Attrition Warfare
Attrition warfare is a military strategy where the goal is to wear down the enemy to the point of collapse through causing continuous loss of personnel and resources.
The strategy had a famous phrase during WW1 called “Bleeding France White”.
While attrition is inevitable in any war, you are said to be employing the attrition warfare strategy when your aim is to purely deplete the opposition’s resources while safeguarding your own.
Numbers dictate the result
There is one likely result of employing the attrition warfare strategy - the side with the bigger army and war chest wins the battle.
This strategy is supposed to be the final straw when other strategies like manoeuvring, divide and conquer, surprise attack etc are not feasible.
Attrition warfare often results in such catastrophic loss of life and resources that even victory might sometimes feel like a defeat. It is said that one should always resort to other strategies and only when one is convinced that nothing else will work, should attrition warfare even be considered.
An example of this was during the American Civil war where the Union’s General Ulysses Grant knew that with their superior numbers and armoury supply they could overwhelm the Confederacy even if the casualty ratio was unfavourable to the Union. Even if for every dead Confederacy soldier, the union lost more than 1 life they would still win the war due to the size of their army.
By the nature of the result, victory through this strategy is often hard to refute and is very assertive, hence it is used extensively when the status of a war seems indecisive.
Bleeding out your rivals
The strategy holds good not just in war but any sphere of life where there is a competition whose outcome can be determined based on resources.
For example, if you are a big player and your competition is a small player with not a lot of resources, you could outbid them in every aspect of the market and dry up their cash flow.
Amazon deployed this strategy with Diaper.com. Back in 2009, Amazon wanted to get into the diaper business and they wanted to buy out their competition called Daipers.com.
Soon, Amazon started dropping prices up to 30% on diapers and other baby products. The founders of Diapers.com figured that Amazon was manipulating their prices based on the prices on Diapers.com and other competitors.
Eventually, the price war came to a point where Diapers.com couldn’t compete anymore.
Even though it was estimated that Amazon was on track to lose $100 million over 3 months in the diapers market, they didn’t stop lowering their prices.
The losses were too high for Diapers.com to continue and they eventually sold to Amazon.
The strategy and the results that follow are brutal and decisive.
Attrition Warfare in Everyday Lives
While most of us won't be in a position to employ attrition warfare in our daily lives, it is equally important to make sure we aren’t at the wrong end of one. Here are some tips that can help.
Choose domains where you have a distinct advantage that is not tied to a resource. Look at things that can't be easily replicated just by employing more manpower or resources.
Don’t sell your time for money. There is always someone who will do it for longer and cheaper but not necessarily better.
Choose a niche where you’ll not attract too much attention from big players too early. No one thinks twice before killing a small threat in a thriving market.
Get big fast and keep consolidating the market. When you gain a significant threshold in a situation/market, it becomes harder to get rid of you easily.
Keep all options open at any time and this includes joining hands with your rivals.
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