All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.

“The remnants of an enemy can become active like those of a disease or fire. Hence, these should be exterminated completely. One should never ignore an enemy, knowing him to be weak. He becomes dangerous in due course, like the spark of fire in a haystack.” — Kautilya, Indian Philosopher, Third Centuryb. BC.

Chinese history contains many examples of enemies that have been left alive only to end up returning for revengeful chaos. As a result, a moral within Chinese culture became ‘crush the enemy’.

Some may think this is a very aggressive and extreme approach.

So how might we apply this to our life?

You may think …

Crush my enemy?

I don’t want to kill anybody. I’m not a Chinese leader.

I’m not about to take over a country.

If we look beyond the surface level there are many practical applications to this law. Example: What’s a competitive environment you see yourself in that may require you to defeat and crush your opponent?

How about sports?

It’s fair to say a large portion of the population have played some type of competitive sport. We often see teams come back from large deficits in the last portion of games because possessing a lead gives us a certain psychological comfort and complacency. This can be seen frequently within basketball. You can’t afford to take your foot off the pedal. You must crush your enemy totally with a relentlessness alike to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Sometimes It Is Better To Let Your Enemies Destroy Themselves

Leave your enemy an escape route. A retreat is the ultimate demoralizing defeat.Let them be the agents of their own destruction. The result will be the same.
The risk of crushing an enemy is you embitter them so much so that they spend years and years plotting revenge. Do not let your guard down, but simply crush them again.