, generated extra salvos of laughter. The Party was embarrassed — instead of being feared, it became the subject of the people’s laughter. This marked a shift in people’s attitude, with consequences far beyond just making Party people angry. This strategy, used by a large part of the population, was called “inner emigration”. As I mentioned, the government was able to control the material aspects of our lives, but the intellectual and spiritual lives were beyond their reach. So changing the focus from physical wellness to intellectual activity was like defeating the enemy’s doctrine in the best spirit of Sun Tzu’s teaching.
Another technique popular in Eastern Europe is “salami tactics.” This occurs when an opponent divides an enemy slice by slice. Each slice is so thin that it doesn’t trigger a reaction until there is no more salami. The international application was demonstrated in the traditional “divide and conquer” approach of Hitler’s Germany, whereby the major powers thought they could appease the government by allowing it to absorb smaller neighbors a slice at a time. In Poland the communists took control of our material life, slice-by-slice, by introducing a series of small regulations that were individually unnoticed by the public. The final result was the same as making one big move. These tactics are potentially very effective against an opponent abiding by rules of proportional response. Breaking one of the initial, small rules would be considered escalating both violence and risk to an unacceptable level.
So how do we defend against salami tactics? One way is to convince an opponent that we do not have salami at all. This translates to strategic deception, which is very difficult in execution, especially in the long term. Another approach would be to take our salami out of an opponent’s reach, like the Poles did with inner emigration. They physically remained within Poland and subject to the rules of the Party, but their most robust undertakings retreated inwards to spiritual and intellectual pursuits, and where their loyalty was much harder to control or attain.
Both are examples of defensive strategies, meaning the object is to deny opponents their ability to achieve their positive goals. They were well adapted to the situation of the people in Eastern Europe, but inappropriate for the stronger side in a conflict. An example of a positive or offensive strategy would be to look for opportunities to apply salami tactics against an opponent. But the question is what does the other side consider salami? Answering this question is like linking something pleasant (salami) with useful (strategy) and hopefully appropriate for the summer holidays.
Przemek Krajewski alias Viribus Unitis is a blogger In Poland. His area of interest is the context, purpose, and structure of navies – and promoting discussion on these subjects in his country.
The following article is special to our International Maritime Shipping Week. While we often discuss the threats to maritime shipping, this week looks at dangers arising from such global trade, and possible mitigations.
“Where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”
Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911)
In a global system marked above all by its complexity and interconnectedness, dependence on international shipping is universal. Yet some nations are far more vulnerable than others. As students of naval history well know, such vulnerability is often turned into a source of strategic leverage. To what extent can this leverage actually be exploited under 21st century conditions?
The needs of a nation, the opportunity of a foe
The globalized economy is, in a very real sense, a system of maritime exchange. As Thomas Friedman points out, as much as any other recent innovation, it was the shipping container that shaped our daily lives by making the economic transformation of the late 20th Century possible.[1] In the past two decades alone, the volume of sea-borne commerce has more than doubled, from 4 billion tons in 1990 to 8.7 billion tons in 2011. According to the International Maritime Organization, if the overall trend of trade growth observed over the last one and a half centuries continues, the figure will be 23 billion tons in 2060. And, while the exact share of global trade in goods that is moved by is a matter of some debate, it is sea well in excess of 75 percent by most reckonings. Further, it is clear that only cheap and plentiful shipping in a secure maritime environment can sustain this transformation. As a result, the stakes in international shipping are widespread.
But while any nation that wishes to prosper in the current global environment shares in the global dependency on shipping, the vulnerabilities that arise from it are distributed unevenly. This is mainly for two reasons: First, the degree to which specific nations sustain themselves by means of ship-borne imports, and to which they found their prosperity upon maritime exports, varies greatly. Secondly, depending inter alia on a country’s geopolitical setting, it will be more or less able to manipulate the degree to which it has to rely on shipping for its economic security. A resource-rich, continental-size state with landward access to sizeable markets – like Russia – has serious alternatives to maritime transportation. A small island nation with an export-oriented economy that runs on imported hydrocarbons – such as Taiwan – does not. It is where dependency gives rise to vulnerability that it turns into a potential source of leverage for outside powers.
Targeting Shipping for Strategic Effect
In what ways can vulnerabilities in the area of maritime transportation be exploited for strategic effect? There is, of course, a whole spectrum of options available to would-be-predators. Unilateral or multilateral sanctions have been a mechanism of choice since the end of the Cold War. But historically, it has been direct military action against the opponent´s shipping that has had the greatest impact on trade. Two main methods of waging war on commercial shipping can be distinguished, at least at an analytical level: (1) the blockade, and (2) guerre de course, or commerce raiding. The blockade relies on concentration and persistence to choke off the flow of sea-borne goods into enemy harbors, and as such will usually require some form of command of the sea. Commerce raiding, on the other hand, relies on dispersed, attritional attacks by individual vessels (or small groups of vessels), which makes it an attractive option for navies that find themselves in a position of inferiority. Both methods leverage the disruption of shipping to impose a cumulative toll on the adversary’s economy, which is expected to have a significant indirect impact on the war effort and/or erode the opponent´s will to resist.
Historical examples of shipping being turned into a strategic lever are abundant. In the age of sail, preying on adversaries’ commerce was an integral part of most naval campaigns, including those of the Dutch Wars, the Seven Years’ War, and the Wars of the French Revolution. While it was seldom decisive, it was often “exceedingly painful,”[2] as Colin Gray observes. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, innovations in naval technology all but brought to its termination the “close blockade” of enemy harbors while also providing means – the submarine, torpedo, and naval mine – that would transform guerre de course into a method of total warfare. Much ink has been spilled on Germany’s failed – and strategically counterproductive – attempts subdue Britain by way of Handelskrieg (the German variation of commerce raiding), while a slightly more specialized literature focuses on the “distant blockades” of Germany that were a key feature of British naval operations in both World Wars. However the case of Japan is most the instructive for the purposes at hand.
An island nation with an extremely circumscribed resource base, Japan was utterly dependent on ship-borne imports of a range of raw (and precursor) materials. In a very real sense, the Empire´s huge naval modernization program during the 1930s was based on its maritime commerce with the United States. Among other things, the U.S. covered 80 percent of Japanese liquid fuel needs. Given its political and military trajectory, Japan´s demand for key commodities was highly inelastic. The only alternative to trade with the United States and other potential adversaries was the unilateral extraction of resources from Japan´s near abroad – which could decrease its dependence on this particular foreign power, but (crucially) not on maritime transportation. When war came, the U.S. was able to exploit this vulnerability to devastating effect. Despite the many operational and technical inadequacies revealed by its initial operations in 1941-42, the U.S. Navy´s all-out war on Japanese shipping eventually came as close to strategically decisive as can reasonably be expected from any indirect use of military power.[3] Aided by the dire lack of defensive measures on the part of the Imperial Japanese armed forces, U.S. submarines alone sent more than 1,100 Japanese merchantmen to the bottom, and nearly as many were sunk by aircraft and mines. By the spring of 1945, Japanese sea-borne logistics had virtually ceased to exist, and so had Japan´s ability to sustain its war effort.
It has been suggested that other attempts throughout history at disrupting shipping flows might well have been equally successful in exploiting strategic vulnerabilities, had it not been for the predators´ “technical incapacity, operational ineptitude, and policy incompetence […] in the conduct of commerce raiding.”[4] Whether this assessment is accurate or not, there is little doubt that – despite the moral opprobrium that has often accompanied attacks on civilian vessels – the vulnerable dependence on sea-borne trade can be exploited to considerable effect. What relevance this finding might possess in an era of global economic integration is, however, much less clear.
Execute against China?
Until very recently, the explosion of maritime trade supporting economic globalization has not resulted in a resurgence of military strategies based on the (selective) disruption of international shipping. An important exception has been Iran´s focus on the Strait of Hormuz, which has played a critical role in Iranian strategic thinking since the 1980s. But it is the rise of China that has reignited naval strategists´ interest in shipping as a source of strategic vulnerability.
One set of scenarios that has been debated in detail involves Chinese offensive operations against Taiwan´s economic lifeline. Given the island´s vulnerable dependency on shipping and the enduring limitations of the People´s Liberation Army with regard to a full-scale invasion, it is hardly surprising that the imposition of a coercive blockade should hold some appeal in PLA planning circles.
Considerably greater attention has been attracted, however, by the possibility that the People´s Republic might itself become the target of offensive military action against the sea-borne commerce on which the integrity of its economic model stamds. After all, 90 percent of China’s exports and 90 percent of its liquid fuel imports – which, as Sean Mirski observes are “functionally irreplaceable”[5] – are transported by sea. The oft-cited ‘Malacca dilemma’ is but one expression of a suspicion that now unites an increasing number of strategic thinkers, both Chinese and foreign: namely, that its dependence on maritime transportation may prove to be China´s Achilles’ heel on its way to greatness.
While the vulnerability of the PRC’s sea lines of communications has become an official justification for naval expansion and a rallying cry for naval nationalists, it is also a focal point for U.S. strategizing in the context of increasing access challenges in the Western Pacific. Thus, a blockade of Chinese (or rather China-bound) shipping has been debated both as an element of, and as an alternative to, the AirSea Battle Concept that is designed to enable operations in the face of an anti-access/area-denial challenge, such as U.S. military planners anticipate in case of conflict along the Chinese periphery.
While Western treatments of the subject tend to agree that a blockade would be militarily feasible – given an adequate investment of resources – and could have a very considerable impact on the Chinese economy, the assumptions under which they arrive at these conclusions are extremely restrictive. For example, Mirski assumes that (1) the U.S.-China conflict in question would not be limited in scope, yet would stop well short of nuclear use, (2) the U.S. would find itself in the position of defender of the status quo against a blatantly aggressive China, (3) the U.S. would be able to build a coalition that includes Russia, India, and Japan; and (4) under these conditions, a ‘sink-on-sight’ policy towards civilian vessels in China’s near seas would be politically viable. Even with these preconditions, he concludes that despite the American blockade “China would be able to meet its military needs indefinitely.”[6]
Recent publications also points to changes in the nature of international shipping itself as potential complicating factors: in a prospective blockade scenario, few – if any – civilian vessels would fly the Chinese flag and, given the practice of selling and reselling cargo on spot markets, a ship´s final destination might not be known until it actually enters port.[7] But while Mirski’s proposal of instituting a system of digital navigational certification is ingenious, he dodges the broader question of how the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific would deal with the myriad repercussions of what would amount to a major disruption of the globalized economic sphere for an extended period of time.
Conclusion: Return of the commerce raiders?
If nothing else, the current debate about a U.S. naval blockade of China reveals that – much like their predecessors in past centuries – strategists in a globalized era see shipping as a repository of strategic vulnerability, particularly in cases of high-intensity conflict between great or medium-size powers. But while the potential leverage to be gained from nations’ dependence on international shipping is perhaps greater than ever before, the actual leverage might not correspond to planners’ expectations. The sources of this disconnect lie primarily in the political and economic context in which any concerted military action against sea-borne trade would be embedded. Given the U.S. Navy’s determined stewardship of freedom of navigation, the U.S. in particular would find itself on the wrong side of the norms it has been upholding for the past 60 years. And while the economic fall-out of any great power war is likely to be significant, the willful disruption of trade flows for strategic effect would only serve to accentuate the costs to regional allies and global trading partners.
As a result, unrestricted commerce warfare of the type pursued by the U.S. Navy against Japan in 1941-45 is just not in the cards. On the other hand, anything short of a strategically counterproductive ‘sink-on-sight’ policy might not produce sufficient strategic impact to justify the cost of embarking on such a risky course of action in the first place. Finally, once we move beyond the context of open interstate warfare, multilateral economic sanctions offer the possibility of causing many of the same effects at markedly lower cost to the attacker’s international standing.
Overall, the recent surge of interest in economic warfare strategies does little to encourage faith in the potential decisiveness of military actions against globalized trade, and serves to underline the practical and political challenges presented by any attempt at leveraging the vulnerabilities of a major trading power under 21st-century conditions. While the dependence on international shipping poses many risks, the strategic leverage it provides as a direct result of its crucial contribution to the prosperity of nations is now more apparent than real.
Michael Haas is a researcher with the Global Security Team at the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich. The views presented above are his alone. Michael tweets @the_final_stand.
[1] Thomas L. Friedman (2006), The World Is Flat: The Globalised World in the Twenty-first Century (London: Penguin), 468.
[2] Colin S. Gray (1992), The Leverage of Sea Power: The Strategic Advantage of Navies in War (New York: Free Press), 13.
[3] Robert A. Pape (1996), Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP), 100-01.
[5] Sean Mirski (2013), “Stranglehold: The Context, Conduct and Consequences of an American Naval Blockade of China,” Journal of Strategic Studies 36:3, 389.
The following article is special to our International Maritime Shipping Week. While we often discuss the threats to maritime shipping, this week looks at dangers arising from such global trade, and possible mitigations.
As months of massive opposition protests culminated on July 3, 2013 in a military coup against Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the eyes of the commercial maritime industry were fixated on the Suez Canal. Though the general report from the vital waterway is ‘business as usual,’ the political and security situation in Egypt remains incredibly fluid. In the restless Sinai Peninsula, militant groups have seized a perceived moment of weakness to launch a fresh round of attacks against Egyptian authorities. In the major cities, including those along the Canal, pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrations and security crackdowns have turned violent, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Military deployments have been increased in the Canal Zone, but the balance between security and efficiency is a delicate one.
As an exercise in speculative analysis, this article examines the questions of who might attempt to shut down the Suez Canal, while the second installment will assess how such an objective could be achieved. Of particular relevance for International Maritime Shipping Week, is the possibility that a vessel transiting the Canal might unwittingly become a pawn in a scheme to close it.
Potential Perpetrators
There is no shortage of local and regional groups hostile to Egypt’s interim military government. As the military’s legitimacy and public support is largely based on the relative stability it provides, an attack on the Suez Canal would serve to undermine and embarrass the interim government, demonstrating to the world that the military is unable to protect the country’s vital interests. That said, the integral boost that Canal revenues provide to the Egyptian economy—accounting for some 2.5% of GDP—makes it unlikely that a political actor with aspirations to govern the country, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, would publically seek to disrupt the Suez Canal.
Riding West from Sinai
Militants in the Sinai Peninsula—a mix of local Bedouins, Palestinians arriving from Gaza, and handful of foreign jihadists—have engaged in low-level conflict with the Egyptian state for decades, but have dramatically escalated their attacks since Morsi’s ousting. The targets of militant attacks are usually symbols of Egypt’s political and military authority in the Peninsula, including security checkpoints, police stations, administrative buildings and army camps. Militants have also struck at critical infrastructure such as oil pipelines to Israel and Jordan, power stations, and the airport at El-Arish. An influx of weapons looted from Libya and the function of Gaza as a smuggling hub has meant that Sinai militants are increasingly well armed, brandishing unguided missiles, RPGs, mortars, and guided anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
Egyptian security checkpoints and military outposts are now subject to near daily attacks by Sinai militants.
As the Egyptian army attempts to crackdown on the militants, there are several indicators that Sinai insurgents may attempt to broaden their campaign and target the Canal Zone. On July 8, armed gunmen attacked the Port Said traffic police directorate and the city’s western seaport in a series of drive-by shootings that mirrored those seen in northeast Sinai. On June 25, a rocket fired from central Sinai landed in an empty area east of the Canal in what Egyptian officials speculate may have been a military drill by an insurgent group. It was also reported that another inaccurate rocket launch in early July was an attempt to hit oil installations in the city of Suez. In addition, Egyptian military sources claim that a cache of Iranian-sourced Fajr-5 rockets seized in Sinai on August 9 were part of a plot to attack Suez Canal facilities.
Forcing a closure of the Canal would be incredibly difficult, but options for disruption are many (see Part II). Regional security expert Ehud Yaari notes that even a lone jihadist in the Sinai could fire an anti-tank missile or RPG at a ship moving slowly through the Suez Canal. This would be unlikely to block the Canal, but may result in delays, increased insurance premiums, and demands for hazard pay for shipping companies.
An Escalating Circle of Political Violence
Two weeks ago, this author assessed that “there is a very low probability that the Muslim Brotherhood will abandon its current strategy of sit-ins and protests in favor of armed revolt against the military.” Recent events, however, have increased the likelihood of political violence spilling over into the Canal Zone. Clashes between Morsi supporters and security forces that left some 80 dead on July 26 were in fact only a preview of the carnage witnessed on August 14, when a police effort to clear protest camps in Cairo was backed by army units firing automatic weapons and sniper rifles. By August 15, the Egyptian ministry of health had recorded 525 dead, but other estimates put it hundreds higher. This event is likely to prove a watershed moment for Egypt and has already resulted in violent blowback from Brotherhood supporters.
Sites of the clashes between protesters and security forces (The Economist)
Egypt’s interior ministry claims that 43 policemen were killed during the clashes, four of them captured and summarily executed in the village of Kerdasa near Cairo. Muslim Brotherhood supporters stormed government buildings in Cairo and Suez city, while violent mobs also set fire to some 18 Christian churches across the country.
Now facing an imposed nighttime curfew and state of emergency declaration, the official line from the Muslim Brotherhood leadership is to continue with demonstrations and marches. “We will rise and rise again until we push the military back into the barracks and restore democracy,” tweeted Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad.
The longer this cycle of protest and repression continues, the harder it will be for the Brotherhood’s leaders to prevent its members from engaging in violent acts. There are reports that some Islamists have fled mainland Egypt to join the insurrection currently waged in the Sinai. Other protest groups have threatened to block roads and railways, and attack security directorates and public facilities if the military continues to break up sit-ins or gatherings. These types of actions will have a direct effect on Canal operations. GAC Egypt, a shipping service provider, recently recommended that transiting vessels suspend crew changes and logistical deliveries until further notice.
The worst-case scenario for the Suez Canal would be if individual Islamists become so frustrated with the Egyptian government that they resort to economic destabilization by disrupting the Canal. It is also possible that continued military violence against Islamist protestors could lead other political groups, such as the Salafists (ultra-conservative Islamists), to abandon mainstream politics in favor of armed conflict. If such groups flee the political system, it could equate to targeted attacks against the backbone of the Egyptian economy: the Suez Canal, the Suez-Mediterranean (SUMED) oil pipeline and tourist centers.
A protest camp cleared, but the battle for Egypt rages on
Eyes on the Canal
Though Canal traffic remains normal, the political violence that has spread to the Canal cities of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez is of great worry for the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) and Egypt’s military government. Reinforcements from the army, navy, and air force have been sent to secure the entire length of the waterway. There are also unconfirmed reports that the SCA raised the Canal’s security level to “extreme emergency” following the August 14 massacre. The exact nature of this perceived threat—including possible targets for attack and potential impacts of worst-case scenarios—will be the focus of this briefing’s second installment.
This article contains excerpts from the Delex Maritime Analysis Center’s “Suez Canal Security Tracker” series, co-authored by Delex analysts James Bridger and Jonathan Zinger. For more information about this product offering, please contact jbridger@delex.com
The following article is special to our International Maritime Shipping Week. While we often discuss the threats to maritime shipping, this week looks at dangers arising from such global trade, and possible mitigations.
Certainty at what cost?
Last year, the Obama Administration released its first-ever National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security. As stated, the main goals of the strategy are to promote the efficient and secure movement of goods and foster a resilient supply chain. Maintaining a secure and resilient supply chain is certainly critical to ensuring the prosperity of the United States’ economy. However, existing legislation governing maritime cargo transit and port security directly contradicts the goals of this strategy.
In 2007, Congress mandated that 100 percent of the approximately 32,000 cargo containers entering U.S. ports each day be screened. The feasibility of this mandate has been questioned by security experts from day one.
In seeking to establish a workable alternative, Congress should consider supply chain realities in fostering a risk-based approach to maritime cargo security.
Given the extensive economic importance of the maritime supply chain, the vulnerability of maritime cargo to terrorist and other malicious attacks has long been a concern. With this concern heightened after 9/11, Congress and the Administration moved to create a risk-based approach to strengthen maritime security centered on analyzing cargo attributes, such as contents and origin of the cargo container, to single out high-risk cargo for further inspection.
By 2006, however, Congress turned sharply away from the risk-based approach with the passage of the Security and Accountability for Every Port Act, which called for testing the feasibility of scanning 100 percent of U.S.-bound cargo, a requirement that was fulfilled though the creation of the Secure Freight Initiative pilot program.
While the program showed that “scanning U.S.-bound maritime containers is possible on a limited scale,” major challenges existed in expanding 100-percent scanning to all 700 international maritime ports handling U.S.-bound cargo. These findings, however, would be disregarded, and Congress moved to mandate that 100 percent of all U.S.-bound maritime cargo be scanned by July 1, 2012—prior even to the pilot program’s completion.
Proponents of the 100-percent mandate have pointed to the supposed success of mandating 100-percent screening of air cargo. Besides the fact that this screening was limited to domestic cargo—screening of U.S.-bound international cargo proved much more difficult—and that a significantly greater volume of cargo transits through the maritime supply chain, another critical difference is that the air cargo security mandate called for the 100-percent screening of all cargo, whereas the maritime cargo mandate calls for 100 percent scanning.
While screening calls for cargo to be assessed for risk on the basis of contents, origin, and other attributes, scanning means that each of the approximately 10.7 million maritime cargo security containers entering U.S. ports each year must be physically scanned. The growth of maritime cargo containerization in recent decades means that typical maritime cargo containers often measure some 40 feet in length. One key issue regarding screening maritime cargo is, therefore, one of scale. While the basic technology exists to effectively screen cargo containers, the expanded technology necessary to perform this function on the larger forms of containerized cargo largely does not.
Cost and infrastructure are also important factors. A single x-ray scanner, the most common technology used for cargo screening, can have a price tag of $4.5 million, plus an estimated annual operating cost of $200,000, not to mention the roughly $600,000 per year for the personnel required to run the equipment and examine the results. Likewise, the mere placement of scanners can also cause logistical problems, as many ports were not built with natural bottlenecks through which all cargo passes. With today’s economy relying heavily on the timely and efficient movement of goods, such delays could amount to around $500 billion in total profit loss. And once scanning technology is installed, it may encounter multiple problems, such as incompatibility with previous technologies, outages due to weather, and insufficient communication infrastructure to transmit electronic data to the U.S. National Targeting Center-Cargo, where it is assessed.
A large part of the post-9/11 anxiety regarding maritime cargo security has centered on the “nuke in a suitcase” scenario, an extremely low probability event. The vast majority of cargo traveling through the maritime supply chain consists of legitimate goods. The 100-percent maritime screening mandate, however, fails to recognize this reality and instead treats every piece of cargo as a genuine threat.
Congress should rethink the 100-percent cargo security mandate and instead return to a risk-based approach to cargo security, centered on analyzing manifests and other data, to single-out only high-risk cargo for further inspection. Ensuring the security and prosperity of the maritime supply chain is simply too important for Congress not to get this right.
Emil Maine is a National Security Research Assistant at the Heritage Foundation, where he conducts independent research on U.S. defense posture. The views and opinions expressed in this article are his own.
Another technique popular in Eastern Europe is “salami tactics.” This occurs when an opponent divides an enemy slice by slice. Each slice is so thin that it doesn’t trigger a reaction until there is no more salami. The international application was demonstrated in the traditional “divide and conquer” approach of Hitler’s Germany, whereby the major powers thought they could appease the government by allowing it to absorb smaller neighbors a slice at a time. In Poland the communists took control of our material life, slice-by-slice, by introducing a series of small regulations that were individually unnoticed by the public. The final result was the same as making one big move. These tactics are potentially very effective against an opponent abiding by rules of proportional response. Breaking one of the initial, small rules would be considered escalating both violence and risk to an unacceptable level.
