McNair Paper Number 52, Chapter 1, Notes, October 1996

1. Hans Rothfels, quoted in Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 124, note 3. Clausewitz married Marie von Brhhl in December 1810 (ibid., 209). Once married, Marie Clausewitz identified herself whole-heartedly with her husband's work, "acted as his amanuensis and after his death as his editor," presiding over "what still remains the complete edition of his works which she published in 1832-4" [Michael Howard, Clausewitz (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 8].

2. Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, ed. Werner Hahlweg (Bonn: Dhmmler, 1980 and 1991), 265; Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Peter Paret and Michael Howard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 119.

3. The March 1992 edition of Air Force Manual 1-1: Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force states that war is characterized by "fog, friction, and chance" (vol. I, 2). The reigning view in the U.S. Army is that "[a]mbiguity, uncertainty, fog, friction, danger, stark fear, and chance . . . continue to describe accurately the conditions with which military forces have to contend and will continue to contend" (General Gordon R. Sullivan and Lieutenant Colonel James M. Dubrik, ALand Warfare in the 21st Century," Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 4th annual conference on strategy, February 1993, 26). Also see U.S. Marine Corps, Warfighting, Fleet Marine Field Manual 1, 6 March 1989, 4-7.

4. "[Admiral William A.] Owens Says Technology May Lift 'Fog of War': Breakthroughs Could Give Forces Total Command of Future Battlefield," Inside the Navy, 23 January 1995, 3. See also, Admiral William A. Owens in Dominant Battlespace Knowledge: The Winning Edge, eds. Stuart E. Johnson and Martin C. Libicki (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, October 1995), 14-15; and Owens, "System-Of-Systems: US' Emerging Dominant Battlefield Awareness Promises To Dissipate the 'Fog of War'," Armed Forces Journal International (January 1996): 47. The meaning initially associated with Admiral Owens' notion of Dominant Battlefield Awareness was that, by connecting largely existing sensors and shooters together via appropriate information and command-and-control systems, it should be possible to detect, track, and classify most (or all) of the militarily relevant objects moving on land, the surface of the ocean, through the air, or in space within a cube of battlespace some 200 nautical miles on a side.

5. Michael J. Mazarr, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Benjamin Ederington, "The Military Technical Revolution: A Structural Framework," Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC, final report of the CSIS study group on the MTR, March 1993, 58.

6. While the ideas in this essay are the author's responsibility alone, Andrew W. Marshall encouraged exploration of the possibility that warfare might possess structural or built-in features that could not be wholey eliminated by advances in the means of combat. Marshall, however, was also willing to entertain the possibility that advances in the information aspects of conflict could substantially attenuate the magnitude of frictional impediments, particularly at the operational level of future war.