The Art of Maneuver is an important theoretical study of an issue that is currently the subject of much discussion in professional military journals and symposia. The author takes a fresh, unbiased look at what soldiers consider the maneuver-oriented American army and finds that we do not understand the importance of maneuver as classical writers on the subject going back to Sun Tzu have understood it. In fact, we are culturally conditioned to see war as an attritional phenomenon--think of the emphasis on body count and the use of over-whelming firepower in Vietnam. A similar mind-set was operative as recently as Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama. On the other hand, General Schwarzkopf found maneuver warfare extremely effective in Operation Desert Storm. Leonhard shows how true maneuver-warfare theory has been applied in campaigns throughout history. With a genius for apt analogy he shows how our obsession with fighting and winning set-piece battles causes us to overlook an enemy's true vulnerabilities. But as low-intensity conflicts promise to become the dominant warfare of the future, the importance of maneuver in attacking an enemy's critical vulnerability will render attrition approaches to warfighting ever more obsolete.

The crisis is upon us: We have no viable doctrine for tomorrow's wars. Now that the world has entered the information age, principles that have served to enlighten the art of war no longer work. Born of agrarian times and honed during the industrial age, the classical principles of war are, in large part, hopelessly outdated. Radical change is needed now. The Principles of War for the Information Age provides a prescription for this change.