Word: clausewitzes
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...front on Day Five. Relying less on brute force than on operational elegance, it requires commanders to concentrate their efforts on attacking the right thing in the right place at the right time. The enemy's crucial "center of gravity" -- a term borrowed from Prussian strategist Karl von Clausewitz -- is that target whose destruction will have the greatest ripple effect on the enemy's overall military operations...
...gulf commands eerie and unprecedented high-tech global attention, and yet the volume of real information about the conduct of the war is small. The public does not know how effective the allied strikes against Iraq have been, for example, or how heavy the civilian casualties may have been. Clausewitz's "fog of war" -- a phrase endlessly repeated these days -- has become a bright electrical cloud of unknowing...
When asked to predict the outcome of a war against Iraq, senior officers invariably quote Clausewitz's warning about the "fog of war" -- the uncertainties that inevitably crop up in combat. Even so, it seems possible, perhaps even likely, that the U.S.-led alliance could score a reasonably quick knockout. The awesome arsenal that the coalition has assembled in the gulf provides it with overwhelming military advantages. "I look at the scenarios," says an Army colonel, "and I just don't see where Saddam's army is going to hide...
...While Clausewitz called war a continuation of politics by other means, $ economics may become a continuation of war by other means. There may be virulent trade wars among the economic Big Three -- Europe, Japan and America (whose sphere should eventually include Canada and Mexico in an American Economic Community...
Iraqi armored and infantry units get good marks from military experts for the way they carried out the invasion of Kuwait. But they were operating against very light opposition. Everything becomes much more difficult in heavy combat when what Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz called "the friction" of war confuses commanders, frightens troops and disrupts plans...