No. I don’t think that accurately summarizes what Clausewitz did. He tried to “get to the bottom” of what war was in its essence, not “redefine war to suit the purpose of his audience and himself”. He was not trying to introduce jargon, but introduce terms that lent clarity to phenomena that existed but had not been teased out before: friction, the culminating point of the attack, the fog of war, war as a continuation of policy, etc. He added concepts and terminology which were clear enough and distinct enough that they made it possible to more clearly and accurately understand and discuss any kind of war, and more than that, many other kinds of conflict and competition as well.

But, we had a massive discussion here about Clausewitz, as you know. i will let him, and those posts, speak to this question rather than rehash it further here.

You said Clausewitz “spoke of war only against thinking enemies who are capable of negotiating” — which I took to mean excluding human enemies who are motivated by seemingly irrational ends or engage in seemingly irrational means.

Then this is the source of confusion.

A fair argument that all ends are ultimately irrational, as otherwise they would means. Likewise, all means take place in a thick fog of uncertainy and confusion, so our means may look irrational to others.

However, this does not mean our enemies are capable of negotiating — indeed, in Clauswitz’s system, war is a form of negotiation. Rather, we may find their terms unacceptable, as they may find ours.

But if you mean that Clausewitz somehow “failed” because he did not speak of “war” against non-human categories

No. Rather, Clauswitzs defined war in a way that was useful for him. He was not concerned about political philosophyk, life in a pre-agricultural society, or so on, and so criticizing him for this redefinition would be besides the point.

To dissolve useful and clear terms into vague metaphorical language is destructive of clarity in any discussion.

This is a fair point, and it is to this extant alone that Clauswitz (if he had been operating in an English-speaking context and had been discussing the same phenemonon as Hobbes and Locke) could be said to have failed. But he wasn’t, and this is besides the point.

My point which you are criticising is this: Clauswitz came late to the topic war, focused on what had bene accepted as a subset of war for a subset of the original audience, and then proceeded to redefine war to suit the purpose of his audience and himself. That’s fine. That’s jargon. That shouldn’t confuse the broader discussion.

To call all kinds of things that are not war (which is the use of force to obtain a political end) “war”, when we already have words to describe those other activities, is to add unnecessary confusion to the discussion of war, and to any underestanding of those other things which have been inaptly characterized as war. To dissolve useful and clear terms into vague metaphorical language is destructive of clarity in any discussion. Doctors memorize anatomy, so their is no ambiguity about what is being discussed. The fifth lumbar vertebra is what it is, unambiguously, and it is not something else, or a cloud of metaphorical meanings that take in adjacent body parts. Lawyers establish definitions so that rights and obligations can be clearly established, and it is bad drafting, and a source of later trouble, when the longstanding trade practices regarding drafting are ignored or forgotten or mistakenly applied. There is similar utility for people discussing war to establish fairly narrowly and specifically what is and is not war, and what is some other type of violence or threat or compulsion or subversion or persuasion or brainwashing or bribery or cooption or religious conversion or law enforcement or espionage or sabotage or political mobilization or any other means of establishing dominance or influence or control or modification of individual or collective behavior. Saying some of these phenomena are “really” war gets you nowhere. It is a regressive move.

And to bring this back around to Clausewitz, the phenomenon of human-to-human violent conflict is a large enough phenomenon that he cannot be criticized for not talking about other ancillar or related things as well. A book on brain surgery may not talk about spinal surgery, though they are related fields with some overlap in both theory and practice.

God willing, I will have the time and strength to discuss this essential point in a review of your forthcoming 5GW volume. I also hope that our discussion next year (again, God willing) of Kautilya, who discussed the full range of state activity including espionage, subversion and open warfare, with conceptual clarity, will be a good counterpoint to the troubling trend I see of mixing things up in a way which adds no value or utility to the discussion.

That said, I will try to read the 5GW volume with an open mind. Some smart people including you contributed to it, so I am sure there will be much of value in it. But as I have said before, I see more smoke and heat than light emerging from that discussion.

You describe the exact situation we were in when I was deathly in the Soviet Union. Lucky for me, my family had both connections and money for bribes. The same thing happens in Canada now.

Ginny,

Obama will never say anything good about American health care. He is as ignorant and under accomplished as they come and he has a deep underlying hatred for all that America is and all that it stands for. Upon returning from each of his apology tours and playing kissy-face, huggy-body with Chavez, he comes back with renewed determination to turn this country into Venuzuela.

My point was that it is anachronistic to limit ones conception of the state’s war against nature to Clauswitz’s definition of war. I am unaware of saying anything factually incorrect about Clauswitz.

When you have socialized medicine you also get bribery. Rampant bribery exists at every level of government in the US and even in every government in every country in the world. Bribery lets ordinary people get decisions in their favor.

If we have socialized medicine grandma can still get the care she needs if she can raise the money she needs for the bribe. The big difference between socialized medicine and free market medicine is that under socialized medicine grandma risks going the jail for bribery.

As the founders noted, it is best to keep the axis of the general good as close to the axis of the personal good – the communal and the tribal, the national and the personal. Forgetting human nature – what makes us tick – is always the problem with statist solutions.

This is wrong. It is a false caricature of Clausewitz. I agree that is a widely-held caricature of Clausewitz, and is even attributed to Clausewitz, but it is false nonetheless. I just read the whole book. He is a lot smarter than that. He focuses on the kind of wars he had fought in, and that were likely to impact his own army in his own era, but he was aware of and discussed a much wider range of conflict. It is amazing how much the straw-man “Clausewitz” has eclipsed the real Clausewitz, mostly because the book is long and difficult.

They don’t necessarily need more money. The alternative to spending more for a given level of service is to cut service to keep the budget from growing too big. That’s why the current govt proposal would shift funds from Medicare to everyone else. It’s also why the proposal would raise insurance premiums on healthy young people who are probably already paying too much for insurance.

I think it’s most likely that any govt health scheme along the lines of the Democratic proposal would reduce the level of service and increase systemic costs. It would also discourage innovation, which might decrease short-term costs but only at the expense of long-run improvements in both costs and outcomes.

I don’t think we are in disagreement about how bad the plan is. We disagree on a couple of facts.

…but when he or Pelosi actually give their vague descriptions of it, it is only about coverage.

Oh, that’s absolutely untrue. From just one “town hall” propagandafest – Obama: “If we emphasize prevention and wellness programs … so that we’re reimbursing doctors, not just for treating people after they get sick but for helping people stay well, if we use medical technology to reduce error rates and ensure electronic medical billing …, these are simple things we can do that will save us money…”

then, he claimed making your medical records available to government in electronic form will save all kinds of costs. In many speeches available on youtube he also talked about how his reform will cut costs.

In your final comment,”That’s rather vague. The promise is that …” I think we are saying the same thing. It is going to end up being a middle and upper income tax, directly or indirectly, no matter how it evolves.

We’re not saying quite the same thing. I’m saying that the cost will NOT be borne by the upper and middle income brackets. I’m saying that the cost will be borne mostly by the individual receiving treatment. the wealthy will end up paying the smallest cost as they usually have connections or enough wealth to jump the wait lists. Their cost will be monetary and calling in favours. The poor and middle class, who don’t have the funds to escape the wait lists and rely on the “rich” to create jobs for them will actually bear the heaviest burden. The tax disincentive to invest will reduce employment. That puts downward pressure on wages. Lower wages means that it’s unlikely that you will be able to pay to avoid rationed care. The poorest will be least able to and their cost of care will be pain and suffering, poor quality of care and worse health care outcomes for diseases like cancer. Pain and suffering is not a cost easily adaptable to an accountant’s ledger, but it is a cost nonetheless. Since the “wealthy” will be less wealthy and their tax rates will be higher, charitable giving will nose-dive as it has in Europe. That will also hurt the poor.

Maybe a little off-topic, but seems to me that very major advances in the fight against disease occurred much earlier than 1980. For starters…

Quite right. We had a lot of luck with cheap and effective measures early in the century, which led to a lingering affection for health care spending even when it wasn’t doing too much. By 1980s we started a second wave of progress, which is much more cost intensive.

Maybe a little off-topic, but seems to me that very major advances in the fight against disease occurred much earlier than 1980. For starters…

–vaccination
–antibiotics
–anaesthetics
–Pasteurization
–clean water

Indeed, the collective impact of these changes (all of them pre-1940) was so strong that it arguably had a major impact on the whole way people perceived human life.

Of course you are right – Obama creates the sense of urgency by citing the cost of health care, but when he or Pelosi actually give their vague descriptions of it, it is only about coverage. I haven’t heard Obama or anyone else give any credible basis for thinking this plan will in any way reduce costs.

In your final comment,”That’s rather vague. The promise is that …” I think we are saying the same thing. It is going to end up being a middle and upper income tax, directly or indirectly, no matter how it evolves.

Are you kidding? In every speech before the CBO weighed in, he has claimed that we MUST have reform to cut health care costs. Our deficits depend on it, etc. His claim is that his reform will make health care in America better, faster and cheaper. He has abandoned that since the overwhelming evidence is that it will be none of those things, but he was selling exactly that fantasy until the end of July.

…which would have the unintended consequence of having employers discontinue their programs and putting everyone into the kluge of government run Obamacare.

Calling that an “unintended consequence” is quite a stretch.

No, the only dispute here is over who is going to pay the trillion – and since the government is going to run the program, no matter how they cast it, the answer to that question is ultimately the taxpayers.

That’s rather vague. The promise is that the top 2% will pay for everyone else. The reality is that this is the group that is most mobile and has the most options – including just reducing how much the work and invest in taxable ventures. No matter what Obama tells you, the cost of medical care will be borne by the people receiving the care. The payment will be some combination of higher income taxes on everyone (including the supposedly put-upon middle class), out of pocket expenses to avoid wait lines and pain and suffering by patients.

Well said.

Some government control will be necessary as long as we have public funding of health care. Moving to a more rational system will be painful for some.

David,

Thanks for your comment.

Tdaxp…if I understand correctly (and I may not), you are saying that *any* large-scale human activity is the equivalent of war and should be organized in the same way.

No, I must have spoke to vaguely. I apolgoize for that.

I meant something closer to this: the only reason the government exists is to protect our rights. The most important of these are life, liberty, and property. We are extremely lucky to live in a country where many of our rights are explictly protected in a Constitution which gives limited powers to our state and national governments.

The first war we fought to defend our rights, even before this constitution, was the Revolution against King George III. We have fought a number of wars since then.

Around 1980, we acquired the tools to fight the deadliest of our enemies, and the one most dedicated to taking away our rights: disease. Before the rise of assembly-line surgery and prescription drugs, our health efforst were limited to programs such as good nutrition, fluridation, clean drinking water, and so on. That is like defending against al Qaeda if the only weapons we had were nuclear weapons. We wouldn’t be defenseless, but there wouldn’t be much to do, either. 1980 is the period in which health care spending began to correlate with longer life expectency in industrialiazed countries. Before that, health care spending beyond the basics may have killed as many people as it saved, because of crude tools, disease, medical mistakes, uncessary surgeries, and so on.

After 1980, our arsenal expanded dramatically. We now have the ability to engage disease and death in a way that is unprecidented in human history. To use a DOD analogy, all of a sudden we have COIN capacity in this war against microscopic terrorists.

And it is a war. They are taking away our liberties. They are red in tooth and claw. They try to deprive us of our right to speech by taking our tongues, our assembly by taking our legs, our press by taking our hands, our faith by taking our hearts and minds. Every right we have disease takes from us.

clauswitz, a johnny-come-lately, spoke of war only against thinking enemies who are capable of negotiating. But this is a European idea that is foreign to us.

If one follows that model, then the restrictions on human freedom which are an inevitable part of being at war would be eternal and all-encompassing.

Indeed. Hobbes even advocated this, because he believed as long as an individual retained the right to his life and the right to withdraw (that is, turn on the State), he was better off than in the state of nature. Of course, post-John-Locke, our founding fathers have a much more limited role of the government. We have constitutional rights and protections.

Newrouter,

yea wiki AUTHORITATIVE. settles it for me.

Feel free to read the relevent primary sources and come to your own conclusions. If you have a question, feel free to mention it. You obviously have much to learn, but that is the fun of blogging!

There is nothing in the Obama health care plan that seriously addressess the cost of health care. To his credit, I don’t beleive he ever claimed that his plan would reduce the cost. Its sole focus is to provide health insurance to the 40some million people who currently don’t have insurance – many by choice. The issue is who is going to pick up the tab for all of those 40 million+ insurance policies – which CBO says comes to a trillion bucks.

The schemes proposed include jacking the tax rate on higher income peole to north of 50%, and they include takng some of the money away from Medicare, and they include charging employers a fee, which would have the unintended consequence of having employers discontinue their programs and putting everyone into the kluge of government run Obamacare.

But make no mistake, reducing the cost of your health care or mine, or anyone’s health care for that matter, is not part of the plan. If it were, we would be talking about the cost of defensive medicine and the bureaucratic messes that mire doown the entire system. No, the only dispute here is over who is going to pay the trillion – and since the government is going to run the program, no matter how they cast it, the answer to that question is ultimately the taxpayers.

That just bears repeating – over and over again.