Selections from Clausewitz, Part 1

The prophet of strategy was Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian military officer who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, served in the Prussian and Russian armies, and died in 1831. After his death, von Clausewitz's wife, Countess Marie von Clausewitz (née, Countess von Brühl) collated his collected writings and published them as Vom Kriege - "On War". Although Sun Tzu's The Art of War gets much more press than On War, Thomas Rid - you remember, the guy whose book I gushed about last week - rightly notes that whereas On War offers profound, detailed, complex thoughts on strategy and politics, Sun Tzu's magnum opus "read[s] like a choppy Twitter feed from 500 BC". It's understandable: people love, short, direct, quotable catch phrases because they're easier to comprehend than the very weighty wisdom that von Clausewitz left to the world. I'm reminded of 1 Corinthians 3:2 or Hebrews 5:12: Sun Tzu's comparatively short book of philosophical phrases is milk, whereas Carl von Clausewitz's dense tome is meat.

I hold a degree in military strategy ("Strategic Studies"). My curriculum exposed me to various Clausewitzian passages and concepts, but the entirety of On War wasn't on the syllabus. It's sort of like getting a master's degree in divinity without ever having been on the hook to actually read the Bible. So, I'm going to try - slowly - to read a chunk of On War each day. I don't know how long it will take me, and I don't really care, but I've already found some interesting passages, and I'm not even through the first chapter. Here are a few I've found interesting.

"Violence arms itself with the inventions of Art and Science in order to contend against violence. Self-imposed restrictions, almost imperceptible and hardly worth mentioning, termed usages of International Law, accompany it without essentially impairing its power."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, section 2

If only Carl von Clausewitz knew... As I noted earlier, he died in 1831. The Napoleonic Wars, and prior wars such as the American Revolution and the Seven Years War, had gotten to the point of relative civility. As industrialization and the beginnings of the Progressive Movement began to influence both government and society at large, Western governments were increasingly of the mind that war could be legislated into civility, and into oblivion, by way of international laws, accords, treaties, and concensus. Below is a list of only the most significant treaties governing war and warfare which have entered into (and, in some cases, exited from) force since von Clausewitz's death.

1864 - First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field
1868 - St. Petersburg Declaration (precursor to Declaration III of the 1899 Hague Convention)
1899 - 4 Hague Conventions, 3 Declarations
1906 - Second Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea
1907 - 13 Hague Conventions, 2 Declarations
1922 - Washington Naval Treaty of 1922
1925 - Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention (chemical warfare)
1928 - Kellogg-Briand Pact
1929 - Third Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War
1930 - London Naval Treaty of 1930
1936 - Second London Naval Treaty
1949 - Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War
1972 - Biological Weapons Convention (addition to Geneva Protocol)
1977 - Geneva Protocol I relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts
1977 - Geneva Protocol II relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts
1993 - Chemical Weapons Convention (addition to Geneva Protocol)
2005 - Geneva Protocol III relating to the Adoption of an Additional Distinctive Emblem

Between readings from Colin S. Gray and John J. Weltman, I'm convinced that belligerents abide by or violate such treaties, regardless of whether or not they are signatories, based upon their own interests with respect to Thucydides' strategic triad: fear, honor, or interest. A number of these conventions, protocols, and treaties are hilariously outdated, or have proven mostly ineffective - for example, the St. Petersburg Declaration and the Hague Conventions outlawed the use of hollow-point bullets in warfare, and the 1925 Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention and 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention to the Geneva Protocol haven't actually ended chemical warfare. I'm reminded of one of my favorite essays/speeches, "Aliens Cause Global Warming" by the late Michael Crichton. Regardless of one's view on the actual issues of global warming/climate change, Crichton's thesis should appeal to all: governments have become very fond of wrapping the actual science around policies they already support, regardless of what the science actually says. I suspect Carl von Clausewitz would look back at the effectiveness of these various legal injunctions, snort, and say "Ich habe dir so viel" - "I told you as much."

Now, philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skilful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this 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 just the worst. As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act likewise. By such means the former dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed to extremities, to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of counteracting force on each side.

[...]

If the wars of civilised people are less cruel and destructive than those of savages, the difference arises from the social condition both of states in themselves and in their relations to each other. Out of this social condition and its relations war arises, and by it war is subjected to conditions, is controlled and modified. But these things do not belong to war itself; they are only given conditions; and to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, section 3

Following from the last passage to at least some degree, von Clausewitz pours additional cold water on the idea of constraining warfare by way of legal injunctions on armaments or methods, but goes a bit further and, in effect, dismisses what we might now call "limited war". In my course, we came to the collective conclusion - guided by our beloved course director - that limited war is a great theory, but that it doesn't actually withstand the tests of history or reality. Apparently, we agreed with von Clausewitz without realizing it at the time.

"If our opponent is to be made to comply with our will, we must place him in a situation which is more oppressive to him than the sacrifice which we demand; but the disadvantages of this position must naturally not be of a transitory nature, at least in appearance, otherwise the enemy, instead of yielding, will hold out, in the prospect of a change for the better."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, paragraph 4

I read this, and immediately thought of President Obama's decision in late 2009 to send a surge of thirty thousand troops into Afghanistan, but on an announced withdrawal timeline. Conservatives criticized President Obama at the time for, in essence, telling the Taliban exactly how long they would need to hold out in order to prevail. It appears that von Clausewitz would have looked with the White House's 2009 plan with great concern.

"If we desire to defeat the enemy, we must proportion our efforts to his powers of resistance. This is expressed by the product of two factors which cannot be separated, namely, the sum of available means and the strength of the will. The sum of the available means may be estimated in a measure, as it depends (although not entirely) upon numbers; but the strength of volition, is more difficult to determine, and can only be estimated to a certain extent by the strength of the motives."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, paragraph 5

This passage is interesting for several reasons. First, the concept of proportionality ties into Just War Theory, although Clausewitz might disagree with St. Augustine and other Just War philosophers with his suggestion that a belligerent can only prevail insofar as they are willing to use at least a slightly disproportionate amount of force relative to the opponent's capacity to resist.

I'm also reminded of the legendary General James N. Mattis' famous memorandum assessing Effects Based Operations (EBO). I once heard General Mattis speak on the topic, and he related a story from the Iraq War in which Marines were deployed to collect information to feed EBO's information requirements, but that he saw that Iraqi forces' strength of will was unrelated to their "sum of available means" with respect to their capacity to fight to defend their territory. It was a moving anecdote, as evidenced by the fact that I remember it so vividly all these years later. Our recent war efforts have often boiled down to hard, sterile data and what its interpretation suggested that coalition forces ought to do. It seems that Carl von Clausewitz, and indeed James Mattis, would beg to differ with such an approach. More to come as my readings continue.