Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-97.81.240.58-20130603234626/@comment-24590102-20140404091746

Touche    :^)

Contract negotiation is highly strategic and tactical. It's always about objectives and about undermining objectives which are considered "counterproductive" - which boils down to altering perception through deceit. Most contracts I've come across are not even designed to survive their fist five minutes in front of a judge and, as such, are only offered to create the perception that a person does not have the right when such a right cannot be signed away. Thankfully, rights are not nearly as complex as Chess openings and, once you know which of your rights are inalienable, which are strictly judicial and which can be legally negotiated, then it's easy to see what's going on. I consider contracts and treaty problems as being the same as battlefield problems, only vastly easier to understand.

I recall Sun Tzu's warning about the desperate enemy, but the the idea that the siege of a city is done only at last resort seems new to me and perhaps I missed it. It does seem to imply a different, more mobile, approach to what we have seen in, for example, the Napoleonic Wars and WWI. Sun Tzu does admonish that when the enemy is left behind ones army, that one is on "serious ground" - but maybe it's not so much an admonition as a statement to the effect that one is committed at this point.

I agree that it was an effective stratagem for the Thalmor to use the treaty as a means to erode their enemy's alliances.