The fog of war describes the confusion caused by the chaos of battle, the way that smoke, noise, panic and broken communication leave commanders and soldiers unsure of what is actually happening around them. A general using the phrase might mean that nobody on the field, on either side, really knows the true strength or position of the forces involved. The expression has spread well beyond the battlefield, and is now used of any situation, in business, politics or everyday life, where confusion and incomplete information make it hard to see clearly what is going on or to act with confidence.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘the fog of war’?
The exact wording “fog of war” is commonly credited to the British Colonel Sir Lonsdale Hale, who is said to have coined it in a work of 1896. Hale used it to describe the state of ignorance in which commanders frequently find themselves as regards the real strength and position, not only of their foes, but also of their friends. That definition captures the double uncertainty at the heart of the phrase: a commander is blind not just to the enemy’s movements but sometimes to the state of his own side too.
The underlying idea is often traced further back, to the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. He is widely credited with inventing the concept, but he never actually used the phrase “fog of war” or its German equivalent. What Clausewitz wrote was something more precise: that three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. The neat phrase now attached to his name is really a later paraphrase of that longer statement about the unreliability of information in battle.
So the concept behind the phrase is older and more thoroughly argued than the phrase itself, which seems to have taken its current compact form only at the end of the nineteenth century, in Hale’s writing on military affairs. From there it moved into general military vocabulary and then into wider use as a ready shorthand for any confused, information-starved situation, on or off the battlefield.