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So what is maneuver?

The Two Types of Maneuver
I have discussed two things that can reasonably be called "maneuver" in strategy. It's time to contrast the two.

In a discussion of expected outcomes, I claimed that a situation has a given expected outcome, assuming the best possible generalship. This outcome is likely to be unacceptable to one side, and that side will try to compensate by taking a few risks. This typically results in "maneuver".

In a discussion of transforming advantages, I wrote of various advantages being transformed. The result of this is also usually called "maneuver". If, for example, our army has an advantage in mobility, the only way we have to convert this advantage into victory is movement, and this is movement of the sort that I call "maneuver".

There is another popular use of the term, simply meaning movement, but I don't think that is a very good use of it, and I will not use maneuver to mean plain movement.

The Three Varieties of Maneuver
Leonhard does an excellent job of dissecting maneuver warfare into three categories: preemption, dislocation, and disruption. Let's look at these with attention to the above distinction.

Preemption
Preemption is the method of striking first, before your opponent is ready for an attack. The risky method is to attack before either side is ready, although this will usually favor the defender. The transformational method is to be prepared for fast attacks in some form or another. If our army is faster than expected, or can concentrate undetected, or is quicker at getting into battle array, we can transform this into an attack on an unprepared defender. Obviously, if we decide to use preemption as a strategy, we can tailor our army accordingly, and create the advantages we hope to use later.

Dislocation
Dislocation is the art of avoiding the enemy's main strength. The German attacks on France in 1914 and 1940 were good examples. In both cases, there were obvious attack routes that were occupied by numerous and well-armed defenders, and not-so-obvious attack routes that were not. The 1940 attack was particularly successful in that it cut off the main French and British armies. The risky version is to leave the main enemy strength unaccounted for, and hope it will not be used decisively in the meantime. The transformational version is to pin the enemy main force with strong enough forces to keep it busy for long enough: to quote Patton, "Hold 'em by the nose and kick 'em in the pants".

Disruption
Disruption is the art of finding a weakness and attacking it fiercely. Instead of defeating soldiers individually, it involves making them ineffective in some manner. One time-honored technique is putting our forces into the enemy's rear areas. The risky version is to concentrate on exploiting a possible weakness, to the detriment of conventional operations. In the Crusader battles in North Africa at the end of 1941, the Afrika Korps had repulsed the Eighth Army attack and inflicted heavy losses on the British, when Rommel tried launching his best troops deep behind British lines. The British commanders saw that the attack was going nowhere immediately vital, and largely disregarded Rommel's move, and proceeded to win the battle while the Panzertruppen were away. The transformational version is to know what what we are threatening, and that it is a threat sufficient to win the battle, or to be able to win the battle in any case, and use disruption to try for a greater victory.

Combinations
These three concepts are dependent on each other. Dislocation is the art of attacking where the enemy is weak, rather than strong. If that is all it is, then we have defeated a weak enemy force, which is not likely to advance our cause. If we can attack something vital to the enemy, such as supply lines or command centers, then we are using dislocation to accomplish disruption. Similarly, a well-prepared army is likely to guard its vulnerabilities well, so preemption is a good way to accomplish disruption. Preemption and dislocation are two ways to do the same sort of thing, and in the case of a surprise attack against a lightly defended area it can be difficult to decide which is which.

The Ultimate Goal
In any case, maneuver warfare strives to disrupt the enemy. There are, after all, only two ways to defeat an enemy: we can fight him, or we can disrupt him, and fighting him is attrition warfare. Even in attrition warfare we will find scope to use maneuver, if only as a method of transforming our advantages to be better able to kill the enemy, and we must remember that disrupted enemies are much easier to kill.