xi No strategies are suggested here for the United States or any other country. My purpose,
rather, is to uncover the universal logic that conditions all forms of war as well as the adversarial dealings of
nations even in peace... the logic of strategy is manifest in the outcome of what is done or not done, and it is
by examining those often unintended consequences that the nature and workings of the logic can best be understood.
p.5 all forms of maneuver - paradoxical action that seeks to circumvent the greater strengths of
the enemy and exploit his weaknesses - will have their costs, regardless of the medium and nature of the combat. (The word
"maneuver" is often misused to describe mere movement. Actually there may be no movement at all; but the action must be paradoxical
because the enemy's strengths will presumably be arrayed against expected forms of action.)
p.6 Nothing can be had for nothing in war.
p.16 But there are of course at least two conscious, opposed wills in any strategical encounter
of war or peace, and the action is only rarely accomplished instantaneously, as in a pistol duel; usually
there is a sequence of actions on both sides that evolve reciprocally over time.
p.19,20 With victory, all of the army's habits, procedures, structures, tactics, and methods
will indiscriminately be confirmed as valid or even brilliant - including those that could benefit
from improvement or even drastic reform... Defeat is by far the better teacher.
p.28-29 The "action-reaction" sequence in the development of new war equipment and newer countermeasures,
which induce in turn the development of counter-countermeasures and still newer equipment, is deceptively familiar. That the
technical devices of war will be opposed whenever possible by other devices designed specifically against them is obvious
enough.
Slightly less obvious is the relationship between the very success of new devices and the
likelihood of their eventual failure: any sensible enemy will focus his most urgent efforts to develop countermeasures against
the opposing equipment that seems most dangerous at the time. Thus, paradoxically, less successful devices may retain their
modest utility even when those originally most successful have already been countered and perhaps made entirely useless.
p.30 resistance to countermeasures is also an aspect of performance... once the creativity of the
adversary is unleashed, countermeasures may take the form of new tactics, operational methods, military structures, or even
strategies - whose successful prediction is not at all a matter of scientific or engineering expertise.
p.31 In this instance, as so often, utility in conflict and performance were not the same, since
the latter only covers resistance to known and predictable countermeasures. It cannot possibly anticipate
the full range of reactions that a major innovation can evoke in an observant and creative enemy. The sphere of strategy
is defined precisely by the presence of a reacting enemy, and that is what prohibits the pursuit of optimality... As
soon as a significant innovation appears on the scene, efforts will be made to circumvent it - hence the virtue of suboptimal
but more rapid solutions that give less warning of the intent and of suboptimal but more resilient solutions. This
is why the scientist's natural pursuit of elegant solutions and the engineer's quest for optimality often fail in
the paradoxical realm of strategy.
p.70 outside observers were distinctly puzzled by the minimalism of Soviet theater strategy in Afghanistan.
After an initial effort to establish countrywide territorial control that was soon abandoned, the Soviet army settled down
to defend only the largest towns and the highways that connected them, otherwise conceding almost the entire country to the
guerrillas.
p.110 Once the battle begins, they [the higher echelons of command and the national authorities
on both sides] strive to retain control over the course of the fighting by reacting to its emerging results... what
can and cannot be done must depend on what the enemy can or cannot do.
The interplay of action and reaction is then no longer confined to the tactical
level. We will need a quite different and much broader perspective... For this we must ascend to the next level of strategy
p.127 information both valid and timely becomes war's most powerful weapon
p.129 What is actually happening is an information race, which preconditions the
redeployment race that is usually decisive.
p.219-220 Nothing can be done to overcome the essential indeterminacy of combat, but great
efforts are made to reduce uncertainty in estimating military balances... But there still remains the far larger part of the
unknown, the intangibles... that count for so much more than the material factors.
