"The best defense is a good offense" is an adage that has been applied to many fields of endeavor, including games and military combat. It is also known as the strategic offensive principle of war. Generally, the idea is that proactivity (a strong offensive action) instead of a passive attitude will preoccupy the opposition and ultimately hinder its ability to mount an opposing counterattack, leading to a strategic advantage.
George Washington wrote in 1799: "...make them believe, that offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only (in some cases) means of defence". [1]
Mao Zedong opined that "the only real defense is active defense", meaning defense for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive. [2] Often success rests on destroying the enemy's ability to attack. This principle is paralleled in the writings of Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. [3]
Some martial arts emphasize attack over defense. Wing chun, for example, is a style of kung fu which uses the maxim: "The hand which strikes also blocks."
During World War I, Germany planned to attack France so as to quickly knock it out of the war, thereby reducing the Entente's numerical superiority and to free up German troops to head east and defeat Russia.
In some board games, such as Risk , one's ability to build up armies depends on aggressively attacking so as to acquire territory; however, in Risk , luck in rolling the dice is the ultimate determining factor. Players who fail to do so, and concentrate instead on holding the line against enemy attack, will likely end up in a weak position. In-depth info argues that this adage does not always apply: "When the battle rages between two players one should put every ounce of power in the offense, but when several players are involved, the political element changes this dynamic." [4]
In chess, one's ability to prevent enemy attacks often depends on maintaining the initiative – i.e., making a series of threats that the opponent must use his turns to parry, rather than launching his own attacks; thus, common tips used in conjunction with this adage are that the best way to upset an opponent's plans is to become menacing and that the best way to stop an enemy threat to one's own king is to attack the opponent's.[ original research? ]
In sports such as football and basketball, [5] the adage is used to note that success can hinge on an effective offense that keeps the ball on the other team's side of the field, thus not only creating scoring opportunities but preventing the opposing team from scoring.
The adage has also been applied in the intellectual property realm, in reference to patent trolls. [6]
The adage has also been applied in court where the defense counsel attacks and breaks the prosecutor's case. It is the prosecution's burden to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.
There are strict rules of criminal procedure code which require the prosecution to first prove a prima facie case, before the defense could be called or even invited to set out material aspects of its position, and the prosecution's task to present its case at the trial.
In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Empath", Captain Kirk says, "The best defense is a good offense, and I intend to start offending right now." [7]
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would result in the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek word strategos, the term strategy, when first used during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", or "the art of arrangement" of troops. and deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy.
A preemptive war is a war that is commenced in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived imminent offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending war shortly before that attack materializes. It is a war that preemptively 'breaks the peace' before an impending attack occurs.
Turtling is a gameplay strategy that emphasizes heavy defense, with little or no offense. A player who turtles minimizes risk to themselves while baiting opponents to take risks in trying to overcome the defenses.
In sports, a utility player is one who can play several positions competently. Sports in which the term is often used include association football, basketball, American football, baseball, rugby union, rugby league, softball, ice hockey, and water polo.
Axis & Allies: Pacific is a strategy board game produced by Hasbro under the Avalon Hill name brand. Released on July 31, 2001 and designed by Larry Harris, the designer of the original Axis & Allies game, Axis & Allies: Pacific allows its players to recreate the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Strategy is a major part of American football.
The 46 defense is an American football defensive formation, an eight men in the box defense, with six players along the line of scrimmage. There are two players at linebacker depth playing linebacker technique, and then three defensive backs. The 46 defense was originally developed and popularized with the Chicago Bears by their defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, who later became head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals.
Flexible response was a defense strategy implemented by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to address the Kennedy administration's skepticism of Dwight Eisenhower's New Look and its policy of massive retaliation. Flexible response calls for mutual deterrence at strategic, tactical, and conventional levels, giving the United States the capability to respond to aggression across the spectrum of war, not limited only to nuclear arms.
Principles of war are rules and guidelines that represent truths in the practice of war and military operations.
Man-to-man defense, or man defense, is a type of defensive system used in team sports such as American football, association football, basketball and netball, as in which each player is assigned to defend and follow the movements of a single player on offense. Often, a player guards his counterpart, but a player may be assigned to guard a different position. However, the strategy is not rigid, and a player might switch assignment if needed, or leave his own assignment for a moment to double team an offensive player. The term is commonly used in both men's and women's sports. The alternative to man-to-man defense is zone defense, a system of defense in which each player guards an assigned area rather than a specified opponent.
Players use different strategies while playing tennis to enhance their own strengths and exploit their opponent's weaknesses in order to gain the advantage and win more points.
Basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) are tactical movements performed by fighter aircraft during air combat maneuvering, to gain a positional advantage over the opponent. BFM combines the fundamentals of aerodynamic flight and the geometry of pursuit, with the physics of managing the aircraft's energy-to-mass ratio, called its specific energy.
Deep operation, also known as Soviet deep battle, was a military theory developed by the Soviet Union for its armed forces during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a tenet that emphasized destroying, suppressing or disorganizing enemy forces not only at the line of contact but also throughout the depth of the battlefield.
A halfback (HB) is an offensive position in American football, whose duties involve lining up in the offensive backfield and carrying the ball on most rushing plays, i.e. a running back. When the principal ball carrier lines up deep in the backfield, and especially when that player is placed behind another player (usually a blocking back), as in the I formation, that player is instead referred to as a tailback (TB).
In martial arts, the terms hard and soft technique denote how forcefully a defender martial artist counters the force of an attack in armed and unarmed combat. In the East Asian martial arts, the corresponding hard technique and soft technique terms are 硬 and 柔, hence Goju-ryu, Shorinji Kempo principles of go-ho and ju-ho, Jujutsu and Judo.
In military tactics, a flanking maneuver is a movement of an armed force around an enemy force's side, or flank, to achieve an advantageous position over it. Flanking is useful because a force's fighting strength is typically concentrated in its front, therefore, to circumvent an opposing force's front and attack its flank is to concentrate one's own offense in the area where the enemy is least able to concentrate defense.
An offensive is a military operation that seeks through an aggressive projection of armed forces to occupy or recapture territory, gain an objective or achieve some larger strategic, operational, or tactical goal. Another term for an offensive often used by the media is "invasion", or the more general "attack". An offensive is a conduct of combat operations that seek to achieve only some of the objectives of the strategy being pursued in the theatre as a whole. Commonly an offensive is carried out by one or more divisions, numbering between 10 and 30,000 troops as part of a combined arms manoeuvre.
Defensive patent aggregation (DPA) is the practice of purchasing patents or patent rights to keep such patents out of the hands of entities that would assert them against operating companies. The opposite is offensive patent aggregation (OPA) which is the purchasing of patents in order to assert them against companies that would use the inventions protected by such patents and to grant licenses to these operating companies in return for licensing fees or royalties. OPA can be practiced by operating companies or non-practicing entities (NPEs)