Archive for the 'Clausewitz Roundtable' Category

Nathan Bedford Forrest, an unlettered but practiced dealer in the market for human flesh, came to the study of war as an intelligent layman. He started as a private and rose to lieutenant general. Everything he learned about the art of war he learned on the job. This lack of formal military training freed him from some of the worst Jominian excesses of the Old Army’s officer corps (future president James Garfield, another general without professional military training, once observed “I declare that if this union goes down in blood and ruin, let it’s obituary read, “Died of West Point.”). Forrest summed up his hard-won knowledge in two memorable action hero catchphrases:

• The secret of victory was “get there first with the most men”

and

• “War is about fighting and fighting is about killing”

Killing is the essence of war as Book IV Clausewitz saw it. This made Book IV Clausewitz more popular with his immediate successors than Book I Clausewitz, who spouted (old school) liberal nonsense like “war is the continuation of policy by other means” which sounded suspiciously like chaining the unrivaled genius of Ludendorff and his many chins to the petty whims of Kaiser Bill, Bethmann-Hollweg, and all those commie Social Democrats in the Reichstag. But, with Book IV Clausewitz, here was a writer any red blooded Prussian with an iron backbone could respect. Seek out the decisive battle. Collide head to head with the enemy. Kill more of his men than he kills of yours. Drive him before you in relentless pursuit until victory falls into your righteous iron fist. Here was a prophet of war that any warrior would appreciate. You’ve never read Book IV until you’ve read it in the original Klingon.
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Book VII features Clausewitz’s famous analysis of the “culminating point of the attack”.

I have little to add to the many analyses of this point, or to Clausewitz’s own words.

I did note that in places his discussion reminded me of our current American misadventure in Iraq.

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Book VI, the longest book in On War, is entitled “Defense”. It is also the one which is most closely tied to the specific military practices of Clausewitz’s day. Hence, it contains the most material which has become outdated, and is usually skipped over by people who study and teach from On War in our era.

I decided to read it anyway. There is, in fact, a lot of valuable material in Book VI.

The chapter shows the amount of intense, hard thought that Clausewitz applied to the various types of defensive warfare, which must have been derived from both personal experience, discussion with other soldiers, and reading. In its day, portions of it could probably have been used as a manual for commanders who were going to be fighting on the strategic defensive, and for their opponents who were going to have to dislodge and defeat them. That function no longer pertains, due to greatly changed conditions. Therefore, much of Book VI can at best be suggestive in its relation to current practice.

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Book six gives us Clausewitz’ theory of the defense. While he is particularly verbose in this book, Clausewitz lays out for us some timeless concepts that can and should be applied as the basis to any defensive strategy. First, Clausewitz gives us the purpose of the defense. Essentially it is to gain time for the commander to seek a battle that is more advantageous to him (p.370, 380). He makes it clear that the defense is merely a means to an end, a method of war, and not the end result in its self (p.392). Read the rest of this entry »

Clausewitz considered that “people’s war”, or popular resistance to an invader, is one of several factors that makes defence the stronger form of war. As the enemy advances deeper into another country, his forces become dispersed, his formations become depleted, and his supply lines become stretched. The more spread out the enemy is, the more vulnerable he becomes to guerrilla attacks by “militias and bands of armed civilians”.

During the Napoleonic wars, people’s war was regarded as a new phenomenon; its potency had been demonstrated in Spain and Russia where guerrilla resistance played a significant part in wearing down the French invaders. But chapter 26, which analyzes people’s war, shows that Clausewitz was struggling to come to terms with its potential. It’s clear that he viewed guerrilla activity as auxiliary to the action of the army, perhaps analogous to the light troops who in battle skirmished to the front and on the flanks of heavy infantry formations…

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Carl von Clausewitz concludes his magnum opus with a return to the beginning – but from a far larger perspective. While he began Book I asserting that “[w]ar is nothing but a duel on a larger scale,” he begins Book VIII (“War Plans”) by “… deal[ing] with the problem of war as a whole… cover[ing] its dominant, its most important aspect: pure strategy … the central point on which all other threads converge.”
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There are many points one could make in connection with Book VIII of On War.  As I mentioned in my first post on this roundtable, Clausewitz deals with different types of theory in the book.  I have mentioned the general theory, Clausewitz’s art of Napoleonic warfare, and his theory of politics/political development.  This last type could be simply described as his concept of cohesion, since it is the different types of cohesion present which indicate the type of political community we are dealing with.  For this discussion I  rely on Chapter 3B of Book VIII particularly, in addition to his essay titled “Agitation”, as well as other parts of On War.

This concept has received next to no treatment in Clausewitz literature, or in any treatment of On War, outside of a paper I posted last year on the DNI site.  The concept indicates the “cutting edge” nature of Clausewitz in strategic theory even today.

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Book five was perhaps the most difficult read for me thus far. Clausewitz appears to pause here in his flow of ideas to concentrate on the apocrypha of war. It is in these pages that he gives us his view of how the supporting operations should be conducted, as well as considerations for placement, movement, and troop strengths. Application of most of Clausewitz’ points to modern day is extremely difficult and in most cases takes a good deal of abstract thinking. Read the rest of this entry »

In Book VII, Clausewitz returns to his dialectical logic in framing the nature of “The Attack” by contrasting it with the previous book, “Defense”. He begins Book VII by discriminating between defense (whose strengths “…may not be insurmountable, [but] the cost of surmounting them may be disproportionate.”) and offense.
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Clausewitz starts off this chapter with an extension of the range of resources that the defender has at his disposal, these in addition to those listed in Chapter 3 as being responsible for defensive strategic success.  This includes the militia (which exhibits distinct advantages and limitations as compared to the army; fortresses; the people (as in assisting the army operating on their own territory) which can be armed and become yet another source of power – the people in arms; and finally the defender’s allies.  In describing this last source of the defender’s power, Clausewitz provides his view of the balance of power in Europe:

If we consider the community of states in Europe today, we do not find a systematically regulated balance of power and of spheres of influence, which does not exist and whose existence has often been justifiably denied; but we certainly do find major and minor interests of states and peoples interwoven in the most varied and changeable manner.  Each point of intersection binds and serves to balance one set of interests against the other.  The broad effect of all these fixed points is obviously to give a certain amount of cohesion to the whole.  Any change will necessarily weaken this cohesion to some degree.  The sum total of relations between states thus serves to maintain the stability of the whole rather than to promote change; at least, that tendency will generally be present.

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“God is on the side of the biggest battalions”, or so the maxim goes. It was an article of faith for Clausewitz, who wrote that

“The best strategy is always to be very strong; first in general, and then at the decisive point….there is no higher and simpler law of strategy than that of keeping one’s forces concentrated.”

This quote brings together three ideas that are key to understanding Clausewitz’s view of how battles are won: concentrating superior numbers at decisive points.

So, did Clausewitz believe that only big armies have a hope in hell on the battlefield? Read the rest of this entry »

Given that there is a lot of material in Book VI worthy of comment, I’ll start with this chapter since it allows us to provide something of a recap of what we have read in On War so far.  On page 90 of his book, Clausewitz – Philosopher of War, Raymond Aron hesitatingly reduces a portion of the general theory to three conceptual pairs: moral/physical, means/end, and attack/defense.  The first refers to the essence of war itself – the clashing wills – which leads to the second pair.  The decision to go to war starts with the defense since the aggressor is more than happy to get what he wants by simply taking it (see Bk VI/Ch 5) .  Attack without resistance is not war, but something else as Clausewitz indicated in Bk I/Ch 1.  Means/ends can be further linked with two additional pairs: military aim/political purpose and strategy/tactics.  Taken together these conceptual pairs constitute the “intelligent” aspects of the general theory, that is leaving out chance, friction (in all its forms) and “objective” Politik.  So with the intelligent aspects, the aspects not responding to intelligence and the various operating principles we come once again to the whole of the general theory, with each concept only understandable in terms of the whole (that is in terms of the general theory).

In reading Chapter 3, which is quite short, we see that Clausewitz mentions all three of the initial conceptual pairs that Aron mentions and expands our understanding of the whole in some significant ways.

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Chapter Four of Book V of On War is titled “Relationship between the Branches of the Service.” This chapter, however, doesn’t really seek to explain the relationship between the branches (infantry, artillery, and cavalry). Instead, it seeks to explain the relative strengths and weaknesses of the three branches. The specific relationships between the branches are left for us to intuit.

Clausewitz explains the strengths right off:

“The engagement consists of two essentially different components: the destructive power of firearms, and hand-to-hand, or individual, combat. The latter in turn can be used for either attack or defense (words here employed in an absolute sense, for we are speaking in the broadest of terms). Artillery is effective only through the destructive power of fire; cavalry only by way of individual combat; infantry by both these means.

In hand-to-hand fighting, the essence of defense is to stand fast, as it were, rooted to the ground; whereas movement is the essence of attack. Cavalry is totally incapable of the former, but preeminent in the latter, so is suited only to attack. Infantry is best at standing fast, but does not lack some capacity to move.” (p.285)

Clausewitz then enumerates his thoughts on the combat arms:

“1. Infantry is the most independent of the arms.
2. Artillery has no independence.
3. When one or more arms are combined, infantry is the most important of them.
4. Cavalry is the most easily dispensable arm.
5. A combination of all three confers the greatest strength.” (p.286)

And so Clausewitz starts beating around the Combined Arms bush.

But what is Combined Arms?
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At first glance, from a general theory perspective, Book V doesn’t offer much, focusing as it does overwhelmingly on the tactical, that is the level of warfare most open to change, most influenced by the epoch in question.  Still there are various points which from a general theory perspective are worth noting.

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In Book 4 Clausewitz puts battle at the heart of war…

“since the essence of war is fighting, and since the battle is the fight of the main force, the battle must always be considered as the true centre of gravity of the war.” [4.9]

There’s little doubt that “the battle” – the clash of armies at a particular site over a limited time period – was the center of gravity during the Napoleonic Wars. But this idea doesn’t hold for modern conflicts. Battle, where it occurs, may be the most dramatic event, but it is not the center of gravity.

What does “center of gravity” mean? I take it to mean the situation where the outcome of the campaign or war is ultimately decided. In the First and Second World Wars, the center of gravity was the use of resources. The nations that won were those that most effectively mobilized, coordinated and utilized their human and material resources.

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Our long dead Prussian friend understood that tactics change with time and technology, and that strategies remain similar even if the metaphors change.  When he tells us that strength of will is more to make a change in strategy versus tactics) p. 178) he recognizes that which is the parasitic force of decision. He identifies in one paragraph they “why” of how cyber warfare has existed and been known for nearly four decades yet has no mind share among generals. Only recently has the public picked up on the issues and the media reported incidents closely aligned with cyber warfare. Read the rest of this entry »

The most ambitious of all eight books in On War, Book VI is more than triple the length of the other books – equally any three of them in sheer volume. In this book, entitled simply “Defense”, Clausewitz offers practical lessons for the 19th century warfighter: operations on a flank (with diagrams), defensive mountain warfare, entrenched positions, and – prescient of France’s Maginot Line of the early 20th century – the importance of a network of interlaced cordons to a nation’s security.
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Going into book IV I expected to receive a lesson in general tactics. This is not the case. Instead what Clausewitz has in store for us is a discussion of the engagement as an extension of strategy, a sort of demonstration of applied theory. Modernists and critics would be quick to site this book when attempting to prove Clausewitz’ irrelevance to current warfare, citing ideas that may appear at first glance to be relics of earlier generations of warfare.

Clausewitz sites rough terrain and night as being two factors that can impede military operations to the point of bringing them to a halt. In the case of night operations especially, Clausewitz shows great concern, stating that only in the most extreme cases are operations at night warranted due to the lack of control that brings with it a high probability of failure (p. 273-275). Read the rest of this entry »

Book V is a case study of the armed forces, not of their employment in battle, but rather how they are organized and their “relationship to country and terrain”. It rather like describing how each chess piece is allowed to move on the board, less about how it is used in actual play.

Book V, like all of On War, has many points of interest. In particular, it is a good example of Clausewitz’s own method of analysis, and thinking through how the various elements of the “modern” military forces of his day actually worked. This approach could be fruitfully emulated by application to modern militaries. However, since it is a “drill down” on armies as they were in Clausewitz’s own day it contains a relatively lower proportion of “high grade ore” than some of the other books, particularly the refined material in Book I.

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I have to apologize to my fellow roundtable participants for my lengthy absence. I will endeavor to catch up, starting with this post.

My background is in 20th century diplomatic and economic history, with an emphasis in the Cold War and related Soviet Studies. Our former Communist adversaries, especially the doctrinaire ideologues among them, were fond of employing a term “correlation of forces” to describe the geopolitical situation as being favorable or unfavorable to some proposed course of action. While it was woodenly uttered Marxist jargon, “correlation of forces” was far from meaningless as a phrase. It was a reminder in that grotesquely ideological world that it was important in affairs of state to calculate rationally. Even the old monster Joseph Stalin was known to bark at his henchmen” This is not a propaganda meeting!” when matters of war were being discussed in council.

Clausewitz devoted Book III of On War to matters of general strategy and he has an important section on the nature of calculation ” Possible Engagements are to be Regarded as Real Ones because of Their Consequences“:

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