Unfortunately, Cimbala seems to have fallen prey to one of the errors he cites: failure to plan. The chapters on WWI, the Gulf War, and the Cold War were good, but material relevant to each subject was scattered throughout. Rather than revealing something more complex to the reader as time went on, this habit instead tends to repeatedly cover similar issues with new details, not a novel perspective.

The book is worth it for any student of limited warfare or conflict termination, and would be useful to anyone interested in further research on the causes of WWI and the *real* lessons of Desert Storm. If Cimbala had just collated all his thoughts on the various conflicts in a more concise way, I would have given it five stars.

The remainder of the book, though, rehashes themes that Cimbala has covered in significant depth in the past. He uses the examples of Russian war planning at the start of WWI, US/Soviet relations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and nuclear war planning to demonstrate how inflexible plans and thoughtless leaders can precipitate undesired wars. In this, the book is a simple repeat of his earlier book, Military Persuasion.

Cimbala does include two thoughful chapters that expand his earlier themes and contribute to the study of friction in modern, information driven conflicts: one on NATO action in Kosovo, and one on the Gulf War of 1991. Both chapters are useful and highlight his thesis that war planning in the information age is just as susceptible to friction as it was 100 years ago.

Overall, those interested in friction in policy decisions, or friction in information war will find the book useful. Those who have read some of Cimbala's other works can safely pass this one up.

The author, and this book, may well be among the strongest elements of what I perceive to be a growing backlash against the prevalent technophelia characteristic of the military-industrial complex that President and General Eisenhower warned us against--a technophelia that advocates a "system of systems" with no provision for strategy, doctrine, or intelligence; and a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) that looks to micro-UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and robotic ants as the primary means for defeating any enemy. We will simply assume every enemy will conveniently expose themselves to the narrow range of capabilities that we have devised at great expense!

The author provides as good a review of "friction" in war and in policy as one could hope for. Although sometimes tedious and not always easy to follow, this book is a must for any serious scholar of future conflicts between states, nations, and organizations. Above all, this book is a giant compressed Castor Oil pill for the techno-meisters so eager to believe they can shape a world where our money and our technology can overcome every obstacle and every opponent.

A few highlights intended to recommend the purchase of this book and its digestion:

1) Friction is not receiving the attention it merits from modern social scientists, including all those on the Department of Defense payroll. We still conceptualize our capabilities along techno-rational lines instead of human-normal chaos lines.

2) It is the combination of thoughtful doctrine, individual and unit discipline, initiative at all levels, and good intelligence (individual, organic, and external) that leads to victory through the reduction of friction--what General Alfred M. Gray, former Commandant of the Marine Corps institutionalized with his concept of "commander's intent" on top of training for war with the assumption that communications and computing *will* collapse in the heat of battle.

3) Although very brief in his coverage of intelligence per se, the author is helpful in reviewing Clausewitz's top eight sources of friction, the first three of which deal with information: insufficient knowledge of the enemy; unreliable information from patrols and spies; and uncertain knowledge of our own capabilities and dispositions. The author administers the coup de grace to technophiles with some elegant quotes from these worthies claiming that the new world of satellite intelligence is taking us to a non-Clauswitzian world where friction can be overcome by "information superiority"--these are the same folks that cannot find Bin Laden and had to invade Panama in order to capture Noriega--the same folks that let a warlord in Somalia run amok and let a small crowd chase away a U.S. Navy ship of war from docking in Haiti...the same folks that ignore 18 distinct genocide campaigns on-going today, with all that implies in terms of forced migration and epidemic disease and failed states and rampant destabilizing crime.

4) The author's review of groupthink (Janis) and how this leads to policy fiasco's is very worthwhile, not only because it is acutely relevant to how we are making decisions today in defense, energy, health, and fiscal policy, but because it highlights so clearly the dangers that come from a leadership that thinks it is invulnerable, morally superior, self-censored, sharing illusions of unanimity, subject to stereotyped visions of the world, and--worst of all--protected from reality by self appointed "mind guards" who put direct pressure on "deviant" naysayers (or dump them from the team).

5) The author is one of the few to focus on the impact of friction on what Clausewitz calls the ultimate disconnect, that between ends and means in war. As America prepares to rethink its military force structure, it is especially appropriate to note that we are planning to downsize the conventional forces while investing heavily in electronic capabilities, at the same time that the most advanced thinkers have moved beyond asymmetric war to non-traditional soft power including major emphasis on disease control, water preservation, transnational law enforcement, and major diplomatic and economic assistance options. Looking at today's situation through the author's eyes and this book, one can see that we do not have a strategy; we don't even try to understand what everyone else's strategy might be; and we are completely ignoring the need to fully integrate home front and overseas defense, foreign affairs, and trade strategy and capabilities management.

Over the course of 7 chapters, the author reviews friction both at the policy/acquisition level and the operational level of command, in relation to irrelevant and inflexible war plans; nuclear crisis management; within Desert Storm; in small wars, "faux wars" and peace operations; in modern deterrence; and in relation to mass destruction and information warfare paradigms. In the latter instance, he is acutely sensitive to the teachings of Dr. Steve Blank, that one man's information "warning" attack is another man's signal for "total war"--witness Russian doctrine that considers a C4I attack to be fundamental and requiring an immediate "dead hand" retaliatory attack.

The author concludes the book with a review of simple, compound, and complex friction in policy and operations, with examples, and for this section alone the book merits inclusion in any serious library concerned with international security.