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The great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz is a household name among students of military science, and not only that–his seminal work Vom Krieg (On War) is also very well known among fiction writers who include war as a subject matter within their stories. One of the most important principled he outlined in his book is friction, which he describes thus:

‘Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen War . . . in War, through the influence of an infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described on paper, things disappoint us, and we fall short of the mark.‘ (Clausewitz, bk. I, ch. VII)

To understand this principle better, let us examine a classic example of friction, namely the Battle of Ad Decimum (533) between an Eastern Roman invasion force under the famous general Belisarius and a Vandal army led by King Geilimer. The battle derived its name from the ten- mile marker on the Roman road leading south of Carthage. Most of the decisive actions during the battle took place around this road marker; of particular interest to us is an action near the middle of the battle, where a strong detachment of Roman cavalry reached the marker only to be surprised and routed when Geilimer’s main Vandal force appeared on their flank. However, Geilimer’s brother Ammatas had been killed at the same spot during a vanguard action earlier in the day, and upon discovering his brother’s body Geilimer stopped to lament the death instead of mounting a vigorous pursuit of the fleeing Roman force. This allowed the Romans the time to regroup and meet the main body of their force. It was not long before the combined Roman force arrived upon the marker, found the previously victorious Vandal army scattered in disorder all over the place, and routed the Vandals in one massive charge. (Procopius, bk. III, ch. XVII – XIX)

We can easily identify the two most important moments of friction during this incident. The first is Geilimer’s discovery of his brother’s corpse on the battlefield, which informed him that his vanguard had been defeated before he arrived on the scene. The second happened when Belisarius and his Roman force found that their forward cavalry detachment had met the Vandal force and been routed in the process. But what does it all mean? On one hand, there is the important fact that _the battle did not proceed according to either side’s plan_. Geilimer had envisioned that Ammatas’s vanguard force would meet the advancing Romans and hold them in place while his own main force moved around behind the hills to strike the Roman flank, but Ammatas’s hurried and careless execution of his part of the plan led to his defeat in the hands of the Roman vanguard before he could even strike any significant blow. Belisarius, too, must have hoped for a smooth and uneventful advance where every component of his force would triumph over their Vandal counterparts, but halfway through the battle he was faced with the unexpected defeat of his forward detachment. The other lesson we can take from the incident is that _friction does not only create threats; it also provides opportunities_, and the side that can exploit these momentary opportunities better would have a much greater chance of achieving victory. We need not look any further than the difference between the two commanders’ reactions to their respective sides’ setbacks. Geilimer broke down and failed–or refused–to cope with the defeat of his vanguard force, and as a result he missed the chance to turn his minor victory over the Roman cavalry detachment into a more significant and permanent success. Meanwhile, instead of being disheartened by the defeat of the cavalry detachment, Belisarius stood firm and thus managed to rally his force just in time to exploit the advantage they gained from Geilimer’s fatal mistake.

So how can the principle be applied to fiction? The first possibility is quite obvious; to look at the example of Ad Decimum, neither Belisarius’s nor Geilimer’s plan worked out perfectly, and neither should a fictional military plan. Even the most detailed and meticulously-planned operation will meet an obstacle–large or small– at one point or another. In fact, the more complicated a plan is, the more likely it is to go wrong for the simple reason that it’d have more components that can suffer from the effects of an unexpected mess- up. In this way the idea of friction can help steer the writer away from the fallacy of the “perfect plan” where everything works as planned. Such flawless military operations are not only unrealistic– they will also bore the reader with the monotony of successes.

The second application of friction follows directly from that idea. Readers don’t want characters who just walk effortlessly through the story without experiencing any difficulties. They want to read about characters who run into trouble and overcome these troubles, experiencing personal growth in the process–and what is friction if not an excellent source of military obstacles to a character’s progress? This is especially important because friction-induced conflicts can provide military characters with a way of displaying their skills in a plausible and exciting way. Belisarius wouldn’t have been quite as famous if all his campaigns had been mindless walkovers; his fame rests firmly on his ability to face disadvantageous military situations (like the defeat of his cavalry detachment at Ad Decimum) and turn them into opportunities for victory. In a similar vein, friction can provide a handy explanation for a failure that happens in spite of (or because of) the presence of a well-thought-out plan. Remember that the Vandal defeat at Ad Decimum was essentially caused by the death of a single man–Ammatas–and Geilimer’s inability to deal with it in a mature and decisive way.

So ends this brief foray into the realm of military theory. I hope this short article will be enough to show how Carl von Clausewitz’s famous principle of friction applies not only to real-world military endeavors but also to various kinds of imaginary and/or fictionalized combats.

Works Cited:

Von Clausewitz, Carl, On War. Trans. Col. J.J. Graham. London, 1909 (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1946)

Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars: Books III and IV – The Vandalic Wars. Trans. H. B. Dewing. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1919. (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16765)

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