Warfare is very much like a chameleon—its color changes in accordance with the prevailing conditions and surroundings. Warfare is constantly evolving at such a speed that it is difficult to keep pace with its developments; but it is still true that launching a war is much easier than ending one. A leader waging a war thinking that he will be able to manage it, will inevitably after the first salvo become a slave to the conflict, and to all of the eventualities that he did not plan for. Hence, the observation of the famous German military commander Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800–1891) that no battle plan ever survived first contact with the enemy. Adaptation in war, therefore, is vital to victory; one must “adapt or die.”

There are many variables in war, and there is no common denominator between them; that is, they cannot be processed simultaneously and in a linear fashion, or by employing an explicit formula—in the words of the Prussian thinker Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), “everything in war is simple, and the simplest thing is difficult.” Indeed, Clausewitz suggested that the most difficult of all was dealing with what he called ‘friction’ — the way in which theoretical forward-planning is incapable of accounting for the multitude of eventualities one may face in real situations.