Clausewitz Roundtable

Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: Clausewitz on Military Genius

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I am reading Clausewitz because I fight as a profession. It is therefore my duty to heed my obligation to society that I read and understand my craft. Clausewitz, whether one agrees with him or not, has shaped the doctrine of all modern state-owned militaries. The capstone doctrinal document of the Marines, MCDP 1: Warfighting, is laced with Clausewitzian thought and terminology. Ask any Marine lieutenant what Friction is. He almost certainly knows!

On my road to professionalism I have wondered what makes a person a genius at the military arts and sciences. Fortunately Clausewitz provided me the Third Chapter of Book One of On War, where he dissects military genius into its component parts and discusses them. In doing so he provides a great starting point to discuss the nature of military genius. What is military genius? Where does it come from? What kinds of people are military geniuses? Do we make geniuses, or are they born?

Here I will digest the chapter and provide my thoughts, as well as questions for the Round Table.

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Clausewitz, On War, Introductory Matter: The Continuation of Policy

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I heard the name Carl von Clausewitz many times during my education and career, but I only started to look into his writings a few years ago. The impetus for that was hearing “War is the continuation of policy by other means” and its variants a few too many times in a few too many contexts. I thought I had a use for it myself in something I was writing, but I wanted to find out what Clausewitz meant by it before I used it.

The poles of meaning attributed to that simple sentence seemed to be, on the one hand,

Politicians might do damn near anything. Make flamethrowers available in the US Congress, and they’ll probably use them.

And on the other,

War is a means to attaining a politically-defined result.

What I wanted to say was closer to the second. I found a compendium of quotes from his work in the Web, with some commentary attached was pleased to find that I was in line with Clausewitz’s meaning, at least as far as I could tell from that limited selection of quotes.

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Clausewitz, On War, Book 1 – My introduction, and comments on Chapter 1

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Knowing how to start one’s own contribution to this very worthwhile discussion is difficult. Beginning that discussion with Book 1 Chapter 1 of Clausewitz’s On War adds to a very difficult situation indeed. One could write a book about this first chapter and in fact people have.

Consider that I am a Clausewitzian strategic theorist, this being a simple label of identification, not intended to be any sort of indication of special expertise. I would rather let my words speak for themselves. To start I would point out that Clausewitz deals with different types of theory in On War. The specific branch of theory I refer to here is “strategic theory”, defined as that kind of social theory concerned with the exercise of power – including potentially the use of organized force – to achieve the goals of one political community in conflict with others.

In my view it is in Book 1, Chapter 1 where the general theory is most clearly explained, although elements of it are scattered throughout the work, especially in Books 6 and 8. So what is the general theory and how does it differ from the other two types of Clausewitzian strategic theory I’ve mentioned?

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Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: 21th Century Global Challenges to 19th Century European’s Definitions

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(Note: I am a blog virgin, so excuse any errors in my blog manners or style.)

I assume that Clausewitz wanted generals (i.e., leaders of armies) and statesmen (i.e., leader of states with armies) to read “On War” so that they would have constructs and vocabulary with which to think and talk about undertaking a “war” in a systematic way. In Chapters 1 and 2 of Book 1, Clausewitz does much of this work by defining “What is War?” and describing its “Ends and Means”. Although Clausewitz’s definitions are clearly thought out and well stated, it seems to me that the 21th century’s global “war” experience presents some significant challenges to Clausewitz’s 19th century European definition.

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Clausewitz, On War, Introductory Matter: Empiricism, Clarity of Expression, Patterns not Systems, Utility

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I am happy to be reading On War again. I read excerpts in college, in Prof. Mearsheimer’s class “War and the Nation State”. I have only glanced at it in the years since. I have been carting this particular copy around from place to place for sixteen years. Why am I reading it?

Samuel Johnson, whose temperament was anything but martial, astutely observed: “Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.” So it is with me, and many of us war-haunted males, who have always been fascinated by these matters, since childhood. With such people, with advancing age, a pretense if not the actuality, of emotional maturity develops. The ongoing fascination with martial matters takes the form of an often ardent, book-based, interest in military history and military affairs — while perhaps denying or downplaying the deep-rooted underpinnings of this fascination, which go to the foundations of the man’s personality.

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