McNair Paper Number 52, Chapter 4, October 1996

With the foundation provided by chapters 2 and 3, we can now complete the initial task of clarifying Clausewitz's mature notion of general friction. The account of the concept in On War contains two interlocking difficulties: the absence of a reasonably exhaustive taxonomy of general friction's various components or sources; and, Clausewitz's confusing use of the term Friktion to refer both to the unified concept as well as to one of general friction's components or sources. The easiest way to clarify, much less extend, Clausewitz's original concept is to resolve these difficulties, and the place to begin is with what Clausewitz calls "the atmosphere of war."

The first book of On War offers two lists of the various elements that, for Clausewitz, coalesce to form the atmosphere of war (der Atmosph"re des Kreiges):

Chapter 3, Book One: Chapter 8, Book One:

1. danger 1. danger

2. exertion 2. physical exertion

3. uncertainty 3. intelligence

4. chance(Note 1) 4. friction(Note 2) 2

What do these lists represent? Ignoring for the moment the discrepancies in the last two places of both lists and the perplexing occurrence of "friction" in the second, the answer is that these lists detail various elements or sources of general friction. This interpretation can be readily confirmed by observing that danger, physical exertion, intelligence, and chance (construed as the countless minor incidents that one can never foresee) are all unambiguously identified in On War as sources or components of friction in the inclusive sense of the unified concept that distinguishes real war from war on paper. (Note 3)

Next, can the apparent discrepancies in the lists' third and fourth places be resolved? The easiest place to begin answering this question is to look at the detailed meanings Clausewitz attached to danger and physical exertion as sources of general friction. A close reading of Chapter 4 in On War's first book, "On Danger in War," reveals that the phenomenon at issue consists of the debilitating effects that the imminent threat of death or mutilation in battle has on the ability of combatants at every level to think clearly and act effectively. Physical exertion is much the same: the extraordinary physical demands that combat so often makes on participants can quickly begin to impede clear thought or effective action. For a sense of what danger and exertion have meant even on late 20th- century battlefields, the reader need look no further than Lieutenant General Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway's searing account of the battles fought by two air-mobile infantry battalions of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division in the Ia Drang Valley against three North Vietnamese regiments during November 1965; or, for an equally searing account of armored warfare, the reader might wish to examine Avigdor Kahalani's description of the defense mounted by the Israeli army's Battalion 77 on the Golan Heights in October 1973. (Note 4)

Turning to "intelligence" versus "uncertainty," On War initially describes the former in terms of "every sort of information about the enemy and his country, the basis, in short, of our own plans and operations." (Note 5) Further discussion, however, turns quickly to the uncertainties and imperfections that pervade the information on which action in war is unavoidably based. Among other things, imperfect knowledge of a combat situation can lead not only to mistaken judgments as to what to do, but also undermine one's resolve to act at all. (Note 6) The seeming discrepancy between the third items in the two lists is, therefore, more apparent than real. Perhaps all that needs be added from a contemporary perspective is that in light of the fundamental role played by uncertainty in fields like quantum mechanics and information theory, uncertainty is the deeper, more pervasive concept of the two. For this reason uncertainty seems the preferable term.

What about "chance" versus "friction" at the end of both lists? Here the discrepancy is more substantive. The opening paragraph of the relevant chapter in On War (Book One, Chapter 7, "Friction in War"), as well as the opening sentence of the third paragraph, seem to be about the unified concept of general friction, which Paret terms "the 'general concept' of friction"; by contrast, the second and fourth paragraphs, and all of the third save for the opening sentence, appear to focus on friction "in the narrow sense," which Paret interprets as "the impediments to smooth action produced by the thousands of individuals who make up an army." (Note 7) Can one reconcile these apparently divergent aspects of general friction? In this case, they appear to be genuinely distinct. Friction in the narrow sense is certainly a robust source of resistance to effective action in war. It recalls the meaning Clausewitz originally attached to the term Friktion when he first used it in the 1806 letter written to Marie von Brhhl before the battle of Auerst(dt, a meaning that is reiterated toward the end of the third paragraph in Chapter 7. However, it is not reasonable to equate this source of friction with chance in the sense of the unforeseeable accidents, the play of good luck and bad, that runs throughout the tapestry of war. Chance, understood as the countless accidents one can never foresee, is unquestionably a legitimate source of general friction but seems quite distinct from friction in the narrow sense. This difference argues that chance (meaning fortuitous events rather than complete randomness) and friction (in the narrow sense) constitute distinct sources of general friction.

The analysis to this point suggests, then, replacing On War's four-item lists with a composite list containing five sources of general friction:

1. Danger's impact on the ability to think clearly and act effectively in war;

2. The effects on thought and action of combat's demands for exertion;

3. Uncertainties and imperfections in the information on which action in war is unavoidably based;

4. Friction in the narrow sense of the internal resistance to effective action stemming from the interactions between the many men and machines making up one's own forces; and,

5. The play of chance, of good luck and bad, whose consequences combatants can never fully foresee.

Besides resolving the textual ambiguities about friction's various sources in On War, this list also tries to characterize each component in sufficient detail to make its role in war as clear as possible. How complete is this taxonomy of general friction? If the general concept is construed as all the disparate things that distinguish real war from war on paper, it is not difficult to find other important and distinct sources of general friction in On War. Consider, once again, Clausewitz's argument from On War's first chapter as to why the actual conduct of war falls so far short of the maximum possible application of violence implicit in war's pure concept. One of the reasons offered by Clausewitz concerns the spatial and temporal limitations to the employment of military force in the Napoleonic era: AWAR DES NOT CONSIST OF A SINGLE SHORT BLOW." In an age of intercontinental, thermonuclear weapons, these physical limits may be considerably less than they were in Napoleon's day. Nonetheless, physical limits remain even with thermonuclear weapons, and to these physical limits must be added the political limitations of war's subordination to policy. In the final analysis, the political reason why nuclear weapons were not used during the Cold War was that American and Soviet policy makers alike came to realize that an all-out nuclear exchange between the two countries could serve no useful end. (Note 8) Thus, physical and, above all, political limits to the unrestricted use of military force offer another source of general friction.

One can cull at least two more sources from the pages of On War. In Book Two, which discusses the theory of war, Clausewitz emphasizes the unpredictability of interaction with the enemy stemming from the opponent's independent will. (Note 9) As will be suggested in chapter 10, unpredictability stemming from human decisions and interventions in the course of battle can be linked to chance in the sense of unforeseeable events. For now, though, it seems best to leave the unpredictability of interaction as a separate source of friction.

One further source of general friction can be found: Clausewitz's injunctions in Book Eight of On War that the means of war be suited to its ends. (Note 10) Perhaps the most telling twentieth-century case in point is the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. While the widely accepted view that the war was unwinnable entails a degree of determinism that is seldom warranted in human affairs, neither the firepower-intensive, Asearch-and-destroy" approach that the U.S. Army eventually adopted, with its misplaced focus on body counts, nor the incremental bombing of North Vietnam itself, proved suitable means for building a viable South Vietnamese nation capable of defending itself. As Scharnhorst said of the War of the First Coalition, "One side had everything to lose, the other little." (Note 11) In light of Ho Chi Minh's calculation in the 1940s that he could lose 10 of his men for every French soldier killed and still drive France from Indoschina, this same asummetry appears to have applied to America in Vietnam as well. (Note 12)

With the three additional sources just sketched, one can give the following taxonomy for Clausewitz's "unified concept of a general friction [Gesamtbegriff einer allgemeinen Friktion]": 1. danger

2. physical exertion

3. uncertainties and imperfections in the information on which action in war is based

4. friction in the narrow sense of the resistance within one's own forces

5. chance events that cannot be readily foreseen

6. physical and political limits to the use of military force

7. unpredictability stemming from interaction with the enemy

8. disconnects between ends and means in war. (Note 13)

This taxonomy clearly goes well beyond traditional and most contemporary readings of Vom Kriege. (Note 14) Instead, it suggests a view of general friction closer to what Clausewitz might have reached if he had lived long enough to revise On War to his satisfaction.

This essay began with three questions about Clausewitzian friction:

Is it a structural feature of war or something more transitory?

Even if general friction cannot be eliminated altogether, can its magnitude for one adversary or the other be substantially reduced by technological advances such as those now anticipated in the information dimensions of future war?

What might Clausewitz's original notion look like if reformulated in the language and concepts of more contemporary disciplines like nonlinear dynamics?

The initial step toward answering these questions was to clarify Clausewitz's original concept, which we have now done. The next task, which will be the focus of chapter 5, is to present empirical evidence for general friction's persistence down to the present day.

Although we are not yet far enough along to offer full answers to the original questions about general friction, some preliminary insights can be drawn from the clarification of Clausewitz's general concept so far. Regarding the first question, Scharnhorst and Clausewitz's staunch refusal to accept that any theories, systems, or principles of war could eliminate chance suggests that, in their view, friction was an inherent feature of violent conflict between nation states. From the lowest-ranking soldier to generals and field marshals, friction was a force with which combatants on both sides had to cope.

Yet, turning to the second question, Clausewitz himself suggested various "lubricants" that could ease the "abrasion" or resistance that friction caused for one's own military operations. In On War combat experience, maneuvers sufficiently realistic to train officers' judgment for coping with friction, and the genius of a leader like Napoleon, are all mentioned as viable means of reducing general friction within one's own army. (Note 15) The German general staff system's emphasis on individual initiative and judgment, for which Scharnhorst deserves considerable credit, constituted an institutional lubricant to general friction. And, as has been mentioned, there are at least hints in On War that elements like chance could provide opportunities to exploit friction's "equally pervasive force . . . on the enemy's side." (Note 16) Thus, Scharnhorst and Clausewitz's evidently believed that the relative balance of friction between two opponents could be manipulated to one's advantage, even if they were skeptical about driving up enemy friction as opposed to reducing one's own.

As for the third question, Friktion, like Clausewitz's notion of the opponent's center of gravity, was undoubtedly borrowed from Newtonian physics via Kantian concerns about how that physics was possible. The first edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica [Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy], with which modern physics begins, appeared in 1687, and the core question of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, was how certain a priori synthetic judgments, like the equality of action and reaction in the exchange of motion, (Note 17) which lay at the core of Newtonian physics, could be possible. (Note 18) Clausewitz was familiar with these Newtonian and Kantian ideas and, even in On War, invoked the mechanistic image of the army as a machine whose internal friction "cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a few points." (Note 19) Nonetheless, it is evident from the final list of general friction's sources developed in this section that, over time, his unified concept moved increasingly away from its mechanistic origins. Indeed, not one of the entries in the reconstructed taxonomy is inherently mechanical. Moreover, all of them, including chance, ultimately reduce to phenomena that affect the ability of human beings to think clearly and act effectively in war. Consequently, general friction may have more in common with 20th-century fields like nonlinear dynamics and the neo-Darwinian synthesis of evolution biology than first meets the eye.