The Clausewitzian fallacy of absolute war

Clausewitz was much preoccupied with the apparent contradiction between real and absolute war. Why did war in history so rarely exhibit the extremes of violence and energy implied in the pure concept of war? Clausewitz’s commentators have usually followed him in thinking that this was a genuine problem in need of a solution, but I want to question that view. I will argue that Clausewitz did not have a coherent philosophy of absolute war, and therefore the contradiction he posited between real and absolute war was equally meaningless – as, too, was his effort to resolve it by claiming that some real wars approached or even attained the absolute form of war. The real problem was not the opposition of real and absolute war, but the self-contradictory theory of absolute war.     

Clausewitz’s Concept of Strategy – Balancing Purpose,Aims and Means

The task of coming to a proper appreciation of Clausewitz’s thoughts on war is to combine a hierarchical structure with that of a floating balance. This article examines the relation of purpose, aims and means in Clausewitz’s theory and highlights that this relation is methodologically comparable to the floating balance of Clausewitz’s trinity. Modern strategic thinking is characterised by the ‘ends, ways, means relationship’ and the concept of the ‘way’ as shortest possible direct connection between ends and means. If strategy is nothing else than the direct way of linking the political purpose with the means, understood as combat, this understandings results in ‘battle-centric’ warfare. My thesis is that the aim (goal, way) in warfare is not a direct link between purpose and means, but rather an indirect, intermediary dimension, a mediation (in Hegelian terms) between purpose and aims with its own grammar. This article distinguishes (sometimes going beyond Clausewitz) between the rationality of the whole process of war, the rationality of the separate aspects of purpose, aims and means in warfare and finally their conflicting tendencies. This article highlights Clausewitz’s different concepts of purpose and aims and tries to shed at least some light of the strategic implications of this difference. This interpretation of Clausewitz leads to the definition of strategy as maintaining a floating balance of purpose, aims and means in warfare.     

Military autonomy: its origins,limits, and the politico-military dialectic of war

Military officers often oppose political interference in the conduct of war. Political leaders respond by citing Clausewitz’s contention that “war is the continuation of politics with the addition of other means.” Scholarship in security studies and civil-military relations argues that civilians are right to oppose military autonomy because it serves the parochial interests of the military. However, through the dialectical relationship between the violent essence of war and its political nature, Clausewitz provides an alternative explanation for military demands for autonomy. He shows that military and political leaders are prone to an incomplete understanding of war that can undermine strategy and policy.     

A Criterion for Settling Inconsistencies in Clausewitz’s On War

On War’s unfinished state has been a source of difficulties for interpretation for 180 years. By establishing a hierarchy of revision among the parts, we propose a criterion that can bring any part of On War in line with the most advanced stage of Clausewitz’s thinking. We exemplify the utility, illustrate the underpinnings and appreciate the potential of this criterion. We argue that the criterion offers the prospect of a shared, coherent, fully consistent and faithful rendering of Clausewitz’s theory of war.     

Lost through non-translation: bringing Clausewitz's writings on ‘new wars’ back in

While Carl von Clausewitz has generally been respected as one of the most profound philosophers of war, his expertise has been regarded as somewhat limited if not even irrelevant to the so-called ‘new wars’ of the post-Cold War world. Many scholars in international relations have claimed that ‘new wars’ are essentially ‘post-Clausewitzian’ and ‘post-trinitarian’ in nature, meaning that they are no longer fathomable through a Clausewitzian framework. However Clausewitz's earlier writings were nearly exclusively dedicated to guerrilla warfare, or what he called ‘small wars’. These writings have been largely overlooked by many analysts of contemporary conflicts. By drawing on his rare and untranslated writings, the article uncovers a critical part of Clausewitz's expertise in asymmetric warfare and shows that, far from being irrelevant in an age where interstate warfare is increasingly being replaced by conflicts between states and semi-/non-state actors, Clausewitz's philosophical writings actually shed new light into the particular interactive dynamics generated during wars waged under conditions of asymmetry.     

War as a System: A Three-Stage Model for the Development of Clausewitz’s Thinking on Military Conflict and Its Constraints

This article presents a new model for the development of Carl von Clausewitz’s thinking on the factors that constrain warfare. The model posits three stages in his thinking that are determined by two system theoretic dimensions. The three stages are friction as a constraint on the effectiveness of the execution of military plans on paper, suspension as a constraint on the intensity of military action and political objectives as a constraint on military objectives. The two dimensions consist of an interactive perspective in the form of causal feedback loops and a holistic perspective in the form of a political system that forms the context of the military subsystem.     

Of war plans and war guilt: The debate surrounding the Schlieffen Plan

This article outlines the controversy surrounding the thesis advanced by Terence Zuber that there never was a Schlieffen Plan and that German war planning in 1914, far from having the aggressive edge that historians have attributed to it for decades, was in fact designed to deal with a Franco-Russian attack on Germany. In addition to reviewing the debate precipitated by Zuber's thesis, this article also takes a closer look at how Germany prepared for war in the years 1906–14, and particularly how it ended up embarking on that war in August 1914. Such an investigation of German war planning, with particular emphasis on the war plans of the younger Moltke, will serve as a critique of Zuber's controversial thesis, and it will be shown that while Zuber maintains that there never was a Schlieffen Plan, Schlieffen, Moltke and their contemporaries were certain that such a plan existed. In 1914, Moltke did not shrink from implementing his own version of Schlieffen's strategic thinking when war broke out.     

Clausewitz and Low-Intensity Conflict

The end of the Cold War led some commentators to question the relevance of Clausewitz's thought in a strategic environment where low-intensity conflict (LIC) would predominate. On the contrary, however, Clausewitz's understanding of the intensity of warfare, and its relationship with the political environment of any given time, makes his thinking compatible with changing historical circumstances. The current War on Terror, for example, can be comfortably accommodated within Clausewitz's concept of war. However, a move away from Clausewitz in US doctrine has been coupled with a rejection of LIC in favour of the erroneous notion of ‘operations other than war’. Consequently, such doctrine lacks the clarity required for its proper dissemination.     

The road not taken: Conflict termination and guerrillaism in the American Civil War

Irrespective our views on the rationality of our opponent's continuing to conduct operations against us, unless utterly extirpated, he retains a vote on when and how conflict will end. This is because war is about power — compelling another actor to do something he would not otherwise do, or to cease doing something he would otherwise prefer to do. In planning for conflict termination we should account for the peculiarities of opponents who may decide not to quit when we have beat them fair and square. We do not desire that they cease conventional fighting, but that they cease fighting altogether.     

What-If at Waterloo. Carl von Clausewitz’s use of historical counterfactuals in his history of the Campaign of 1815

In this article, I analyze the use of historical counterfactuals in the Campaign of 1815 by Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831). Such is the importance of counterfactuals in this work that its gist can be given in a series of 25 counterfactuals. I claim that a central role is played by evaluative counterfactuals. This specific form of counterfactuals is part of a didactic method that allows Clausewitz to teach young officers a critical method that prepares them for the challenge of decision-making in real warfare. I conclude with the enduring relevance of Clausewitz’s use of evaluative counterfactuals for contemporary military historiography.     

The concept of logistics derived from Clausewitz: All that is required so that the fighting force can be taken as a given

This article assesses the existing literature on logistics in war, concluding that there is no satisfactory conceptual definition of logistics. It proposes a concept of logistics derived from Clausewitz's theory of war to fill that void. This is presented as a derivation because Clausewitz's distinction between (1) the use of the fighting forces (tactics and strategy) and (2) all other activities in war that were required so that forces could be taken as a given. The latter, left unnamed by Clausewitz, corresponds to a concept of logistics that proves to be an analytical peer to Clausewitz's categories of politics, tactics and strategy.     

The RAF staff college and the evolution of British strategic bombing policy, 1922–1929

This article borrows from the work of Clausewitz to posit two general approaches to the pursuit of limitation in war, one being political and the other technical. The political approach seeks to control escalation via consensual arrangements with the adversary, while the technical approach seeks to forestall escalation by peremptorily destroying the enemy's military capability. It is argued that the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA) instantiates the second, technical, approach to war limitation. By exploiting advanced technology, the US armed forces hope to limit the costs of war by defeating their adversaries in a rapid, decisive manner. The problems associated with this approach are discussed in relation to the nature of the conflicts that the US is likely to face in the foreseeable future. The article concludes by suggesting that such conflicts will require that more attention be paid to the political sources of limitation in war.     

Nothing fails like success: The London Ambassadors’ Conference and the coming of the First World War

During the July Crisis Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, focused on organising a conference through which differences could be reconciled. After the war, he maintained that Germany’s unwillingness to join this conference was one of the immediate causes of war. This essay disputes Grey’s contention, arguing that his plans for a conference, based on a misleading analogy to the previous Balkan Crises, actually helped facilitate the outbreak of war in 1914 by sanctioning inaction in the first phase of the crisis (28 June–22 July) and by tacitly encouraging Russian mobilisation in the second phase (23 July–4 August).     

The Challe Plan: Vain Yet Indispensable Victory

On April 23, 1960, General Maurice Challe left Algiers and his position as Commander in Chief there, having achieved a rapid military victory over the rebellion within Algeria. As an airman at the head of an essentially ground force engaged since 1954 in counter-insurgency warfare, he had within 16 months gained the military success everyone deemed indispensable. It proved a vain victory though over an enemy already made irrelevant by rapid developments on the national and international political stage. The enemy, Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), was a two-tiered organization. In accordance with revolutionary doctrine, the military branch, the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN), supported the political arm, the Organisation Politico-Administrative (OPA), and in this case all operated both inside Algeria and in exile. The strength of the FLN over the course of the conflict had shifted externally to Algeria, particularly under Houari Boumedienne's leadership in Tunis. The major portion of the ALN its Tunisian sanctuary had gradually renounced the costly support of its internal units and chosen to wait in exile for further developments. The freshly formed Gouvernement Provisoire de la Republique Algerienne (GPRA), also in Tunis, had managed to obtain international recognition, and with this development the war within Algeria lost its decisive character. From an operational perspective though, the Challe Plan belongs to the list of military successes. Four years into a fight of limited tactical and strategic accomplishments, Challe, through his imagination and energy, was able to achieve victory within his short assignment with the resources at hand. Just how he accomplished this feat, as we shall see, is a fascinating example of a successful ‘small war’.     

French war plans, 1914: The ‘Balance of Power Paradox’

Historians have noted that both German and French war preparation in 1914 fell victim to the inadequacies of traditional threat-based planning: vulnerability to ‘threat deception’ which caused each to underestimate or mischaracterize the threat; a tendency to ‘mirror-image’ by fitting intelligence into preconceived notions of how the enemy was expected to behave; and ‘group think’ that discouraged a serious consideration of alternative scenarios. This article applies the ‘Balance of Power Paradox’ to explain why, at the dawn of the twentieth century, war planning in both Germany and France was driven by an acute sense of weakness which encouraged each side to fashion highly ‘risk acceptant’ strategies. In particular, he examines why and how French commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre evolved and rationalized his audacious, and disastrous, Plan XVII to leverage French weaknesses and prevent the stronger German Army from bringing the full weight of its military strength to bear against France. The potential implication of this historical vignette is that leaders, and by extension military planners, of both strong and weak states focus on the constraints faced by their opponents, and assume that they can avoid the limitations of their position, while their opponent cannot.     

The Serbian defence institution: the need for clear policy guidance to improve the Serbian defence planning,management, and command processes

ABSTRACT

The uncritical layering of western liberal defence governance norms and concepts on top of existing legacy concepts has impeded achieving coherent military capabilities and capacities when Serbia’s political and military leadership tried to reform the defence system using Western benchmarking principles and Western countries’ best practices. The process of this change has been more valuable than its actual output, as defined by increased capabilities. Such outcomes should be reflective of policy guidance, and can be thought of as closing the trinity loop of a defence planning system: plans, money and execution. This article addresses two key functional areas of the Serbian defence institution. First, it assesses the current state of defence planning to discern its strengths and weaknesses to ascertain if plans are tied to financial decision-making. Second, a full examination of current Serbian defence management is conducted to discern whether weaknesses exist that distract from producing operational capabilities. Both areas are analyzed thoroughly and some solutions for change are proposed. Also, the article analyzes the appearance of two negative phenomena in the planning process – economization and managerialism.     

Clausewitz and the politics of war: A contemporary theory

ABSTRACT

This paper re-examines the theoretical underpinnings of Strategic Studies, proposing a novel theory and a new framework for analysing war’s fundamental relationship with politics in line with the Clausewitzian tradition. Throughout modern history, Clausewitz’s concept of politics has been misconstrued as referring only to policy whereas in fact, for him, ‘politics’ was a much broader concept, including domestic power struggles. The political logic of war is defined here as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles and policy objectives within a given polity that restrains and enables these political forces. The analysis of the Clausewitzian political logic of war is conducted through the sociological ‘liquid modern’ lens. It is argued that with power increasingly shifting from centralised state-oriented political leadership towards market forces, non-state actors and other political bodies, the effectiveness of war has been reduced. This is evident in the fragmentation of Western political systems and, as a result, suboptimal strategy and the domination of domestic power struggles in political decision-making concerning war.     

Right Intention and the Ends of War

The jus ad bellum criterion of right intention (CRI) is a central guiding principle of just war theory. It asserts that a country’s resort to war is just only if that country resorts to war for the right reasons. However, there is significant confusion, and little consensus, about how to specify the CRI. We seek to clear up this confusion by evaluating several distinct ways of understanding the criterion. On one understanding, a state’s resort to war is just only if it plans to adhere to the principles of just war while achieving its just cause. We argue that the first understanding makes the CRI superfluous, because it can be subsumed under the probability of success criterion. On a second understanding, a resort to war is just only if a state’s motives, which explain its resort to war, are of the right kind. We argue that this second understanding of the CRI makes it a significant further obstacle to justifying war. However, this second understanding faces a possible infinite regress problem, which, left unresolved, leaves us without a plausible interpretation of the CRI. This constitutes a significant and novel reason for leaving the CRI out of the international law of armed conflict (LOAC).     

‘The extraordinary successes which the Russians have achieved’ - the Conquest of Central Asia in Callwell’s Small Wars

ABSTRACT

Charles Callwell’s Small Wars (1896, 1899, 1906) is widely considered both an ur-text for modern counter-insurgency studies, and a primer for the racialized late-Victorian approach to war against ‘savages’: either way it is usually only considered within a British context. Alongside the numerous examples Callwell used from British colonial campaigns, he frequently referred to those of other European powers – notably the Russian conquest of Central Asia. This article will seek to analyse Callwell’s views of Russian colonial warfare, establish the sources on which he relied, and evaluate his accuracy and the effect which the Russian example had on his thinking.     

A view from Berlin: Colonel Frederick trench and the development of British perceptions of German aggressive intent, 1906–1910

This essay traces the image of Germany that emerges from the reports of Colonel Frederick Trench (1857–1942), British military attache in Berlin from 1906 to 1910. At this time, the British Army possessed only the most limited intelligence‐gathering apparatus and had to rely heavily on the reports of military attaches for information about their continental rivals. Trench, who believed that Germany planned to wage war against Britain and said so categorically in his reports, was the main source of data on the German Army. From the limited surviving records of who read these reports and how they responded to them, this essay posits that Trench's views contributed to the growing British perception of a German threat, a perception that did much to influence British strategic planning in this period.