In the philosophy of war, this work is considered the most important attempt to understand war, its strategies and internal dynamics. Here, on the basis of historical studies and Clausewitz’s practice accumulated in wars, the general principles, aims and means of war, the art and science of war, and the relationship between war and politics are examined in detail.
Appearing for the first time in 1832. even after Clausewitz’s death, “On War” was immediately recognized as one of the most significant texts that influenced not only entire generations of soldiers and military strategists, but also political leaders and intellectuals. The passage provides the beginning of the book, an attempt to define war.
We share an excerpt from the book.
Carl von Clausewitz. About the war
On the nature of war
CHAPTER ONE
What is war?
We are going to examine the individual elements of our object, then its individual parts or members, and finally the whole and its interrelationships, thus proceeding from the simple to the complex. But here, more than anywhere else, one must begin by looking at the essence of the whole, because here, more than anywhere else, when speaking of a part, one must always have the whole in mind at the same time.
1. Definition
We will not go into heavy journalistic definitions of war here and will stick to one of the elements of war – a duel. War is nothing more than an extended duel. If we intend to imagine the innumerable duels of which it consists as a certain unit, let us rather think of two wrestlers. Each of them tries to force the other to do his will by physical force; his immediate goal is to knock down his opponent, so that he can no longer resist in any way.
Thus, war is an act of coercion by which an adversary is forced to do our will.
Coercion arms itself with the inventions of arts and sciences to counter other coercion. It is accompanied by imperceptible, barely noticeable limitations that it imposes on itself in the name of international law, but those limitations do not fundamentally diminish its power. Thus, coercion, i.e. physical coercion (because moral coercion does not exist, if we do not talk about the concepts of state and law), is tool; and imposing one’s will on the enemy is purpose. To achieve this goal, we must render the enemy unable to defend itself, and this, by definition, is the true goal of military action. It stands up and, so to speak, overshadows the goal as if it were something unrelated to the war itself.
Use of extreme coercion
Now altruistic souls may easily think that it is possible to artificially disarm or stun an enemy without inflicting too many wounds, and that this is the true trend of the art of war. No matter how beautiful you look, this mistake still has to be destroyed; for when faced with such dangerous things as war, mistakes made out of benevolence are precisely the worst. Since the use of physical coercion on a full scale does not mean that the mind is not involved, he who uses this coercion indiscriminately, sparing no blood, must gain an advantage if his opponent does not. As a result, he dictates the conditions to the second, and thus both go to the extreme limit, and without internal counterweights there are no other barriers.
This is how the matter must be looked at, and the effort to disregard the nature of the coarse animal for the sake of detesting it is quite useless, even inappropriate.
If the wars of civilized peoples are far less cruel and destructive than those of uncivilized nations, this is due to the social condition of the states within and between them. War arises from this condition and its relations, this condition determines, limits, moderates war. But these things do not belong to war itself, they are only givens to it, and the principle of moderation can never be introduced into the philosophy of war, unless we want to take an absurd step.
Fighting between people basically consists of two elements: enmity feeling and hostile intentions. We have chosen the second element as the feature of our definition because it is more general. We cannot think even of the fiercest, almost instinctive, passionate hatred without hostile intentions, but there are many hostile intentions which are not accompanied by any, or at least by any hostility of the dominant feelings. In the case of harsher nations, feeling predominates, and in the case of cultured nations, intentions attributable to reason; but this difference relates not to the very essence of harshness and culture, but to the accompanying circumstances, institutions, etc.; thus it is not necessarily found in every single case, but in most cases it is dominant; in short: even the most cultured nations can be inflamed with passionate hatred for each other.
Thus we see how wrong we would be to think when we tried to ascribe cultured war to the mere act of the minds of governments, and to imagine it more and more so devoid of all passion, that in the end war really required no longer the physical masses of the armed forces, but only their relations, like some kind of algebra of activity.
The theory had already begun to move in this direction, but the manifestations of the last wars showed that it was wrong. If war is an act of coercion, then it is inevitably related to feelings. If it does not arise from feeling, it still tends to it more or less, and this “more” or “less” depends not on the degree of culture, but on the importance and duration of the hostile interests.
Therefore, if we see that civilized nations do not send captives to the sea, do not destroy cities and villages, it is because the intellect intervenes more in warfare and has learned to use more effective means of coercion than such crude manifestations of instinct.
The invention of gunpowder and the ever-increasing improvement of firearms are enough evidence that the growing culture did not in any way disturb or turn aside the tendency to destroy the enemy inherent in the concept of war.
So we repeat our statement: war is an act of coercion, and there are no limits to the use of coercion; thus each dictates conditions to the other, both sides exert an influence on each other, which in principle must go to the extreme limit. It is the first interaction and the first extreme that we encounter.
(The first mutual effect.)
The goal is to render the enemy unable to defend itself
We have said that rendering the enemy unable to defend himself is the object of military action, and we now intend to show that it is necessary, at least theoretically.
If the adversary is to do our will, we must put him in such a position that it is less favorable than the sacrifice we require of him; but the disadvantage of this position must, of course, at least appear not to be temporary, or the adversary will lie in wait and not surrender. Thus, any change in this situation resulting from continued military activity must, at least conceivably, make the situation even more unfavorable. The worst position a belligerent can find himself in is a complete inability to defend himself. Thus, if an adversary is to be forced to do our will by military action, we must either render him effectively incapable of defending himself, or make him feel as if he is likely to be threatened. Therefore, the conclusion is that disarming the enemy, or stunning it, whatever we call it, must always be the goal of military operations.
But war is not the effect of living force on dead mass; since absolute suffering would not be warfare, then war is always a collision between two living forces, and what we have said about the final object of warfare we must apply in mind to both sides. So here again there is a mutual interaction. Until I have overwhelmed my opponent, I have to fear that he will overwhelm me, so I am no longer my own master, because the opponent dictates the order to me, and I dictate it to the opponent. It is the second interplay that leads to the second extreme.
(Second mutual interaction.)
Extreme stress
To overwhelm an adversary, we must measure our efforts by his power to resist; the latter is expressed as a product whose factor cannot be separated from one another, namely: in the amount of existing measures and strength of will.
It would be possible to determine the size of the existing measures, as it is (albeit not exactly) based on numbers; and it is much less possible to determine the strength of the will, it can only be roughly estimated according to how strong the motive is. Supposing we have thus succeeded in ascertaining a tolerable probability of opposition by the enemy’s power, we may accordingly anticipate our efforts, making them either so great as to achieve superiority, or, in case our resources are insufficient, as great as possible. But so does the opponent; thus another mutual contest which, in the pure imagination, must once again mean striving for the extreme. This is the third interaction and the third extreme we have found.
(The third mutual interaction.)
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2024-09-30 09:38:11
