Clausewitz's Concept of Friction in the Contemporary World
How an idea first published 191 years ago can help recovering conspiracy theorists come to a more sophisticated way of understanding the news
“We plan, God laughs” - Yiddish proverb
By Karl Wilhelm Wach - Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=695673
Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz was born in Prussia in 1780 a few years before the French Revolution set Europe ablaze. He served in the Prussian invasion of France in his early teens and then fought in the Napoleonic Wars for both Prussia and Russia for nearly a decade, including fighting in the Battle of Waterloo.
After studying Enlightenment philosophy at military academy in Berlin, Clausewitz helped reform the Prussian army on modern lines and in peacetime returned to the same academy as a teacher. He died in his early 50s, having attained the rank of general, and his widow published his masterwork in the theory and practice of war in the early 1830s.
Clausewitz is best known for his concept of “friction,” which he described as an “unseen, all-pervading element” that changes the perspective of people who have experienced war compared to those who haven’t. To explain friction, he wrote: “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.”
The author asks us to imagine a trip that goes wrong. In modern terms, you might drive over a nail. You realise you forgot to change your spare tyre last time this happened. When you try and call your insurer to get the flat tyre fixed, you see your smartphone has run out of battery. Annoying!
Now imagine moving an army from A to B. Expect multiple incidents like this, all of which multiply with other minor incidents. “Countless minor incidents - the kind you can never really foresee - combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal.”
What Clausewitz describes as “iron willpower” by military leaders can often overcome this friction, for a time, but it comes at a cost and can never last long. The problems are largely due to the difficulty in obtaining all the information necessary in difficult circumstances, which he calls “a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.” This is often paraphrased as “the fog of war.”
Once you become aware of the concept of friction, news about wars make much more sense. Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces fought for the control of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, between February and April 2022. However, Russian troops had sold diesel for drinking money before the attack, the Russian army’s supply lines were stretched and the Ukrainian army fought back surprisingly hard. Friction was the deciding factor before the Russians had to retreat.
Meanwhile, in June 2023, the Ukrainian army launched a much hyped counter-offensive against Russia. However, despite heroics on the battlefield by the Ukrainian army, Russian minefields and entrenched positions have proved hard to overcome with minimal air cover. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired his defence minister in early September, saying that it was time for “new approaches.” Once again, friction has been a key factor in the slow progress of the counter-offensive.
Friction is a very useful concept for conspiracy theorists who want to reconsider their starting positions. It is also a useful concept for those of us who want to gently coax our friends out of conspiratorial cults, although of course we always need to be aware of the dangers of cognitive dissonance when we try and do this.
Conspiracy theorists often imagine that a shadowy “deep state,” which is unaffected by the peaceful transition of power, is capable of setting up convoluted plots. Amateur researchers with YouTube accounts are allegedly able to uncover these plots by moving backwards from events to intentions. The fact that this speculation is often promoted by people who want to smash liberal democracy, including Putin himself, is rarely mentioned (and perhaps not even noticed) by most conspiracy theorists.
The concept of friction can provide us with a more sophisticated way of understanding the news, as we saw in the examples above. It explains why unintended consequences are so important. If we become aware of a gap between intentions and actions, paying attention to other people’s words becomes much more important as we try to understand their perspective. It can also show why peacetime politicians with no experience of war can sometimes seem so facile.
On a related note, I have mentioned before that I left an international news agency to join a journalism startup called Mergermarket in 2002. One of the co-founders, CEO Caspar Hobbs, was a former military intelligence officer, who had served with the British Army in Northern Ireland before studying business administration.
In the company’s early days, Caspar used to name meeting rooms after military strategists, as well as teaching the team about mission command (devolved decision-making to cope with friction and uncertain information - an approach which was developed by Clausewitz’s successors in the Prussian army).
I have no doubt that Caspar’s personal experience with friction helped the company survive and thrive following the dot-com crash, which made it hard for startups to raise fresh cash from investors as interest rates went up. Focusing on recurring revenues and client retention was the key to the company’s survival and growth in difficult times for startups. This strategy laid the foundations for Acuris (the eventual name of the company) to become one of the world’s few journalism unicorns towards the end of the 2010s.
Understanding the power of friction can also help us appreciate plenty of edgy fiction, from the novels of George R. R. Martin to the films and plays of David Mamet, where any plot will always go wrong. Friction means that plans that seem perfect on paper can and do go wrong and then spin out of control.
Learning to play chess is also a useful way of learning why it can be so hard to execute our plans perfectly. You can play against apps on your smartphone nowadays. Conspiracy theorists would do well to download an app and then try to impose their will on it. The comments are open. See you next week!
Further Reading
On War by Carl von Clausewitz
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