Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

The maxim advises strategic vigilance: intimacy with allies is natural, but proximity to adversaries can be even more crucial because it yields information, anticipates threats, and reduces the chance of surprise. In practice it points to intelligence-gathering, diplomacy, and the management of rivalries—keeping potential opponents within view rather than at a distance where they can organize unchecked. Although often attributed to ancient military wisdom, the line’s modern popularity reflects a broader, realpolitik sensibility: power depends not only on loyalty and friendship but on understanding opponents’ motives, capabilities, and intentions.