[throwup238]

While Brett Devereaux is excellent, he’s sharing a surface level, black and white definition suited to a blog post aimed at laymen, the kind that want to read about the siege of Gondor. Biddle’s Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle is a much more in depth treatment of the topic that is hardly that prescriptive.

Edit: if you are so inclined, Commanding Military Power: Organizing for Victory and Defeat on the Battlefield by Ryan Grauer, The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver Warfare Theory and Airland Battle by Robert Leonhard, and Combined Arms Warfare in the Twentieth Century by Jonathan House would provide a more rounded view of the academic debate. The latter is particularly relevant because it looks at Russia’s tactics in Chechnya.