Clausewitz Roundtable

Strategy is a very misunderstood concept. Over the last eight years the United States has implemented a number of various strategies which were more the nature of public relations campaigns, attempts to give the impression of government design on what have been commonly seen as disorganized chaos following mismanaged policy adventures. Too often it seems that ”žstrategy“ is used interchangeably with ”žintentions“, in order to give the impression that by calling one’s stated intentions a ”žstrategy“ it magically increases the likelihood of success.

Reading Clausewitz’s On War during what has been arguably a nadir of strategic thought’s influence on US policy formulation could be seen as depressing. At the same time our current situation is comprehensible in Clausewitzian terms. As Americans (addressing the American contributors to this roundtable) it may be particularly difficult for us to understand (let alone face) the dysfunctions of our own domestic political system (dysfunctional policy sharing the character of those who have implemented and supported it) along with the assumptions of our own strategic culture.

Clausewitz offers a different perspective and a theory-based methodology – in effect a conceptual yardstick – with which to look at our own situation and compare it to other situations at present or in the past. There are no guarantees that this will lead to better policy however, or to more practical and farsighted statesmen, even the best strategic theory could not save Prussia which no longer exists as a political entity.

So, a bit of an introduction as to the importance of strategic theory but also its obvious limitations. Another obvious limitation is lack of understanding. Book III offers a good point of departure for a quick review of what Clausewitz is up to here.

Read more

One theme of Book III is the contrast between strategy, a world of uncertainty, and tactics, a world of mechanistic certainty. This contrast is most striking in the contrast between the moral and the material. Military theorists like von Bulow and Jomini, the immediate predecessors of Clausewitz, attempted to take the deterministic approach that met with some success in tactics and use it to reduce strategy to a “war by algebra”, amputating that inconvenient and unquantifiable moral dimension:

It is even more ridiculous when we consider that these very critics usually exclude all moral qualities from strategic theory, and only examine material factors. They reduce everything to a few mathematical formulas of equilibrium and superiority, of time and space, limited by a few angles and lines. If that were really all, it would hardly provide a scientific problems for a schoolboy.
 
But we should admit that scientific formulas and problems are not under discussion. The relations between material factors are all very simple; what is more difficult to grasp are the intellectual factors involved. Even so, it is only in the highest realms of strategy that intellectual complications and extreme diversity of factors and relationships occur. At that level there is little or no difference between strategy, policy, and statesmanship, and there, as we have already said, their influence is greater in question of quantity and scale than in forms of execution. While execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, than intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.

Read more

Clausewitz set forth the nature of war, in Book I. What we saw there was that the nature of war can only be incompletely known, by a series of analogies. It is deepest nature cannot ever be realized in practice, but only tends toward “Absolute War”. In Book II Clausewitz discussed the theory of war, disclosing that there is no actual theory, but only a method of study, which is to be internalized by the commander. In Book III, “On Strategy in General” he tells that strategy is at bottom simple, yet exceedingly difficult in practice, and devotes most of his discussion to telling us the things that other writers have erroneously believed to be true about strategy. So, to recap our journey so far, we have been told that (1) there is an inner logic to war — that never happens in reality, (2) the theory of war is induction and intuition and examples, but not a theory in any ordinary sense, and (3) strategy is simple as an idea, hard in practice, and not what most people think it is.

The pattern here is pretty clear. You expect Clausewitz to tell you something, but when he does, he takes most of it back, and he tells you that a lot of what matters is inarticulable. Clausewitz works not only by induction, and example, but also by indirection and paradox. Most of all, he works by analogy, to suggest the shape of something that cannot be explained to lay persons who have not experienced the stress of high command, the hardships of campaigning, the hazards and confusion of battle. Yet he is not trying to be difficult or clever. He is trying to show that what most smart people try to make war out to be is wrong, and why it is wrong. He wants to articulate a better understanding, so a superior practice of war can be undertaken, in place of the erroneous ideas and actions he sees all around. He would rather be difficult, or merely suggest something that cannot be said, than to say something that is actually false.

Read more

Chapter 6 of Book 3 is one of Clausewitz’s gems. He strikes that middle ground that he so often aims for and frequently misses, balancing the rational and nonrational, outlining the pitfalls and long reach of this quality.

My interest in Clausewitz goes beyond the military applications of his thought. My first substantive introduction to him was by a mentor who was partial to military thought (Sun Tzu as well) as a model for organizational strategy.

I’ve never suffered from a deficiency of boldness, but that is a mixed blessing for a woman; was more than is. I recall springing up a flight of stairs in a college dormitory not my own, whistling. I was feeling good. “Women who whistle, and hens that crow,” came the word from a suddenly appearing housemother. (Yes, it was that long ago!) My boldness extended a poisonous look.

Read more