On War - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Vom Kriege is a book on war

War

War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...

and military strategy

Military strategy

Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...

by Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

n general Carl von Clausewitz

Carl von Clausewitz

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz was a Prussian soldier and German military theorist who stressed the moral and political aspects of war...

(1780-1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife in 1832. It has been translated into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

several times as On War. On War is actually an unfinished work; Clausewitz had set about revising his accumulated manuscripts in 1827, but did not live to finish the task. His wife, with whom he shared a deep intellectual relationship, edited his collected works and published them between 1832 and 1835. His 10-volume collected works contain most of his larger historical and theoretical writings, though not his shorter articles and papers or his extensive correspondence with important political, military, intellectual and cultural leaders in the Prussian state. On War is only the first three volumes and represents his theoretical explorations. It is one of the most important treatises on political-military analysis and strategy ever written, and remains both controversial and a living influence on strategic thinking.

History

Clausewitz was among those intrigued by the manner in which the leaders of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, especially Napoleon, had changed the conduct of war through their ability to motivate the populace and to gain access to the full resources of the state. Thus unleashing war on a greater scale than had previously been seen in Europe. Clausewitz was well educated and had strong interests in art, history, science, and education. He was a professional soldier who spent a considerable part of his life fighting against Napoleon. The insights he gained from his political and military experiences, combined with a solid grasp of European history, provided the basis for the book.

Synopsis

The book contains a wealth of historical examples used to illustrate its various concepts. Frederick II of Prussia

Frederick II of Prussia

Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...

(the Great) figures prominently for having made very efficient use of the limited forces at his disposal, though Napoleon is perhaps the central figure.

According to Azar Gat

Azar Gat

Azar Gat is a researcher and author on military history. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University...

, the "general message" of the book was that "the conduct of war could not be reduced to universal principles. Among many strands of thought, three stand out as essential to Clausewitz's concept:

War must never be seen as having any purpose in itself, but should be seen as an instrument of Politik--a German word that conflates the meanings of the English words policy and politics: "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.").
The military objectives in war that support one's political objectives fall into two broad types: "war to achieve limited aims" and war to "disarm” the enemy: “to render [him] politically helpless or militarily impotent."
All else being equal, the course of war will tend to favour the party with the stronger emotional and political motivations, but especially the defender (a notion that surprises and confuses many readers, who typically expect a soldier--especially a German soldier--to be a proponent of aggressive warfare).

Some of the key ideas (not necessarily original to Clausewitz or even to his mentor Gerhard von Scharnhorst

Gerhard von Scharnhorst

Gerhard Johann David Waitz von Scharnhorst was a general in Prussian service, Chief of the Prussian General Staff, noted for both his writings, his reforms of the Prussian army, and his leadership during the Napoleonic Wars....

) discussed in On War include (in no particular order of importance):

the dialectical approach
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...

to military analysis
the methods of "critical analysis"
the uses and abuses of historical studies
the nature of the balance-of-power mechanism
the relationship between political objectives and military objectives in war
the asymmetrical relationship between attack and defense
the nature of "military genius"
the "fascinating trinity" (Wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit) of war
philosophical distinctions between "absolute or ideal war," and "real war"
in "real war," the distinctive poles of a) limited war and b) war to "render the enemy helpless"
"war" belongs fundamentally to the social realm, rather than the realms of art or science
"strategy" belongs primarily to the realm of art
"tactics" belongs primarily to the realm of science
the essential unpredictability of war
the "fog of war
Fog of war
The fog of war is a term used to describe the uncertainty in situation awareness experienced by participants in military operations. The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign...

"
"friction"
strategic and operational "centers of gravity"
the "culminating point
Culminating point
The culminating point in military strategy is the point at which a military force no longer is able to perform its operations.On the offensive, the culminating point marks the time when the attacking force can no longer continue its advance, because of supply problems, the opposing force, or the...

of the offensive"
the "culminating point of victory"

Clausewitz used a dialectical method to construct his argument, leading to frequent modern misinterpretation because he explores various--often opposed--ideas before coming to conclusions.

Modern perception of war are based on the concepts Clausewitz put forth in On War, though these have been very diversely interpreted by various leaders (e.g., Moltke, Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

, Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...

, Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...

, etc.), thinkers, armies, and peoples. Modern military doctrine, organization, and norms are all based on Napoleonic premises, even to this day—though whether these premises are necessarily also "Clausewitzian" is debatable.

The "dualism" of Clausewitz's view of war (i.e., that wars can vary a great deal between the two "poles" he proposed, based on the political objectives of the opposing sides and the context) seems simple enough, but few commentators have proven willing to accept this crucial variability—they insist that Clausewitz "really" argued for one end of the scale or the other. On War has been seen by some prominent critics as an argument for "total war

Total war

Total war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population.In the mid-19th century, "total war" was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare...

". It has been blamed for the level of destruction involved in the First

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

and Second World Wars, but it seems rather that Clausewitz (who did not actually use the term "total war") had merely foreseen the inevitable development that started with the huge, patriotically motivated armies of the Napoleonic wars. These wars resulted (though war's evolution has not yet ended) in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with all the forces and capabilities of the state devoted to destroying forces and capabilities of the enemy state (thus "total war"). Conversely, Clausewitz has also been seen as "The preeminent military and political strategist of limited war in modern times." (Robert Osgood, 1979)

Clausewitz and his proponents have been severely criticized, perhaps quite unfairly, by competing theorists--Antoine-Henri Jomini

Antoine-Henri Jomini

Antoine-Henri, baron Jomini was a general in the French and later in the Russian service, and one of the most celebrated writers on the Napoleonic art of war...

in the 19th century, B. H. Liddell Hart in the mid-20th century, and Martin van Creveld

Martin van Creveld

Martin Levi van Creveld is an Israeli military historian and theorist.Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam, and has lived in Israel since shortly after his birth. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has...

and John Keegan

John Keegan

Sir John Keegan OBE FRSL is a British military historian, lecturer, writer and journalist. He has published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime, and intelligence warfare, as well as the psychology of battle.-Life and career:John...

more recently. On War is a work rooted solely in the world of the nation state, says historian Martin Van Creveld, who alleges that Clausewitz takes the state "almost for granted" as he rarely looks at anything previous to Westphalia

Peace of Westphalia

The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October of 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the...

. He alleges that Clausewitz does not address any form of intra/supra-state conflict, such as rebellion and revolution, because he could not theoretically account for warfare before the existence of the state. Previous kinds of conflict were demoted to criminal activities without legitimacy and not worthy of the label "war." Van Creveld argues that "Clausewitzian war" requires the state to act in conjunction with the people and the army, the state becoming a massive engine built to exert military force against an identical opponent. He supports this statement by pointing to the conventional armies in existence throughout the 20th century. This view ignores, among many other things, the facts that Clausewitz died in the early 19th century, that Prussia itself was not a "nation-state," and that the Napoleonic Wars included many non-conventional conflicts of which Clausewitz was well aware. In any case, revolutionaries like Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

, Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...

, Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

, and Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong

had no trouble adapting Clausewitz's concepts to their own purposes. Nor did conservatives like the Elder Moltke and Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...

. Much of Clausewitz's thinking was based on his experience as a Prussian war planner concerned with how to use popular forces in an insurrectionary struggle against the much-superior French forces which occupied Prussia after 1806--how, in short, to wage a "Spanish War in Germany."

Clausewitz himself never saw the 20th-century states and armies to which Creveld refers—the states with which he himself was familiar were quite different. In any case, the "Clausewitzian Trinity" that Van Creveld condemns as consisting of a rigid, static hierarchy of "People, Army, and Government," does not in fact consist of those three concrete actors. In fact, the words people, army, and government appear nowhere in the paragraph in which Clausewitz defines his famous Trinity. Rather, the Trinity of forces that drive the course of real-world war in Clausewitz's view are 1) violent emotion, 2) the interplay of chance and probability, and 3) political calculations driven by reason. It seems unlikely that emotion, chance, and rationality will cease to play a role in war any time soon, whatever the fate of the state.

English translations

1873. Graham, J.J. translator. Republished 1908 with extensive commentary and notes by Victorian imperialist F.N. Maude. Project Gutenberg eBook, a partial version There is a complete version at http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/OnWar1873/TOC.htm.
1943. O. J. Matthijs Jolles
O. J. Matthijs Jolles
Otto Jolle Matthijs Jolles performed a major service to strategic studies in the United States by providing the first American translation of Carl von Clausewitz's magnum opus, On War. Jolles himself is a bit obscure to students of military affairs, largely because his translation of On War was...

, translator (New York: Random House, 1943). This is viewed by some modern scholars as the most accurate existing English translation.
1968. Edited with introduction by Anatol Rapoport
Anatol Rapoport
Anatol Rapoport was a Russian-born American Jewish mathematical psychologist. He contributed to general systems theory, mathematical biology and to the mathematical modeling of social interaction and stochastic models of contagion.-Biography:...

. Viking Penguin. ISBN 0-14-044427-0. This is badly dated (based on the 1873 Graham translation), severely abridged (leaving out, for instance, Book Six on defense--which Clausewitz considered to be the stronger form of warfare), and badly biased (because of its Vietnam War era and the editor's hostility to "neo-Clausewitzian" Henry Kissinger).
1976/1984. Howard, Michael
Michael Howard (historian)
Sir Michael Eliot Howard, OM, CH, CBE, MC, FBA is a British military historian, formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, and Robert A...

, and Peter Paret
Peter Paret
Peter Paret is American military, cultural & art historian with a particular interest in German history. Paret was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Dr. Hans Paret and Suzanne Aimée Cassirer, who divorced in 1932...

, editors and translators. Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
-Further reading:* "". Artforum International, 2005.-External links:* * * * *...

. ISBN 0-691-05657-9. This is generally considered to be the standard modern translation,despite its weaknesses.

External links

The Clausewitz Homepage
Online version of Vom Kriege - the 1832 German original
Online version of On War - the 1873 English translation
Bassford, Christopher, 2002, "Clausewitz and His Works." Describes the author's intent, and discusses interpretations and common misunderstandings.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Synopsis

English translations

See also

External links