A Strategic View of Insurgencies: Insights from El Salvador

Turkey: Thwarted Ambition

“…Nor did they intend to take Turkey out of NATO, which they recognized as important for Turkish security and a bulwark against Communists, Leftists, and Marxists. 8 Refah declared themselves to be the only party in Turkey that genuinely supported a civil society that was dominant over the state ideology. They wanted to amend the Constitution to curtail the influence of the military in the NSC and to subordinate the Chief of TGS to the MOD, "as in other Western democratic countries."…”

Clausewitzian Friction and Future War

“…The fact that one's own army is never as strong as it appears on paper 7. The difficulties in keeping an army supplied 8. The tendency to change or abandon well-thought-out plans when confronted with the vivid physical images and perceptions of the battlefield.…”

“…7 Insofar as Clausewitz's efforts to reach a scientifically valid (or defensible) understanding of eigentliche Krieg (war as it actually is) are concerned, friction remained an enduring theoretical concern. 8 Undoubtedly the challenges and frictions he experienced both with the Russian army in 1812 and during the last three years of the Napoleonic wars (1813-1815) "strengthened his already pronounced realism," thereby reinforcing his intellectual propensity to find a comprehensive way to "distinguish real war from war on paper." 9 Still, to realize how central a concern friction became for Clausewitz, we need look no further than the unfinished manuscript that his widow published after his death as Vom Kriege, a work that "almost completely" occupied the last twelve years of his life and has since overshadowed everything else that Clausewitz wrote.…”

“…In the final analysis, the political reason why nuclear weapons were not used during the Cold War was that American and Soviet policy makers alike came to realize that an all-out nuclear exchange between the two countries could serve no useful end. 8 Thus, physical and, above all, political limits to the unrestricted use of military force offer another source of general friction.…”

“…On the second and third nights of the war, more than half of the planned F-117 strikes were aborted or unsuccessful due to low clouds over Baghdad; on the second day of the ground campaign (25 February 1991), all F-117 sorties were canceled due to weather. 8 So disruptive did the cumulative effects of adverse weather become on the air campaign that the Coalition's head air planner, (then) Brigadier General Buster C. Glosson, came to view it as his "number-one problem" and, by implication, as a greater impediment than the Iraqi Air Force. 9 Similar assessments of weather's disruptive effects on air operations can be found as far back as World War II.…”