This book is a treatise about causality in joint operations. Its content accords with that of official publications issued by the Alliance. Various NATO documents reveal that the way the Alliance approaches joint operations is in sharp contrast with the proverbial statement that war features friction that frustrates action and makes the simple difficult, the difficult seemingly impossible. The frictional nature of war does not allow effects to be traced back to single causes as several concurrent causes are normally at work.

Thus the book can be seen as a descriptive, reflective and explanatory study. It is descriptive since it describes the way causality decomposes in war. It is reflective since by discussing causality in war, On War serves as a basis. It is explanatory since problems are discovered, contributory factors are identified and explained in detail. At the heart of it is the recognition that theories capitalising on causal constructs may run the risk of being costly, slow and unnecessarily destructive. The aim of the author is to develop a novel and coherent framework to better understand cause-and-effects relationships in war.