Winning Requires Leverage

Winning requires leverage. Always winning means always having leverage.

Leverage means having a means by which one can always enforce one's will on the other side, no matter what the particulars of the circumstance.

It is very important to understand the principle in general. To build an effective stable ruling class, in any era, it is necessary to understand the chain of leverage, and to concentrate on gaining and keeping control of the highest forms of leverage.

What are the highest forms of leverage, or more accurately---what have they been at any point of history? (for the chain of leverage is not constant over historical time).

The lowest form of leverage is enforcing one's will is through physical violence or threat. To put it bluntly, a loaded gun or a bayonet, is a spectacular means, in the short run, of getting someone to do what you want. But the effect only lasts as long as the weapon is pointed. It can produce the opposite long term effect than what one desired.

Likewise, on a large scale, control over armies, navies, air forces, and ballistic missiles, is a tremendous way of projecting one's will onto an entire nation or even the world in any immediate circumstance. Control over such forces is absolute prerequisite of power. But as on the personal, reliance on this alone is insufficient, and can produce great complications in regard to the maintenance of stability.

For one thing, men simply tire of pointing weapons at each other. Armies want to go home.The people desire peace most naturally.

Partly because of this, the ownership of a great military---although an absolute prerequisite for maintenance of power---is not at the apex of the pyramid of leverage.  It is a necessary but not sufficient condition.  Since the end of the Napoleonic wars at least, it is generally something that one controls by means of leverage through other forms of power.