"Clausewitz for Every War" Topic
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Tango01 | 24 Oct 2014 1:03 p.m. PST |
"The years 2007 and 2008 have seen a blossoming of new books on Carl von Clausewitz and his major work, Vom Kriege (On War). Besides the books covered by this review, other ones have been published in the United States and in France, where the Prussian thinker was the subject of an international conference at the military school of Saint-Cyr in November 2007.[1] One can speak of a new wave in Clausewitz studies, after the one centred on the widely used 1976 translation of On War by Michael Howard and Peter Paret.[2] In many respects, the new wave is a reaction to a Cold War vision of Clausewitz. Among the common features of recent studies on Clausewitz, there is a tendency to balance the primacy of politics in war, expressed in the famous dictum of Book 1, chapter 1 of On War: ‘war is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means'. Where Howard and Paret read ‘policy', the new wave sees ‘politics'. This implies a less rationalistic view of war, which is always related to politics but can escape the control of policy. The emphasis is laid on another definition of war mentioned later in the same chapter, the ‘wondrous trinity' which is ‘composed of primordial violence, hatred and enmity, and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone'[3] . On War was not completed by Clausewitz when he died from cholera in 1831 and Book 1, chapter 1 had for a long time been considered as the only expression of Clausewitz's final thinking. Israeli historian Azar Gat had already noticed in 1989 that the other books of On War may not have been as unfinished as previously thought[4] . What definitely necessitated a re-examination of Clausewitz was the new kind of war encountered in the post-Cold War world. Sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and terrorism led some analysts to call Clausewitz obsolete and irrelevant. Wars didn't follow the classical pattern of an armed conflict between states any more and a work conceived in this context, just after the end of the Napoleonic wars, would just remain an historical piece[5] . Others saw it differently. Andreas Herberg-Rothe is a private lecturer at Humboldt University, Berlin. Clausewitz's Puzzle is a shortened translation of a book published in Munich in 2001. It argues convincingly that three military campaigns experienced by Clausewitz are central to an appropriate understanding of On War: the Jena-Auerstaedt campaign of 1806, the 1812 campaign in Russia and the Waterloo campaign in 1815. Clausewitz wrote detailed accounts of these campaigns between 1823 and 1827, while he composed On War. So Books 3 and 4 (about strategy and combat) mainly reflect 1806, Book 6 (about defence) is mainly derived from 1812 and Book 8 (about war plans and politics) from 1815. Only in Book 1 and at the beginning of Book 2, does Clausewitz succeed in finding a common denominator to these contrasting historical experiences. By reflecting on the success but also on the limitations and on the failure of Napoleon's experience, he went beyond purely military matters and was able to develop a wide-ranging political theory of waging war. The ‘wondrous trinity' is the final result of this development and his true legacy. The humiliating Prussian defeat in 1806 shook him to the core. Realizing that previous conventional theoretical limits were no longer relevant, he developed four ideas: ‘an existential conception of war; the inherently unlimited violence of war; an orientation towards the primacy of the attack at all costs; and, in Clausewitz's early writings, the prioritization of military success over ideals and politics (understood in civilian terms)' (p. 27). These ideas were challenged when Clausewitz, in 1812, left the Prussian service to fight against Napoleon in the Russian army. The campaign in Russia led him to qualify his previous view of the exemplary character of Napoleon's strategy. An offensive strategy was not suited against Russia, although it had succeeded against Austria and Prussia. ‘The Russian campaign could not have been won, however it might have been waged' (p. 31). Clausewitz, says Herberg-Rothe, became aware of a fundamental limit of warfare. The door was open for the next step, following the experience of the Waterloo campaign: the discovery of the primacy of politics over warfare…" Full article here link Amicalement Armand |
Frederick | 25 Oct 2014 7:50 a.m. PST |
Studying and dissin' Clausewitz come in waves – about 20 years a number of military writers were discounting his work, but over the past five years his work is being quoted and studied again Anyway, I like it, but I find it (at least the translations I have) a somewhat slow read if you want to really understand it |
Tango01 | 25 Oct 2014 10:59 a.m. PST |
Glad you like it my friend. Agree with you. Amicalement Armand |
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