The Art of War – War and Military Thought, by Martin Van Creveld, Cassell & Co, London, UK, 2000 is a good introduction to strategies of war. When the author looked at the European experience – there were many books written about the tactics of war – the use of arms, marching, combat, deployment; however very few about strategy. The key element is the map. Today very few people would drive off without a map or access to one on their smartphone, but maps for a long time were not that accurate. By the end of the 1700’s maps were accurate and could be used to do strategy behind the scenes or not in the General’s head. The earliest person credited for using the new technology is a Prussian officer and writer Adam Heinrich Dietrich von Buelow. He talked about lines of operations – the army moved and operations flowed, often these lines would be stretched how much is the key. He suggested if the lines stretching from the flanks should meet at the objective in such a way they form a right angle. Proceed further from this and you risk being cut off by a side stroke.

The next addition to strategy was by Antoine Henri Jomini who added other concepts such as Theatre of Operations and Zones of Operations. After this more complexity developed along with the lines being called blue for friendly, red for hostile. Are the divisions separate and operate semi independently? If you wanted to deliver a swift blow if a blue army was between two red ones, so before the red lines could unite the blue lines would fight the red ones.  Whatever the precise manoeuvre selected it was a question of bringing superior force against the decisive point.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in war strategy a map and a plan are needed to find the weakest link to attack to divide and conquer. When you are buying a hundred shares of a large company, there will not be a great impact, but what you are doing is not buying others. If you begin with a dividend, you narrow the field to those that are profitable and the management returns profits to shareholders. As long as the company remains profitable it will be desired by others who will help push the share price up.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions