The Law of Power: Crush your enemy completely. If you leave even one ember smoldering, it will eventually ignite. You can’t afford to be lenient.
History is replete with examples of leaders who defeated their enemies but left them alive out of mercy. Of course the opponent always bided his time, becoming ever more resentful and determined, until he was strong enough to seek revenge.
Your enemies feel nothing but animosity for you, and want to eliminate you. The only way to have security and peace is to do to them what they would do to you. When you get the upper hand, don’t hesitate to deliver the final blow. This doesn’t necessarily mean killing them, but at minimum neutralizing them by totally eliminating their ability to fight back. In the old days, banishment often worked.
For instance, in the 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek had almost decimated Mao Tse-tung‘s Communists, so he turned his attention to the invading Japanese instead. But over ten years, the Communists recovered and eventually routed Chiang’s army, forcing him to flee to Taiwan.
You need to control your enemies totally — don’t go halfway with them or give them any options whatsoever. Don’t negotiate — negotiation will undercut your victory. For your security, you must crush them.
Putting the Law to Work
Empress Wu of China enjoyed a forty-year reign, one of the longest in Chinese history, because she ruthlessly crushed every rival without exception.
Starting with her rise to power as a concubine of the emperor, she smothered her own child to cast suspicion on another concubine, so that woman was executed. She poisoned a niece and a son, and had another son exiled. She had a son declared unfit to serve when the emperor died, leaving only her youngest son, whom she controlled, to become emperor. Every time there was a coup attempt, she had everybody executed.
She claimed to be a divine descendant of Buddha and eventually had herself named divine emperor. By the time she got the job, there was no one left in the dynasty. She ruled capably until age 80, when finally forced to abdicate.
On rare occasions, when you have your opponents on the ropes it may make sense to let them self-destruct rather than crushing them. Defeat and humiliation may be so demoralizing that there’s no possibility of recovery, or they may have permanently damaged or exhausted themselves.
However, leniency can embitter or even embolden an enemy, so you’re almost always better off crushing them.