Planning versus Chaos in Clausewitz's On War

Abstract

Clausewitz laid great emphasis on the planned construction of war, but this idea has received little attention from his commentators, who generally attach far greater importance to what he said about the chaotic elements of war, in particular its interactive nature and the friction inseparable from its conduct. This article gives long-overdue recognition to planning as a dominant theme of On War. The essential point Clausewitz makes concerning interaction is not that the enemy's responses are bound to disrupt our plans, but that our plans must aim to predict and incorporate his responses. Clausewitz acknowledges that friction creates enormous difficulties for the realization of any plan, but it is precisely in respect of this challenge that he develops the concept of military genius, whose capabilities are seen above all as the executive arm of planning.

Key Words:

• Clausewitz
• planning
• chaos

Notes

¹All page numbers given in my text refer to Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, Princeton UP 1976).

²Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz (London: Pimlico 2002), 89.

³The context is Moltke's essay of 1871 ‘Ueber Strategie’, where he writes: ‘The material and moral consequences of every major battle are so far-reaching that they usually bring about a completely altered situation, a new basis for the adoption of new measures. One cannot be at all sure that any operational plan will survive the first encounter with the main body of the enemy. Only a layman could suppose that the development of a campaign represents the strict application of a prior concept that has been worked out in every detail and followed through to the very end.’ (Helmuth von Moltke, Militärische Werke, ed. Großer Generalstab, Abteilung für Kriegsgeschichte I, Vol. II, 2, Moltkes taktisch-strategische Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1857 bis 1871 (Berlin: Mittler 1900), 291–2).

⁴The words in square brackets are supplied from the original German, which reads ‘Kriegs- und Feldzugsplan’; see Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 17th edition, ed. Werner Hahlweg (Bonn: Ferd. Dümmlers Verlag 1966), 248.

⁵Alan Beyerchen, ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War’, International Security 17/3 (Winter 1992/93), 85. This article is also accessible via The Clausewitz Homepage in a section devoted to ‘Clausewitz and Complexity’ <www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/Beyerchen/CWZandNonlinearity.htm>.

⁶Ibid. (printed version), 73.

⁷Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 186.

⁸See also Clausewitz's ‘Strategic Critique of the Campaign of 1814 in France’ (extracts), in Carl von Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, ed. and trans. Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (Princeton, Princeton UP 1992), 205–19, esp. 217.

⁹Beyerchen, ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War’, 84.

¹⁰The German verb used here (Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 843) is not raten, to guess at something, but erraten, which has the connotation of guessing correctly. Thus you can say in German falsch geraten! (‘you guessed wrong!’), but falsch erraten! would make no sense.

¹¹Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford: OUP 2001), 188.

¹²Ibid., 370.

¹³Quoted in ibid., 187–8. For the original German see Clausewitz, Die wichtigsten Grundsätze des Kriegführens zur Ergänzung meines Unterrichts bei Sr. Königlichen Hoheit dem Kronprinzen, in Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 978.

¹⁴Peter Paret, ‘Clausewitz’, in idem (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998), 203.

¹⁵Beyerchen, ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War’, 66.

¹⁶Ibid., 80.

¹⁷Ibid., 77.

¹⁸In this translation, the wording ‘far from the sphere of action’ makes it sound as if the initial plans are made while the action is already taking place somewhere else. In fact Clausewitz says that when a commander first draws up his plans he is ‘noch außer der eigentlichen Kriegssphäre’ – as yet uninvolved in the actual sphere of war (Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 156). It is a relation of time, not of space. The point is not that the plans are made at a safe distance from the war, but that they are made before it starts.

¹⁹The word ‘earlier’ is supplied from the original German, which enjoins ‘das Halten an diesen Resultaten eines früheren Nachdenkens’ (Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 143).

²⁰Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 138. I have translated this quotation myself because the Howard/Paret version (Clausewitz, On War, 105) leaves out the direct reference to planning and misattributes the pronoun ‘derselben’. The original states that ‘die Standhaftigkeit … von dem Verstande unterstützt sein will; denn mit der Dauer einer Tätigkeit nimmt die Planmäßigkeit derselben zu, und aus dieser schöpft die Standhaftigkeit zum Teil ihre Stärke’.