A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind

by Zachary Shore

Overview

More than two thousand years ago the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu advised us to know our enemies. The question has always been how. In A Sense of the Enemy, the historian Zachary Shore demonstrates that leaders can best understand an opponent not simply from his pattern of past behavior, but from his behavior at pattern breaks. Meaningful pattern breaks occur during dramatic deviations from the routine, when the enemy imposes costs upon himself. It's at these unexpected moments, Shore explains, that successful leaders can learn what makes their rivals truly tick.

Shore presents a uniquely revealing history of twentieth-century conflict. With vivid, suspenseful prose, he takes us into the minds of statesmen, to see how they in turn tried to enter the minds of others. In the process, he shows how this type of mind-reading, which he calls "strategic empathy," shaped matters of war and peace. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, was an excellent strategic empath. In the wake of a British massacre of unarmed Indian civilians, how did Gandhi know that nonviolence could ever be effective? And what of Gustav Stresemann, the 21-year-old Wunderkind Ph.D., who rose from lobbyist for chocolate makers to Chancellor of Germany. How did he manage to resurrect his nation to great power status after its humiliating loss in World War One? And then there is Le Duan, the shadowy Marxist manipulator who was actually running North Vietnam during the 1960s, as opposed to Ho Chi Minh. How did this rigid ideologue so skillfully discern America's underlying constraints? And, armed with this awareness, how did he construct a grand strategy to defeat the United States? One key to all these leaders' triumphs came from the enemy's behavior at pattern breaks.

Drawing on research from the cognitive sciences, and tapping multilingual, multinational sources, Shore has crafted an innovative history of the last century's most pivotal moments, when lives and nations were on the line. Through this curious study of strategic empathy, we gain surprising insights into how great leaders think.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199987375
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/14/2014
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Zachary Shore is an Associate Professor of History at the Naval Postgraduate School. He is the author of What Hitler Knew, Breeding Bin Ladens, and Blunder.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Conscience of an Empire

1. Fitting In: Some Thoughts on Scholarship, Sources, and Methods
2. Arming Your Enemy: Stresemann's Maneuver, Act I
3. Steady on the Tightrope: Stresemann's Maneuver, Act II
4. Stalin the Simulator: The Problem of Projected Rationality
5. A Rendezvous With Evil: How Roosevelt Read Hitler
6. Hanoi's New Foe: Le Duan Prepares for America
7. Counting Bodies: The Benefits of Escalation
8. Overdog Errors
9. Number Worship

Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

01/06/2014
Shore (What Hitler Knew), a historian of international relations at the Naval Postgraduate School, takes strategic empathy—“the ability to think like your opponent”—and applies it to analyses of 20th-century wars and international conflicts. His subjects include Gandhi’s extrication of India from the British Empire following WWII; German Foreign Minister (and later Chancellor) Gustav Stresemann’s diplomatic successes in the 1920s; Stalin and Roosevelt’s dealings with Hitler in the 1930s; and North Vietnamese leader Le Duan’s decades-long shaping of the war with the United States. This history, as interpreted “through an alternative lens,” is deeply researched, well argued, and often convincing. Shore shows, for instance, how North Vietnam’s “strategic empathy for America,” led by the generally underappreciated Communist Party Secretary Le Duan, was an important factor in North Vietnam’s “final triumph” over the United States and South Vietnam. Although Shore’s writing occasionally becomes convoluted and is prone to an overreliance on supposition, he offers an intriguing and fresh interpretation of some of recent history’s best-known and most important global conflicts. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Deeply researched, well argued, and often convincing....Offers an intriguing and fresh interpretation of some of recent history's best-known and most important global conflicts."—Publishers Weekly

"What Zachary Shore refers to as 'strategic empathy' is a vitally important concept in international affairs, and he is to be lauded for this intelligent, discerning, and engagingly written book."—Fredrik Logevall, author of Embers of War, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History

"Zachary Shore articulates a provocative and compelling argument about a crucial yet understudied issue lying at the heart of decision making—how to read one's rivals. The analysis is developed in the context of artfully chosen, snappily written, historical case studies that make for captivating reading in and of themselves. This work will be of significant value and interest to scholars and policy makers alike."—Aviel Roshwald, author of The Endurance of Nationalism

"A Sense of the Enemy will reward all readers concerned with foreign-policy strategy."—Michigan War Studies Review

From the Publisher