On War – Carl von Clausewitz
‘On War’ is a book on war and military strategy. It was written shortly after the Napoleonic Wars by the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz. It is one of the most important treatises on political-military analysis and strategy ever written, and even today it remains both controversial and an influence on strategic thinking. This edition comprises all eight books.
On War
Format: Paperback.
On War.
ISBN: 9783849676056.
Available at amazon.com and other venues.
Synopsis of On War (from Wikipedia):
The book contains a wealth of historical examples used to illustrate its various concepts. Frederick II of Prussia (the Great) figures prominently for having made very efficient use of the limited forces at his disposal, though Napoleon is perhaps the central figure.
According to Azar Gat, the “general message” of the book was that “the conduct of war could not be reduced to universal principles.” Among many strands of thought, three stand out as essential to Clausewitz’s concept:
War must never be seen as having any purpose in itself, but should be seen as an instrument of Politik – a German word that conflates the meanings of the English words policy and politics: “War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.”
The military objectives in war that support one’s political objectives fall into two broad types: “war to achieve limited aims” and war to “disarm” the enemy: “to render [him] politically helpless or militarily impotent.”
All else being equal, the course of war will tend to favor the party with the stronger emotional and political motivations, but especially the defender.
Some of the key ideas (not necessarily original to Clausewitz or even to his mentor Gerhard von Scharnhorst) discussed in On War include (in no particular order of importance):
the dialectical approach to military analysis
the methods of “critical analysis”
the uses and abuses of historical studies
the nature of the balance-of-power mechanism
the relationship between political objectives and military objectives in war
the asymmetrical relationship between attack and defense
the nature of “military genius”
the “fascinating trinity” (Wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit) of war
philosophical distinctions between “absolute or ideal war,” and “real war”
in “real war,” the distinctive poles of a) limited war and b) war to “render the enemy helpless”
“war” belongs fundamentally to the social realm, rather than the realms of art or science
“strategy” belongs primarily to the realm of art
“tactics” belongs primarily to the realm of science
the essential unpredictability of war
the “fog of war”
“friction”
strategic and operational “centers of gravity”
the “culminating point of the offensive”
the “culminating point of victory”
Clausewitz used a dialectical method to construct his argument, leading to frequent modern misinterpretation because he explores various—often opposed—ideas before coming to conclusions.
Modern perception of war are based on the concepts Clausewitz put forth in On War, though these have been very diversely interpreted by various leaders (e.g., Moltke, Vladimir Lenin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mao Zedong, etc.), thinkers, armies, and peoples. Modern military doctrine, organization, and norms are all based on Napoleonic premises, even to this day—though whether these premises are necessarily also “Clausewitzian” is debatable.
The “dualism” of Clausewitz’s view of war (i.e., that wars can vary a great deal between the two “poles” he proposed, based on the political objectives of the opposing sides and the context) seems simple enough, but few commentators have proven willing to accept this crucial variability—they insist that Clausewitz “really” argued for one end of the scale or the other. On War has been seen by some prominent critics as an argument for “total war”. It has been blamed for the level of destruction involved in the First and Second World Wars, but it seems rather that Clausewitz (who did not actually use the term “total war”) had merely foreseen the inevitable development that started with the huge, patriotically motivated armies of the Napoleonic wars. These wars resulted (though war’s evolution has not yet ended) in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with all the forces and capabilities of the state devoted to destroying forces and capabilities of the enemy state (thus “total war”). Conversely, Clausewitz has also been seen as “The preeminent military and political strategist of limited war in modern times.” (Robert Osgood, 1979)
Clausewitz and his proponents have been severely criticized by competing theorists–Antoine-Henri Jomini in the 19th century, B. H. Liddell Hart in the mid-20th century, and Martin van Creveld and John Keegan more recently. On War is a work rooted solely in the world of the nation state, says historian Martin Van Creveld, who alleges that Clausewitz takes the state “almost for granted” as he rarely looks at anything previous to Westphalia. He alleges that Clausewitz does not address any form of intra/supra-state conflict, such as rebellion and revolution, because he could not theoretically account for warfare before the existence of the state. Previous kinds of conflict were demoted to criminal activities without legitimacy and not worthy of the label “war.” Van Creveld argues that “Clausewitzian war” requires the state to act in conjunction with the people and the army, the state becoming a massive engine built to exert military force against an identical opponent. He supports this statement by pointing to the conventional armies in existence throughout the 20th century. However, revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did derive some inspiration from Clausewitzian ideas.
(The text of the last section was taken from a Wikipedia entry and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)
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