Friction as a catalyst of strategy
Von Clausewitz on friction:
“Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest things are difficult. These difficulties accumulate and create friction that no one who has not seen war can really imagine. Imagine a traveler who plans to cover two stations at the end of his day’s journey in the evening, four to five hours by post horse on the highway; but nothing occurs. Now he arrives at the penultimate station, finds no horses or only bad ones, then a mountainous area, ruined roads, night falls, and he is glad to have reached the next station after many hardships and to find meager accommodation there. Thus, in war, through the influence of countless small circumstances that can never be properly taken into account on paper, everything is reduced, and one falls far short of the goal.” – Carl von Clausewitz: On war, p. 36