Clausewitz in the Twenty-first Century -- The Most Timeless War Theorist

2015-11-20T16:49:23-05:00

For any Clausewitzians out there, I thought you might enjoy one of my old War College papers.

"Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst."[1]
—Carl von Clausewitz

Throughout the history of mankind, war has always been the ultimate achievement, the defining moment of civilizations, the rise and fall of kings and conquerors, and perhaps the downfall of humanity. For as long as man has waged war he has tried to understand how to wage it better than his adversary to ensure victory. From Herodotus and Thucydides to Brodie and Wholstetter man has recorded for himself, his generation, and posterity his theories on what war is, what it has become, and what it will be in the future. Of all the war theorists, Carl von Clausewitz has timelessly articulated the nature of war, and as such can provide the most lucid explanation of the nature and conduct of war in the twenty-first century.

Since the Napoleonic Wars of Clausewitz’s era, the characteristics and manner in which man wages war has changed dramatically. Tactics and strategy have been reshaped, rewritten, and relearned with each new revolutionary change in warfare, from the advent of minié balls to intercontinental ballistic missiles, from iron clad steamships to nuclear submarines, and from hot air observation balloons to stealth fighter aircraft. In the past two decades alone we have gone through a revolution in military affairs to effects based operations, from an objective force to modular transformation, and from a Cold War military structured to counter a Soviet threat in Western Europe to one focused and tailored to fighting a global war on terror. Despite all of the digital age technology, despite the space-based and cyber-enabled collaborative systems that provide access to information in nanoseconds, the nature of war in the twenty-first century will still be succinctly summed up as, “War is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means.”[2]

The reasons that state leaders—and one could argue even non-state leaders—embark on war are as varied as the methods in which wars may be prosecuted, but ultimately their purpose for war is to impose a desired policy or end state through the means of violence. During a course on Theory of War and Strategy, a group of U.S. Army War College students attempted to come up with a thorough definition of war. After much discussion and weeks of reading and lectures, the best they could posit was: organized violence between or among political entities having conflicting interests with an ultimate aim of producing an outcome or result that favors the attainment of a desired end. While this may strike close to the mark it is not nearly as succinct as “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”[3] Almost 2,500 years ago the ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu, stated that war “is a matter of vital importance to the State; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin.”[4] This is a sound reason for studying war, but Master Sun did not provide as telling a definition of war as Clausewitz. The Prussian officer goes further in explaining that when “whole communities go to war—whole peoples, and especially civilized peoples—the reason always lies in some political situation, and the occasion is always due to some political object. War, therefore, is an act of policy.”[5] This description of war holds just as true in the twenty-first century as it did in the nineteenth.

War, to be sure, is an exercise in violence; of this Clausewitz was certain, for he said “war is a pulsation of violence, variable in strength and therefore variable in the speed with which it explodes and discharges its energy.”[6] Defining war—or at least using war terminology—in the twenty-first century seems to, at times, lose sight of this seemingly irrefutable tenet. One must take caution in speaking of things like the war on drugs or on illegal immigration as though it were the same as a state waging war on another state. Even the notion of cyber war falls short of the “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity” of which Clausewitz spoke.[7] Some may argue that because perpetrators of cyber war may harbor feelings or intentions of hostility that, although non-kinetic, it is a variant of war. However, when Clausewitz spoke of hostile feelings and hostile intentions he was speaking of the two “motives” that cause men to fight.[8] He was not stating that the presence of hostile feelings or intentions indicates the presence of war. Clausewitz hinted toward the pain and suffering that is necessary to impose one’s will when he stated that if “the enemy is to be coerced you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make.”[9] Violence will continue to be the nature of war through the twenty-first century and beyond just as it was in the nineteenth century and back into ancient times.

Clausewitz was an early nineteenth century practitioner of war, and as such, his treatise on this topic is replete with discussions of the warfare waged during his time. All theorists and historians are bound by their knowledge of the past, provide an understanding of the present, and at best put forth an educated premise as to what may come in the not too distant future. What sets Clausewitz apart from other theorists is a number of his statements on the nature of war that have stood the test of almost two centuries of theoretical analysis and still seem as applicable to describing war in the ancient world, in his day, and in the twenty-first century. While he discusses the character of warfare—how war was waged in his time—it is his timeless postulations on the nature of war—what it is and why it occurs—that is so applicable in the twenty-first century.

One of the timeless aspects of Clausewitz’s war theory is his notion that war is like a chameleon that changes its appearance in each instance.[10] The characteristics of war change throughout the ages as actors adjust to the advent of new technologies and new methods of employing power, but the nature of war remains unchanged. This unchanging nature he goes on to describe as a remarkable trinity. Clausewitz speaks of the passion that must be present within the people, of the commander’s character and army that can maximize chance and probability, and of the reason exemplified through the policies of the state. He compares each of the aspects of this trinity to separate codified law, which have their own solid foundation but that are at the same time changing with respect to each other. He postulates that any theory that negates or minimizes one of these three aspects is not based in reality and goes on to compare balancing these aspects to a metal object dangling between three magnets. This trinity of the people (passion), the army (chance), and the government (reason) can clearly be seen in the conduct of war today.[11]

There are movements throughout the world today to ban war, to make it illegal. These movements have launched campaigns such as “2000 without war”, “Education for Nonviolence,” and “The World March for Peace and Nonviolence.”[12] They postulate that man must humanize the world by ridding it of violence. This is not a new notion. In the middle of the last century one of our greatest captains of war, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, famously and repeatedly said that war should be banned. He went as far as to ensure it was banned in the post-war Japanese constitution, and provided written advice to President-Elect Eisenhower to introduce into the Russian and American constitutions a “provision outlawing war as an instrument of national policy.”[13] However, as indicated in the epigraph of this essay, Clausewitz knew that such talk, while admirable, was useless, for he knew war is a part of human nature when he stated “war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.”[14] He further posited that no war is ever final stating that the “defeated state often considers the outcome merely as a transitory evil, for which a remedy may still be found in political conditions at some later date.”[15]

The nature of war is unchanging. Clausewitz recognized this elemental fact during the Napoleonic era in which he served. For the sake of his fellow officers, for the sake of a militaristic European Continent of the early 1800s, and for current and future practitioners of war, Clausewitz wrote it down. Human conflict has never been better explained than in the Prussian’s treatise On War. Carl von Clausewitz would likely agree with a later Spanish-American philosopher, George Santayana, when he stated at the end of the Great War in his poem Tipperary:

"Yet the poor fellows think they are safe!
They think that the war--perhaps the last of all wars--is over!
Only the dead are safe;
only the dead have seen the end of war."[16]

Endnotes

[1] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1976), 76.

[2] Ibid., 69.

[3] Ibid., 75.

[4] Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel Griffith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 63.

[5] Clausewitz, On War, 87.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 89.

[8] Ibid., 76.

[9] Ibid., 77.

[10] Ibid., 89.

[11] Ibid.

[12] World without Wars and Violence, International Humanist Organisation – Official Website, http:// http://www.worldwithoutwars.org/background (accessed September 20, 2011).

[13] William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978), 688.

[14] Clausewitz, On War, 80.

[16] George Santayana, The Works of George Santayana, (California: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 97.

Clausewitz in the Twenty-first Century

     Throughout the history of mankind, war has always been the ultimate achievement, the defining moment of civilizations, the rise and fall of kings and conquerors, and perhaps the downfall of humanity.  For as long as man has waged war he has tried to understand how to wage it better than his adversary to ensure victory.  From Herodotus and Thucydides to Brodie and Wholstetter man has recorded for himself, his...

Response by MAJ Alvin B. made Nov 20 at 2015 5:07 PM

2015-11-20T17:07:24-05:00

I have read and re-read "On War" many times. First as a young soldier, then as a cadet and as a junior officer and then in graduate school.

Each time i have learned something new, my insights being tempered by experience and new perspectives. His insights on the nature of war also reflects upon the nature of humanity and our innate nature.

War is a part of our being, be it waged on a global scale by super powers or the local level between clans.War is not always about physical violence, as the threat of violence is often enough to obtain a desired outcome.

While peace may be our desire and our highest aspiration, it is something of a false hope, an illusion on the horizon. War remains a constant driver in the human condition, war, or its shadow, spurn us on to new developments, and it is he reason we must be ready, if we are to emerge victorious once the inevitable arrives in one of its many guises.

Response by SGT Private RallyPoint Member made Nov 20 at 2015 9:11 PM

2015-11-20T21:11:31-05:00

It is a good book, but the context is different. I'd suggest coupling it with The Utility of Force and the COIN manual for a more comprehensive application of his theorem.

Response by SPC Christopher Perrien made Nov 21 at 2015 8:16 AM

2015-11-21T08:16:12-05:00

For reference to anyone, quite a lot on the man and the book, includes 3 versions of the book.
http://www.clausewitz.com/

The Clausewitz Homepage

Mobile Compatible • NOTE: This is a new front page, but many links still go to older pages that are less mobile-friendly.

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made Nov 21 at 2015 4:35 PM

2015-11-21T16:35:14-05:00

I will read this after my domestic god chores are done. I like Clausewitz. He helps to make order out of chaos.

Response by Capt Richard I P. made Nov 21 at 2015 4:37 PM

2015-11-21T16:37:57-05:00

I might submit the Art of War by the tradition of Sun Tzu as a more timeless War Theorist.

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made Nov 21 at 2015 5:09 PM

2015-11-21T17:09:36-05:00

Very good paper! I love the Trinity of Passion, Military Prowess, and Rational Government are timeless and can be used today for paradigms of the Revolutionary war and Iraq. Add Mao's thoughts on insurgency and you have many tools to study Iraq. Clausewitz as the applicable theorist and Mao as the practitioner within Clausewitz' domain.

Response by SSgt Boyd Herrst made Dec 17 at 2017 10:58 AM

2017-12-17T10:58:19-05:00

Clausewitz notes that good intentions can bring about negative results in war..
I liken that to the appeaser that feeds the alligator(s) snacks to avoid being eaten and is eaten anyway...