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Friction: War's Forgotten Dimension
| Article
# : |
11785 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
4,997 Words |
| Author
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Harry G. Summers, Jr.
Harry G. Summers, Jr., a retired U.S. army colonel, was a
military analyst for CNN, NBC, and the Los Angeles Times
during the Persian Gulf crisis. The sequel to his award-
winning Vietnam War analysis, On Strategy II: A Critical
Analysis of the Persian Gulf War, is forthcoming from Dell in
February 1992. |
Everything in war is very simple," wrote Karl von Clausewitz over a century and a half ago in On War, his masterwork on military theory, "but the simplest thing is difficult." Clausewitz attributed this difficulty to friction, "the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper."
Friction is a major constraint on the conduct of war at every level - at the tactical level on the battlefield itself, at the operational or theater-of-war level, and at the strategic level. As every combat veteran knows full well, friction (what we would call Murphy's Law) is a constant on the battlefield. Troops get lost, bombs miss their target, weapons don't work the way they were supposed to. In short, as Clausewitz said, "Countless minor incidents - the kind you can never really foresee - combine to lower the general level of performance - so that one always falls far short of the intended goal."
Moreover, although "the military machine...is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage" the fact is that "none of its components is of one piece [and each piece] retains [its] potential of friction."
At the operational or theater-of-war level, these components include the army, navy, air force, and marines - each with their own customs and traditions and each with their own way of doing things. The confusion during the Grenada adventure was evidence that friction is still very much part of war.
It is not generally understood outside the military profession itself that friction is also very much a problem at the strategic level of warfare as well, for here too war has many dimensions. And each dimension - warfighting, political, psychological, and logistical - retains its potential of friction. To make matters worse, running through them all is a dimension all too often ignored, but one with the potential for creating more friction than all the rest put together - the bureaucratic dimension.
The Warfighting Dimension
The most obvious dimension of war is the battlefield itself. While this is an area of intense interest and study by the military, most Americans outside the military have little interest in its complexities. What they do know, thanks to television, is that it is a bloody affair. The battlefield is a dimension so terrible, so frightening, and so horrific that it dominates thinking
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