Some weeks ago, I had the chance to listen to an interesting lecture given to some strategists. Here is my recap (I’ll leave the religious crap out of the narrative – it isn’t relevant at all).
The educated, bearded and renowed teacher started off with some recent experience:
We knew they were preparing to come after us soon. Their plans were ready but they still needed some preparations on the ground. Their troops were not in place yet and the hot phase of their public campaign had not even started.
My fellows were prepared on the military side. We had everything in place where we would need it and we even had some nasty surprises prepared. There wasn’t much more we could do.
So why wait? We didn’t. We decided to take the initiative.
We launched a small interception and snatched some of their guys. We didn’t expect that to escalate at once and were prepared to do some additional scops. But those were not needed at all. They tried to get their people back immediately and we slaughtered their rescue team when it crossed our border. That did the trick.
They got such fierce public pressure by their own hawks that they had to launch their campaign unprepared.
They dropped on us what was available to them, but we paid them back every day. Their ground component, unprepared as it was, ran into every trap we had set up. Their decision making process was in total disarray and from top to bottom they seemingly did their best to screw up wherever they could.
After a few weeks, public opinion was decisively on our side and against theirs. They had to stop the fighting. When it was over, their original attack plans were archived.
It was a great victory for us. Internally, we were credited for defeating another occupation attempt, externally we are now the heroes of the proverbial street.
So on to your situation.
Your enemy is preparing for an attack. Though some of its assets are in the area, it is not yet ready for the fight. To show off, these dumb folks are parading their floating airports in your garden pond. As long as they do so, they can not attack. There is no room for manuever and those Chinese worms you have would make big scrap heaps out of them.
So here is my advice.
Catch some as you can. Make sure it looks ambiguous. They certainly give you enough chances for that. Make a bit of media fuzz and then just let it build.
Give their hawks some time to shame the fools at the top into ordering a premature attack. Take some digs at them here and there – stoke their fire.
There are two possible outcomes I can see:
- They will hit you with whatever they have ready. Bad, but you will have much better chances to hit back than you will get when they are fully prepared.
- They will chicken out. You’ll have taken their faces and gained the cred. They may even abort their attack plans at all after such.
I can’t think of a way such action would NOT help you.
But then – it’s your decision of course – and maybe you will not even have to make a decision at all.
As often in history, things may just fall into place by themselves.