280 Campaigns — The Evidence Behind the Indirect Approach

"In all these campaigns, only six decisive results came from a direct approach." — B.H. Liddell Hart

Military Context

The first four chapters state the principle of the indirect approach. This one supplies its evidential basis, because a strategic claim without empirical support is only a preference.

1. What He Actually Did

In Strategy, Liddell Hart did something rare in military writing: systematic historical statistics.

He surveyed thirty major wars from the Greco-Persian wars of the fifth century BC to the twentieth century, covering roughly 280 campaigns, classifying each by outcome and by the approach employed.

His conclusion: across those 280-odd campaigns, only six decisive victories came from direct assault on the enemy's main strength. Nearly every other decisive result came from some form of indirect approach — manoeuvring to a flank, severing supply, attacking the mind rather than the position.

2. Why the Number Matters

Six out of 280 converts "the indirect approach is better" from a strategic preference into an empirical regularity.

More importantly, it explains a paradox: if the indirect approach is so plainly superior, why did commanders repeatedly choose frontal assault?

Liddell Hart's answer: direct attack is psychologically easier to choose. It is simple, comprehensible, and looks decisive, while the indirect approach requires admitting you cannot win head-on — difficult both institutionally and personally.

3. The Honest Limits of His Method

The study's limitations must be stated, or this chapter becomes an appeal to authority.

He did the classification himself. The boundary between direct and indirect admits interpretation, and he plainly entered the survey with his conclusion already formed. A different classifier might not produce the number six.

There is also obvious selection bias: campaigns that enter the historical record tend to be those with decisive outcomes, while a great many inconclusive manoeuvres may never have been recorded at all.

But even discounting for both, the direction of the conclusion holds — no reasonable classification makes "frontal assault usually produces decisive victory" true.

The Wall Street Translation

4. The Investing Counterpart Statistics

Comparable evidence exists in investing, and it points the same way.

Active management attempts to beat the market head-on through better selection, while the persistence data recorded in A Random Walk Down Wall Street Chapter 5 elsewhere in this library shows: active funds beating their benchmark over fifteen years are typically under fifteen percent, and the probability that a past outperformer keeps outperforming approaches random.

This is investing's six-out-of-280.

And what is the indirect approach in investing? Not smarter selection, but:

• Reducing costs — raises net return without defeating anyone
• Extending holding periods — lets compounding work instead of forecasting
• Diversifying — requires no judgment about which wins, only that no single failure destroys you
• Controlling behaviour — avoiding panic selling requires no market knowledge at all

What these share: each bypasses the frontal battlefield of having to be smarter than other participants.

5. Why Most People Still Choose the Frontal Assault

Liddell Hart's explanation for commanders applies almost word for word to investors.

Direct assault — selection, timing, hunting the next big opportunity — is psychologically more satisfying. It supplies a sense of control, participation, and skill.

The indirect approach demands admitting something uncomfortable: you cannot beat the market on information or speed. Accepting that is emotionally difficult even though it is mathematically liberating — it removes you from an unwinnable contest and redirects you to variables you fully control.

Actionable Trading Rules

1. Look for the statistical basis before adopting any strategy: ask how the method performs across a large sample rather than whether it worked in one case.
2. Prefer methods that require defeating no one: improvements in cost, time, diversification, and behaviour depend on nobody else losing.
3. Be wary of psychologically satisfying strategies: satisfaction and effectiveness are uncorrelated and often inverted.

Relevance to a Retirement Portfolio

This chapter supplies a historical analogy for the entire retirement approach: low-cost indexing is the indirect approach.

It does not attempt to beat the market but bypasses the contest entirely — bearing the market's aggregate risk for the corresponding return while minimising costs, taxes, and behavioural losses.

Liddell Hart's statistics offer a forceful parallel: across 2,500 years of warfare, the success rate of frontal assault was startlingly low; across roughly a century of investing history, the sustained success rate of beating the market head-on is startlingly low too.

Two domains, twenty-five centuries apart, one conclusion: going around works far better than going through.