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Abstract
On War’s unfinished state has been a source of difficulties for interpretation for 180 years. By establishing a hierarchy of revision among the parts, we propose a criterion that can bring any part of On War in line with the most advanced stage of Clausewitz’s thinking. We exemplify the utility, illustrate the underpinnings and appreciate the potential of this criterion. We argue that the criterion offers the prospect of a shared, coherent, fully consistent and faithful rendering of Clausewitz’s theory of war.
Key Words:
Notes
1 W.B. Gallie, Philosophers of Peace and War (Cambridge: CUP 1978), 37–65; cf. concluding remarks, 135 ff.
2 See Anatol Rapoport’s edition of Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics 1968); Roger Ashly and Michael Howard Leonard, A Short Guide to Clausewitz on War (New York: Capricorn Books 1968).
3 Christopher Bassford, Clausewitz in English (Oxford: OUP 1994) offers such a history, covering the English-speaking world.
4 We are working on a thorough presentation of Clausewitz’s theory in the light of the criterion. Preliminary publications include: Domício Proença Júnior and Erico Duarte, ‘The Concept of Logistics Derived from Clausewitz’, Journal of Strategic Studies 28/4 (Dec. 2005), 645–77; Eugenio Diniz, ‘Epistemologia, História e Estudos Estratégicos: Clausewitz versus Keegan’ [‘Episthemology, History and Strategic Studies: Clausewitz versus Keegan’], Contexto Internacional 32/1 (Jan./ June 2010), 39–90.
5 Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State (Princeton UP 1976), pages from the 1985 edition.
6 Raymond Aron, Penser la Guerre, Clausewitz, vol. 1 (Paris: Galimard 1976).
7 Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought (Oxford: OUP 1989).
8 Michael I. Handel (ed.), Clausewitz and Modern Strategy (London: Frank Cass 1986).
9 Gert de Nooy (ed.), The Clausewitzian Dictum and the Future of Western Military Strategy (Hague: Kluwer Law International 1997).
10 Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (London: Free Press 1991).
11 Bassford, Clausewitz in English.
12 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (Vintage 1994).
13 Uwe Hartman, Carl von Clausewitz (Munich: Olzog Verlag 1998).
14 Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Das Rätsel Clausewitz (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2001).
15 Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz (London: Pimlico 2002).
16 Jan Willem Honig, ‘Introduction’ to Carl von Clausewitz, On War (New York: Barnes and Noble 2004).
17 Hugh Smith, On Clausewitz (New York: Palgrave MacMillan 2005).
18 Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds), Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century (New York: OUP 2007).
19 Antulio Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War (New York: OUP 2007).
20 H.P. Willmott and Michael B. Barrett, Clausewitz Reconsidered (New York: Praeger 2009).
21 Colin S. Gray, The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford UP 2011).
22 Jon Tetsuro Sumida, Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War (Lawrence: UP of Kansas 2008), 36–64.
23 Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography (London: Grove Press 2008), 191–4.
24 Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 3–10.
25 Gat, The Origins of Military Thought, 1–10, 251–4.
26 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, (eds and trans.) Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton UP 1976), pages from the 1984 edition; Marie’s Preface and Clausewitz’s notes, 61–74. Cf. Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 19th ed, (ed.) Werner Hahlweg (Troisdorf: Dümmler 1980).
27 Gat, Origins of Military Thought, 255–63.
28 Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War, Vol. IV (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1990), 454–5.
29 Clausewitz, On War; Howard and Paret choose ‘enemy’ for Gegner; this is at odds with the meaning of the word, and it will be translated as ‘opponent’ in all quotations.
30 Clausewitz, On War, 77, emphasis in the original.
31 Clausewitz, On War; Howard and Paret choose ‘policy’ for Politik, which compromises quite a few passages, as has been remarked, among others, explicitly by Bassford, Clausewitz in English, and in practice by Beatrice Heuser, ‘Clausewitz’s Ideas of Strategy and Victory’, draft presented to the Clausewitz Conference, Oxford, 23–25 March 2005 and graciously made available to us. We translate Politik as either ‘policy’ or ‘politics’ on the basis of context.
32 Clausewitz, On War, 77, emphasis in the original.
33 Clausewitz, On War, 77.
34 Clausewitz, On War, 79.
35 Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 170.
36 Gat, The Origins of Military Thought, 259.
37 Aron, Penser la Guerre, Clausewitz, Vol. 1, 239, emphasis added, our translation.
38 Ibid., 259–60.
39 Aron, Penser la Guerre, Clausewitz, Vol. 1, 239; emphasis added.
40 Aron, Penser la Guerre, Clausewitz, Vol. 1, is in a quandary to find out which would be this third ‘solution according to other lines’, that he refers to by the German word Ausweg, an exit. He would seem to find it in the inconsistency and hesitation on what would be the essence of the defense. This is so uncharacteristically a deus ex machina that the only possible explanation must lie in the need of presenting something that might be a new way out. As Aron holds the Undated Note to have been written in 1830, this is to be expected: some way out had to be found outside of the Note of 1827.
41 Clausewitz, On War, 69–71.
42 Gat, Origins of Military Thought, 261.
43 Clausewitz, On War, 66.
44 Gat, Origins of Military Thought, 258.
45 Gat, Origins of Military Thought, 257.
46 The Note of 1827 also raises the issue of premature death, but hypothetically, in contrast to the Undated Note, that reads almost like a will.
47 Gat, Origins of Military Thought, 259.
48 Clausewitz, On War, 140.
49 Ibid., 141, emphasis in the original.
50 Clausewitz, On War, 142; cf. Vom Kriege, 292.
51 Clausewitz, On War, 143; cf. Vom Kriege, 293.
52 Clausewitz, On War, 141.
53 Clausewitz, On War, 140.
54 Ibid., 70, emphasis added.
55 Clausewitz, On War, 127; Howard and Paret have ‘Classifications of the Art of War’; in German, ‘Einteilung der Kriegkunst’, Vom Kriege, 269, which shows that Clausewitz is addressing the division of the art of war in the conduct of war (tactics and strategy) and all else that is required so that the fighting force may be taken as a given. This led to our choice of ‘division’. See Proença Júnior and Duarte, ‘The Concept of Logistics Derived from Clausewitz’, 645–77.
56 Clausewitz, On War, 132.
57 Ibid., 157; Howard and Paret choose ‘principles’ for Grundsätze, which is unfortunate given Clausewitz’s aversion for such things as ‘principles of war’. Cf. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 359 footnotes a defense of ‘principles’, conceding the idea might be best expressed by ‘propositions’. We choose ‘fundamentals’ as an expression of an enduring aspect of reality.
58 Clausewitz, On War, 158: ‘A critic should never use the results of theory as laws and standards, but only – as the soldier does – as aids to judgment.’; cf. Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 315, reads: ‘Solche Resultate der Theorie darf die Kritik nie als Gesetze und Normen zum Maßstabe gebrauchen, sondern nur als das, was sie auch dem Handelnden sein sollen, als Anhalt für das Urteil’, emphasis in the original. We translated it differently because Clausewitz systematically avoids the equivalences of warrior to soldier, ‘bellic’ [kriegerische] to military, fighting force to army, and any other choices that would tend to imply that he would be addressing only the organizational forms of his time – both in war and in politics. Further, Clausewitz frequently contests the slighting of practical knowledge and first-hand experience by pedantic writers. Howard and Paret’s choice here undermines the conscience expressed by Clausewitz about the plurality of historical forms; the universality of his approach; and the humility of the serious and respectful intellectual towards practitioners.
59 Clausewitz, On War, 157–8.
60 Ibid., 168.
61 Gat, The Origins of Military Thought, 262.
62 Gat, The Origins of Military Thought, 262.
63 H. Rothfels, ‘Clausewitz’, in Edward Mead Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton UP 1943), 1971 reprint, 108, footnote 65.
64 Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 4, footnote 1.
65 Clausewitz’s Strategy in the Year of 1804 may not have been available to Rothfels; see Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 89 note 25, 152, 170.
66 Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 4.
67 Clausewitz, On War, 70.
68 Aron, Penser la Guerre, Clausewitz, Vol. 1, 97–8.
69 Aron, Penser la Guerre, Clausewitz, Vol. 1, 101, emphasis in the original.
70 Gat, Origins of Military Thought, 263.
71 Clausewitz, On War, 119.
72 Clausewitz, On War, 81; cf. Vom Kriege, 201, which reads ‘Ein Stillstand im kriegerischen Akt ist dadurch noch nicht erklärt’. Howard and Paret choose ‘military’ for kriegerische; we argue for the archaic ‘bellic’, as Clausewitz’s concern is war as the universal phenomenon of the use of force.
73 Clausewitz, On War, 78–81.
74 Ibid., 527.
75 Ibid., 528.
76 Clausewitz, On War, 566; Vom Kriege, 935, includes this text at the end of Book VII, with no chapter number; Book VII is presented by Hahlweg as ‘Skizzen zum siebenten Buch’, (draft towards Book VII).
77 Clausewitz, On War, 566.
78 Ibid., 529.
79 Ibid., 617, ‘The Plan of War designed to lead to the total defeat of the enemy’; cf. Vom Kriege, 1009, ‘Kriegsplan, wenn Niederwehrfung des Feindes das Ziel ist’.
80 Clausewitz, On War, 625.
81 Ibid., 633.
82 Ibid., 601, ‘Closer Definition of the Military Objective – continued: Limited Aims’; cf. Vom Kriege, 984, ‘Fortzetzung – Beschränktes Ziel’.
83 Clausewitz, On War, 602.
84 Ibid., 603, ‘The Effect of the Political Aim on the Military Objective’; cf. Vom Kriege, 987, ‘Einfluß des politischen Zweckes auf das kriegerisches Ziel’.
85 Clausewitz, On War, 605, ‘War is an Instrument of Policy’; cf. Vom Kriege, 990, ‘Der Krieg ist ein Instrument der Politik’.
86 Clausewitz, On War, 585, ‘Scale of the Military Objective and of the Effort to be Made’; cf. Vom Kriege, 960, ‘Von der Größe des kriegerischen Zweckes und der Anstrengung’.
87 Clausewitz, On War, 585.
88 Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 4.
89 We find no inconsistency between I-2 and I-1. However, the clear ascendancy of I-1 must be firmly stated and I-2 must be subordinated to it, regardless of it having been written afterwards. This is the result of internal reading that, on this one occasion, seems strong enough to trump dating, despite the fact that the issue could have been avoided by ranking both at the top.
90 Clausewitz, On War, 217–19, emphasis added.
91 Clausewitz, On War, 83–4, emphasis added.
92 Clausewitz, On War, 83–5, emphasis added.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Eugenio Diniz
Eugenio Diniz is Professor at the Department of International Relations of Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais – PUC Minas, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. BA in Philosophy, MSc in Political Science and DSc in Production Engineering (Strategic Studies). He is also member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies – IISS (London) and of the Grupo de Estudos Estratégicos (Group for Strategic Studies) – GEE (Rio de Janeiro). He is a Researcher at the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – CNPq and a Minas Gerais Researcher at the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais – FAPEMIG.
Domício Proença
Domício Proença Júnior is Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Brazil, belonging to the core faculty of the Production Engineering Program (PEP) of the Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute, Graduate School and Research in Engineering (Coppe) and the Public Policies, Strategy and Development Program (PPED) of the Institute of Economics (IE). He is a Production Engineer with minors in Electronics Engineering, History, Political Science and Administration; MSc in Production Engineering (Politics and Policy of Science and Technology) and DSc in Production Engineering (Strategic Studies). He was awarded the Brazilian Order of Merit for National Defense in 2002. He is a Member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies – IISS (London) and chairs the Grupo de Estudos Estratégicos (Group for Strategic Studies) – GEE (Rio de Janeiro).