Michael Foucault said – inverting the phrase of the famous military man Carl von Clausewitz – that “politics is the continuation of war by other means”, and in fact, among many other things, the confrontations, verbal attacks, accusations and accusations that are that occur on a daily basis in political life are at the same time the continuation of old quarrels and conflicts, many of which came to be armed, and the way of confronting differences – this in a system that is called democratic.
In this rhetorical environment of politics and war are the electoral campaigns, which are the way that democracies – mature or young – have of choosing our rulers. As their name indicates, electoral ‘campaigns’ have their military roots: a campaign, a specific period focused on achieving a certain objective, in this case the government, positions of power. Another of the military contents in electoral campaigns – and a fundamental content – is discipline. Candidate without discipline is destined to lose. You have to have military discipline to follow the selected message, the ideas to transmit. The disorder, the lack of structure are immediately noticeable in ‘the battlefield’, which today is the media and that enormous echo chamber that is social networks. Another famous term in campaigns are the so-called ‘war rooms’, meetings in which the designed strategy is monitored.
The parallels between war and politics abound in history and campaigns are a good part of it. It is not for nothing that electoral battles are about adversaries, about overwhelming victories, about humiliating defeats, about changes from an ‘army’ to the opposing side. I am going to leave here some of Napoleon’s aphorisms about parallels between military and political matters. He was a high-flying military strategist, a central figure in European history, who – like any candidate who is constantly present – won multiple campaigns and lost many others, some of them definitive – such as Waterloo, which is used as a reference for a big defeat.
-A general should never let neither the victors nor the defeated rest.
-Territorial conditions disrupt plans. Education or discipline have more influence than the climate on the character of the troops.
-War, like government, is a matter of tact.
-In war as in politics, the lost moment never returns.
-Armies are not enough to save a nation; A nation defended by the people is invincible.
-Love is the occupation of the idle man, the distraction of the warrior, the stumbling block of the sovereign.
-It is possible to stop when ascending, never when descending.
-With audacity you can undertake anything, but not everything can be achieved.
-Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than knowing how to decide.
-Coldness is the greatest quality of a man destined to govern.
-There are those who are virtuous because they lack opportunities for vice.
-Men are better governed by their vices than by their virtues.
-The heart of a statesman should only be in his head.
