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Abstract
The task of coming to a proper appreciation of Clausewitz’s thoughts on war is to combine a hierarchical structure with that of a floating balance. This article examines the relation of purpose, aims and means in Clausewitz’s theory and highlights that this relation is methodologically comparable to the floating balance of Clausewitz’s trinity. Modern strategic thinking is characterised by the ‘ends, ways, means relationship’ and the concept of the ‘way’ as shortest possible direct connection between ends and means. If strategy is nothing else than the direct way of linking the political purpose with the means, understood as combat, this understandings results in ‘battle-centric’ warfare. My thesis is that the aim (goal, way) in warfare is not a direct link between purpose and means, but rather an indirect, intermediary dimension, a mediation (in Hegelian terms) between purpose and aims with its own grammar. This article distinguishes (sometimes going beyond Clausewitz) between the rationality of the whole process of war, the rationality of the separate aspects of purpose, aims and means in warfare and finally their conflicting tendencies. This article highlights Clausewitz’s different concepts of purpose and aims and tries to shed at least some light of the strategic implications of this difference. This interpretation of Clausewitz leads to the definition of strategy as maintaining a floating balance of purpose, aims and means in warfare.
Acknowledgements
I’m very grateful for the immense help of Emile Simpson, Oxford in reworking my article and additionally for the recommendations of Francisco Magliano, Buenos Aires; nonetheless, all remaining faults are my own.
Notes
1 The relevant discussions may be found in the following books: Antulio Echevarria, Clausewitz and Contemporary War (Oxford: Oxford UP 2007); Colin Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford UP 1999); Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle: The Political Theory of War (Oxford: Oxford UP 2007); John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London and New York: Vintage 1994); Emile Simpson, War from the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics (London: Hurst 2012); Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press 2007); Tihamer von Ghyczy, Christopher Bassford and Bolko von Oetinger, Clausewitz on Strategy: Inspiration and Insight from a Master Strategist (Hoboken: Wiley 2001); Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2010); Beatrice Heuser, The Strategy Makers: Thoughts on War and Society from Machiavelli to Clausewitz (Santa Barbara: Praeger Security International 2010).
2 Carl von Clausewitz, Schriften, Aufsätze, Studien, Briefe, vol. 2, edited by W. Hahlweg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 1990), here volume II (Writings II), 64; it must be emphasised that this a quotation from a very early text of Clausewitz.
3 For details, see Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle; Carl von Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, edited by P. Paret and D. Moran (Princeton: Princeton UP 1992); Carl von Clausewitz, Politische Schriften [Political Literature], edited by H. Rothfels (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag 1922).
4 The numbers in brackets are references to Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated and edited by Peter Paret and Michael Howard (Princeton: Princeton UP 1984). As translation is an extremely tricky process, I have tried to make some translations of my own only in some cases, especially in trying to distinguish the German terms of ‘Zweck’ (purpose) and ‘Ziel’ (aim). These terms have been translated as purpose, object, objective, ends and as aims, goals and sometimes even ways by Howard and Paret. One of my intentions in this article is to distinguish between purpose and aims. It might be that the great variety of the translations has contributed to the underestimation of the difference between purpose of the war and the aim within war. Although they are closely connected with each other, I follow Clausewitz’s assertion that the same purpose could be reached by pursuing different aims.
5 Howard/Paret translate the German term ‘wehrlos’ with ‘powerless’, but I think that the right translation is ‘defenceless’.
6 In contrast to the Howard/Paret translation, I use the term ‘purpose’ throughout the text for the German term ‘Zweck’. Howard and Paret sometimes translate both the German terms of ‘Zweck’ and ‘Ziel’ as ‘object’, which is not appropriate in all cases.
7 With this notion we can explain the difference between Clausewitz’s real concept of the trinity and trinitarian warfare, which is not directly a concept of Clausewitz, but an argument made by Harry Summers, Martin van Creveld and Mary Kaldor. In trinitarian warfare, the three tendencies of war are understood as a hierarchy, whereas Clausewitz describes his understanding of their relationship as a floating balance. In my view, each war is differently composed of the three aspects of applying force, the struggle or fight of the armed forces and the fighting community the fighting forces belong to; based on this interpretation I define war as the violent struggle of communities; see Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle.
8 This reference seems to strengthen the difference made by Emile Simpson between the use of armed force within a military domain that seeks to establish military conditions for a political solution on one side and the use of armed force that directly seeks political as opposed to specifically military outcomes; nevertheless, war remains a political instrument for Clausewitz; what he might have intended to distinguish is the varying scope of the political influence on war; Simpson, War from the Ground Up, 1.
9 The confusion about the difference between ‘Zweck’ (purpose) and ‘Ziel’ (aims) concerning Clausewitz might be additionally caused by his own insufficient differentiation in this chapter.
10 For Clausewitz’s concepts of policy and politics, see Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle, Chapter Six.
11 In contrast to Jon Sumida, who tries to explain Clausewitz solely out of his notion, that defence is the stronger form of war, I’m making an argument to use the dialectics of attack and defence, the dynamic relationship of both; see Jon Sumida, Decoding Clausewitz (Kansas City: U of Kansas 2008); Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle.
12 Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Russian Campaign’, in Peter Paret and Dan Moran (eds), Carl von Clausewitz: Historical and Political Writings (Princeton: Princeton UP 1992), 201–2. He expressed this statement quite similarly in On War, 166–7.
13 Clausewitz, ‘Russian Campaign’, 201.
14 Raymon Aron, Den Krieg denken (Stuttgart: Propylaen 1980), 207–8; although I don’t agree with Aron’s interpretation of Clausewitz, I think that his book is one of the best books ever written on Clausewitz. It failed to gain the merits it deserves due only to an extremely poor translation into English.
15 Clausewitz, ‘Russian Campaign’, 202–3, 169.
16 Ibid., 169.
17 Ibid., 167.
18 Carl von Clausewitz, Der russische Feldzug von 1812 (Essen: Magnus Publishers 1984), 64: ‘Wer die Sache gründlich durchdenkt, wird sich sagen, dass die Angriffsform die schwächere und die Verteidigungsform die stärkere im Krieg ist, dass aber die erstere die positiven, also die größern und entscheidendern, die letztere nur die negativen Zwecke hat, wodurch sich die Dinge ausgleichen und das Bestehen beider Formen nebeneinander erst möglich wird.’ All translations of German passages not already published in English, referenced in these notes, are by Gerard Holden. Hereafter cited as Clausewitz, Der russische Feldzug. Unfortunately, this passage is missing in the Paret and Moran edition of the ‘Russian Campaign’. Clausewitz repeats this analysis of the ‘dialectical’ relationship between offence and defence in almost the same words in the first chapter of On War, 83–4.
19 Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Gedanken zur Abwehr’, in Carl von Clausewitz, Verstreute kleine Schriften (Osnabrueck: Biblio-publishers 1980), 493–527; on this point, 497–8. Herfried Muenkler, Gewalt und Ordnung (Frankfurt: Fischer 1992); on this point, 96.
20 Clausewitz, ‘Russian Campaign’, 204.
21 Ibid., 179.
22 Ibid., 202.
23 Aron, Den Krieg denken, 208.
24 For all references and citations in this paragraph, see Clausewitz, ‘Russian Campaign’, 202.
25 Ernst Vollrath, ‘Überlegungen zur neueren Diskussion über das Verhältnis von Praxis und Poiesis’ (‘Consideration of the Recent Discussion on the Relationship of Practice and Poiesis’), in Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 1 (1989), 1–26, here 11 and 14ff.; Keyword Zweck (purpose), in Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaftstheorie [Encyclopedia of Scientific Philosophy], edited by Jürgen Mittelstraß, vol. 4 (Stuttgart: Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaftstheorie 1995), 865–8.
26 Gerhard Goehler, ‘Rationalität und Irrationalität der Macht’ [‘Rationality and Irrationality of Power’], in Michael T. Greven (ed.), Macht in der Demokratie [Power in Democracy] (Baden-Baden: Nomos 1991), 46–9. Lexikon zur Soziologie [Encyclopedia of Sociology], second edition, edited by Werner Fuchs and others (Opladen: Verlag fuer Sozialwissenschaften 1978), 888 and 861. The mutual exclusivity in both definitions is a means to distinguish both forms of rationality categorically from each other, although mixed forms occur in reality.
27 Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Strategie aus dem Jahre 1804 mit Zusätzen von 1808 und 1809’ [‘Strategy from the Year 1804 with Additions from 1808 and 1809’], in Carl von Clausewitz, Verstreute Kleine Schriften [Small Scattered Writings] (Osnabrueck: Biblio-publishers 1980), 3–61, here 20–1. In certain respects the ‘duplex nature of war’ is shown in the Nachricht from 1827 in the differentiation of the duplex nature of purpose. A significant difference is however, that Clausewitz states in the ‘Nachricht’ concerning the limited war, that in the early formulation of strategy to have items for exchange in the peace negotiations, as opposed to dictating the conditions of peace.
28 Vollrath, ‘Überlegungen zur neueren Diskussion’, 14.
29 Muenkler, Gewalt und Ordnung, 108–10. For details, see Andreas Herberg-Rothe, ‘The State and the Existential View of Warfare’, in Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Jan Willem Honig and Dan Moran, Clausewitz, the State, and War (Stuttgart: Steiner Publishers 2011), 71–86.
30 Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Historisch-politische Aufzeichnungen von 1809’ [‘Historical-Political Records of 1809’], in Carl von Clausewitz, Politische Schriften [Political Literature], edited by H. Rothfels (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag 1922), 76.
31 John Keegan, Die Kultur des Krieges (Berlin: Rowohlt 1995), in particular, 543; Friedrich Naumann, ‘An den Ufern des Oxos’ [‘On the banks of the Oxos’], John Keegan corrects Carl von Clausewitz, in Frankfurter Rundschau, 17 June 1998, ZB 4.
32 Clausewitz, Schriften (Writings II), 630 and 636.
33 For this understanding of modern warfare, see Michael Geyer’s work of a lifetime; see for example Michael Geyer, Deutsche Rüstungspolitik 1860–1980 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1984).
34 Sabina Brändli, ‘Von “schneidigen Offizieren” und “Militärcriolinen”: Aspekte symbolischer Männlichkeit am Beispiel preußischer und schweizerischer Uniformen des 19. Jahrhunderts’ [‘Of “Dashing Officers” and “Military Crinoline”: Aspects Symbolic of Manliness in Examples of Prussian and Swiss Uniforms of the 19th Century’], in Ute Frevert (ed.), Militär und Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Klett Cotta 1997), 201–28, here 225.
35 Keegan, Kultur; Martin van Creveld, Die Zukunft des Krieges, second edition (Munich: Gerling Akademie Verlag 2001); Cora Stephan, Das Handwerk des Krieges (Berlin: Rowohlt 1998).
36 For the meaning of this distinction, see Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Der Krieg. Geschichte und Gegewanrt (Frankfurt: Campus 2003), see in particular the typology of combatants, 60–83.
37 This opposite is most clearly emphasised by John Keegan, Kultur, and in a more sophisticated manner by Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Henry Holt 1998); see also Herberg-Rothe, Der Krieg.
38 Zygmunt Bauman, Moderne und Ambivalenz (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1995).
39 Compare only the beginning of Chapter One, Book Eight, in which it is retrospectively summarised: ‘and we concluded that the grand objective of all military action is to overthrow the enemy – which means destroying his armed forces’ (577) with: ‘[w]e can see now that in war many roads lead to success, and that they do not all involve the opponent’s outright defeat’ (94).
40 Muenkler, Gewalt und Ordnung.
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Andreas Herberg-Rothe
Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Dr. phil. habil., is a permanent lecturer at the faculty of social and cultural studies at the University of Applied Sciences, Fulda and was a private lecturer of Political Science at the Institute for Social Sciences, Humboldt-University Berlin (up to 2009) He was an associate of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme ‘The changing character of war’ (2004–2005) and convener (together with Hew Strachan) of the conference ‘Clausewitz in the 21st century’ (Oxford 2005). He was a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre for International Studies (2005–2006).
He is the author of Clausewitz’s Puzzle. The Political Theory of War (Oxford University Press) and edited together with Hew Strachan the anthology Clausewitz in the Twenty-first Century (Oxford University Press 2007). His articles include: ‘New Containment Policy: Grand Strategy for the Twenty-first Century?’ RUSI-Journal 153/2 (2008), 50–55; ‘The Re-politicisation of War and Violent Conflict - The World Powers are Striking Back’, in Ralph Rotte and Christoph Schwarz (eds), War and Strategy (New York: Nova Science 2010). His last book about Clausewitz (together with Jan Willem Honig and Dan Moran) has just been published: Clausewitz: The State and War (Stuttgart 2011). In 2010 and 2011 he held lectures at Westpoint Academy about Tolstoy and Clausewitz (this article is slated to be published in Chinese) as well as in Washington about curbing war and violence in world society, the emergence of world order conflicts, Clausewitz and partisan warfare and in Oxford about the democratic warrior. Some of his political-philosophical articles are collected in his volume: Lyotard und Hegel. Dialektik von Philosophie und Politik [Lyotard and Hegel. The Dialectics of the Political and Philosophy] (Wien 2005). He held his most recent lecture about the last topic at the 29th international Hegel conference in Istanbul in October 2012. In September 2013 he gave a lecture about the evolving battle space of the twenty-first century at Nanyang University, Singapore.