The Empty Fort Strategy is a stratagem in which a weaker or undefended party deliberately presents an appearance of openness and calm to convince an opponent that a position is a trap full of hidden ambushes, inducing the opponent to retreat rather than attack. It is catalogued as the thirty-second of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, a body of classical Chinese strategic principles concerned with deception and reading an adversary expectations under uncertainty.
Sources
Empty Fort Strategy (Wikipedia)
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The Empty Fort Strategy involves using reverse psychology to deceive the enemy into thinking that an empty location is full of traps and ambushes, and therefore induce the enemy to retreat.
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