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“…we say that there is only one result that counts: final victory“.
- Carl von Clausewitz

On War is a classic of military strategy and perhaps the greatest work ever produced on the nature of war. Clausewitz’s genuine rivals are very few – Sun Tzu and Thucydides come to mind but these comparisons, though equally great in stature, are also at best inexact. How important is Carl von Clausewitz? In the words of the arch-Clausewitzian Professor Chris Bassford:

Clausewitz is the theoretical cornerstone of all the US military’s mid- and senior level PME (Professional Military Education) schools and all US military doctrine. I can say that fairly authoritatively, since I teach at the National War College and have tought at the USMC Command & Staff College and the Army War College, and have also been a US Army soldier (field artillery) and a USMC and Joint Staff doctrine writer

Yet at the same time, Clausewitz is often forgotten, as by the Kaiser’s Grossgeneralstab on the eve of the Great War or by America’s four star grandees at MACV when JFK believed in “flexible response” and LBJ in “escalation”. Then, painfully, after national hubris or martial incompetence brings some great historical debacle, Clausewitz is remembered again, sometimes to be blamed or to be offered up as a savior and the dog-eared copies of On War are taken from the shelf and dusted off.

I think we are living in such a time.

This roundtable has been a delight. Not only did it force me, someone who was not particularly in tune with Clausewitz to give On War a second and more serious reading but the other participants who have posted here or discussed CvC further via email have been enlightening and in some cases, caused me to reconsider prior opinions. For that I thank all of you.

America needs more military strategists and more statesmen who understand how to think strategically. It is a shame that On War and other classics are not required reading in the universities that produce the American elite and it is daunting to consider that we regularly elect politicians to posts of high responsibility who never managed to get through key texts like The Republic or On War. If you couldn’t stare down the ghosts of Plato or Clausewitz from the comfort of your dorm room how will you look a Putin or Ahmadinejad in the eye? How can you steer the ship of state when you do not know the fundamentals of navigation?

Therefore, despite my partiality for Sun Tzu and my unapologetic admiration for John Boyd, I hope more people elect to pick up On War and wrestle with the author until they understand his unsparing but subtle philosophy of war. America can only benefit from a Clausewitzian revival.

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Book VI of On War is about von Clausewitz’s assertion of the pivotal role of defense in war. And so it is. To me however, the passages were echoes of Napoleon’s folly of invading Russia, vast and terrible, and the enduring lessons that von Clausewitz managed to distill from the frozen wasteland of the endless steppe. “The People’s War” rose in Spain against King Joseph Bonaparte and French occupation; led by juntas, the campesinos fought French soldiers with merciless savagery but it was waging war in Russia that had reduced Napoleon Bonaparte from a European Emperor, down again to a mere upstart Corsican general. A parvenu brigand on a continental scale.

No wonder Carl von Clausewitz was in awe of defense.

“If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to to pursue a positive object. When one has used defensive measures successfully, a more favorable balance of strength is usually created; thus the natural course in war is to begin defensively and end in attacking”

One of the anomalies of the crusade of Napoleon’s Grande Armee into the Russia of Tsar Alexander is that the Russians began in a position of numerical inferiority, something that had not happened at any other time except during the Mongol Yoke. Even Hitler’s massive onslaught of 150 Wehrmacht divisions hurled into the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa in 1941 did not enjoy the advantage in numbers held by Napoleon in 1812. Napoleon’s host had an almost mythic quality, reminiscent of the army of Great King Xerxes in The Persian Wars. Historian Alan Schom writes:

“Napoleon’s mighty force was phenomenal in size and strength as it continued its advance. They were marching by the thousands, the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands. It was incredible, it was fascinating, it was aew inspiring, but above all, it was terrifying. All Europe was trembling at the very thought of this massive Gallic-led horde, the likes of which had not been seen since the eighth century invasion of Europe by the Arabs and Berbers, and before that by Attila the Hun. Bavarians, Wurttemburgers, troops from Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Nassau-Aremberg, Isenburg, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Wurzberg, Saxony, Anhalt-Berburg, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Waldeck, Schaumburg-Lippe, Westphalia, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, occupied Denmark, occupied Prussia, occupied Spain and Portugal, occupied Holland, occupied Switzerland, northern Italy, the occupied Papal States, Danzig and Illyria, tiny San Marino and the miniature principality of Liechtenstein….the marched hundreds of miles, some ultimately two thousand miles, because once more Napoleon Bonaparte had refused peace, because – obsessed beyond any rational thought – he demanded war and further conquest”[1]

Tsar Alexander responded to the “Gallic horde” by trading space for time, evacuating Vitebsk and famously, Moscow, which was set to the torch. Alexander made use of the terrain, Russia’s vast and unforgiving span of earth to decimate the invaders whose lines of supply stretched vaporously thin.

Carl von Clausewitz wrote in chapter 3 of Book VI of On War:

“…But if for some reason, the attacker has to advance with divided forces – and problems of supply often leave him little choice – the defender obviously reaps the benefit of being able to attack a part of his opponent with his own full strength.
In strategy, the nature of flank and rear attacks on a theater of operations changes to a significant degree….

….3. Because of the greater areas involved in strategy, the effectiveness of the interior and therefore shorter lines is accentuated and forms an imortant counterbalance against concentric attacks.”

In Chapter 8 “Types of Resistance” , we see that Tsar Alexander’s retreat of scorched earth has provided a template for Clausewitz regarding the use of territorial space by armies on the defensive:

“….and therefore, two kinds of reactions are possible on the defending side, depending whether the attacker is to perish by the sword or by his own exertions.

….Indeed, the latter can essentially take place only where the retreat penetrates deeply into the interior of the country. It is in fact the only reason that can justify such a retreat and the great sacrifices it entails.”

The late, great, historian of old Russia, W. Bruce Lincoln, wrote of Napoleon’s predicament in smoldering Moscow:

“Throughout the fall of 1812, Napoleon waited in vain for Alexander’s peace proposals to arrive in the Kremlin. When none came, he made overtures of his own, but Alexander sent no reply. As the days stretched into weeks, Napoleon came to see that he, not Alexander, faced a truly desperate situation, for Russia’s armies grew stronger by the day while his own dwindled from desertions and the ravages of disease. He faced the hopeless prospect of wintering in Russia without adequate food, shelter, or supplies, surrounded by a people so hostile that they burned their grain rather than sell it for French gold. As winter approached, and as the Russian partisans stepped up their attacks on his rear, Napoleon saw that his line of communications, which relied upon a perilously vulnerable corps of couriers who raced from Paris to Moscow in fourteen days, must soon collapse.” [2]

As with Spain, in Russia Napoleon Bonaparte met with the “rage of the people” in addition to the Tsarist armies and Cossack hosts. And as in the case of Spain’s campesinos, the Russian muzhik was fired by religious zeal against the unholy invader. On Russia’s long suffering peasantry, it’s “dark people” still enthralled in serfdom then, J. Christopher Herold wrote of the popular reaction to the French:

“Alexander’s proclamation to his people, issued at the time of the French invasion, appealed to these deep seated feelings: Napoleon had come to destroy Russia; the entire nation must rise against ‘this Moloch’ and his ‘legions of slaves’. ‘Let us drive this plague of locusts out! Let us carry the Cross in our hearts and steel in our hands!’ The proclamation was read in all the churches, and the priests supplemented it with embellishments of their own. The comte de Segur, at this time an aide-de-camp to Napoleon, wrote: ‘They convinced these peasants we were a legion of devils commanded by the Antichrist, infernal spirits, horrible to look upon, and whose very touch defiled” [3]

Russia was well suited to all of Clausewitz’s conditions for which a general uprising would be effective; that is to say, Clausewitz determined his conditions for a general uprising from the Russian partisan experience against the French (and perhaps also, upon reflection, that of the Spanish guerrilla as well but Clausewitz saw Russia with his own eyes).

“The following are the only conditions under which a general uprising can be effective:

1. The war must be fought in the interior of the country.
2. It must not be decided by a single stroke.
3. The theater of operations must be fairly large.
4. The national character must be suited to that type of war.
5. The country must be rough and inaccessible because of mountains, or forests, marshes, or the local method of cultivation.”

Only five percent of the soldiery of the mighty Grand Armee that boldly marched into Imperial Russia with Napoleon made it out alive. Roughly the same percentage as of the Wehrmacht troops who had served under Field Marshal von Paulus at Stalingrad.

Despite the claims of abstract universalism put forth on behalf of On War by Clausewitzians, the great insights of General von Clausewitz – and they truly are great – are firmly rooted in time and place. Mother Russia casts a shadow long and deep.

[1] Schom, Alan. 1997. Napoleon Bonaparte. HarperCollins. NY.NY. 594.
[2] Lincoln, W. Bruce. 1981. The Romanovs: Autocrats of all the Russias. The Dial Press. NY.NY. 400.
[3] Herold, J. Christopher. 1963. The Age of Napoleon. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston, Mass. 348

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Of what worth is the unfinished scribblings of an out of favor subject of the feeblest autocracy in the whole Concert of Europe, a middling officer who was lightly regarded in his own time and lightly regarded by most of his immediate successors?

Everything and nothing.

Clausewitz stands alone, the only epochal thinker on war. He is the Newton and Darwin of war, all in one, but he lacks successors. Where he went, no one has followed or passed him by. He said let their be light and there was light, but of a peculiarly refracted sort. Even the most incisive of Clausewitz’s Prussian students, the elder Moltke, missed the whole war is the continuation of political intercourse by other means thing and insisted upon political outcomes that derived from purely military considerations. When war broke out, the politicians should take some time off and let the soldiers run things. Once they have achieved victory, then the politicians can take the hand off and run with the ball. Moltke, tired of Bismarck’s interference in what he saw as his domain, insisted on Alsace-Lorraine as a military buffer against the Third Republic and ended up waving a permanent red flag in front of the Gallic bull.

Clausewitz is also a parochial figure of his own time, with his own country to defend, his own axe to grind, his own issues, and his own petty grievances. Two stars shine in his firmament: Frederick II and Buonaparte. While Clausewitz often strikes observers as a worshipper of Buonaparte, to whom Clausewitz refers as the “God of War”, I would peg him as a devotee of the Frederican cult. Given Clausewitz’s strong bias towards defense (compare Books VI and VII), his numerous references to Frederick’s exploits during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, and his belief that war was the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means, his large though not uncritical admiration for Old Fritz becomes clear. Frederick represented the ultimate subordination of war to the political: Frederick’s mind put his political interests ahead of his military pursuits. Policy and strategy, since one thought followed another, were in perfect agreement. Frederick was the ultimate practitioner of the strategic defensive: he knew his limits and adhered to them with an iron will. Clausewitz, like many contemporary Prussians, was looking for a system that would produce a Frederick when it could only produce a succession of second-class Frederick Williams. His commander-in-chief participating in cabinet meetings was the best analogue he could find to the absence.

This Clausewitz also had fights to start with otherwise forgotten figures like von Bulow and more influential thinkers like Jomini. Jomini’s cut-and-paste military how to manuals must have made Clausewitz foam at the mouth. Here was the Tony Robbins of military self-help, with his impressive gigs as aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney, personal adviser to Buonaparte, and various positions as a commanding general in French and Russian service. Jomini was a trite axiom spewing military entrepreneur, selling his How to Win a War in 10 steps to the highest bidder. As a Swiss patriot (who never returned to Switzerland), he was a citizen of the world. Contrast this with war nerd Carl von Clausewitz. Though appreciated by such giants of the German army as Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and happily married (far above his station) to Countess Marie von Bruhl, Clausewitz was out of favor with king and court and spent most of the postwar era in a prestigious but empty and responsibility free position as head of the War Academy. Clausewitz yearned to be a man of affairs like Jomini but he didn’t have a sound-bite personality (or writing style) so he was passed over for men whose names are now long forgotten. So he had to settle for a try at posthumous immortality instead. Curiously, despite a ill-timed death, he is now the most important Prussian of the early nineteenth century, his insight rivaled only by Blucher’s hatred of Buonaparte as the Prussian personality trait that most shaped the world we live in.

So there are two Clausewitzes (or Clausewitzi?): There is the universal Clausewitz, the Clausewitz that tells us that war is the continuation of politics by other means, the Clausewitz that explains why defense is the stronger form of war, the Clausewitz of friction, the culminating point of victory, the remarkable trinity, the Clausewitz of Book I and VIII. Then there is the historical Clausewitz, the Clausewitz that abhors cordon warfare, that hides behind fortresses, that hates encirclement and surprise, that lived in a world little different from 100 years before, a world that ran at the speed of a good horse, where states were unchallenged, battles could be fought within eyesight of the commanding general, and disease carried off most of the casualties, the Clausewitz of Book VI. The historical Clausewitz was more appreciated by his immediate successors. They loved the “Mahdi of Mass”. It is only in our own time that the universal Clausewitz has emerged.

The universal Clausewitz can be the Clausewitz of his supporters, who argue that he created a treasure for all time, or his detractors, who see only a relic of the past when states were states and attrition was attrition. It is my hope that the universal Clausewitz will emerge triumphant. Clausewitzian war is fought by all human communities, not by states alone. Clausewitz was more than the prophet of the decisive battle who shouted, “If it doesn’t attrit, you must acquit”. Clausewitz will remain relevant for all time, or at least until the killer robots take over.

I’d like to thank all of the participants in this roundtable. I’ve received many a new insight and many a new addition to my personal reading list. Re-reading Clausewitz has opened new lines of inquiry and thought. The old dog will have a few new tricks in him yet.

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There is a huge amount of secondary material about On War. Many books, often by very competent scholars, and an enormous number of articles, all offer us shortcuts into Clausewitz’s thought.

I decided to read none of it. I did not care very much, for now, about Clausewitz scholarship, and I did not care if I replowed already well-plowed ground. To the extent I got any “new” insight from On War, it was inevitably something that is “old” in terms of the voluminous critical writing. Someone else certainly thought of it first.

But, for me, the point was not to engage in some kind of academic exercise. I am not an academic, I do not have academic colleagues, I do not publish scholarship about military matters, I do not have classes either as a teacher or student. I have no need to be “up to date” or “cutting edge” about Clausewitz.

Instead, I am simply an amateur who is a lifelong student of military history and military affairs, and a citizen who prefers to have some understanding of the world and the threats our country faces, and how we might deal with those threats.

From that humble standpoint, I decided that the best thing to do with Clausewitz was trust the verdict of history, that On War has ongoing value, and respect the effort he made to write it, and his widow made to put his draft in order, so that we could have it to read.

The best way to do that was to simply read it all, front to back, and see what I found in there.

Therefore, it did not matter to me that others had already thought of everything worth saying about On War before me.

What mattered was to engage with Clausewitz’s mind, and to reach my own conclusions.

The problem I have these days is that work and family commitments make it very hard to read anything in a focused and careful way. Time and energy are scarce. This makes a long and demanding book like On War almost beyond my capacity to read in a serious way.

The blog roundtable was, for me, a way to impose discipline on myself. By committing to read the book over a specified period, and to concentrate sufficiently to write about it, and to engage with others who were doing so at the same time, I was able to read the book and focus on it and extract some value from the experience, as haphazard as it was at times. I would tell my family, “you have to leave me alone for a while. I am going to write about Clausewitz!” (The children found this puzzling, but my wife is used these occasional episodes.) What I wrote for the blog was more a means to help me digest the book than a fully coherent set of posts for the reader. If anyone found any of them worth reading, I am glad to hear it.

While I was reading On War I always had two or three other books going at the same time, as usual, mostly military history. It was interesting that On War was already causing me to read and understand other books on military affairs with — I believe — a superior level of critical thinking and insight.

Clausewitz is the kind of teacher who causes you to think better merely by following along with what he is trying to teach you.

Of course, to say it this way is to speak of “Clausewitz” as if he exists as a disembodied presence, who has or had an intention that somehow is still running its course nearly two centuries after his death.

As a Roman Catholic, I do literally believe that Clausewitz, like everyone, is an immortal soul, and I prayed for him from time to time as I read the book. I hope he made it to Heaven. I want to get there myself, and I want to meet him.

But on the more mundane level, can we infer that Clausewitz meant to speak to us, in this inconceivably different world of today? Is he really speaking to us? Or are we listening in to a conversation between General Clausewitz and his brother officers of his own era, a conversation that has points of interest, but is over now, a conversation fading into the past?

I think he did mean to speak to us. He was serious when he told us that he was trying to penetrate to the bedrock of war, the actual nature of war, to absolute war, an unattainable apex toward which actual events gravitated, to other permanent and commonly recurring features, of which this or that historical contingency is only a particular manifestation.

He believed he had, in some places, hit bedrock. I think he was right about that. There is no reason to think that these findings would not be permanent, would not remain applicable, so long as the most basic things about human beings living in organized societies remained true.

So he meant to speak to us today, and into the future, and his reasons for presuming to do so were sound.

I am going to forego a bullet-point list of “lessons learned” at this point. As I sketched one out, it promised to be far too long, beyond what I have the time to write.

Like any truly great book, reading On War once is not enough. If you had asked me halfway through Book VI if I would ever read it again, I would have said “no way”.

Having finished it all, I now feel compelled to say, “I have to read it again”. Maybe not every word the second time. And certainly not right away. Good heavens, no. I need to digest it, and read a lot of other things.

But probably within ten years, God willing, I will be pounding on General Clausewitz’s door, and demanding that he take me through this material one more time. He will roll his eyes, shake his head, but then put on his cloak and riding boots and bicorn hat, and ride with me, and perhaps with some companions, over the same ground, and try beat into my head some of what he has to offer. I will do my best, as I did this time.

I must express my sincere gratitude to all of my companions on this roundtable. Many of the posts, and comments, and offline discussions, were very astute and helpful. Each contributor brought a distinct personality and intellectual style to their writing, which lit up varying facets of the book that I might have missed, or which I would not have thought of in quite the same way. It is like we have gone on a staff ride together with Clausewitz. I only regret that we cannot all come in from the field together, hang up our rain-dampened cloaks, stamp the mud from our boots, and have a round of drinks before the fire. Cyberspace is wonderful, and allows companionship across space in ways that we would not want to live without. But it will always fall short in some important aspects.

Last and most importantly, thank you to Gen. Carl von Clausewitz, late of the Prussian Army, soldier and scholar, man of physical, moral and intellectual courage, who believed that the primal violence of war had to be harnessed and channeled and directed by political and military leaders, toward reasonable and achievable ends, to bring about a better peace when the cannon at last fall silent, who generously left to posterity the priceless treasure trove of his hard-won wisdom.

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The German word politik, as used by Clausewitz, can mean both politics and policy. The two words were used interchangeably by Michael Howard and Peter Paret in translating On War depending upon how they interpreted Clausewitz’s meaning in a particular passage. This can serve to remind us that both policy and politics play a role in launching and waging war. While much of On War deals with policy, the rational planning of how to use x resources to achieve y goals, much of Book VIII deals with politics. What is politics? James Burnham ponders this in The Machiavellians:

What are we talking about when we talk politics? Many, to judge by what they write, seem to think we are talking about man’s search for the ideally good society, or his mutual organization for the maximum social welfare, or his natural aspiration for peace and harmony, or something equally removed from the world as it is and has been. Machiavelli understood politics as primarily the study of the struggles for power among men. By so marking its field, we are assured that there is being discussed something that exists, not something spun out of idealist’s dreams, or nightmares. If our interest is in man as he is on this earth, so far as we can learn from the facts of history and experience, we must conclude that he has no natural aspiration for peace or harmony, he does not form states in order to achieve an ideally good society, nor does he accept mutual organization is to secure the maximum social welfare. But men, and groups of men, do, by various means, struggle among themselves for relative increases in power and privilege. In the course of these struggles and as part of them, governments are established and overthrown, laws passed and violated, wars fought and won and lost. A definition is arbitrary, true enough, but Machiavelli’s implied definition of the field of politics as the struggle for power is at least insurance against nonsense.

Max Weber echoed Burnham’s definition even earlier in Politics as a Vocation:

‘Politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

Christopher Bassford places the definition of politics as the division of power between socially determined ends in a specifically Clausewitzian context in Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century:

Politics is the highly variable process by which power is distributed in any society: the family, the office, a religious order, a tribe, the state, an empire, a region, an alliance, and the international community. The process of distributing power may be fairly orderly—through consensus, inheritance, election, some time-honored tradition, or it may be chaotic—through assassination, revolution, and warfare.

War is not a departure from this fundamental nature of politics, it is a logical continuation. As Clausewitz observes:

It is, of course, well-known that the only source of war is politics – the intercourse of governments and peoples; but it is apt to be assumed that war suspends that intercourse and replaces it by a wholly different condition, ruled by no law but its own.

We maintain, on the contrary, that war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means. We deliberately use the phrase “with the addition of other means” because we also want to make clear that war in itself does not suspend political intercourse or change it into something entirely different. In essentials that intercourse continues irrespective of the means it employs.

Political intercourse, concerned primarily with the division of power both within and without a human community, does not suspend itself during war. This means that the petty details of politics, buying political support, the compromising of principles, the catering to special interests, the rhetorical excesses, whoring, horse-trading, half-truths, distorted world views, all the evils of Babylon, will shape war more profoundly than devotees of rational decision making would like or even acknowledge. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita argues that most foreign policy decisions are primarily shaped by domestic politics as political leaders seek developments abroad that will satisfy their domestic constituencies and enable them to both gain and hold on to power. War is no different. Politics may not stoop to determining “the posting of guards or the employment of patrols” (though LBJ may beg to differ). It usually has other sordid details to oversee. But the very atmosphere the flames of war feed on emanates from the machinations of politics. It is politics, driven by narrow and parochial concerns, tossed and turned as it is by the shifting fortunes of war, that will determine the outcome of war. Clausewitz puts this kindly, putting the ideal first (with my substitutions):

It can be taken as agreed that the aim of [politics] is to unify and reconcile all aspects of internal administration as well as spiritual values, and whatever else the moral philosophy may care to add.

Then comes the first qualification:

[Politics], of course, is nothing in itself; it is only the trustee for all these interests against other states.

He acknowledges the imperfections but sticks to the main assertion:

That it can err, subserve the ambitions, private interests, and vanity of those in power is neither here nor there. In no sense can war ever be regarded as the preceptor of [politics], and here we can only treat [politics] as representative of all interests of the community.

Politics, for all of its flaws, determines the course of war. This isn’t to say that participants in the political process, inasmuch as such participation is allowed, shouldn’t seek the best policy for their community. However, they shouldn’t seek fault in the instrument, war, alone, though the critical eye may see flaws in the instrument as well. They should seek to remedy faults in the real source: politics:

No major proposal required for war can be worked out in ignorance of political factors; and when people talk, as they often do, about harmful political influence on the management of war, they are not really saying what they mean. Their quarrel should be with the policy itself, not with its influence. If the policy is right – that is, successful – any intentional effect it has on the conduct of the war can only be to the good. If it has the opposite effect the policy itself is wrong.

When the current power configuration of a community is summed up by the political process at a given point in time, that summation will be what dictates the direction war will take. If the military instrument rebels against the hands of its masters and takes over the political process, that is not an unnatural assertion of the power of war over politics. It’s the replacement of one set of politicians with another set, only this time they are garbed for war instead of peace.

Clausewitz rejected technical explanations for changes in the art of war because of his belief in the primacy of politics over war. He argued that shifts in the nature of politics had more to do with the descent of Europe into total war than advances in technology and tactical technique:

Clearly the tremendous effects of the French Revolution abroad were caused not so much by new military methods and concepts as by radical changes in policies and administration, by the new character of government, altered conditions of the French people, and the like. That other governments did not understand these changes, that they wished to oppose new and overwhelming forces with customary means: all these were political errors. Would a purely military view of war have enabled anyone to detect these faults and cure them? It would not. Even if there really had existed a thoughtful strategist capable of deducing the whole range of consequences from the nature of the hostile elements, and on the strength of these of prophesying their ultimate effects, it would have been quite impossible to act on his speculations.

The bad news is that the solution to the changing faces of warfare may have to emerge through the narrow bandwidth of the intelligence of those who are usually the last to realize the world has changed: politicians:

Not until the statesmen had at last perceived that the nature of the forces that had emerged in France, and had grasped that new political conditions now obtained in France, could they foresee the broad effect all this would have on war; and only in that way could they appreciate the scale of the means that would have to be employed, and how best to apply them.

That the monarchies of Europe only solved the problem of the Corsican Ogre and his Merry Frenchmen after twenty years of policy failure is only stronger evidence of the primacy of politics in war:

It follows that the transformation of the art of war resulted from the transformation of politics. So far from suggesting that the two could be disassociated from each other, these changes are a strong proof of their indissoluble connection.

The success and failure of war and strategy can occur without the direct influence of politics. However, they are in orbit around the planet Politics and its gravitational sway will eventually decide if local success or failure translate into global success or failure. The muddled and confused strategies of contemporary conflicts are the product of a muddled and confused politics; they reflect the contortions and pretense of contemporary society as accurately as a mirror held up to the face. Only a better political outcome will result in a better strategic outcome. Though the two constitute a feedback loop that causes strategy to shape politics and politics to shape strategy, the impact of politics is inevitably stronger. As Clausewitz concludes his last section on war as an instrument of politics (with my replacements):

Once again: war is an instrument of [politics]. It must necessarily bear the character of [politics] and measure by its standards. The conduct of war, in its great outlines, is therefore [politics] itself, which takes up the sword in place of the pen, but does not on that account cease to think according to its own laws.

If so much of war is spent struggling in the squalor of mud advancing or retreating from an unimpressive dot on a map at the caprice of persons far away, it is because it is a representative sample of politics as a whole. Politics, at its core, is a struggle in the mud between writhing swine grubbing desperately in the muck for the fetid slop of power.

Like father, like son.

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Book VII can be summarized as, “Offense is hard. Defense is strong. Culminating point of victory. Move along.” DEFENSE! DEFENSE! Clausewitz cheers. Offense. offense. Clausewitz grudgingly mutters. I lost count of the number of times Clausewitz says, in effect, “I could say something really insightful about offense here but I already said it about defense in Book VI. Go re-read Book VI. Now.” Take this bronx cheer for example:

It is thus defense itself that weakens attack. Far from this being idle sophistry, we consider it to be the greatest disadvantage of the attack that one is eventually left in a most awkward defensive position.

That’s right. The most damning thing about offense is that it’s poor defense. Turns the old adage about the best defense being a good offense on its head. If we follow John Sumida’s argument, this is the main thesis of On War: defense rules; offense is lame.

However, there are a few interesting nuggets here and there in the otherwise sparse landscape of Book VII. The one that stuck was Clausewitz’s discussion of waging offense for “the sake of trophies, or possibly simply of honor, and at times merely to satisfy a general’s ambition”:

Anyone who doubts this occurs do not know military history. Most of the offensive battles in the French campaigns during the age of Louis XIV were of this type. It is more important to note, however, that these considerations are not without weight, mere quirks of vanity: they have a very definite bearing on the peace and hence they lead fairly straight to the goal. Military honor and the renown of an army and its generals are factors that operate invisibly, but they constantly permeate all military activity.

This was one of the three motivations that Thucydides claimed condemns men to war: fear, honor, and interest. Honor is a signal. When it is violated, it signals that its holder might be vulnerable to further violations. In this sense, honor is a form of credit. If you have it, you can draw on it while waging war in pursuit of the goals of politics you wish to realize when peace comes, as Clausewitz points out. If you lose it, your leverage in war and peace will degrade rapidly.

Honor was everything in the Archaic Greek society Homer portrayed. While the poor bloody infantry was slogging it out off camera, Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Odysseus, Aeneas, Ajax, and other aristocrats were hogging the spotlight in single combat. Battles would turn on the outcome of the clash of champions. The winner had honor and his side gained in honor and, not to be underestimated, morale. The effect of Achilles’ rage after the death of Patroclus in raising the sagging morale of the Acheans and deflating the Trojans after it seemed they were on the verge of driving the Greeks into the sea rings true. Sudden swings in morale are the crucial events that decide the outcome of battle. Du Picq pointed out that most casualties in a rout occur when one side gives and retreats. The backsides of the retreating army are exposed to enemy action. Men turn and run, fling away their equipment, order disintegrates, and the mob lurking inside every army is set free. Much depends upon unit pride and cohesion, one of the primary justifications for the pursuit of honor. Standards like the eagles of Rome and the unit pennants of American units are honor incarnate. They are a visible manifestation of pride and cohesion. This made them a prize that a unit would die to defend and the enemy would kill to win as a trophy. There’s more than bluster behind the apocryphal phrase, “the Guard dies, it does not surrender.”

Sometimes seemingly senseless acts of violence must be committed in order to re-establish credibility and maintain honor. However, senselessness is in the eye of the beholder. When the fundamental language of fear and honor is the one language that transcends all cultural bounds, what doesn’t make sense to the higher mind may make great sense to the innermost reaches of the animal mind. Credit may be re-established and honor restored. However, it’s best not to lose it to begin with. There may not be a bailout or lender of last resort when the dogs of war run free.

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This is the first time I have read Clausewitz. The experience has changed and expanded my understanding of conflict and warfare. I am certain it will influence the remainder of my academic and professional career.

As a Marine NCO, I was at the lowest possible layer of leadership that Clausewitz discusses. The majority of the decisions I was expected to make were operational, and therefore tactical. I was given instruction in the strategic realm only as an overview, and was expected to be concerned with the how, and not worry about the why. Hindsight, combined with insight gained from Clausewitz allows me to broaden the view and (in some cases anyway) see the strategic value in the tasks that a young Corporal grumbled over.

My current position spans both the strategic and the tactical. Though it is firmly entrenched in the civilian world, I find I can still apply much of what Clausewitz discusses to my daily grind. It may take a bit of abstraction, but the core concepts Clausewitz espouses can be applied to business deals, (attack and defense) Policy, and leadership. Sun Tzu is often suggested reading for up and coming corporate world MBA types. Perhaps they should take the time to read Clausewitz as well.

I think though that I stand to benefit most academically from Clausewitz, however. As a graduate student studying information security and cyberwar policy, Clausewitz’ concepts will provide foundational materials for the remainder of my studies, as most of the material can be applied directly. “On War” has proven to be a timeless reference, with significance beyond the battlefield.

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Clausewitz says

war is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means.

He also says that this is the central point of On War. But what does he mean by it? Is it a precept? An observation? A recommendation for a successful war?

In Clausewitz’s time, the objective was usually control of territory, incorporating it into one’s own country or to be used as a bargaining chip. That object is not unknown today, but perceptions play a part that was inconceivable in Clausewitz’s time.

Clausewitz’s dictum seems self-evident. Why would a nation marshal its human and material resources to be damaged and destroyed if not for some good, or at least sensible purpose? Why would it expend its power if not for some definable purpose?

Is it a precept, a recommendation for how best to conduct a war? Could it be recast as

If you would win a war, be sure you have a clear and achievable purpose.

Clausewitz warns that war has its own momentum, which can change and subvert that political objective. So political leaders must work to keep the war directed toward their political objectives. This might recast the dictum as

If you would win a war, keep the political objective firmly in mind.

Or is it simply an observation?

Nations go to war for political objectives.

Clausewitz comes close to saying, in Book 8, that it is a precept, a necessity for success. If you do not have a clear objective, it is difficult to know when you have achieved it.

Case Studies
Let us look at some recent wars and their political objectives.

Iraq War, 2003 The first objective advanced publicly by the United States was to end Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, in particular because of his acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. When those weapons of mass destruction weren’t found, the objective of planting a democratic state in the Middle East was advanced. My suspicion is that we may not be able to know the objective(s) until the records of the deliberations leading to war are declassified.

Afghan War, 2001 The US objective was to eliminate the Taliban and its policies of sheltering al-Qaeda from Afghanistan.

Israel’s Attack on Gaza, 2008 Israel’s stated objective was to eliminate Hamas rocket positions and smuggling of armaments into Gaza.

Israel’s Attack on Lebanon, 2006 Israel’s stated objective was to eliminate Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.

Russia’s Attack on Georgia, 2008 Russia’s stated objective was to prevent Georgia from forcibly preventing the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia’s stated objective was to prevent that secession.

Wars in the Former Yugoslavia, 1991-2001 Objectives on the part of the local groups had to do with territorial control. NATO/EU objectives had to do with stopping the genocide that accompanied some of the initiatives for territorial control.

Russian Wars in Chechnya, 1994-1996 and 1999-? Russian objectives were to prevent Chechnya from seceding from Russia and, perhaps, to end Chechen terrorism within Russia.

Soviet War in Afghanistan, 1978-1989 The Soviet objective was to maintain a Soviet-style government in Afghanistan.

US War in Vietnam, 1959-1975 The US objective was to maintain a Western-backed government in South Vietnam, perhaps to extend that governance to North Vietnam.

Commonalities
Several themes run through this enumeration of war objectives. Other wars would exhibit similar characteristics.

There is considerable uncertainty as to whether the objectives stated by the attackers in fact represent the policy objective that is being pursued. There is not as much reason to doubt the stated objectives of the defenders. One reason for this is the recency of these wars; important documents may not be available. Another reason for this may be that perception on the part of other nations has become a larger part of the objective of military action. Clausewitz focused on gaining control of territory and says little about this aspect of war.

Control of territory as an objective is not absent from any of the wars listed here; probably it was strongest for the various groups in Yugoslavia as it broke up and for the North Vietnamese. Control of territory has shifted in some cases to control of governments in that territory; thus the Soviets did not want to make Afghanistan part of the Soviet Union, but they did want a sympathetic government with a Soviet-style structure. Similarly, the US in Vietnam, Russia in Chechnya, and both the Russians and Georgians in the 2008 war wanted to determine the government in power.

Israel’s actions against Lebanon and Gaza, which may have been campaigns rather than war in the Clausewitzian sense, were explicitly not for the control of territory, but rather to eliminate particular threats to Israeli security. However, the broad-based use of the military raised questions of whether the stated objectives were the actual objectives. The actions also explicitly included the objective of “sending a message” to Hezbollah and Hamas, in other words, changing their perception of Israel’s ability to control them. Presumably this message was intended for other players in the region, including nations that are unfriendly to Israel.

Comments from some of the participants in decision-making for the 2003 Iraq war have suggested that a perceptual message was also intended, that the United States could flatten any nation that crossed its military might. It is likely that the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya intended messages as well, but other objectives were most likely primary in those cases.

The Record of Success
Now let’s look at the record of success in achieving the stated objectives.

On the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Russia’s action in Georgia, I would argue it’s too soon to tell. It’s possible that war’s logic has pulled these actions away from their original political objectives.

Israel’s actions slowed down Hezbollah and Hamas in their rocket harassments. The organizations, however, are still intact and claim their own victories. The means by which Israel conducted these campaigns have raised questions in other countries about their legitimacy in a sort of collateral damage.

A detailed analysis of the claims of the various groups in the former Yugoslavia would probably show that some of them achieved at least parts of their objectives. The NATO/EU objective of stopping ethnic cleansing and genocide was met.

The Russian objective was met in Chechnya, which remains part of Russia. However, this shares with the Israeli campaigns the downsides of not knowing whether the separatists will return and a perception of overreaction.

The US did not gain its objectives in Vietnam. The North did.

Conclusions
The commonalities of the successful campaigns seem to be that they had reasonably well-defined political objectives and that they were defensive. Clausewitz claims that defense is more powerful than offense, which muddies the question of whether the clarity of the political objectives was decisive.

Overall, in this group, there seems to be a partial confirmation that wars with clear political objectives are more likely to succeed than those without, although I have to admit that the evidence is not fully convincing.

Our modern problem seems to be that wars are fought for many reasons, the least of which seems to be Clausewitz’s. This may change the rules, but it may also be that the very multiplicity of reasons violates Clausewitz’s dictum: the objectives are less clear. In any case, how does one measure, say, Hamas’s desire to attack Israel with rockets? If it can’t be measured, how does one then measure whether the objective has been achieved? International opinion, or the inclinations of particular states, is even harder to measure.

A question: does it ever make sense for a government to keep secret their objectives in a war? I’m not sure I can think of a scenario where it does without going through some improbable contortions. This is an important question for analysts, because we need to know, as for example in the Iraq war, whether the real objectives have been enunciated, and, if so, which they were.

And a final observation. The technologies that allow for instant information dissemination by practically everybody have made an enormous difference, particularly to objectives related to perceptions. Competing views and documentary evidence, including photos from the war scenes, are readily available in ways that Clausewitz probably couldn’t even have conceived of.

What Clausewitz gives us is a series of excellent questions and the basis for developing more in today’s context. This is his continuing value.

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This is possibly the most difficult post yet.  How to make a fitting conclusion to this very exceptional work, a work that influences not only military historians, but strategic theorists, military officers, those involved in the training of strategic theorists and military officers . . .  It would be difficult to come up with a book going on 200 years old which retains more influence today than it did 20 years after it was published, that continues to open up new vistas of thought, in this the most complex of all human interactions, that being war.

For instance it was only after the First World War that German scholars realized that On War contained a general theory of war, that is was able to theoretically conceptualize the phenomenon of war as a whole (“capable of embracing every conceivable form of war or strategy”, see especially Herbert Rosinski’s The German Army, 1939 & 1966, pp 110-11).  That is the general theory is able to “capture” (that is in a theoretically adequate way) the nature of war’s moral elements which are timeless.  Since that time – talking about the 1920s-30s here – many have attempted to duplicate or even replace Clausewitz, but none have been successful.  I would argue that most have not even come close for the simple reason that they failed to understand his most fundamental accomplishment and the source of his continuing relevance: the general theory.

Why is the general theory so important?  Because it provides us with a framework, a litmus test for all the various “art of war” versions (covering the type of warfare for the epoch in question) which would have to be more or less compatible with the larger framework of the general theory.  For instance On War contains not only the general theory but also a theory of Napoleonic warfare, or the art of warfare for the early 19th Century.  This was further developed by Helmut von Moltke in the 1860-80s who updated the art of war in the age of railroads and telegraph communication.  Colmar von der Goltz, although pretty much forgot today, probably came up with a more applicable art of war for the early 20th Century than did Graf von Schlieffen, or any of their contemporaries.  Schlieffen however appealed to prejudices of his Zeitgeist whereas Goltz did not, with Schlieffen’s followers in turn losing the connection between military aim and political purpose which led to military accomplishment followed by military and political disaster.  Svechin’s Strategy picked up the pieces after the First World War and imo supplied the art of industrial war as it was fought up to and beyond 1945 (as in the Korean War for example).  Notice that Bewegungskrieg (updated tactics of mobile warfare) and Ludwig Beck’s Truppenführung (German military doctrine developed in the 1930s) are both compatible within the Clausewitzian Svechin’s art of war.  This would also indicate the level of strategic theory that the Germans lacked in World War II to very obvious effect.  All these works are – as is strategic theory by its very nature – retrospective.

In addition to the general theory, we have of course Clausewitz’s influence on the development of first the Prussian and later German General Staff systems and the military staffs of all the armies which imitated them.  This influence was exclusively posthumous which also explains how the staff officer/strategic theorist equipped with the general theory was replaced with the narrowly-trained general staff specialist who excelled at tactics, stumbled a bit at operations, never questioned military strategy, and refused to consider political purpose.

This blindness was commented on at the time by a thoughtful observer:

Nothing could be more dangerous than to follow sudden inspirations, however intelligent or brilliant they may appear, without pursuing them to the logical conclusions, or to indulge in wishful thinking, however sincere our purposes.  We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusions, with disciplined intellect, strong enough in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates.

General Ludwig Beck, 1935

The two legacies – the general theory and the various arts of war within its framework and the general staff system – come together in the form of the strategist who forms military strategy with or without the help of strategic theory (if there is no art of war for the epoch in question, the strategist must in effect develop his own).  At the same time the strategist is well advised to think in terms of the general theory since that provides the basis of strategic thought.  Finally, militaries being what they are today require a corps of well-trained staff officers to operate.  Beck’s warning should require no further explanation.

Which brings us to the more polemic part of this post.  Clausewitz’s theory of war is very much a political theory of war so it goes without question that policy, politics and the character of governments waging war in the name of the nation state would fall within this commentary.  What does a reading of Clausewitz  indicate as to our basic strategic dilemma today?

Imo we have lost the thread of strategic thought, the connections between tactics and strategy, and military aim and political purpose.  But that is only part of the problem.  We have also lost the ability to question our own political motives as they are presented to us, to even comprehend the basic questions of politics.  Such situations are often laid bare by failed wars . . .

The aggressor marches into hostile territory; he drives the enemy back a little, but then begins to have doubts about risking a decisive battle.  He halts and faces his opponent, acting as if he had made a conquest and was interested only in protecting it – in short, he behaves as if it were the enemy’s affair to seek a battle, as if he himself were ready to fight at any time, and so forth. All of these are mere pretexts, which a general uses to delude his army, his government, the world at large, and even himself.  The truth of the matter is tht the enemy’s position has been found too strong.  Here we  are not talking of a case in which the aggressor fails to attack because a victory would be of no use to him, because his advance having run its course he does not have enough resiliency to start a new one.  This would assume that a successful attack had already taken place and resulted in a genuine conquest; rather, we have in mind a case in which the aggressor gets bogged down in the middle of an intended conquest.

As that point the attack will wait for a favorable turn of events to exploit.  There is as a  rule no reason to expect such a favorable turn; the very fact that an attack had been intended implies that the immediate future promises no more than the present.  It is therefore a fresh delusion.  If, as is usual, the operation is a joint one timed to coincide with others, the other armies will then be blamed fro his failures.  By way of excusing his inaction he will plead inadequate support and cooperation.  He will talk of insuperable obstacles, and look for motives in the most intricately complicated circumstances.  So he will fritter his strength away in doing nothing, or rather in doing too little to bring about anything but failure.  Meanwhile the defender is gaining time – which is what he needs most.  The season is getting late, and the whole offensive ends with the return of the invader to his winter quarters in his own theater of operations.

This tissue of falsehoods ends by passing into history in place of the obvious and simple truth: that failure was due to the fear of the enemy’s forces.  When the critics begin to study a campaign of this sort they tend to get lost in argument and counterargument.  No convincing answer will be found, because everything is guesswork and the critics never dig deep enough to find the truth.

That sort of fraudulence is not merely a matter of bad habit; its roots lie in the nature of the case.  The counterweights that weaken the elemental force of war, and particularly the attack, are primarily located in the political relations and intentions of the government, which are concealed from the rest of the world, the people at home, the army, and in some cases even from the commander.  For instance no one can and will admit that his decision to stop or to give up was motivated by the fear that his strength would run out, or that he might make new enemies or that his own allies might become too strong.  That sort of thing is long kept confidential, possibly forever.  Meanwhile, a plausible account must be circulated.  The general is, therefore, urged, either for his own sake or the sake of the government, to spread a web of lies.  This constantly recurring shadowboxing in the dialectics of war has, as theory, hardened into systems, which are of course, equally misleading.  Only a theory that will follow the simple thread of internal cohesion as we have tried to make ours do, can get back to the essence of things.

If military history is read with this kind of skepticism, a vast amount of verbiage concerning attack and defense will collapse, and the simple conceptualization we have offered will automatically emerge.  We believe that it is valid for the whole field of defense, and that only if we cling to it firmly can the welter of events be clearly understood and mastered.

On War, Book VI, Chapter 8.

The verbiage falls away, but we grasp at it all the more frantically since it is all we have, like shards of colored glass in a child’s kaleidescope, which forms subjective patterns, but only for a moment, until the toy is moved and the shards form something else.  We have not only lost the general theory, but have lost the concept of this type of theory altogether.  Instead we construct rigid, reified systems which lead to only increased confusion.  Words have lost all meaning.  “Democracy” means “domination” and “freedom” means “subjugation”, whereas “strategy” decays to simply “rhetoric”.  Radicals wear the ill-fitting masks of “conservatives” and openly scrap our national ideals in the guise of “security”.  Torture enters as a stalking horse for police state.  A “long war” is fought with only a vague and hopelessly absolute (and thus unattainable) purpose, while limited and regional wars mired in narrow-interest are pumped up to global and “existentialist” proportions to ensure their saleability to an increasingly restive public that more and mores sees through the “web of lies”.

The collapse of strategic thought in not only the US, but the West is only part of a much larger process which encompasses not only intellectual, but legal/ethical and moral failure.  We are in the midst of a revolution and we don’t even know it (refer to The Peloponnesian War, 3.82).

In closeing I would only say that I have enjoyed participating in this very worthwhile and timely discussion.  I remain a convinced Clausewitzian in terms of strategic theory and a Southern small town conservative by political inclination.  Having lived in Europe since 1984, first as a military intelligence officer in Berlin and later as a private businessman and finally educator in Portugal, I’ve seen how other systems work, both their strengths and weaknesses.  Distance and isolation often provide clarity, or at least a different perspective, which I hope I have been able to state clearly.

I do recommend one article which I think particularly important, that being Hew Strachan’s Strategy and the Limitation of War which is available on the net.

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Clausewitz was not afraid to state the bleedingly obvious. In Book 8 of On War, he wrote that war’s most dangerous feature is “its tendency toward the extreme, and of the whole chain of unknown possibilities which would follow”.

“Well of course,” you might exclaim. “Everyone knows that!”

But do we really “know that”? Like a vicious dog that slips its lead and savages a young child, war results in chaos, carnage and unanticipated consequences which can be felt decades, even centuries, later. In large part, 20th century history was about war “untrammelled by any conventional restraints, broken loose in all its elemental fury”.

Yet for something that’s so obvious, it’s staggering that time and time again, political leaders and military commanders go blithely to war without even, as Clausewitz suggests, “first being clear” about ends, ways and means. With a handful of notable exceptions, politicians and generals continue to believe that wars can be won quick and dirty. Perhaps this is why they’re attracted to false but seductive theories – like blitzkrieg, strategic bombing, and the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) – which promise that, in the right hands, war can be a precise instrument of policy.

In Book 8, Clausewitz seems to argue for moderation in war-making. To be useful, war must be controlled – prevented from escalating into absolute war. The vicious dog, when fenced inside the backyard or held firm on a lead, has its uses – as a guard dog for instance. But if the dog escapes from the yard or slips its lead, all hell breaks loose and its rampage can be ended only with great difficulty and after immense cost.

According to Clausewitz, one way to ‘control’ war is to recognize that it has many varieties, and that it is valid to fight “minimal wars” where the objectives are limited, e.g., wars which “consist in merely threatening the enemy, with negotiations held in reserve”. Another way is to match ways and means to ends, to “act on the principle of using no greater force, and setting…no greater military aim, than would be sufficient for the achievement of [the] political purpose”.

Then there is the idea of subordinating military objectives to political aims – keeping the military on a tight leash. This is one of the big ideas in On War, but it is an imperfect way of achieving control, as it assumes that politicians will be more cautious and less bloodthirsty than their military chiefs. This has often proved not to be the case.

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Clausewitz served a dynasty renowned for enlightened manpower management (“Dogs! Do you want to live forever?”) and cutting edge political agitation (“My people and I have come to an agreement which satisfied us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.”). However, this passage from On War may have given even the avant-garde Hohenzollerns pause:

The system of requisitioning, and the enormous growth of armies resulting from it and from universal conscription, the employment of militia – all of those run in the same direction when viewed from the standpoint of the older, narrower military system and that also leads to the calling out of the home guard and arming the people.

The innovations first mentioned were the natural, inevitable consequences of the breaking down of barriers. They added so immensely to the strength of the side that first employed them that the opponent was carried along and had to follow suite. That will also hold true of the people’s war. Any nation that uses it intelligently will, as a rule, gain some superiority over those who disdain its use…

[...]

By its very nature, such scattered resistance will not lend itself to major actions, closely compressed in time and space. It’s effect is like that of the process of evaporation: it depends upon how much surface is exposed. The greater the surface and the area of contact between it and the enemy forces, the thinner the later have to spread, the greater the effect of the general uprising. Like smoldering embers, it consumes the basic foundations of the enemy forces. Since it needs to time to be effective, a state of tension will develop while the two elements interact. This tension will either gradually relax, if the insurgency is suppressed in some places and slowly burns itself out in others, or else it will build up to a crisis: a general conflagration closes in on the enemy, driving him out of the country before he is faced with total destruction…To be realistic, one must therefore think of a general insurrection within the framework of a war conducted by the regular army, and coordinated in one all-encompassing plan.

Clausewitz’s temerity, remarkable for an era where Prussia danced to the tune of the Concert of Europe, was echoed by Thomas Jefferson, a minor Clausewitz contemporary who was the political leader of the reactionary agrarian Republicans in the peripheral United States of America:

Uncertain as we must ever be of the particular point in our circumference where an enemy may choose to invade us, the only force which can be ready at every point and competent to oppose them, is the body of neighboring citizens…On these, collected from the parts most convenient, in numbers proportioned to the invading foe, it is best to rely, not only to meet the first attack, but if it threatens to be permanent, to maintain the defence until regulars may be engaged to relieve them.

While the prevailing wind of legitimist Europe was in the direction of disarming the population, the United States, at least on paper, was dedicated to the proposition that every citizen should possess a military grade firearm and military training:

That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia, by the Captain or Commanding Officer of the company, within whose bounds such citizen shall reside, and that within twelve months after the passing of this Act. And it shall at all time hereafter be the duty of every such Captain or Commanding Officer of a company, to enroll every such citizen as aforesaid, and also those who shall, from time to time, arrive at the age of 18 years, or being at the age of 18 years, and under the age of 45 years (except as before excepted) shall come to reside within his bounds; and shall without delay notify such citizen of the said enrollment, by the proper non-commissioned Officer of the company, by whom such notice may be proved. That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack…after five years from the passing of this Act, all muskets from arming the militia as is herein required, shall be of bores sufficient for balls of the eighteenth part of a pound…

[...]

X. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the brigade inspector, to attend the regimental and battalion meeting of the militia composing their several brigades, during the time of their being under arms, to inspect their arms, ammunition and accoutrements; superintend their exercise and maneuvres…

Chapter 26 of Book VI is one of the most contemporary passages in On War. In anticipating a battlefield that was broader and deeper than the narrow front of the Buonapartist battlefield, Clausewitz anticipated a battlefield that could extend over miles and miles until it could extend from the English channel to the Swiss border or from Leningrad to the Caucasus. He anticipated a battle that could extend into all three dimensions and encompass every man, woman, and child of each combatant nation. He anticipated unrestricted warfare:

The expansion of the domain of warfare is a necessary consequence of the ever-expanding scope of human activity, and the two are intertwined. Mankind’s understanding of this phenomenon has always lagged behind the phenomenon itself…up to now most people involved in warfare considered all the non-military domains where they were as being accessories to serve military needs. The narrowness of their field of vision and their way of thinking restricted the development of the battlefield and changes in strategy and tactics to within one domain. From…the massive bombing of Dresden and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, inflicting countless civilian casualties in the pursuit of absolute military victory; to the strategic propositions of “massive retaliation” and “mutually assured destruction;” none of these [ideas about war] broke this mold.

It is now time to correct this mistaken trend. The great fusion of technologies is impelling the domains of politics, economics, the military, culture, diplomacy, and religion to overlap each other. The connection points are ready, and the trend towards the merging of the various domains is very clear…All of these things are rendering more and more obsolete the idea of confining warfare to the military domain and of using the number of casualties as a means of [measuring] the intensity of a war. Warfare is now escaping from the boundaries of bloody massacre, and exhibiting a trend towards low casualties, or even none at all, and yet high intensity. This is information warfare, financial warfare, trade warfare, and other entirely new forms of war, new areas opened up in the domain of warfare. In this sense, there is now no domain which warfare cannot use, and there is almost no domain which does not have warfare’s offensive pattern.

- Col. Qiao Liang, PLA, and Col. Wang Xiangsui, PLA, Unrestricted Warfare

In a world where traditional Great Power war is discouraged, Clausewitz’s extrapolation of the idea of the People in Arms from contemporaneous conflicts in Spain, Russia, the Tyrol, and Prussia is more important that it was at the time On War was written. In positioning the People in Arms as a vital part of communal defense, Clausewitz reinforces the major theme of Book VI: that defense is simply the stronger form of war. The argument that unrestricted warfare possesses an inevitable ascendancy over past “generations” of warfare is one an engineer in the army of Charles VIII could have made about artillery or that Douhet made about the bomber: that offense has forever transcended defense. However, while the pendulum swings towards the offense, it inevitably swings back towards the defense all the more strongly. The trace italliene, made out of piled dirt, put a stop to the ambitions of Charles. The bomber did not always get through. Neither will the unrestricted warrior.

A People in Arms doesn’t win by density or ubiquity. It wins by being an “army in being”. The unrestricted warrior must pause to consider what complications a People in Arms introduces into his sinister plans. To him, the People in Arms:

[S]hould be nebulous and elusive; its resistance should never materialize as a concrete body, otherwise the enemy can direct sufficient force at its core [and] crush it…

With the People in Arms looming just over the horizon, with the possibility that it’s leading elements could descend at any moment, uncertainty is introduced into the equation. While the entrepreneur of war accepts some risk as an inevitable part of his endeavor, he prefers to eliminate as much risk as possible. It’s not the People in Arm’s job to stop the terrorist in a miniature battle of decision:

They are not supposed to pulverize the core but to nibble at the shell and around the edges. They are meant to operate in areas just outside the theater of war – where the invader will not appear in strength – in order to deny him those areas altogether. Thunder clouds of this type should build up all around the invader the further he advances…The flames will spread like a brush fire, until they reach the area in which the enemy is based, threatening his lines of communication and his very existence.

However, this force shouldn’t be overestimated:

One need not hold an exaggerated faith in the power of a general uprising, nor consider it an inexhaustible, unconquerable force, which an army cannot hope to stop any more than man can command the wind or the rain – in short, one need not base one’s judgment on patriotic broadsides in order to admit that peasants in arms will not let themselves be swept along like a platoon of soldiers.

The “peasants” should serve the role that Jefferson proposed: “not only to meet the first attack, but if it threatens to be permanent, to maintain the defence until regulars may be engaged to relieve them”.

This is where insurgents should build up larger units, better organized, with parties of regulars that will make them look like a proper army and enable them to tackle larger operations.

Arms aren’t sufficient to be the security of a free state. The People in Arms must also be well-regulated in training and discipline, not to mention civic vigor.

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There are strategic attacks which have led directly to peace, but these are the minority.  Most of them only lead up the point where their remaining strength is just enough to maintain a defense and wait for peace.  Beyond that point the scale turns and the reaction follows with a force that is usually much stronger than that of the original attack.  Since the object of the attack is possession of the enemy’s territory, it follows that the advance will continue until the attacker’s superiority is exhausted; it is this that drives the offensive on towards its goal and can easily drive it further.  If we remember how many factors contribute to an equation of forces, we will understand how difficult it is in some cases to determine which side has the upper hand.  Often it is entirely a matter of the imagination.

Chapter 5

It is not possible in every war for the victor to overthrow his enemy completely.  Often even victory has a culminating point.  this has been ampy demonstrated bz experience.  Because the matter is particularly important in military theory and forms the keystone for most plans of campaign, and because its surface is distorted by apparent  contradictions, like the dazzling effect of brilliant colors, we shall examine it more closely and seek out its inner logic.

Victory normally results from the superiority of one side; from a greater aggregate of physical and psychological strength.  This superiority is certainly augmented by the victory, otherwise it would not be so coveted or command so high a price.  That is an automatic consequence of victory itself.  Its effects exert a similar influence, but only up to a point.  That point may be reached quickly – at times so quickly that the total consequences of a victorious battle may not be limited to an increase in psychological superiority alone.

Chapter 22

This concept of the “culminating point” was later developed by Aleksandre Svechin in his Strategy which is imo the best development of the theory behind operational art we have.  As to the actual use of the concept it has much to do with whether the military aim is following a strategy of destruction or one of attrition.  The example of the Korean War (1950-53) offers an interesting subject of analysis in this regard.

The initial North Korean attack was very much a strategy of destruction, with their aim being the complete overthrow of the South Korean government in a quick campaign, overrunning the entire southern half of the peninsula before the US had time to react.  The North Koreans had the US/ROK (Republic of Korea) forces isolated on a narrow perimeter around the city of Pusan, when General MacArthur landed the 1st Marine Division at Inchon under very tricky tidal conditions, it was quickly followed by the US 7th Infantry Division and the rest is history.  The North Korean front collapsed and the US/ROK/UN forces advanced past the former boundary after recapturing Seoul and pushing the remnants of the North Korean army north towards the Yalu.  Here we have a replay of the same strategy of destruction, with MacArthur now going for the knock out blow and the occupation of all of Korea, just as Kim Il Sung had done before him.  As with the North Koreans, the cumlinating point of the advance was past and with the advent of active Chinese participation in the war both the 8th Army on the left and X Corps on the right (MacArthur’s forces had to operate separately due to terrain) had to retreat under great pressure.

Now it was the turn of the Chinese to overshoot the cumlinating point and they did south of Seoul after an advance that lasted two months.  In the meantime, a new commander, Matthew Ridgway took over from Walton Walker who had been killed in a traffic accident.  Ridgway, took over command of all ground operations in Korea.  Ridgway has always been one of my heroes btw, perhaps the most underrated commander in US history.

Ridgway understood perhaps better than MacArthur and certainly better than many of the politicians in Washington the nature of the war that they were involved in.  He understood that Korea was a limited war and would require a strategy of attrition to win.  This is what he in fact implimented with limited operations (for instand “Operation Ripper” – notice also the lack of euphemistic and self-deluding propaganda in choosing the names of operations) which built on sequential success and methodically drove the Communists north that is until an armistice was signed in July 1953.  Ridgway had turned over command in May 1952 and there were no significant advances after that date.

Ridgway was able to see his war as whole, was not mired in tactics or overawed by technical capability, rather he saw tactics as providing the basis for operational maneuver which in turn would provide the military aim supporting the limited political purpose, essentially the maintainance of the previous division of Korea with the North Koreans back on their side of the border far the worse for wear.

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On War is two centuries old, its author admitting that it is unfinished. It is a difficult book to read. Some sections are long and detailed, others are concise summaries, and yet others have the look of notes to be expanded.

Being two centuries old, On War treats the war of the early eighteenth century and the technologies then in use. We’ve come a long way since then: no more carefully formed-up marches into cannon fire. No more elaborate uniforms for battle. We can see through the dark of night and launch missiles that find their targets largely on their own.

Clausewitz’s logic is not fully worked out. His detailed exegeses of defense and attack in books six and seven can stand on their own, but their connection to his generalizations are sketchy. (Although I suspect, as another commentator concluded, that his generalizations would not have been possible without his exhaustive considerations of attack and defense.) Most importantly, he states that his central principle is

War is the continuation of policy with other means.

but he neither shows how it follows from the rest of the book nor gives much of an explanation of how to apply it.

So we might be justified in jettisoning this period piece as a curiosity of its times. But it is considered a classic and is taught to young soldiers. Translations are regularly refreshed. There must be reasons for this.

A surprising number of Clausewitz’s specific observations of tactics still hold. It can even be argued that he anticipated guerrilla insurgencies, which we tend to believe are very modern phenomena. Other examples have been cited by others in the symposium; this is not my area of expertise.

Some aspects of war, of course, are timeless. It’s possible that among our not-quite-human ancestors, some stood out in group conflicts as having coup d’oeil, although they certainly didn’t call it that. And some of those aspects are not confined to war. Did the leaders of the first bands to move northeast out of Africa have the coup d’oeil to recognize that a new start was needed, whether because of conflicts with other groups or resource exhaustion or a need to do a new thing? And we are familiar with Clausewitz’s friction, which besets all attempts to make something happen.

Clausewitz himself said that the book is not prescriptive, that war cannot be solved as a mathematical equation. This is, in itself, an important generalization, observation and prescription about war. War has its own logic, he says, and it will get away from the policy-makers who believe they can use it to reach their ends. It will even get away from the professional military and collapse into savagery if they are not careful.

Such a mixed bag. How, then, shall we read On War?

On War is a book to argue with, to test its observations and generalizations against our situation and vice versa. It is not a guidebook (as Clausewitz is careful to say), but a checklist, but certainly not a checklist of the kind that pilots use before cranking up the engine.

Clausewitz argues with himself, and, especially given the differences between his time and ours, would expect nothing less from us. His own internal arguments and statements of limitation themselves are clues to what we need to ask. How much of what he has to say is still relevant? Under what circumstances might that work? If statesmen and generals ignore his advice, what does that indicate? What is victory and what is tactical success?

Clausewitz developed the major themes of war and found many nuggets of wisdom along the way. War is a complex enough human endeavor that none of that wisdom applies everywhere, at all times, but, because war is a human endeavor, much of that wisdom can also be applied elsewhere, with the same arguments and questions to work through.

This symposium has provided some of that discussion. There is no end to the discussion, and every reader will find different things in the book at different times.

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Clausewitz discussed my favorite topic, Military Genius, in Book I, and I wrote an amplification of that subject. In the intervening books, Books II-VII, Clausewitz scarcely touches on the subject, but briefly returns to it in Book VIII.

He devotes a long paragraph to the topic in Chapter 1 of Book VIII. I will intensively analyze that paragraph here.

On the one hand, military operations appear extremely simple. The greatest generals discuss them in the plainest and most forthright language; and to hear them tell how they control and manage that enormous, complex apparatus one would think the only thing that mattered was the speaker, and that the whole monstrosity called war came down, in fact, to a contest between individuals, a sort of duel. A few uncomplicated thoughts seem to account for their decisions–either that, or the explanation lies in various emotional states; and one is left with the impression that great commanders manage matters in an easy, confident and, one would almost think, off-hand sort of way. At the same time we can see how many factors are involved have to be weighed against each other; the vast, almost infinite distance there can be between a cause and its effect, and the countless ways in which these elements can be combined. (p. 577)

Rather, Clausewitz should have stated that successful military operations appear extremely simple. This is a function of the general intentionally keeping his thoughts, his will, his orders, and his commands, simple. Kotare already discussed this crucial topic, so I won’t belabor the point.

Clausewitz then tackles the utility of military theories.

The function of theory is to put all this in systematic order, clearly and comprehensively, and to trace each action to an adequate, compelling cause. When we contemplate all this, we are overcome by the fear that we shall be irresistibly dragged down to a state of dreary pedantry, and grub around in the underworld of ponderous concepts where no great commander, with his effortless coup d’oeil, was ever seen. If that were the best that theoretical studies could produce it would be better never to have attempted them in the first place. Men of genuine talent would despise them and they would quickly be forgotten. (p. 577-578)

The battlefields of history are littered with dead theories as much as battered bodies and lost dreams. The Close Order died during the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. French élan and the Cult of the Offensive died in the trenches of World War I. The New Look died on the Korean Peninsula. Massive Retaliation died during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Weinberger and Powell Doctrines are entombed at Ground Zero. Transformation, Shock and Awe, Rapid Decisive Operations, Network Centric Warfare, and the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) lay dead in Iraq. And so the deaths of doctrines continue even today.

Yet some theories that ought to be forgotten continue to persist. Airpower doctrine and the cult of strategic bombing persevere in spite of a rather appalling history. In World War II the negative results of American strategic bombing efforts were documented in the massive Strategic Bombing Survey. Strategic bombing in Vietnam failed to stop traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and only increased the resolve of the North Vietnamese (much as the German bombing of the United Kingdom only increased British resolve). In Operation Desert Storm, Strategic Bombing proved indecisive, requiring a ground invasion after weeks of continual bombardment. In Kosovo, a strategic bombing campaign that was to take two days required 78 days and much extra diplomacy, which rendered the verdict that strategic bombing is an indecisive method. In the 2006 Hizbollah War, Israel attempted a bombing blitz using the American war against Kosovo as a model, and again resulted in a negative outcome.

Why is this? I can only turn to one of the most fervent anti-Clauswitzians for the answer.

The only thing harder that getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
-Sir Basil Henry Lidell Hart

Today, General James Mattis is attempting to discredit Effects Based Operations (EBO). He might be successful in this undertaking, but I doubt it. It seems to me that, as with Airpower doctrine, EBO will persist in some guise or other because many powerful people are more comfortable with mental constructs as an end to themselves than they are with how those mental constructs affect the interactions between us, the enemy, and the moral, mental, and physical environments that war inhabits. (More can be read about the EBO issue here, courtesy of the always-excellent Small Wars Journal.)

When all is said and done, it really is the commander’s coup d’oeil, his ability to see things simply, to identify the whole business of war completely with himself, that is the essence of good generalship. Only if the mind works in this comprehensive fashion can it achieve the freedom it needs to dominate events and not be dominated by them.

Clausewitz returned to the concept of coup d’oeil. For the coup d’oeil is a personal attribute of a military leader, not a wondrous concept to create a miraculous victory. Clausewitz recognized that people fight and win wars, not mental constructs, and that is why he described the plainspoken, coup d’oeil-endowed commander as real conqueror, not a “ponderous concept.”

So, what is to be done about our ponderous concepts?

The solution is to return to the fundamentals of the art of war:

• Place emphasis on making great officers and soldiers
• Return to military history as the primary source of military doctrine.
• When making use of other sources of doctrine, use those sources to evolve current doctrine, not completely replace it. (No more Revolutions in Military Affairs!)
• Return to simple uncomplicated military thoughts. Eliminate jargon.
• Place emphasis on making our military adaptable.
• Ideas and technology must be considered to be secondary and tertiary in importance, behind people.

I will now retire with some final words on Clausewitz and the Roundtable.

I was personally excited to intensively study Clausewitz. As I have stated previously, Marine Corps doctrine draws from several sources. It is probably equal proportions of Clausewitz, Boyd, and the peculiar historical experiences of amphibious warfare and fighting so-called “small wars” in all corners of the globe. Reading Clausewitz with the rest of the Roundtable represented an opportunity to return to some of the original texts which animate the military doctrine that Marines fight by. This is an undertaking that I am glad I participated in.

As with all scholarly experiences, there are various salient points that I will remember from my reading of Clausewitz:

• Tension. With Clausewitz, all ideas are held in tension with other ideas. There are no pure principles that can be meaningfully examined on their own merits. Such principles must be always examined together with all connected concepts. An excellent example is the Clausewitzian concept of the Defense. To Clausewitz, there is no such thing as a pure defense, for even in defense there is resistance to the enemy. Thus the defense is intermingled with the offense. Other concepts held in tension are Absolute & Real War, Moral & Physical factors, Military & Political considerations, Strategic & Tactical, and the trinity of the Government, the Army, and the People.

• Clausewitzian Concepts. Various concepts that Clausewitz created have enriched the modern military vocabulary: Friction, Culminating Point, Center of Gravity, etc. Some of these concepts are so pervasive in Marine Corps doctrine that I often found it difficult to separate the Marine doctrines I’ve internalized and the Clausewitzian concepts I was studying.

• Military Genius. To me, the most interesting topic discussed by Clausewitz was that of what attributes we should seek in our military leaders. For me this is of crucial importance, as the military is my profession. Clausewitz supplied us with one of the most complete portraits of the ideal military genius ever written. Should we compare the leaders that our military institutions produce to the Clausewitzian ideal, we assuredly would be found desperately wanting. I can only work diligently to remedy any such institutional deficits.

Clausewitz has left me with a much-deepened understanding of the nature of war as a human endeavor. I can pay him no greater compliment.

Semper Fidelis, General von Clausewitz. You are well-remembered.

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Clausewitz’ theory culminates in the eighth book, on “War Plans”. While it is clear by the absence of chapters that Clausewitz had more to tell us, he does a great job of bringing everything full circle in order to demonstrate the application of the information in the other books. Clausewitz manages to pull all of the previous discussions together to demonstrate applied strategy, complete with supporting examples from recent history at the time of his writing. In my mind, however, the most valuable chapters of the book are those in which Clausewitz expands on his ideas about war’s relation to the Government, particularly section B of chapter 6.

Clausewitz tells us right away in book one that war is “… a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means” (p. 87). Here he discusses for the reader the idea that war is not an isolated occurrence that springs into being of its own accord, but rather a continuation or extension of a social process. Indeed, throughout “On War”, Clausewitz eludes to the relationship that warfare, and particularly the army must have with the government and the people. Here in this final book, however, he gives us a more intricate view of his thoughts on how war should be governed.

Because this relationship exists, Clausewitz asserts that strategy cannot be isolated from policy (p.605, 606). Further he recommends that, due to this relationship those who create policy be familiar with the concepts of war, though not necessarily career soldiers (p. 608). Clausewitz is confident that where this is the case, policy can only be advantageous to the strategist (p. 608). Clausewitz again gives us several historical examples to prove his point. If we were to examine US military history we would find several examples, both positive and negative, where Clausewitz’ theory holds.

The question is then, what can we, as citizens of a democracy take from this? As a voter, I’m inclined to choose leaders who have military experience. As Clausewitz points out, however, the best generals are not always good politicians, and an intelligent and capable policy maker can generally be taught the basics of military science (p.608). Some would argue that the ability to effectively handle military policy should not be a major priority in the choice of a leader. I disagree with this stance on the basis that war, as a political tool is vital, if for nothing else, for the preservation of the status quo in relation to other political entities. My suggestion then, based on what Clausewitz theorizes is that we must look to individuals who correctly understand the relationship between war and policy to lead our nation. We must choose leaders who are capable of making policy that does not hinder our ability to wage war when it is necessary.

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The original schedule for the Roundtable called for final submissions by the contributors this week.

However, based on communications I have received, I am granting one more week to contributors to place on the blog whatever they may still wish to post.

While all good things must end, they do not all have to end as originally scheduled.

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The condition for defeating an enemy presupposes great physical or moral superiority or else an extremely enterprising spirit, an inclination for serious risk.  When neither of these is present, the object of military activity can only be one of two kinds: seizing a small or larger piece of enemy territory, or holding one’s own until things take a better turn.  The latter is normally the aim of a defensive war. . .

The possibility that a military objective can be modified is one we have treated hitherto as deriving only from domestic arguments [Book VI Ch 8], and we have considered the nature of the political aim only to the extent that it has or does not have an active content.  From the point of view of war itself, no other ingredient of policy is relevant at all.  Still, as we argued in the second chapter of Book I (purpose and means in war), the nature of the political aim, the scale of the demands put forward by either side, and the total political situation of one’s own side, are all factors that in practice must decisively influence the conduct of war.

This post links this concept of “serious risk” with “surprise”, which is one of the keys to success in the tactical/operational attack, but then highlights the overall importance of the political purpose to which the military aim is subordinate.

Given the state of strategic thought among policy makers in the US of the 21st Century, this chapter calls for special attention.  Notice that Clausewitz writes “defeating an enemy presupposes great physical or moral superiority”. No mention of power here, rather given the nature of modern political communities (organized as nation states or not) requires mobilization of the attacker’s strength (physical and moral) to impose his will over the defender.  The attacker can’t simply expect to shell/bomb his way to victory (either be using Napoleon 12 pounders or B-52s), rather he must mobilize the resources of the state/community: the more expansive the political goals, the more intense the mobilization must be.  This is not so easily accomplished, which is why this quote is in the Chapter on Limited Aims.

Notice we have the two strategies implied here:  A strategy of destruction/annihilation (that is total overthrow of the enemy), and a strategy of attrition corresponding to both war waged to defeat an attacking  enemy and offensive war waged for limited political objectives.  The defeat of the enemy requires a strategy of destruction; or a very long attritional war, this usually including periods on the defensive, and requiring an even higher degree of mobilization.

A strategy of destruction requires superiority, or if the relationship is more evenly balanced, the chance for decisive effect exists should an enemy center of gravity be disrupted/overturned, but otherwise there is high probability of lurching into attrition . . .

There is a way out of this dilemma, since as Clausewitz writes, “or else an extremely enterprising spirit, an inclination for serious risk”. So how exactly would this spirit, this inclination for serious risk come into play?  It would come into play when the attacker is the weaker side, period.  For instance in September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and France and Britain promptly declared war.  In all a strategic failure for Germany, since they were now surrounded by stronger forces on two sides.  But the Germans didn’t expect the Western Allies to come to the aid of Poland and massed the Wehrmacht against the Poles (which had a not inconsiderable military in 1939).  On the other hand the French could have attacked and cleared most of the western bank of the Rhine, even captured the Ruhr, since the Germans had striped their Western front for Case White against Poland.

It is also important to consider that the war was not popular among the German people at the time, there had been no mass demonstrations for war as had been common across Europe in 1914.  People had expected this crisis to pass without bloodshed, just as the other crises of the late 1930s had.  The actual declaration of war had taken the people by surprise, since up to that point people had wanted to believe  Hitler’s declarations that he was interested in keeping the peace.  (Refer to William L Shirer’s This Is Berlin , especially his radio broadcasts of September 3 & 4, 1939, pp 75-78).  In other words, the risk taken by the German High Command was even greater when considering what the shock would have been had the French attacked.

In spite of being numerically inferior, and with a “grim” population (Shirer’s term), the Germans were able to defeat Poland and France totally, invade a series of smaller countries, and expel Britain from the continent within a period of 10 months.

Now consider another, very different, historical example: A very powerful state decides to overthrow a much weaker state, a state which is hopelessly isolated and unable to even control its own airspace, in fact, for the first time in military history the air offensive launched is not even considered as the opening of hostilities, that is the months-long aerial pounding is not considered an act of war.  (So history buffs when has that ever happened before?)

The attacker has very extensive goals: essentially the total overthrow of the defender along with the establishment of a new (attacker-friendly) political identity, domination of the national economy and natural resources, establishment of permanent military bases in which to project power throughout the region, a “government” consisting of attacker-friendly emigres, even a new flag . . .  All this with no or little actual mobilization (just using what’s “on the shelf”) let alone any sense of risk since the whole radical enterprise will be easy, a “cake walk”, although for domestic propaganda purposes the defender is portrayed as a “dangerous threat” (in this one respect the two historical examples are similar).

The lesson from our two quite different examples?  Most obviously, even the best military of a given period of time can  not achieve radical political purposes for which the means are inadequate or unsuited.  The radical nature of the attacker’s goals will only call upon additional resistance from the defender who only needs to deny the attacker his goal in order to win.  As the war grinds on the attacker’s original goals will give way to others which reflect more the character of the attacker’s political system, that is objective politics replaces subjective policy.

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Book VIII deals with war plans. It was one of the parts of On War that was in a nearly finished state when Clausewitz died. After transiting the vast lumber rooms of Book VI and Book VII, which have many good things amidst the clutter, the relatively finished nature of Book VIII is a relief and a pleasure.

In the introduction, in Chapter 1, Clausewitz tells us that the vast array of factors that must be considered in preparing a plan for war seem, in the hands of great generals, to be “extremely simple” and their decision-making appears to be “uncomplicated” and “off-hand”. This is an illusion. The men of talent in command of armies are really considering these factors, but not in a “dreary” and pedantic way, but by the interior assimilation of experience and learning that leads to swift and decisive coup d’oeil.

What can be the role of theory, then? It cannot provide formulas, but principles. It cannot show a solution, but mark a direction and help to avoid mistakes. Theory can “give the mind insight into the great mass of phenomena and of their relationships, then leave it free to rise into the higher realms of action. There the mind can use its innate talents to capacity … .” All of the theory that and principles that can be derived from Clausewitz’s book are only so many tools to help the innately talented military mind more quickly “seize on what is right and true”. But the book-learning cannot make a military genius, it can only help the naturally occurring genius to refine and sharpen his capability to analyze and act.

This ties in to a thread that runs throughout the book: The purpose of the book is to help provide professional formation for commanders, especially officers who may one day exercise supreme command. That is its target audience.

In Chapter 2, Clausewitz reprises the distinction between absolute war, and real war. The many factors that are in play in the real world push against any war escalating to the level of absolute war — though as Clausewitz says, he and his colleagues had seen with their own eyes how close war could come to the absolute, in the struggle against Bonaparte.

Clausewitz here states one of his most-quoted epigrams: “No one starts a war — or rather no one in his senses ought to do so — without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how intends to conduct it”. He goes on to say, in a sentence that is not so often quoted, “The former is its political purpose, the latter its operational objective”. He goes on to say further that the war’s political aim should “make its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational detail”.

A question which arises is this: Why, in history, does it seem that so many times the politico-military leadership embarking on a war has not been “in its senses” and has embarked on wars which lacked even the basic coherence that Clausewitz articulates as a minimal requirement? Why do the military effort and any coherent aims become detached, breaking a unity that should permeate the entire war? Why do leaders so often act in a way that is not sensible?

Clausewitz provoked a similar question earlier.

Now he, in part, resolves it.

Clausewitz describes the factors that prevent war from becoming absolute:

We must … be prepared to develop our concept of war as it ought to be fought, not on the basis of its pure definition, but by leaving room for every sort of extraneous matter. We must allow for natural inertia, for all the friction of its parts, for all the inconsistency, imprecision, and timidity of man; and finally, we must face the fact that war and its forms result from ideas, emotions, and conditions prevailing at the time … .

It this is the case, if we must admit that the origin and the form taken by a war are not the result of any ultimate resolution of the vast array of circumstances involved, but only of those features that happen to be dominant, it follows that war is dependent on the interplay of possibilities and probabilities, of good and bad luck, conditions in which strictly logical reasoning plays no part at all and is always apt to be most unsuitable and awkward intellectual tool. It follows too that war can be a matter of degree.

So, as is so often the case with Clausewitz, he has set up a contrast between an ideal type, and the messy reality. Ideally, there is a coherent political leadership, that sets an achievable and rational goal. Then, ideally, there is a commander of genius, possessing authority to act, and the experience, and insight and decisiveness to take in the whole picture, who arrive at a plan of campaign that drives toward an operational objective that will achieve the political purpose.

Clausewitz’s two main exemplars, Napoleon and Frederick, being rulers as well as commanders, combined both political and military command in one person. This certainly simplifies matters. These men approached the ideal.

(As an aside, the US Constitution makes the President the Commander in Chief, allowing a high degree of politico-military unity, if the President assumes and forcefully carries out the full responsibility of this role.)

But, history raises up a few mighty captains in the league of Frederick and Napoleon. It also rarely places in political command an astute and insightful ruler such as Tsar Alexander, who took up the political goal of destroying Napoleon’s power and control of Europe, and allowed a successful strategy that his commanders had only stumbled upon to play itself out.

More often, the political and military leadership is distracted and thrown off the narrow path to victory by the incoming tide of “extraneous matter” and they are led instead into making plans and decisions based on the “ideas, emotions, and conditions prevailing at the time” rather than a reasoned analysis, or even a well-formed intuition, about the proper and achievable political and military aims of a proposed war.

As Clausewitz famously wrote, in his discussion of friction, “everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.” There he was discussing friction in the actual execution of war, down to the smallest tactical detail of maneuvering a squadron of cavalry or a battery of guns, while under fire.

In Book VIII we see that there is a type of friction in play at the highest level as well. The wise statesman, the tough-minded and decisive commander, who will be clear in their minds what they intend to achieve by the war and how they intend to conduct it — it appears that they represent yet another ideal type, which is never fully reached, and only rarely approximated in practice.

So, the preparation of war plans is simplicity itself.

Yet, as with all such simplicity depicted by Clausewitz, it is an ideal that must always remain unattainable — but like Polaris, the pole-star which is also forever beyond our grasp, it points the political and military leaders in the direction they should be heading.

[There is much more to be said about Book VIII, but I will leave it at that.]

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If Sun Tzu is the Tao of War, then Carl von Clausewitz is its Te. Where Sun Tzu gave birth to generalship and strategy, Clausewitz gave military strategy shape and power. Where Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is Zen-like in its brevity, Clausewitz’s On War is profound in both its breadth and its depth – elucidating a far deeper understanding of the nuance of “genius” and strategy.

Many of Clausewitz’s ideas endure to this day: “center of gravity”, “culminating points”, etc. What is more striking is that his best ideas are also applicable – perhaps even more applicable – in the realm of “soft” power. While the attritionist in Clausewitz would not have approved of the logic of “The Surge”, he most certainly would understand its political (vice military) imperative.

I first encountered Clausewitz in 1992 as a young scientist at the Navy’s “Naval Ocean System Center”, while enrolled in the U.S. Naval War College’s Non-Resident Seminar program at the 32nd Street Naval Station. RADM(ret) Jack Shaw was my professor for “Joint Maritime Operations”, and led us on a “deep dive” into On War.

But I did not appreciate Clausewitz then as much as I do today, thanks to the courtesy of Lexington Green and the ChicagoBoyz – as well as the enormously insightful writings from my colleagues in this Roundtable. I can say unequivocally that this has been an intellectual adventure of the highest regard, and I am humbled to have been invited to be a passenger. I hope you, too, have enjoyed the ride.

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To me, book seven feels the most unfinished of all of Clausewitz’ writings. It is true that in discussing other ideas in other books, Clausewitz has already given us several points that might be contained in seven. Even so, more than the rest of the series, this book has the feel of an outline or draft to built on later.

Even though this may be the case, Clausewitz gives us the fundamentals of strategic attack. Essentially, Clausewitz tells us, seize and hold the initiative, assault through the enemy using fire and maneuver, and don’t over-extend. Also, choose objectives appropriately, and be mindful of the terrain. Of course, Clausewitz goes into some detail on each of these points, and where the overall theme is similar to ideas in early works, Clausewitz explains to us the nuances regarding application in the attack. Again, while some of the fine details have changed do to the progress of time and advances in technology, the overall ideas are still sound.

Clausewitz tells us first that the attacker must have the initiative. While this point seems self-evident, it does bear mentioning. Clausewitz wants us to realize that with out maintaining the drive, or controlling the where, when, and how of the battle, the attack will flounder and fail.

Next, Clausewitz tells us the key to success is to destroy the enemy using enveloping, or (preferably) flanking movements (p. 529, 530). I borrowed the statement in the introduction above from the Marine Corps (Locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver…) and while the statement in that case reflects tactics and not necessarily strategy, Clausewitz tells us that ultimately it translates well. He says the attacker must be able to out maneuver the defender in order to apply force at the most effective point.

Clausewitz makes his point about overextension somewhat more subtly, in Chapter twenty-two, He tells us, (though this point was touched on in earlier books,) that as the attacking army moves forward, it tends to both lose men and move further away from its base (p. 568-569). In this chapter, though, he goes further, warning the attacker away from pushing too far forward, and ending up in a situation where the army cannot be supported and consequently find it’s self not only losing momentum but fighting in a poorly formed defensive action.

Finally, Clausewitz discusses the choice of objective. While there are several finer points here, the idea is to attack objectives that further the over-all goal of the campaign. Anything else is of course a waste of strength, and counters the over-all initiative of the army. Related to this, Clausewitz also gives us advice on terrain, telling us to use it to our advantage, and avoid attacks in terrain that would impede the attacker’s maneuverability more than the defender.

So what are the implications of all this for us in the modern day? From a military standpoint, it’s fairly obvious. The concepts are still sound. I would argue though that these same concepts could be applied to any strategic situation where the actor is actively pursuing some end state. Whether it is a sport team trying to win a game, a business attempting to increase sales, or a grad student working toward his master’s, on some level, Clausewitz’ concepts of strategic attack can be applied. Perhaps we can rephrase the introduction for the civilian world as: be proactive, improvise and adapt to the situation at hand, using the best means possible to complete the task, and don’t take on too much at once. Choose the most efficient means to reach the goal, and try not to waste resources.

Perhaps MBAs should read Clausewitz.