Dealing with Barbarians at the Gates - the Byzantine way

A few days ago I noted there are lessons to be learned for Yahoo and Microsift in studying how the Romans kept big, old empires together - now comes news of a classic Barbarians at the Gate syndrome, with Carl Icahn threatening to board and sack Yahoo's board.

The appropriate lessons here though come not from the Vandals sacking Rome, but from the strategies used by Byzantium to withstand numerous sieges of Constantinople by various raiders in its 1000 year history, all who wanted to get their hands on the loot. A short study will tell you that the Byzantines deserved their reputation !

So - typically Byzantine strategies included:

- cutting off flow of resources from backers of the besiegers, or changing their view of their best outcome, by occupying them elsewhere - its not clear if Microsoft is abetting this, but opening a second front there would be typically Byzantine

- bribing opponents of the besiegers to besiege them in turn (I guess today its called PR and Media Relations

- causing insurrections back in the besiegers' homeland

- simply paying them to go away (the ancient equivalent of greenmail). But the Byzantines also had the charming habit of then letting the successful besiegers' party hard on the loot, then send their own army in to give them a hangover to die for - literally - and bring the loot back home.

- burn their enemies' boats with nasty, underhand weapons - In todays' world that would be info-war weapons I think

- Constantinople itself was constructed in such a way that the losses from even a successful siege would make invaders think again, a bitter pill to swallow given the effort.

- Assets were diversified - ie even if the city fell, as in 1204 AD, the enemy did not get control of everything, and those other elements were capable of hitting back.

- Proxy war - take an ally of the main party and make a grisly example of them, as a sort of friendly hint of what may come to pass

- Do the unexpected - Byzantine strategy was full of tricks, traps, double-backs etc - its not even that the foe didn't expect them, but the sheer friction of dealing with them was wearing in itself.

- The very simple strategy of never fighting on ground of the opponent's choosing - they were masters of sacrificing what looked like major assets to put the invader in a position so they could deliver the killing blow

Byzantium had an information and espionage network second to none in the period - information was power then, as now. Yahoo is an information company, Carl Icahn comes from a different era. Just as the eBay / Craigslist battle is being played out in new fields, a Byzantine strategy here would be too.