Enemy disorientation
Annihilation and dislocation represent the “ideal outcome” in military strategy: a swift victory with as few casualties and economic costs as possible. Dislocation reduces an opponent’s willingness to fight by causing confusion or disorientation through unexpected maneuvers or surprise, such as Hitler’s blitzkrieg conquests in the Second World War. Annihilation and dislocation strategies can be considered high risk, high reward. They both require military forces trained well enough and led effectively enough to execute complex maneuvers [Echevarria, p. 13].
According to Lidell Hart, the physical and psychological dislocation of the enemy is the primary aim of the strategy, the processes of mystifying and misleading the enemy provide a distraction, and it is a such distraction that provides both a foundation and amplification of effect for the surprise that is the signature of the indirect approach. Liddell Hart is quite specific that the psychological dislocation--the confusion, the fears, the increased sense of Clausewitzian friction--of the enemy commander is of particular benefit to the practitioner of the indirect approach. In his ancient writings, Sun Tzu explicitly recognizes the benefits of instilling doubts and confusion in the enemy's mind, going so far as to maintain that the primary target of the superior commander is precisely the mind of the opposing commander. The disorientation of a surprised commander under attack and the unwarranted persistence of other commanders in continuing to press discredited strategies may have their bases in the same psychological phenomena [Smyth, p. 2].
Echevarria, A. J. (2017). Annihilation and dislocation. Military Strategy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smyth, R. H. (1997). Dislocation and the Enemy Commander. Washington: National Defense University.