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It’s all about playing the infinite game.
While researching my first book I read Max Boot’s Invisible Armies. It’s an epic history of guerrilla warfare: who staged these campaigns and why they succeeded or failed. They almost always succeeded because whether it was outmanned Jews in Rome-controlled Israel, New England farmers in the American Revolution, or the Taliban in 21st-Century Afghanistan, the guerrilla fighters not only fought a different war than their opposition — attacking and then hiding — but more times than not adapted a different mindset, too.
The large conventional armies tried to win. The outmanned guerrilla fighters tried to survive.
In war-gaming scenarios there’s a term for this: the finite game versus the infinite game. Armies abiding by finite rules have clear missions and a clearer campaign objective: kill enemy combatants until their leaders surrender. The best guerrilla fighters, however, play an infinite game. Their aim is to fight on, whatever happens. This occurred in Nazi-controlled France just as it’s occurring now in Ukraine. There is no “end” to the war fought by infinity fighters because their objective is even more essential than victories authorized in peace treaties.
It’s the ability to fight for the life you want. It’s a battle, ultimately, to forever…
