War between the United States and China in the western Pacific is a real possibility in the next several years. Although both sides have conducted military exercises and “war games” in the region, predicting the course and outcome of such a war is problematic. Military strategists and war planners, even armed as they are with the latest information technologies and precision weapons, have yet to overcome Clausewitzian “friction” and the Luttwakian “paradoxical logic” of strategy. Strategies and plans often fail to survive contact with the enemy. What Bismarck said about statesmen is also true of generals and admirals: They “cannot control the current of events [but] can only float with them and steer.”
