Selections from Clausewitz, Part 3

It's time for another installment of commentary on passages from On War by Carl von Clausewitz.

"The war of a community - of whole nations and particularly of civilised nations - always starts from a political condition, and is called forth by a political motive. It is therefore a political act."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, section 23

This is one of the handful of "money quotes" from On War. I mentioned above that I'm not confident that the U.S. Army is educating its senior officers in strategy; instead, it's teaching them campaigning. Strategy involves the coordination of all of the instruments of national power. The current buzz word for that is "DIME": Diplomacy, Intelligence (or Information), Military, and Economics. Strategy involves orchestrating all four of those elements to achieve political goals, while campaigning typically stops at the achievement of military goals.

There have been a handful of senior officers in recent years who have understood the difference - Generals James Mattis, David Petraeus, and H.R. McMaster being three of the most prominent - but true strategists tend to run afoul of the Army establishment. (The Marine Corps establishment does better, but because the Marine Corps is considered a junior service, and because it is to some degree subordinate to the Navy, its ability to influence the management of America's wars is limitated.) My hypothesis is that because so few Army officers actually learn strategy (and the Air Force is similarly trained in campaigning, rather than strategy), they are less able to advise America's civilian policy-makers. As a result, the campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have become complex and incoherent because their campaigns are not effectively related to the achievement of specific political goals.

Two other terms that are outside the scope of this discussion, but may be worth discussing at a later date, are "strategic corporal" and "commander's intent".

"We see, therefore, that war is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to war relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the art of war in general and the commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, war is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, section 24

As I noted above: the means (the use of military force) must always include the object (a nation's political goals) in our conception (campaign plans and their execution).

"But if even both these things are done, still the war, that is, the hostile feeling and action of hostile agencies, cannot be considered as at an end as long as the will of the enemy is not subdued also; that is, its Government and its allies forced into signing a peace, or the people into submission; for whilst we are in full occupation of the country the war may break out afresh, either in the interior or through assistance given by allies. No doubt this may also take place after a peace, but that shows nothing more than that every war does not carry in itself the elements for a complete decision and final settlement."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, Chapter II

I had a couple of thoughts about this passage. First, it identifies that while limited campaigns may be attractive in some cases, some campaigns will require the complete and total domination of the enemy. Some disputes will persist, and in so doing cost more blood and treasure than is necessary for the settlement of the political dispute. Second, the concluding sentence is an important reminder that while we prefer to perceive wars as episodes with a beginning and an end, they are in fact components in a long string of history that doesn't end.

"There are two considerations, which as motives, may practically take the place of inability to continue the contest. The first is the improbability, the second is the excessive price of success."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, Chapter II

This passage reminds me of deterrence and compellance. With some exceptions, the hope of most rational policy-makers is to achieve its goals, both foreign and domestic, without firing a shot. Belligerents enter into states of war because they believe that there is a probability that, in so doing, they will enjoy a reasonable chance of success. The discussion of Tirpitz below is an illustration of this concept: Tirpitz attempted to achieve naval goals commensurate with the strategic goals of Hindenburg and Ludendorff by presenting the British Royal Navy with a victory at sea whose cost exceeded its value. This concept also drove the development of nuclear strategy after 1945, nuclear strategy having developed from the theories of massive bombardment espoused by Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell after the First World War. In deterrence theory, these concepts are summarized in the two concepts noted above: deterrence by denial, and deterrence by punishment.

"Now if we want to overcome the enemy by the duration of the contest we must content ourselves with as small objects as possible, for it is in the nature of the thing that a great end requires a greater expenditure of force than a small one; but the smallest object that we can propose to ourselves is simple passive resistance, that is a combat without any positive view. In this way, therefore, our means attain their greatest relative value, and therefore the result is best secured."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, Chapter II

This passage reminded me a great deal of insurgencies and guerrilla warfare, in which the guerrilla/insurgent force grinds down the superior conventional force through a "death by a thousand cuts" methodology. One could also make the observation, particularly of the "small objects" terminology, that any strategy requires one or more campaign plans, which are themselves achieved through numerous tactical actions.

"If the object of a combat is not always the destruction of the enemy's forces therein engaged — and if its object can often be attained as well without the combat taking place at all, by merely making a resolve to fight, and by the circumstances to which that gives rise — then that explains how a whole campaign may be carried on with great activity without the actual combat playing any notable part in it."
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book I, Chapter II

The Father of Strategy is identifying what we strategists would currently define as deterrence and compellence: the use of various aspects of national power to manipulate an adversary's behavior without actually engaging them in combat. The most famous example is probably the Cold War, but there are others - for example, I remember discussing the campaign plan of Imperial German Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz with my buddy "Warden" after we'd listened to the following portion of Sir Laurence Martin's 1981 BBC Reith Lecture: "It is not even necessary to threaten defeat. Dr Jonathan Steinberg has illustrated how, at the turn of the century, Admiral Tirpitz’s inferior German navy, by threatening the Royal Navy with more damage than it could afford to accept even for victory, was, as the title of Dr. Steinberg’s book has it, ‘yesterday’s deterrent’. In much the same way, the armed neutralities of Sweden and Switzerland are long-established examples of security sought by confronting a would-be aggressor not with defeat, but with the prospect of higher costs than the prize is worth. As we know, such strategies of deterrence have been tried before and have not always worked — it didn’t work for Tirpitz — so why do people pin so much faith on nuclear deterrence? The answer lies in the supposed potential scale of the costs and the certainty of incurring them." This is typically characterized as "deterrence by punishment", ensuring that the adversary will sustain disproportionate losses should they attempt to attack; or "deterrence by denial", ensuring that the adversary's attack will be unsuccessful and thus, not worth it. The Father of Strategy shifts his focus a bit in his first book's third chapter, so we'll pick up with that in the next installment.