Describe Clausewitz’s view of war. How relevant is his theory of war to global politics in the 1990’s?

Gerard Horgan

 

Course: International Relations.

 

Lecturer: Dr. Luke Ashworth.

 

Total Word Count: 3495.

 

 

 

“Let us not hear of generals who conquer without bloodshed. If a bloody slaughter is a horrible sight then that is a ground for paying more respect to war, but not for making the sword we wear blunter and blunter by degrees from feelings of humanity, until someone steps in with one that is sharp and lops off the arm from our body.”[1]

-          Carl von Clausewitz

 

Carl von Clausewitz remains arguably the most important and influential theorist on war. His magnum opus, On War, stands shoulders above the pantheon of literature dedicated to the study of this violent phenomenon and is studied in war colleges and universities around the world. His conception of war encapsulated in the ‘fascinating’ trinity[2] and his grasp of the relationship between the political and military spheres have in many ways transcended time.[3] His theories remain both relevant and applicable to the global political scene in the 1990’s.

            The purpose of this research essay is, firstly, to outline Clausewitz’s theory of war. Any discussion of his theory entails focusing on the link Clausewitz drew between war and politics, his account of which is regarded by many as his greatest contribution to the study of this violent phenomenon. This necessitates an examination of, what has been termed as the ‘fascinating’ trinity. This includes an analysis of the importance of the role and attitude of the population, the ability and intelligence of the military commander and the directing policy of the government. Clausewitz’s theory of war in both its realist (real war) and abstract forms (absolute war) will also come in for consideration.

            The second section of the essay examines Clausewitz’s theory in relation to global politics of the 1990’s. Clausewitz’s theory is applied to a number of internecine conflicts, which defined that period politically. These will include: the Gulf War, Haiti, U.S. intervention in Somalia and Bosnia, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) involvement in the Kosovo crisis, as well as, Russia’s bitter and savage struggle in Chechnya.

Clausewitz was a man both of his time and before his time. He was a man shaped by his experiences of war. He spent four decades in the military and was involved in a number of major wars culminating in the Battle of Waterloo in 1812.  Clausewitz knew what war meant; he had witnessed firsthand what he described as die Schlacht or slaughter, at Jena and the two battles at Borodino. War was slaughter and spilt blood.[4] Clausewitz never romanticised the nature of war neither did he see it as an exercise in compassionate humanity. He writes:

Philanthropists may readily imagine there is a skilful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that is the proper tendency of the art of war. However, plausible this may appear, still it is an error, which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors, which proceed from a spirit of benevolence, are the worst.[5]

 

 Clausewitz’s famous dictum “war is the continuation of political intercourse with the admixture of other means”[6], encapsulates the essence of his theory on war. He viewed war as being inextricably interwoven with politics. Clausewitz writes, “war is only a branch of political activity…the only source of war is politics - the intercourse of governments and peoples.”[7] His exploration of the nature, purpose and conduct of war and the role of politics and the state in determining these factors lies at the heart of his theoretical analysis. He envisaged war as a “clash of major interests that is resolved by bloodshed, comparable to business or closer still to politics. Politics is the womb in which war develops.”[8] He explores this symbiotic relationship further under the terms ‘wunderliche dreifaltigkeit’ or ‘fascinating’ trinity.[9] According to Clausewitz, the trinity was made up of:

 ...primordial violence, hatred and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force, of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its elements of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone. The first of these three aspects concerns the people, the second the commander and his army, the third the government.[10]

 

Clausewitz’s concept of people, army, and government form an important interlocking trilogy whereby the nature, conduct and purpose of war is determined. He argues that “any theory that ignores any one of them or seeks to fix arbitrary relationship between them would conflict with reality to such an extent that for this reason alone it would be totally useless.”[11]

The trinity concept purports that the support of the populace is an important prerequisite to the commencement of any war.[12] A closer examination of Clausewitz’s trinity reveals that in order for war to be successful the populace needs to be directly engaged. Apathy or unwillingness to either support or to get involved will, in the long-term, serve only to undermine the state. He writes, “the fiercer the tensions that precede the outbreak the closer war will approach its abstract concept.”[13] He explores the role of the military commander using his favourite conceptual tool, that of the role of genius.[14]

 According to Clausewitz, some commanders display abilities such as intelligence and creativity, differentiating themselves from their peers. They possess a unique ability to overcome what he termed as ‘the fog of war’, which referred to the confusion and lack of clarity present in all wars. He maintains that a successful commander should stick to his goals even when information from the battlefield would have him do otherwise. The importance Clausewitz placed on the role of psychological and the role of the individual in war is regarded as area, which differentiates him from his contemporaries in terms of its startling originality.[15]

The role of government however, and the influence of policy on war is perhaps Clausewitz’s greatest contribution to the study of war. He is adamant that the military considerations are of secondary importance to the political ones. Moreover, he maintains that military commanders should always be subservient to their political masters for fear that they might broaden conduct and nature of the war. He states, “no other possibility exists than to subordinate the military point of view to the political.”[16]

 Clausewitz defines war as an “act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”[17] He theorises that this force is a physical one, although he indicates that there are other ways to achieve the subjugation of the enemy. He envisaged two types of war; one war of unlimited military objectives, which sought to prescribe peace terms. The other approach consists of a war of limited military objectives, which aims to reach a negotiated peace. The complete destruction of the enemy’s forces puts a state in the in a stronger position to negotiate an acceptable outcome. In reference to the destruction of the enemy forces he coined the term “centre of gravity”, which meant the hub of all power and movement on which everything depends.[18]

However, Clausewitz points out that it was not contradictory for limited wars to display ‘absolute’ characteristics. In fact, the ‘absolute’ form of war should always be borne in mind when a state decides to involve itself in a war. This in 20^th Century parlance refers to the concept of escalation, “if your opponent was prepared to exert himself to the utmost to achieve his objectives, you have no choice but to do the same. The logical escalation to ‘absolute war’ had to be accepted”.[19]

There were more than a few historical precedents to justify this, as leaders before Clausewitz’s time did not possess the resources to wage long and extensive campaigns. That changed with Napoleon who had the backing of a highly invigorated and patriotic population. It was in light of Napoleons campaigns that he coined the term ‘absolute war’. ‘Absolute war’ represented the crescendo of Clausewitz’s thought with regard to his dealing of war in its most abstract form.    

He argued that war was an act of force and there was therefore no logical limit to its application. The counterweight to ‘absolute war’ is ‘real’ war, war as it occurs on the battlefield, “which occurs between the poles of war of limited object and wars of unlimited object.”[20] ‘Absolute’ war was however, unachievable as it was restricted by a number of extraneous factors most notably the political objective of the war and by what Clausewitz termed as ‘friction’.

             ‘Friction’ was effectively the brake, which limited wars, preventing them from achieving their ‘absolutist’ potential, “if war was the realm of uncertainty and chance, even more was it the realm of suffering, confusion, exhaustion and fear. All these factors combined to create friction, the environment in which all military action took place.”[21] Clausewitz writes, “everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is very difficult…. the inherent tendency is for things to go wrong.”[22] He knew all too well that the conduct of war was inherently flawed as it involved humans who were themselves weak and limited; as a consequence war never reached Vollkommenheit, its ‘perfect’ form.

            Clausewitz’s views on war remain as relevant to global politics in the 1990’s as they did in his own era.  The 1990’s were a defining period in human history. It witnessed the break up of the Communist Eastern Bloc and the subsequent, and to most commentators, untimely demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. It was also an important period for defining the type of world future generations would have to contend with. The balance of terror was replaced by the proliferation of smaller states that acquired nuclear capability. The 1990’s also played host to a number of internecine conflicts that exemplified Clausewitzian theory, most notably those in Iraq, Haiti, Somalia the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Chechnya.  It is in light of these that we shall examine the relevance of Clausewitz’s theories.

The Gulf War in 1991 is for many, a conflict that exemplified characteristics of Clausewitzian theory. The clear U.S. objectives, which ran throughout operation Desert Storm, provide evidence of the impact of Clausewitzian thinking on the U.S. military.[23] Clausewitz emphasised the importance of establishing clear political and military goals from the outset “the first, the supreme, the most far reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make, is to establish by that test what kind of war on which they are embarking on.”[24]

He also emphasised the destruction of the enemy’s centres of gravity. In the Gulf War this was also done. Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard, his country’s infrastructure and the capital, Baghdad were all targets that were repeatedly attacked. The decision by the U.S. to commit a huge force to achieve these aims would also have found favour with Clausewitz “the best strategy is always to be very strong…the first rule should be: put the largest possible army in the field.”[25]

President George W. Bush (Snr.), as commander-in-chief of powerful U.S. military forces, successfully motivated popular support amongst both Congress and the American public for the war, and so ensured a strong Clausewitzian trinity.[26] What is interesting is that the Clausewitz trinity worked on all sides. Saddam Hussein attempted to undermine the U.S. centre of gravity by threatening the American public with thousands of casualties should the U.S. invade Iraq. Such fears run very near the surface in U.S. political circles as a consequence of their disastrous war in Vietnam. The failure by the U.S. to topple Saddam Hussein echoes the words of Clausewitz “even the ultimate outcome of a war is not always regarded as final. The defeated state often considers the outcome merely a transitory evil, for which a remedy may still be found in political conditions at some later date.”[27]

 Before the outbreak of the Gulf War, the U.S. successfully deterred Saddam Hussein from using his arsenal of chemical or biological weapons by threatening his regime with retaliation through the use of nuclear weapons. The theory of deterrent has been linked, by many commentators, to Clausewitzian theory throughout the Cold War and into the 1990’s. Clausewitz’s theory of war clearly implied that a state should always appear to mean what it says. The logic of deterrence similarly is based on the premise of convincing an adversary of one’s fixity of purpose.

 The assumption, which underlies the theory “is that no political object is sufficiently desirable to compensate for the nuclear devastation of one’s homeland[28], in Clausewitz’s words it constituted “an unacceptably high cost.”[29] With “nuclear weapons ‘real war’ and ‘true war’ were believed to be the same thing and the contemplation of the horror of such an identification was believed in itself to guarantee that war would never occur”.[30]However, Clausewitz did note that “once barriers- which in a sense consist in man’s ignorance of what is possible- are torn down, they are not so easily set up again.”[31] This would seem to indicate that once a discovery has been made, especially in relation to improvements in the way wars are waged, then there is no going back. This is particularly true in relation to the advent of the nuclear age.

            The arrival of the Clinton administration provoked many to comment that its foreign policy decisions increasingly smacked of Clausewitzian undertones. Many viewed Clintons threatened invasion of Haiti in 1994 as an expression of war as a continuation of politics. Clinton’s gunboat diplomacy was effective in furthering U.S. policy aims by restoring a pro- U.S. elected government, reinforcing what Clausewitz meant when he wrote, “we must be willing to wage minimal wars which consist of merely threatening the enemy with negotiations held in reserve.”[32] 

The ill-fated decision to deploy U.S. forces to support the United Nations (U.N.) humanitarian mission in Somalia also illustrates the relevance and foresight of Clausewitz’ theory on war. He writes in On War “one country may support another’s cause, but will never take it so seriously as it does its own. A moderately-sized force will be sent to its help, but if things go wrong the operation is pretty well written off, and one tries to withdraw at the smallest possible cost.”[33] This is extract could easily have described the U.S. decision to withdraw from Somalia. Within time the U.N. forces faced a Somali trinity of an enraged population, the amalgamation of the warlords into a single military entity and the emergence of General Mohammed Aideed as a popular leader. [34]Events came to a head when eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed in their attempt to bring Aideed to justice.

 The carnage that ensued greatly undermined the ability of the U.S. military to operate successfully in Somalia. In On War Clausewitz states that “of even greater influence on the decision to make peace is the consciousness of all the effort that has already been made and of the efforts yet to come. Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object; the value of that object must determine the sacrifice to be made…. once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow.”[35] The effects of the waning of military morale and the deaths of the U.S. military personnel made Somalia too high a price to pay, the result being the end of U.S. political support for the operation.

Many of the core concepts expressed in On War, although written with a different type of war in mind, are directly applicable to the conflicts witnessed during the 1990’s. The wars in Serbia, Chechnya, and so on, are relevant to Clausewitzian theory. The motives behind these conflicts were political ones. In Serbia it was to do with the situation in Kosovo.[36] Milosevic’s refused to sign a peace accord over the issue meant that he incurred the wrath of the West.

This however was insufficient to justify the dropping of bombs on Belgrade. Instead the issues of war crimes and human rights abuses, which were reinforced by media images, supplanted the issue of Milosevic’s refusal to sign. Milosevic’s fate was sealed. NATO altered its plans and demanded that Milosevic withdraw his forces from Kosovo and cease his attacks on ethnic Albanians. Clausewitz with some prescience touched on the likelihood of such events occurring “the political object will not provide a suitable military objective. In that event another military objective must be adopted that will serve the political purpose and symbolize it in peace negotiations.”[37]

The conflict in Chechnya has been characterised as a guerrilla style conflict but as Clausewitz noted not even guerrillas fight without a purpose. In On War Clausewitz deals directly with this type of conflict. It would appear that the Chechens read and accepted his advice, “Militia and armed bands…. are not suppose to pulverize the core (enemy forces) but to nibble at the shell and around the edges…. the flames will spread like a bush fire until the reach the area on which the enemy is based threatening ….his very existence.”[38]The Russian military forces, after a brutal and bloody conflict, subsequently withdrew from Chechnya.[39]

Chechnya gives further credence to Clausewitz’s theory on war “control over territory means control over people. Peoples are less likely to allow their political destinies to be determined over their heads. If the people are not prepared…to acquiesce indefinitely, that conquest cannot in the long term be sustained.”[40]This is a lesson, which the Russians should have learned from their experiences in Afghanistan. In Chechnya they certainly learned that “a nation that finds itself on the brink of an abyss will try to save itself by any means.”[41]

            Writers such as John Keegan and Martin van Creveld argue that the Clausewitzian trinity is an obsolete social paradigm and is no longer of any use as an analytical tool.  However, Christopher Bassford[42] and Michael Handel vehemently disagree with such a hypothesis. Handel writes:

The Trinitarian analysis is even applicable to chaotic situations such as the wars in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda- all internal conflicts that Clausewitz did not have in mind. While situations of utter chaos lack a locus of political control such a centre sooner or later emerges. The Intifada is nothing but an attempt to establish an independent Palestinian state – an entity in which the people, their political leaders and their armed forces will be able to operate. The same can be said of Somalia where the absence of strong central political authority spawns numerous groups with their own supporters and leaders. There is nothing new in history about chaotic situations or stasis it is referred to in Thucydides.[43]

 

 To conclude, the success of Carl von Clausewitz’s theory on war have meant that his influence is being felt in the corridors of universities and parliaments around the world. His concepts on war are imbedded in U.S. military doctrine. Colin Powell former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff read On War in War College and said that the book “struck him like a beam of light, illuminating present day military quandaries.”[44] His principles are as valid in the 1990’s for nuclear as for conventional or guerrilla warfare.[45]

Some argued that Clausewitz’s theories were no longer relevant in the world of the 1990’s as it was a period characterised by non-state conflicts. Writers such as Keegan and Van Creveld argue that distinctions between people and army are meaningless when wars are not fought between states but between armed sections of the population. What we witnessed in the 1990’s was the emergence of a number of internal state conflicts, which were limited in terms of their scope and nature and which were driven by emotions rather than by rational decision making at the highest level. However, nothing could further from the truth. Any conflicts involving states such as Russia in Chechnya or the U.S. and UK in Iraq and Bosnia will always be state based.

            The U.S. government’s actions in the 1990’s reflected precisely what Clausewitz meant when he wrote “so policy converts the overwhelmingly destructive element of war into a mere instrument.  It changes the terrible battle-sword that man needs both hands and his entire strength to wield, and with which he strikes home once and no more, into a light, handy rapier -- sometimes just a foil for the exchange of thrusts, feints and parries.”[46]

Even if we adopt a broader application of Clausewitz’s ideas, his words retain an accuracy, which is unparalleled. For example he states, “the invention of gunpowder and the constant improvements of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilisation has done nothing practical to alter or deter the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.”[47]   This was as true in the 1990’s as it was in Clausewitz’s own day. The fact that his theory still captivates and informs generations of political and military leaders, years after his death, is a testament to both his longevity and enduring applicability.

 

Bibliography

Books

• Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.

 

• Handel, Michael I. Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought. 2^nd edt. London: Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd., 1996.

 

• Hirst, Paul. War and Power in the 21^st Century. Cambridge: Polity, 2001.

 

• Howard, Michael. Clausewitz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

 

• Keegan, John. A history of Warfare. London: Random House, 1993.

 

• Paret, Peter. Clausewitz and the State. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

 

Internet Sources

 

• Bassford, Christopher, and Villacres, Edward, J. Reclaiming the Clausewitzian Trinity http://www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/Trinity/Trinitr.htm. (30 November 2002).

 

• Beer, Richard. Clausewitz on Clinton: The war college lecture. National Defense College, National War College. Http//: www.und.edu/nwc/writing/AY00/5602/5602Beer.rtf.  (25 November 2002).

 

• Eidelberg, Paul, Clausewitz in Afghanistan War, A Commentary on the Peace Process. http://www.freeman.org/m_online/oct97/eidelb2.htm. (20 November 2002).

 

• Treisman, Daniel. Clausewitz on Afghanistan \\http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/treisman/pages/CLAUSE.PDF. (20 November 2002).