Mercy is an Act of Strategy, Not Morality
Why power has always managed enemies, and why most people never see it clearly.
Enemies are often placed inside a false moral frame.
Most ordinary people reduce the world to a simple split between friend and enemy, and once that split is made, the enemy is automatically treated as something bad, evil, or personally hostile. Someone who must be confronted, dealt with, or pushed aside. That assumption is wrong. An enemy is not someone you hate or dislike on a personal level. The moment emotion enters the equation, the enemy stops being an enemy and turns into something else entirely. A rival. A personal foe. Something that takes up far more of your attention and energy than it ever should. That kind of fixation is costly.
An enemy, properly understood, is simply someone whose incentives run against your own within a specific pursuit. The conflict is not emotional. It is structural. It exists regardless of how it personally affects your emotions. Seen this way, enemies are often far more useful when they are known and contained than when they are removed and replaced with uncertainty. Removing an enemy does not remove opposition. It usually just creates space for a new one whose motives, limits, and behavior are still unknown.
Known enemies are useful because they are predictable. Their incentives are clear. Their opposition follows patterns. Their position within the structure is visible and can be planned around. You do not have to guess where they stand, only how they will act. Uncertainty is more dangerous than opposition. And many people make the mistake of trying to get rid of enemies instead of understanding the ones they already have.
When you look at history closely, this pattern shows up again and again. The people who understood power best were rarely eager to remove their enemies. They were far more interested in positioning them.
European monarchs did this constantly. Rival nobles were often spared and kept close, not out of mercy, but out of calculation. Distance creates uncertainty. Proximity creates visibility, and visibility is what allows power to remain boring instead of chaotic. A rival kept nearby can be watched, measured, and managed. These nobles were given titles, land, or positions that deliberately tied their interests to the stability of the crown. The goal was not loyalty. The goal was cost. Once a rival had something to lose, resistance became expensive. Not impossible, but costly enough to think twice. Monarchs also understood that some nobles carried the loyalty of the people. Removing one opposing noble did not simplify the problem. It often made it worse. Opposition did not disappear. It scattered. A single visible rival was easier to contain than several unknown ones operating outside the structure. Keeping rivals in place allowed pressure to surface where it could be seen and released, rather than build quietly until it became uncontrollable.
You see the same logic at work with Napoleon. He re-employed officers who had previously opposed him, not because he trusted them, but because he understood their competence. Ability mattered more than sentiment. These men were useful, and usefulness outweighed personal history. Napoleon did not rely on goodwill. He relied on oversight. Former opponents were watched closely. Authority and supervision replaced trust. Their talents were extracted, applied where effective, and constrained by structure rather than belief. In all of these cases, the point is the same. They were treated as strategic realities. Known opposition was preferable to uncertainty, the predictable resistance was and will always be safer than invisible resistance.
This is what it looks like when power is approached without emotion and without illusion.
This strategy, while effective, is also one of the most commonly misapplied. Once people understand it as a function of power, there is a tendency to overuse it. And overuse quietly weakens the very position the strategy relies on to function properly.
This is not a universal rule of power. It is a situational one. The conditions matter more than the insight itself. Many people attempt to apply this idea in environments where they do not actually hold leverage, authority, or enforcement. In those situations, mercy is not interpreted as strength. It is interpreted as weakness. Leverage must already exist for restraint to mean anything. Used too often, this strategy destabilizes the hierarchy it is meant to preserve. Repeated visible restraint begins to look like hesitation. And hesitation, especially when observed by rivals, invites pressure. Appearances matter far more than most people are comfortable admitting. Power is not judged by intent. It is judged by what behavior it allows, and what behavior it makes impossible.
For this reason, mercy must be used sparingly if it is to remain meaningful. Overuse erodes authority. Underuse hardens opposition. Restraint only works when it is clearly optional, not habitual. The moment restraint becomes expected, it stops functioning as strategy and starts functioning as permission. This approach cannot be used from a position of weakness. If you lack authority, leverage, enforcement, or structure, mercy does not stabilize the situation. It exposes you. Without the ability to impose consequences, mercy ceases to be strategic and becomes submission.
Enemies must never become personal foes or rivals. The moment an enemy turns into a villain in your mind, you have traded structure and power for emotion. At that point, you are no longer thinking strategically. You are reacting. An enemy is someone whose ambitions run against your own within a power structure or a personal pursuit. Nothing more. Nothing less. Most people treat enemies as moral problems, and that is precisely why they are never able to take advantage of them. Moral framing replaces analysis. Emotion replaces discipline. None of these caveats guarantee success; they only remove the most common self-inflicted failures.
An enemy is a structural reality. And when the right strategy is applied, that reality can be useful. Power is not maintained by removing opposition, but by managing opposing incentives. The impulse to get rid of enemies is usually emotional. It feels decisive. It feels righteous. And it often leads to ruin. This way of thinking can feel dangerous, even wrong. That reaction is understandable. But when understood and applied correctly, there is nothing inherently corrupt about it. This rule demands patience, responsibility, and intellect. Without those, it will be misused.
Most people would rather feel justified with the approval of the crowd than remain disciplined enough to think clearly. And that difference explains why so few ever dare to think.