Clausewitz and the politics of war: A contemporary theory

ABSTRACT

This paper re-examines the theoretical underpinnings of Strategic Studies, proposing a novel theory and a new framework for analysing war’s fundamental relationship with politics in line with the Clausewitzian tradition. Throughout modern history, Clausewitz’s concept of politics has been misconstrued as referring only to policy whereas in fact, for him, ‘politics’ was a much broader concept, including domestic power struggles. The political logic of war is defined here as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles and policy objectives within a given polity that restrains and enables these political forces. The analysis of the Clausewitzian political logic of war is conducted through the sociological ‘liquid modern’ lens. It is argued that with power increasingly shifting from centralised state-oriented political leadership towards market forces, non-state actors and other political bodies, the effectiveness of war has been reduced. This is evident in the fragmentation of Western political systems and, as a result, suboptimal strategy and the domination of domestic power struggles in political decision-making concerning war.

Introduction

Dramatic historical changes act to challenge our understanding of reality and lead to debates on existing sociopolitical concepts and theories. The fall of the Berlin Wall, ‘9/11’, the revelation of Stuxnet and the Russian occupation of Crimea were all such significant events. These events and the tectonic security changes that ensued – the end of the Cold War, the Global War on Terror, the rise of cyber conflict and the re-ascent of Russia on the global stage – have led to a crisis in the field of Strategic Studies. Some scholars have concluded that the field has lost its relevance, traditional war has become obsolete and strategy merely an illusion.¹ For others – those who advocate ideas on Fourth Generation Warfare, the Revolution in Military Affairs, Non-Trinitarian War and post-Clausewitzian War – these events have led to a reinterpretation of the theory of war and a re-thinking of strategic studies’ key premises, in particular Carl von Clausewitz’s treatise. Many experts have proclaimed a theory of New Wars, arguing that wars of today differ entirely from those in the past in terms of scope, tempo, methods and strategies.² Most fundamentally, New War scholars contend that war can no longer be explained by Clausewitz’s classic dictum as being the ‘mere continuation of policy’ but should rather be explained by other, modern factors, such as identity politics, culture and economic motives.³

While students of strategy have repeatedly argued against a Revolution in Military Affairs, Fourth Generation Warfare and New War theory,⁴ the persistence of these ideas demonstrates that the current body of literature on Strategic Studies has so far failed to explain contemporary wars satisfactory. Strategists, governments and scholars alike all agree that conceptual and strategic thinking on war lags behind current developments and experiences on the battlefield.⁵ Adapting the existing war paradigm to give a more convincing explanation of current events on the battlefield is therefore urgently required – both in academia and for the military. In line with the Clausewitzian tradition, it is suggested here that an adequate understanding of war calls for a more thorough and meticulous investigation of its political determinations than strategic studies scholars have so far attempted.

The aim of this paper is thus to re-think war’s fundamental relationship with politics and adapt the classic Clausewitzian theory of the political logic of war to the contemporary political condition – with a special eye to the fluidity of politics⁶ in the contemporary world. The present theoretical approach entails a two-stage argument. First, a reinterpretation of the Clausewitzian notion of politics is necessary in order to adapt the Clausewitzian political logic of war to contemporary sociopolitical conditions. Second, against that background, a novel analytical framework is developed for interpreting the Clausewitzian political logic of war.

The theory presented builds on the works of Clausewitz scholars and strategic theorists, such as Beatrice Heuser, Hew Strachan, Lawrence Freedman, Jan Willem Honig and Richard Betts. These authors have determined that Clausewitz held a broad interpretation on the political logic of war but that his theory has been structurally misunderstood and has been applied too narrowly as being only state policy.⁷ Antullio J. Echevarria II has demonstrated that ever since the dawn of Strategic Studies, scholarship has been dominated by the primacy accorded to policy.⁸ However, as pointed out by those who have studied Clausewitz thoroughly, his use of the term Politik in the original text connoted different English concepts at different times, such as politics, policy, polity and power.⁹ Moreover, the narrow application of Clausewitzian Politik ignores classical political theory and tends to overlook the evidence of other political forces in war, such as domestic power struggles.

The first thesis of the argument underlying the analytical framework is that throughout modern history, the Clausewitzian notion of politics has been systematically misinterpreted as policy. The adoption of this narrow policy-construct as the framework for understanding the logic of war came to dominate Western strategic thinking in the Cold War era, culminating after the Vietnam War. This led to contemporary conceptual fallacies, such as ideas on ‘new war’, ‘non-trinitarian war’ and ‘post-Clausewitzian war’ as developed by Mary Kaldor, Martin van Creveld, John Keegan and many others.¹⁰ In the second thesis of my argument, I analyse the Clausewitzian political logic of war in the context of the contemporary sociopolitical world. With reference to contemporary sociological thought, it is explained what the current leading sociological ideas on the ‘liquid’ condition of modernity mean for the theory of war and for the Clausewitzian political logic in particular. Contemporary ideas on the sociopolitical ‘liquid’ condition of Western societies postulate an ongoing process in which power increasingly moves away from national politics, with political agencies becoming increasingly prone to power-seeking at the expense of policymaking. This becomes manifest in short-term thinking, risk aversion and over-sensitivity to a capricious consumer civil society. In such a political landscape, war becomes less effective; the use of force must compete with other forms of power (such as market forces) and the fragmentation of Western political systems compromises sound strategy. War’s utility is further compromised in these contemporary conditions since it is increasingly subject to continuing domestic political power struggles and to a lesser extent by policy objectives.

Based on the deduction that politics consists of the core concepts of policy, power and polity, I will then present a theory on the contemporary political logic of war, which Clausewitzian by nature, aims to provide an analytical framework for a better understanding of modern war. I propose a definition of the political logic of war as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles and the policy objectives within a given polity that restrains and enables these political forces. This leads to a definition of strategy as a process, in which political agents, acting in a polity that both restrains and enables, balance ends, ways and means in order to find an optimal equilibrium between achieving policy objectives and a favourable distribution of political power shares.

Strategic studies and the problem of the policy paradigm

The end of the Cold War caused a crisis in the field of Strategic Studies, defined here as the interdisciplinary field of study that looks at leading ideas on the threat and use of force to fulfil the end(s) of policy.¹¹ Since the end of the Second World War, the field was able to present a valid conceptual framework for understanding major interstate wars and deterrence. Notwithstanding the established status of this field of research, the end of the Cold War triggered a massive overhaul of existing theories and studies, since most of the conflicts that occurred since then have been of other (more limited and restrained) kinds.¹² While the utility of force in these contemporary conflicts is increasingly questioned and revisited, very few useful answers have emerged.¹³ The field has been criticised for being outdated, state-centred, rationalist, militarist, confused with security-studies, either too practical or too theoretical.¹⁴ Some have even wondered whether what is left of strategy is no more than an illusion, or whether it has lost its meaning completely and is simply no longer a useful concept.¹⁵ And although belief in the importance of strategic scholarship continues, a fundamental reevaluation of strategic concepts and a reinvigoration of the field are sorely needed.

One of the major contentions within (and against) strategic theory is its premise of the primacy of policy as the guiding principle for the logic of war. According to ‘New War’ scholarship, this premise is no longer applicable to the understanding of contemporary wars. The primacy of policy has indeed been one of the underpinnings of strategic theory since the dawn of Strategic Studies.¹⁶ The central question of Strategic Studies is the essential Clausewitzian problem of how to make force a rational and purposeful instrument of policy or, as in the often cited words from the influential military historian Basil Liddell Hart, to distribute and apply ‘military means to fulfil the ends of policy’.¹⁷ Typical strategic studies research programmes proceed from policy issues, to theoretical formulation, to empirical testing, to policy application. There is by now a fairly universal consensus that the primacy of policy is basic to Western Strategic Studies scholarship. This provides the customary lens through which the logic of wars has been observed, analysed and interpreted. Despite thorough Clausewitzian scholarship and rejection of the ‘New War’ fallacy, however, the importance of policy as the principal guiding logic for understanding war has been overstated in the strategic literature.

This claim is based on identifying four points of contention. First, as several students of Clausewitz, such as Honig, Strachan, Heuser, Herberg-Rothe and Echevarria, have correctly pointed out, the interpretation of policy has been applied far too narrowly, which conflicts with the original German text in which Clausewitz uses the term Politik to connote several different concepts, which in English translate as policy, politics and polity.¹⁸ The Clausewitz scholar Christopher Bassford notes that Clausewitz’s Politik inherently concerns power – and power is so much more than mere policy.¹⁹ As outlined below, Clausewitz used a broad conception of politics indeed, but throughout modern history, a narrow policy-oriented interpretation has dominated strategic thinking. Consequently, as Strachan observed, while Clausewitz intended to present a descriptive, philosophical theory, strategic scholarship has increasingly assumed that Clausewitz’s theoretical philosophy could be interpreted as a prescriptive doctrine of how to determine the necessary force in order to achieve the policy objectives at stake.²⁰

Second, this narrow policy-oriented approach tends to neglect classical political theory and its conceptual treatment of policy and power. The concept of policy emerged together with the concept of the state in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century.²¹ Since then, the potential for conflict between power and policy has been of central concern. The founders of modern political science, such as Nicolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guardini, were already deeply concerned with the conflicts between the ragione di stato against interesso suo and discussed ways of balancing the collective interest with concerns of personal power.²² The tension between the two is evident and becomes increasingly manifest with their performative actions: policymaking and power-seeking, or politicking. While the aims of policymaking are trying to achieve a better state of affairs and serving the collective, politicking is concerned with optimising one’s share of power.²³ For politicians, both are important. Striving for power has a negative connotation, as it is associated with the politician seeking for personal prestige, status and the joy of having power to nurture the self. Normative judgements or questions of legitimacy, however, are insufficient reason to exclude this important variable. In a Weberian sense, moreover, power also serves as a means to an end, based on the assumption that without power, there is no position (Handlungsmacht) to make policy.²⁴ Power and policy are thus locked together in a complex, but unmistakable relationship, conflicting and inseparable at the same time. Overlooking the way this tension between power and policy influences our conceptualisation of war undermines a better understanding of modern war itself.

Third, history demonstrates that the political logic of war is ill-served by a too narrow focus on policy, since this logic is also determined by other political forces and conditions, such as the composition of the polity and domestic power struggles. Politicians in every era have pursued foreign policies they believed were detrimental to national interest but nevertheless persisted in their course because their thinking was dominated by concerns of power.²⁵ One only has to consider Napoleon III (no fool by any standard), whose war strategy was guided solely by his ambition to secure personal power, to be lauded by the public and respected by the kings of Europe. We could also take Franklin Roosevelt, who was so concerned to avoid accusations of entering the Second World War in Europe for purely electoral reasons that he delayed acting in the genuine national interest by embarking on such a course. Other examples include Lyndon Johnson, who was obsessed to first ‘win, win, win the elections’ and only then to win the war in Vietnam; or the Argentine regime that invaded the Falklands in 1982 in order to increase the junta’s domestic popularity. After the release of the gruesome videos of the murder of two American journalists in 2014, President Barrack Obama felt the pressure of his advisors and public opinion to deploy troops to Iraq and fight Islamic State. He decided not to rush to war, however, even though he realised the political implications of this decision, reflecting that ‘I am aware I pay a political price for that’.²⁶ According to the renowned strategist Colin Gray, policy goals can be elusive. He acknowledges the neoclassical realist view that domestic forces influence the conduct of strategy-making. Yet he, among others, maintains that these are corrupting forces and that the strategy of war should serve the policy goals that are part of the polity’s broader vision.²⁷ Hence, as Clausewitz scholars rightly conclude, the political forces in war either do not merit sufficient attention or are wrongly interpreted.²⁸

Fourth, the narrow lens of policy becomes increasingly inadequate to understand the logic of contemporary war involving Western democracies. As Strachan points out, politicians are nowadays in immediate and simultaneous contact both with the forces on the battlefield and their electorates at home, which allows them to intervene at the tactical level for direct domestic political effect.²⁹ Consequently, the contemporary battlefield is increasingly pervaded by political forces – a tendency that manifests itself in the strict political guidance and oversight on the conduct of operations, by national caveats, limitations of what soldiers are allowed to do and to say, and by restraints on the use of force.³⁰ These political restraints on the conduct of war cannot be explained by means of a conventional Clausewitzian interpretation of the logic of policy. Nevertheless, many scholars and practitioners have tried to do so, arguing that the poverty of political logic of wars and underlying strategy is due to the lack of civil–military dialogue, invalid strategic advice from the civilian and military bureaucracy, and a lack of political understanding of strategy and the utility of force.³¹

The aim of this paper is not to focus on questions of how the strategic studies can provide better practical advice, find strategic answers or support the design of sound policy but rather to reconceptualise the theoretical underpinnings of the field. In particular, it aims to replace the narrow analytical prism of the primacy of policy by a more comprehensive analytical framework of politics, aligned to Clausewitz’s ideas and classic political theory and adapted to the contemporary condition.

First, let us study the way the polity, politics and the context of policy as the force of war have changed. I offer a reading of the interpretation of Clausewitz through time, thereby demonstrating how his notion of the political logic of war has been structurally misunderstood. I will then make the case for the way that the sociopolitical conditions for waging and thinking war have changed, and how Clausewitz’s notion of politics may be deployed to develop a framework for dealing with this new strategic landscape.

Strategic theory: the primacy of policy

The primacy of policy has dominated modern strategic thinking since Carl von Clausewitz noted that war is not an independent phenomenon but a modification of political intercourse.³² It has been critically acclaimed as the most important and most fundamental part of Clausewitz’s work.³³ War may have its own nature of passion and violence, chance and probability, but its ‘first consideration’ is the political objective, as Clausewitz concluded. His work fell on fertile ground, not least because of the work of contemporaries such as the Prussian Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern, who already argued in 1818 that every war needed a cause and a purpose, a why and a what for; these had to determine the character and the conduct of the war.³⁴ Clausewitz and his contemporaries realised that a successful outcome on the battlefield is not the purpose of the war itself. Operations on the battlefield, how brilliantly performed, are worthless if they do not contribute to achieving the political objective. It is ultimately about winning the war, and that is always a political matter. War, according to Clausewitz, was a constituent part of political activity and ‘in no sense an independent thing in itself’.³⁵ Political forces aim to control the nature of war, these ‘are the forces that give rise to war [and] the same forces [that] circumscribe and moderate it’.³⁶ As such, he concluded in his most famous dictum, ‘Der Krieg ist eine blosse Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln’, more familiar to us as ‘war being a mere continuation of policy by other means’.³⁷ Future generations of strategic thinkers took this as a basis for further reflection on this field.

Students of Clausewitz’s work by strategic scholars such as Strachan, Freedman, Heuser, Honig, Echevarria and Herber-Rothe, however, have provided a deeper understanding of his concept of Politik, which the Prussian philosopher never explicitly conceptualised. In the original German text of Vom Kriege and in his other writings, it becomes clear that Clausewitz had a broad conception of politics.³⁸ Studies on Clausewitz’s work have convincingly demonstrated that his use of Politik could mean policy, politics or polity and that Clausewitz meant different things at different times.³⁹ The link between war and Politik was the central concern of Clausewitz’s intellectual life and the key concept to his theory of war.⁴⁰ Remarkably, however, Clausewitz’s conception of war’s instrumental relationship with politics evolved gradually throughout his academic endeavour. In one of his earlier manuscripts, Clausewitz regarded war as the continuation of ‘l’intérêt naturel des états’, being much in conformity with the primacy of policy as we know it today.⁴¹ This gradually however changed first into Staatspolitik and finally into Politik when he wrote his last version of Vom Kriege after 1827.⁴² This was the result of the quest for a unifying theory for both the pre-Napoleonic ‘limited wars’ of the ancient regimes and the Napoleonic revolutionary wars, coming closer to the theoretical ‘absolute wars’.⁴³ The former type of war could indeed not be explained as the result of policy, but rather the ‘political ambitions, private interests and vanity of those in power’.⁴⁴ In particular, the domestic political influence on France’s defeat at Waterloo, which limited Napoleon’s options as to where to fight and the number of troops at his disposal, inspired Clausewitz to determine politics as the unifying concept that determines war.⁴⁵ A broader concept than l’intérêt naturel des états or Staatspolitik was therefore required. It was only in the later manuscripts that he finally united both ‘absolute wars’ and ‘limited wars’ in one theoretical conception as war being a continuation of Politik.

Politik, in Clausewitz’s view, was thus broader than merely state interest but encompassed the entire political constellation; its system, its institutes, but also its internal power struggles, private ambitions and political interplay. Clausewitz indeed, as Andreas Herberg-Rothe and Hew Strachan rightly pointed out, considers that personal ambitions and political interplay should not drive wars: [das] gehört nicht hierher.⁴⁶ Clausewitz here followed the ethical reasoning of Machiavelli, whom he greatly admired, viz. that rulers should not strive for personal ambitions but should strictly serve the interest of the state.⁴⁷ This recommendation should not be seen as a denial of the existence of other interests,⁴⁸ but unfortunately many scholars have since mistaken his normative views for theoretical or epistemological claims and have assumed that Clausewitz’s concept of Politik excluded all politicking and self-interest. To comprehend the conflation of normative and descriptive viewpoints in Clausewitz’s work, it is necessary to contextualise Clausewitz’s work, to historicise his words and see him as the modern patriot and Prussian reformer he was. The young Prussian officer, who felt humiliated by Prussia’s devastating defeat at Jena in 1806 and its subservience to France, despised the weakness and moral cowardice of the political leadership. Generally, Clausewitz had a rather pessimistic view of politicians, who in his view were largely driven by personal ambitions: ‘those heads of state behaving themselves as they would do privately are true egoists. They consider themselves as the purpose and the state interest as a side-issue’.⁴⁹ Despite his rejection of such conduct, Clausewitz’s texts reveal that he nevertheless was aware that politics, both the concept and the practice, include domestic political interplay and private interest. Moreover, it was Clausewitz’s realisation of the influence of this ‘petty politics’ on war that allowed for the full maturation of his concept of war. With this understanding, he could formulate a unified theory that covered both Napoleonic wars and those more politically generated pre-Napoleonic wars. In sum, the Clausewitzian war paradigm should be regarded as the continuation of politics in its broadest sense, comprising the whole gamut of policy goals, objects of power, private interests and the political constellation in which politics are played out.

Despite Clausewitz’s emphasis on the influence of politics and other forces such as passion, chance and friction, the primary guide for the events on the battlefield would be the policy objective. One of Clausewitz’s admirers (and one of his students at the German Kriegsakademie) and an early example of a warrior looking at war through the narrow lens of policy was Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (1800–1891), a Prussian general and military commander. Moltke held the opinion that the political leadership could determine when and whether war was declared and determine its purpose, but from the moment the cannons roared, the war was in the hands of the generals until the time came for peace negotiations. This radical (re-)interpretation of Clausewitz would lead to disastrous decisions in the First World War a few decades later, in part decisions taken by Moltke’s own cousin Johann Ludwig von Moltke, who was the German commander in 1914. He insisted that it was up to the military to determine whether or not Germany could still win a total victory. The German Supreme Command, however, had only eyes for total military victory on the battlefield and ignored any possibility of political compromise – even when total victory appeared to be no longer possible. Post-First World War analysts would subsequently scrutinise the War’s utility primarily in terms of achieving policy objectives and concluded that the First World War was the example par excellence of a war without any political benefit. Scholars such as the influential British military historian Basil Liddell Hart and later the British military historian John Keegan have concluded that such a war cannot be seen as a rational form of warfare serving the cause of political utility. The notion of the primacy of policy was demonstrably flawed.

Nevertheless, as military historian Williamson Murray has already pointed out, a broader conception of Politik would have led to more nuanced conclusions. For example, in November 1914, German Chancellor Bethman Hollweg was already advised by General Erich von Falkenhayn, the chief of the Great Prussian Staff, to start peace negotiations with Russia and France because the war could not be won. Hollweg, however, refused and chose to fight until the bitter end because of a fear of domestic political losses. He presumed that the German public would not accept the Reich’s surrender after such great cost and so many casualties and feared the fall of the monarchy and the overturn of internal political order.⁵⁰ Scholarly literature on the First World War was, however, dominated by policy-driven analyses in which domestic power struggles and internal politics would be largely absent.⁵¹ Liddel Hart unjustly regarded Clausewitz as the main proponent of policy-driven war, which damaged Clausewitz’s authority as a war theorist in the Western world.⁵² In short, his careful and philosophical dialectical reflections on the relationship between war and politics were reduced to a simplified recommendation to take policy as the sole guiding principle of war.

With the World Wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945, the body of thought on war and strategy further developed. Basil Liddell Hart analysed strategy, defining the concept in 1954 as the coordination of ‘all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object of the war – the goal defined by fundamental policy’.⁵³ The idea of ‘grand strategy’, came into being, defined as ‘the development and use of all resources in peace and war in support of national policies’.⁵⁴ In mid-1940, Edward Mead Earle had already concluded in his authoritative book, Makers of Modern Strategy that military strategy was only part of an overall strategy, which he described as ‘the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation […] to the end that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and secured against enemies’.⁵⁵ The primacy of policy would, however, remain the dominant paradigm.⁵⁶ The integration of weapons of mass destruction after the Second World War did not change this but prompted new strategic questions in both the Soviet Union and the West. What political objective could justify the use of atomic bombs or even risking the chance on mutual physical annihilation? The idea of deterrence came into being, focused on the political objective of avoiding and preventing war, with a larger nuclear arsenal as the means to achieve this policy goal. Clausewitz’s ideas, which focused on the political utility of war, were no longer widely discussed.

The primacy of policy in modern times

Jumping ahead to the US War in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, a Clausewitzian revival set in – and with him the primacy of policy. Influential studies, such as those from Bernard Brodie and Harry Summers, concluded that the US failure in Vietnam was caused by the absence of clear policy objectives and sound strategy to achieve those goals.⁵⁷ Ignoring the crucial impact of domestic politics and in particular vote-seeking president-elects as primary determinants in the course of the war, their work influenced political and military leaders such as Caspar Weinberger and Colin Powell. Weinberger and Powell based their doctrine and decision-making during the first Gulf War solely on the Clausewitzian principle of policy: a clear political purpose and national interest at stake. These were the glory days of the primacy of policy. At the same time, this was the reduction of Clausewitz’s philosophy of war to a mere checklist, a decision diagram for the state leader to decide whether going to war was the right thing to do or not.⁵⁸ And as history would soon prove, this simplifying disregard of political forces in the course of war would only provide a shallow and incomplete picture of what guides war in the first place.

Major conceptual fallacies began to emerge in the 1990s and 2000s, with the series of ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa, when it was no longer immediately clear what national interest or policy objectives could be distinguished. The one-dimensional policy-driven idea could no longer be maintained. In the post-Westphalian world after 1989, and after the end of the bipolar conflict between East and West, clear-cut doctrines failed to reflect the amalgam of non-state actors, guerrillas, terrorists and international criminal networks that pursued their causes through military force. The context of so-called failed states or rogue states emerged, states which appeared at first sight to practice violence irrationally, or even unrestrained. This again invited criticism of the notion of policy as war’s guiding principle, specifically criticising Clausewitz’s dictum. Debates sparked New War theories, Fourth Generation Warfare, ‘new’ ideas on asymmetric or hybrid conflict and ‘Western ways’ to fight those wars.

The fiercest attacks on Clausewitz were deployed by the Israeli military expert Martin van Creveld, the British historian John Keegan and the British political scientist Mary Kaldor. According to Van Creveld, war is not a rational or utilitarian means within a larger policy framework, but it is merely an autonomous phenomenon that is driven by cultural dynamics. War is not a means to a political end, it is a cultural and a masculine expression.⁵⁹ Keegan concurs, concluding that culture is a ‘prime determinant of the nature of warfare’. Based on anthropological insights and assumptions, Keegan also sees war as an expression, like a ritual, the continuation of sports and cultufre by other means. War is for him more a symbolic than a political activity. War is at the service of latent psychological, social or psychological needs and mechanisms and should therefore absolutely not be seen as a consequence of rational, strategic calculations.⁶⁰ On the basis of her case study of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mary Kaldor added that new wars are mainly driven by identity politics and economic motives, and to a lesser extent by policy objectives.⁶¹

While these critics have raised important issues, their claims have repeatedly been repudiated for being conceptually flawed, factually inaccurate or, particularly in the case of Martin van Creveld, for simply having cherry-picked some general ideas from Vom Kriege, while misinterpreting the central messages and the Clausewitzian trinity in particular.⁶² Their works are moreover based on a misguided and narrow interpretation of politics, ending up with a new interpretation of Clausewitz’s work instead of achieving his goal of disproving him.⁶³ As Richard Betts concluded of one of the critics: ‘Keegan is a respectable historian of military operations, but a naïf about politics, so he cannot render a verdict on the strategy that connects them’.⁶⁴ Overall, the emergence of New War concepts and the attempts to dismiss Clausewitz are outweighed by a vast body of literature based on a more thorough understanding of Clausewitz’s ideas and a broader and more nuanced interpretation of the politics of war.

While Clausewitz’s work has resisted these attacks and survived the march of time, the narrower idea of the primacy of policy is still reflected in much of the modern literature on war, including the memoirs of prominent military commanders. According to many strategic scholars, war is and should be an instrument of ‘high policy’, and not just the outcome of the daily political climate and news cycle.⁶⁵ The political logic of war is primarily explained through the lens of policy and only in rare occasions do domestic power struggles, electoral politics or politicking occur in strategic case studies. These forces are discredited as corrupting forces, spoiling the course of war as ‘it should be’ and disrupting its effectiveness in leading towards achieving a policy goal. This aspect of mundane politics is considered as white noise, polluting the train of normal political decision-making and eroding a strategy, by making it less coherent, focused and goal oriented.⁶⁶ This goes so far that even in one of the most critically acclaimed translations of Vom Kriege, by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, the word ‘politics’ is even deliberately avoided because policy is a more neutral and state-centric term and because of the negative connotation of politics in English.⁶⁷

In sum, Clausewitz’s broad conception of politics has structurally been applied in the narrow policy paradigm, which hampers our understanding of war. This becomes increasingly manifest in the contemporary condition, which is investigated in the following section. In line with Clausewitzian scholarship, the aim is to further justify the adaption of the Clausewitzian political logic of war, providing a novel analytical framework by a close examination of war’s relationship with politics under contemporary sociopolitical conditions.

Contemporary war: bringing politics back in

The central question in this section is what is this contemporary political condition, in the context of current western states and societies constrained by the democratic rule of law, and is the Clausewitzian logic of politics still capable of explaining war? Like war, politics is a product of its place and time, and from a Clausewitzian perspective, while the concept remains the same, its manifestation is never static and always changeable. Political science offers valuable relevant insights, such as public choice theory, which assumes that politicians carry out their social function primarily as a means of attaining their private ends – income, prestige or power. Thus, the collective interest and private ambitions compete in any attempt to define the purpose of war. Contemporary Foreign Policy Analysis theory has adopted more complex models, for example the underlying Diversionary Theory and the Bureaucratic Politics model, which provides a framework for discussing war expeditions as foreign solutions to cover domestic problems, or as consensual expeditions resulting from a conflicted administrative apparatus. The field of Strategic Studies can benefit from these theories and models, as they offer valuable perspectives on how political action ultimately boils down to two central activities: policymaking and power-seeking. It does not however offer an overarching or grand theory of the contemporary political condition by which to conceptualise war. A (macro)sociological approach to politics and war does present a valuable analytical framework and fits neatly with Clausewitz’s approach.

A sociological approach to politics and war acknowledges that a comprehensive knowledge of these concepts requires an understanding of the social. War does not occur in a vacuum and knowledge of the politico-sociological context in which war occurs is critical to understand contemporary conflict. Clausewitz was very aware of that, noting in On War that ‘if wars between civilised nations are far less cruel and destructive than wars between savages, the reason lies in the social conditions of the states themselves’.⁶⁸ Only few contemporary political sociologists such as Martin Shaw, Mary Kaldor and Sinisa Malesevic, and social theorists such as Zygmunt Bauman, have explored this territory. Whereas unmistakably relevant from a sociological perspective, their work lacks familiarity with the Strategic Studies body of literature. While strategic theorists tend to look at war from a rather microsociological perspective, neglecting the politico-sociological context, sociologists in their turn habitually only superficially touch on the epistemology of war studies. Consequently, war theorists tend to treat war as if it were a self-contained process operating according to its own laws, while sociological accounts often feel the need to present new theories, such as New War, without invalidating or even discussing the epistemological foundations of war theory in the first place.⁶⁹ Remarkably, Clausewitz writes as a sociologist as well a war theorist, combining deep political thought with his conceptualisation of war.⁷⁰ It was only when he fully grasped the concept of politics that he was able to arrive at his grand theory of war as its instrument. It is in this tradition that strategic theory will be confronted here with contemporary politics in order to develop a modern theory of war. What is the contemporary politico-sociological condition, what does that mean for war and does the Clausewitzian logic of politics in war still hold?

It is common in sociology to accept that the Western world has moved into an era of liquid modernity, also defined by other leading sociologists as postmodernity, late modernity or reflexive modernity.⁷¹ The varying terms used reflect remarkably similar ideas. In Bauman’s view, the contemporary condition is situated in the context of a transition from a stable, solid and regulated world order, towards a globalised, chaotic, fast-moving and unregulated modernity. Today’s life is increasingly saturated with conditions of precariousness, instability, impermanence, fluctuation and disorientation while traditional social forms that guard choices, routines, rules and norms are decomposed. Liquid modernity represents a categorical shift in the construction and contextualisation of nation states in the late twentieth century. This condition includes three interrelating macro-trends in particular that influence our understanding of contemporary war and affect what we see on today’s battlefield. These are the declining power of traditional politics, the reign of individualising freedom and the consequential struggle of political leadership to adapt to these developments while still clinging to power.

The first and central change, according to Zygmunt Bauman, is an ongoing process of the separation of power from politics. In other words, power increasingly moves away from the national, centralised, state-oriented political leadership, into the hands of transnationally operating market forces, non-state actors and other political bodies.⁷² According to Bauman, power increasingly becomes less a matter of authoritative, territorial control and more the ability to move freely and swiftly and to let capital and trade flow without any boundaries and imposed regulations.⁷³ While market powers increasingly unite, become globalised and are enabled by this condition, political institutions have not followed suit but remain local and become increasingly disempowered. The incoherent and disconnected local forms of politics are surpassed by the coordinated machinery of the global market in which market forces, commerce and capital can no longer be controlled by the political institutions; marketing strategies enter politics to sell policies. As power flows from the political to the market, the power that is left in the political sphere increasingly becomes fragmented and shared with supranational, subnational and non-state entities. Constitutional theorist and strategic scholar Philip Bobbitt described similar developments in his historical analysis of strategy, legal order and the state. In his view, as of the 1990s, the globalisation of strategic threats, markets and culture put enormous pressure on the role of the state, which is too rigid, too prescriptive of (economic) behaviour and too much focussed on collectivist values. The state, which was previously given its legitimacy by assuring the common welfare of all people, subsequently turned towards one providing the maximum opportunities for the satisfaction of individual interests. However, as Bobbitt also warns, the rising power of the markets has negative side effects. The market may optimise choices, but it is not well adapted to the promotion of public goods and moral values, such as loyalty, civility, trust in authority or giving voice to all groups. In his view, in particular the threat of non-state actors has increased. While guerrillas, gangs and terrorists have always been part of the domestic security environment, their access to weapons, technology and media has changed dramatically. As such, Bobbitt argues, modern terrorist groups mimic and are enabled by the decentralised, outsourcing, privatised, globalised and networked world.⁷⁴ As I will outline below, the ongoing relocation of centralised, state-oriented political power to the market, non-state actors and other political bodies has transformed the conduct of war.⁷⁵

Second, collectivity has disintegrated and been replaced by humans operating rather as individual consumers than citizens of their respective polity.⁷⁶ These consumer-citizens, or ‘netizens’, feel the need to turn towards the responsive politician only for the fulfilment of short-term private needs, at the expense of long-term public policies such as war. The liquid modern condition means that individuals have the ability to design their own life and identity. Class and gender used to be ‘facts of nature’ and the only task left to individuals was to ‘fit in’ the allocated niche by behaving as the other occupants of the same niche. Now one’s identity is no longer a ‘given’ fate, but has transformed into a ‘task’, charging the individual with the responsibility to perform that task. In his journey to self-assertion, the individual has traded the worry about the public good and a coherent vision of the good society for the freedom to pursue private satisfaction. This however does not free him totally from society or the political as a whole. The dark side of freedom for the individual is that his autonomy comes with a growing sense of insecurity. Wrested from regulations, norms and boundaries and confronted with profusion of options, an uncertain future and lack of a guiding framework such as grand narratives or collective identities, the free individual is now alone with the task of pattern-weaving his identity and with no one else to blame for any imperfection in life but himself. Burdened by this overwhelming task, the uncertainty and insecurity that comes with it and insufficient means and resources available, the individual turns to the political to seek public solutions for his private troubles and concerns.⁷⁷

Political agents have not been able to adapt to the forces of global markets, declining power and individualisation. Political leaders are on the one hand confronted with the consumer-citizen, seeking for fulfilment of desires and the eradication of extraterritorial fears, threats and risks, and on the other with the weakening framework of political power and thus increasingly becoming impotent to solve, contain or address the issues of the electorate. Lacking the political power and increasingly unable to address a public agenda filled with private fears and desires, politics become increasingly detached from society. This is enabled by media, which, in their competition to deliver consumer-citizens/netizens to advertisers, rather portray governments as villains than heroes.⁷⁸ Political participation, election turnouts and public trust in politicians and political parties are steadily declining.⁷⁹ Long-term factors such as social background and socio-economic status do not have the same degree of influence on a person’s voting behaviour as they once did.⁸⁰ The electorate has become more volatile, fragmented, vulnerable to short-term influences, leadership performance and prone to populism.⁸¹ The skyrocketing rise of popular support for (right-wing) politics, such as France’s Front National and the German party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) and the election of President Donald Trump are illustrative examples. Rather than presenting alternative policies, these political entities easily adapt to tap effectively into the current dissatisfaction and feelings of insecurities among the public and use these to engage the established ‘illegitimate and corrupt political Kartell’. The AfD for example, after initially having success as a Euro-sceptic party during the Euro-crisis in 2013, skilfully transformed itself into an anti-immigrant party during the refugee influx in 2015 and 2016.

These trends have prompted politicians to change from rather patriarchal agents distributing the collective good towards short-term oriented, power-seeking agents in a fluid world of direct presentist goals and gains. At the same time, consumer-citizens have increasingly become spectators of politics instead of participants, observing politics as if it were a sporting event with winners and losers.⁸² This evidently does not serve the careful crafting and designing of conflict-solving policies and according strategies. As Bauman observes, ‘politicians […] no more have a programme. Their purpose is to stay in office’.⁸³ Politicians are reduced to favour-doers, agenda-setters and protectors of established institutional routines, filling the arena with tit-for-tat politics: you give me your vote, I fulfil your individual desire.⁸⁴ At the same time, politicians are more sensitive to risks, with devastating loss of votes or drops of opinion polls constantly lurking. In the language of vote-seeking politicians, following opinion poll statistics, complex, existential problems and widespread feelings of insecurity are translated into populist, simplistic formulae that problematise race, ethnicity, religion and all other lifestyles that are deemed deviant or merely abnormal.⁸⁵ In the race to demonstrate their usefulness and to win the citizen’s vote, politicians are not rewarded by the electorate for their efforts on the long-term, existential issues, such as climate control, overpopulation and policies for war and peace. The rising anonymous power of the market does not favour attention to the long term, not yet urgent, issues. As a result, according to Bauman, liquid modernity causes the decline of political life and constitutes ‘the collapse of long-term thinking, planning and acting’, which are of course the precondition, the very essence, of war policies and strategy.⁸⁶

In sum, the contemporary political condition of western societies is characterised by the increased fluidity of modern life and the ongoing process of the separation of power from politics, of power in politics and with political agencies increasingly prone to power-seeking at the expense of policymaking. This process is manifest in short-term thinking, risk aversion and sensitivity to a capricious, short-term oriented consumer-citizen. The examples mentioned above are not to say that the liquid sociopolitical condition and its implications for war are a one-way street or a prediction for the future. This is a generalised account of the contemporary Western state of political affairs and the translation of Clausewitzian Politik into the twenty-first century, but the liquid condition is not fixed in time or space and may still become temporarily solidified, for example by strategic shocks, such as devastating environmental changes or dramatic (e.g. nuclear) attacks.

The liquid modern condition and contemporary war

The next question is, what does this all mean for contemporary war and its relationship with politics? As further outlined below, the fluidity of politics, the steady process of the separation of power from politics and the political leadership increasingly motivated by power have led to a decline in war’s effectiveness as a means of achieving policy, while at the same providing a tool for enhancing domestic power. First, in terms of policy, the fluid movement, fragmentation and the decline of power in politics are reflected by a similar decline in the value of war as a political instrument. As politics and policymaking have become more fluid and less powerful, war – as its dependent variable – has followed accordingly. Second, in terms of power, with politicians increasingly motivated by their political power share at the expense of policy, war has increasingly become a tool to serve domestic power shares instead of serving collective policy goals. It is particular this latter development that has been the main cause of the incomprehension of contemporary war. I will elaborate on these matters in turn.

The fluid and fragmented political condition in which power increasingly moves away from politics has decreased the effectiveness of using force for the purpose of policy. First, in the current sociopolitical condition, war’s utility seems to be steadily declining in the context of global market forces.⁸⁷ In the past, when properly exploited by politicians, war could bring immense gains, transforming societies, delivering vast amounts of resources or bringing nations to their knees. Whereas the state and war had the capacity to dominate society and override market relations, contemporary wars are generally subordinate to the globalising market.⁸⁸ For example, as of 2014, financial institutions have found legal loopholes to circumvent the political sanctions imposed by Western nations on Russia and continue to do business with the Federation.⁸⁹ As an alternative to force, China assumed territorial control over a port and 15,000 acres of land in Sri Lanka, largely by means of its economic power in 2018. Under the burden of enormous debts and without feasible options to repay the loans, Sri Lanka saw no alternative to handing over the territory for 99 years, providing the Asian republic with a strategic foothold along a critical commercial and military waterway.⁹⁰ In addition, non-state political power has increasingly gained currency, such as non-governmental organisations, terrorists groups like Al Qaida and Hezbollah and activist groups. The hacktivist collectives Anonymous and CtrlSec, for example, effectively engaged Islamic State in the virtual domain. They have carried out several waves of online attacks since 2014 and have managed to take down several thousands of Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and websites linked to Islamic State.

The fragmentation of power in democratic countries means that the political logic of war is determined by a kaleidoscope of competing political agents, including opposition parties, opinion-makers, trade unions and voters – all with their own ideas and preferences and enabled by the contemporary media landscape. Traditionally, war was waged between two powers, whereas postmodern war is a confrontation between a multiplicity of competing powers.⁹¹ With power in the hands of many, war and its purpose consequentially becomes a merger of government aims, opposition objections, electoral concerns, opinion makers’ and agenda-setters’ influence, international pressure and subjective media framing. The ‘consensus war’ that results may partially serve the interests of some or all of these parties but is no longer recognisable as such to any party and difficult to translate into a sound military strategy or a coherent narrative. Indeed, Richard Betts concludes, consensus war has proved to be the enemy of effective war.⁹² An example is the Dutch mission to north Afghanistan in 2011, which was designed by six political parties with significantly divergent ideas and which required the support of the Dutch Parliament (because there was a minority government). The ‘integrated police training mission’ that followed became a merger of all ideas of the parties involved and included a whole range of strategies and objectives, such as strengthening the judicial system, building a legitimate government, creating economic development, promoting gender rights, contributing to stabilisation, improvement of the rule of law and the preventing of terrorism.⁹³ But every party also imposed its own restrictions. Some, for example, explicitly objected to the use of Afghan police officers trained by the Dutch forces for combat purposes, arguing that they could be utilised for police tasks only. The result was that the Dutch-constructed mission only partly met Afghan requirements and, as a result, some soldiers had to return home due to lack of work. The mission increasingly divided the political parties and was terminated before the anticipated end date.⁹⁴

The fluidity of politics, with its fluid shifting of power, is also transmitted to the conduct of war. This has resulted in a state of affairs with floating coalitions, wars without a clear beginning and without a clear end, a perpetual state of conflict and a fluctuating mosaic of participating militaries, non-governmental organisations, private military companies and civilians. The US War on Terror is a point in this case, which according to some has taken on the character of an ‘endless war’, an ‘unending war’ a ‘forever war’, or, adding a spatial dimension to the temporal one, an ‘everywhere war’.⁹⁵ Indeed, as part of this war, US Special Forces conduct military operations all over the world, which are mostly less overt and not formally announced as wars or conflicts. In 2013, US Special Forces were being deployed in over 130 countries throughout the world, with not only counterterrorist raids and drone strikes in Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen but also capacity building missions in Africa, mostly without a clear condition of war.⁹⁶ The Obama administration, for example, bypassed the regular democratic decision-making procedure and did not ask Congress for the authorisation of its intervention in Libya in 2011, on the basis that the military engagement was only limited and that the risk to their own casualties was virtually absent.⁹⁷ Western European countries are involved in a wide variety of military operations as well: the UK Army was deployed in over 80 countries around the world in 2017, while in the same year as small a country as the Netherlands was involved in over 15 military missions.⁹⁸ Between the concepts of war and peace, there exists a murky twilight increasingly referred to as ‘grey zone conflicts’, describing hostile and aggressive activities that remain below the threshold of what is perceived as war by public opinion.

To summarise, the decline of power in state-level politics, combined with the increasing fluidity of political power, results in war having less strategic effect, while at the same time being increasingly omnipresent. Its reduced effects are not determined by the nature of war or of the force itself, but because of the sociopolitical condition in which the use of force competes with other forms of power, and because of the fragmented political make-up of Western political systems producing suboptimal strategy.

Flowing power and the political war at home

In the contemporary condition, power in domestic politics increasingly replaces policy objectives as the primary purpose of war. In other words, the effectiveness of force is to a lesser extent defined by the achievement of a policy objective and increasingly by the electoral consequences. Clausewitz already noticed that the limited wars in his age, in marked contrast to the major wars of the Revolution, were permeated (durchziehen) and even saturated (gesättigt) with politics.⁹⁹ And indeed, as the Dutch government collapse in 2002 over Srebrenica and in 2010 over Afghanistan demonstrates, war has the potential to ruin political careers. The concern for votes and public support brings a whole different political rationale into the design of war and, as Rupert Smith warns, may even lead to deployment of military forces for purposes for which they are neither trained or intended, such as policing, reconstruction or humanitarian tasks.¹⁰⁰ First, political leaders deliberately build in loopholes so as to be able to pull out of the war when it suits politically, or even reject intervention based on political calculations. An example is the UK debate on the government proposal to intervene in Syria in 2013, in which the House of Commons successfully prevented UK involvement. As James Strong argues, this was less about the content of the foreign policy, but more about winning the vote of the public. The discussion among MPs was heavily influenced by public opinion polls, which demonstrated a very sceptic attitude as a consequence of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and after watching post-Gaddafi Libya slide into chaos.¹⁰¹ Bringing the decision to Parliament heavily politicised the Syrian war and dissuaded the UK and subsequently the US from intervening.

On the other hand, politicians feel the need to react when dramatic footage is aired or when terrorist attacks on the homeland instigate a public outcry for retaliation. This ‘something must be done’ approach was coined by Rupert Smith over the Balkans conflict, which referred to the political tendency to be more concerned for the safety of the force and the avoidance of political risk than to solve the crisis.¹⁰² The instant Western response after images of fleeing ethnic Yazidis for Islamic State and the subsequent public pressure to act in 2014 is a case in this point. Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, France dramatically increased its attacks on IS in Syria and Iraq. Interestingly, analysts have observed that scaling up the bombing of IS did not have any significant effect on the terrorist group, leaving former Navy pilot and analyst of the Institute for the Study of War Chris Harmer to conclude that the France retaliatory attacks were not so much aimed for IS but ‘100 per cent for domestic consumption’.¹⁰³ The political sensitivity to public opinion has also become manifest in other ways. For example, it has become a habit only to commit troops for a preset and fixed period and hold annual or biennial reviews to decide whether the deployment of forces should be prolonged or terminated. UN, EU and NATO have iterating ‘force generation’ processes in order to get sufficient troops for missions, for example the NATO mission in Afghanistan and the UN mission in Mali. Enabled by technological developments, politicians prefer to contribute with forces that leave the nation uncommitted. During the previously mentioned war in Libya, US and British forces fired over 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles and the US-led coalition carried out numerous air and drone strikes. Without boots on the ground (except for some special forces), the step to withdraw became morally more acceptable, even when the situation significantly deteriorated. At the same time, war’s more inconvenient by-products could be avoided, such as post-war administrative and managerial responsibilities and costly nation-building obligations (such was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan). Distant fighting, defined by some scholars as hit-and-run warfare, offers the middle-ground strategy to address the public fears of terrorism or the desire to help the helpless, while remaining uncommitted and easily able to opt out when the citizen-consumer has been satisfied.¹⁰⁴

Further, when political leaders do contemplate war, they tend to present it in a way that will gain the consent of political opposition and public opinion. An illustrative example is the way Western politicians have ‘labelled’ the war or the strategy in Afghanistan, such as ‘nation-building’, ‘reconstruction’, ‘winning hearts and minds’ and ‘comprehensive approach’. Clausewitz already warned that political considerations which conflict with the nature of war may hinder the accomplishment of its objectives and may even have rebounding (and often detrimental) effects on politics.¹⁰⁵ Fashionable labels can have an authoritative and suggestive power with its own inhibitory influence on strategy-making and the conduct of war. On a tactical level, moreover, these labels tend to conflict with the actual situation on the ground, confronting soldiers fighting an insurgency with a myriad of complex political constraints and expectations. When the mission is portrayed and advertised as a stabilisation or reconstruction mission, as was the case in some Western countries deploying to Afghanistan, it becomes difficult to explain heavy fighting in such a narrative. Too much wishful thinking may even backfire on the political leadership. As an example, after selling German combat in Afghanistan for 8 years as a peacekeeping or a stabilisation mission, Germany’s political leadership finally had to admit that the country was involved in a war and had to change its strategy and its strategic communication accordingly. Political rhetoric can only go so far that it does not contradict the nature of the military instrument under their control when determining objectives. The military is trained to kill and destroy and instinctively inclined to battle. The reciprocal effect between politics and war manifests when communication diverges too much from reality, or when military force is deployed for purposes for which they are neither trained nor intended. According to Rupert Smith, this was exactly what happened with the Western forces in Iraq after the Iraqi forces were defeated in May 2003. Whilst being an effective military force during the fighting, the force lost its utility when employed for policing and humanitarian tasks.¹⁰⁶

War’s reflection of domestic political power struggles and the impulse to avoid electoral risks compound the political tendency to pay less attention to the long-term effects, the policy objective or the outcome of the war.¹⁰⁷ Instead, politicians increasingly concentrate on how war is performed and can be demonstrated to the consumer-citizen. In the war to retake the Falklands from Argentine forces, British political pressure forced the commanding officer to capture a garrison at Goose Green which he deemed absolutely irrelevant from a military perspective but had to be executed simply ‘to register a British success to win back the headlines’.¹⁰⁸ Colin Gray, among others, has criticised western nations for not having formulated a political goal or a strategy for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.¹⁰⁹ Indeed, the policy documents on the decisions of Western nations such as the United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands to send troops to Afghanistan reveal only brief and very broad descriptions of what a successful outcome would look like and how this could be achieved.¹¹⁰ On the other hand, political guidelines for the conduct of war, which used to be the domain of generals, were described meticulously. At the height of the Western war in Afghanistan in 2009–2010, over 50 constraining restrictions and caveats were imposed on different contributing nations.¹¹¹ The German forces in Afghanistan for example were to abstain from offensive activities and were not allowed to operate in the volatile southern part of the country.

In today’s risk society, war has become an exercise in the avoidance of risks. Conflicts are not solved but rather managed. The consumer-citizen demands ever higher levels of security, while at the same time displaying an increasing aversion to war and a lack of belief in ideas of heroism or fighting for a noble cause.¹¹² Politicians increasingly transfer risks by using proxies, such as the Western nations’ use of private military companies like Blackwater and Control Risk Group which were involved in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the war against Islamic State in 2016 and 2017, Western forces left the heavy fighting to local militias and the Iraqi Army. But this trend is not restricted to the West. Russia, for example, employed contractors in Ukraine and Syria in 2014 and 2015, and Iran has a long record of waging war with insurgent movements. In Africa, countries such as Liberia, Uganda and Tanzania have made use of proxy forces to protect their national interest.¹¹³ Political risk avoidance has gradually turned Western militaries into politico-sensitive entities, incorporating so-called red card holders who check every military activity to ensure that it fits with the political mandate.¹¹⁴ The prevention of collateral damage and civilian casualties has become a mantra on its own, not because of empathic feelings with foreign populations, but because of the consequences at home; and this is not without reason; a NATO airstrike in Afghanistan killing many Afghan civilians involving German forces in 2009 had significant political repercussions, ultimately leading to the resignation of Frans Jozef Jung, Defence minister at the time of the attack.

In brief, the purpose of war in the current sociopolitical world is increasingly defined by domestic political power and to a lesser extent by policy objectives. Both power-seeking and policymaking forces conform to the Clausewitzian logic of politics, but, as I have tried to explain, increased politicisation has had its effects on the conduct of war. The course of the war, its conduct and its presentation is moulded and shaped so to serve domestic political power struggles and to satisfy the consumer-citizen. War as the continuation of party politics or, the politicisation of warfare, is both a contemporary development in the West, and at the same time the least understood. Strategic thinkers and practitioners usually fail to understand the politico-sociological context in which contemporary wars occur and as a result they simply conclude that the West suffers from strategic illiteracy, has lost its institutional capacity for long-term thinking and that political leaders no longer act strategically. When domestic political forces are actually recognised, they are regarded as external disruptive factors rather than inherently political.¹¹⁵ For example, a former British chief of defence contends that politicians have no feeling for strategy as: ‘[strategy] ties them in and stops them veering and hauling according to the latest opinion poll’. In his recent monograph, Christopher Eliot blames Tony Blair for being more concerned with winning upcoming elections than success in Afghanistan.¹¹⁶ In the view of some scholars, these Western wars demonstrate that governments should deal with war entirely apart from the domestic political sphere.¹¹⁷ Indeed, the logic of contemporary politics is difficult to grasp for strategists; for the war theorist it makes no sense that the Dutch government collapsed over the extension of the mission in Afghanistan in 2010, only to have the following government presenting a new mission in Afghanistan a couple of months later. Operational planning becomes difficult when the political leadership intends to deploy a symbolic number of soldiers merely in order to demonstrate international loyalty, or in response to the international pressures that go with a seat in the UN Security Council. However, one cannot ignore that such motives are inherent to the political logic of strategy and war.

Where are we now: the return to Clausewitz

Neither the war theorist who accuses politicians and strategists of being strategically illiterate nor the sociologist who presents a new theoretical perspective can provide a solution to the current unsatisfactory state of affairs outlined above. I contend that politicians do behave strategically (and even rationally) but that their primary purpose of engaging in war expeditions has gradually shifted from policy goals to objectives of power. It is precisely the convergence of the power-seeking politicians with the military policy-oriented strategist that leads to friction and incomprehension – what I would term the politico-military disconnect. Vote-maximising, power-seeking politicians tend to wrap their political ambitions in noble policy purposes and for obvious reasons refrain from openly disclosing their real motivation. The military in turn tends rather naively to take the formally stated, often broad and ambitious, political purpose for granted, overlooking the unspoken, but primary motives of its political masters. The politico-military disconnect boils down to the fundamental question: what is the utility of force? From the perspective of the military, it is to realise policy, while from the politician’s view, it is rather to consolidate power. To make this more specific, one could take the wars in Vietnam, the Balkans and Iraq. These wars have often been regarded as policy failures. Communist influence in Vietnam was not halted, genocide in Bosnia was not prevented and Iraq is still war-torn. However, when seen through the lens of domestic political power, the outcome of these wars is rather different: Lynden Johnson prolonged the Vietnam War but got re-elected; Tony Blair, who brought the United Kingdom into Iraq, remained longer in office than any other Labour leader in British history, while the Dutch government cabinet during the Srebrenica massacre is the only cabinet in two decades that did not collapse.

It will not come as a surprise that the politico-military disconnect works further down the chain of command and is increasingly misunderstood on the battlefield. The more undisclosed power-seeking forces determine the political logic of war, the less war is understood by the military body. In his brilliant monograph, soldier-scholar Emile Simpson articulates this very succinctly: when ‘he look[ed] up from the battlefield and consider[ed] the concepts that put [him] there’ it struck him that war is no longer what war is typically understood to be. Contemporary war, he concludes, is distinct from the established idea set out by Clausewitz, of being an extension of policy by other means.¹¹⁸ I sympathise with strategists and soldiers like Emile Simpson who no longer understand ‘war from the ground up’, from the perspective of policy, but (even though I have been in the same position) at the same time I realise that modern wars make perfect sense for the power-seeking politician looking at ‘war from the top down’. What Simpson describes and what confuses so many is not a deviation from Clausewitzian war but, as I have tried to explain, the developments in contemporary politics. War, as its dependent variable, has merely followed course. Only a deeper understanding of the contemporary political condition and the implications for warfare can restore coherence – both conceptual and in practice.

The main point I have aimed to put forward here is that the sociopolitical condition in which war is waged has changed and so has its conduct. Like war, politics is changeable and a product of its sociological context. The logic of war in the age of liquid modernity, however, is still fundamentally determined by politics in a Clausewitzian sense, so the fundamental relationship between politics and war still holds. What is happening on the battlefield today is war infused with politics, perhaps even the true revelation of war as the continuation of politics, with all the political complexities directly translated into restraints and constraints which then operate at the lowest levels in the theatre of war.

Having demonstrated how the contemporary sociopolitical conditions have changed, how Clausewitz’s political logic of war has been persistently misunderstood and misinterpreted, and in particular having affirmed war’s relationship with politics, it is time to offer a new approach which does justice to the concept of politics in a Clausewitzian tradition. This brings me to the next section of this paper in which I shall try to lay out a new framework for understanding Clausewitz’s logic of war, in order to demonstrate how his notion of the relationship between war and politics can continue to survive the passage of time.

The political logic of war: taking Clausewitz back into the future

Conceptualisation and definition

In this part, the Clausewitzian dictum of war being the continuation of politics will be attuned to provide a contemporary theory, including an analytical framework, a research methodology and indicative research questions for future case studies. The theory aims to cover not only major, interstate wars but also small wars, civil wars and what is called today ‘hybrid war’. These are not restricted to state-actors or to the West but may include any political entity in any geographical (or virtual) area participating in war. This addendum is based on the two basic theses of my argument presented at the beginning of this article. First, throughout modern history, Clausewitz’s remarks on ‘politics’ have been structurally misunderstood and misinterpreted as ‘policy’, while politics should have been regarded in its broadest form, entailing policymaking, power struggles and the polity constellation. Second, and only after this adjustment, may we consider the broad interpretation of Clausewitzian politics a valid construct for the analysis of war in the contemporary sociopolitical condition. The theory presented here is Clausewitzian in nature and takes as a premise the instrumental relationship of war being subordinate to politics.

Since Clausewitz himself did not present a theory of Politik, I follow the reasoning of Strachan, Heuser, Herberg-Rothe, Echevarria and Bassford and disentangle from his use of this term three separate key concepts of policy, power and polity. Viewed through the lens of the political logic of war, I consider politics, as the overarching concept, as the systemic process of power distribution and policymaking by a political entity within a polity. ‘Polity’ is understood here as a metaphorical space that demarcates the ‘political sphere’; the political constellation of entities and practices. It is the fabric, the composition in which politics take place.¹¹⁹ Power is the ability to exercise influence and control. It is often perceived as an adversarial and polarised concept (one’s increase of power automatically lessens the other’s). Power is a precondition for policymaking, but in a Nietzschean sense, power also serves as an end in itself. ‘Policy’ is a rather unilateral concept, and its end is conceived as a better state of affairs in the future, statecraft for the good and the interest of the collective.¹²⁰ This concept, however, hides a plural, dynamic and multifaceted compromise of individual political actors with conflicting interests competing for resources.¹²¹ It is important to note that policy and power, to adopt a metaphor favoured by Clausewitz, have a magnetic relationship, sometimes attracting and overlapping, at other times repelling and conflicting, i.e. the execution of war policy may positively affect the agent’s share of power on one occasion, while in other cases, or over time, the assumed war will incur significant political cost. Overall, the political logic is determined by both conflicting and overlapping policy objectives and power struggles within a given polity which demarcates the space of manoeuvre and provides the rules of the game. Finally, from this it follows that Clausewitzian Politik or the political logic of war can be defined as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles and policy objectives within a given polity that entails restraining and enabling conditions.

Ideal types of politics in war

To gain a better understanding of this definition, it helps to present two ideal outcomes of this political logic. In line with the dialectic approach of the master of strategic thinking himself, the relationship between policy and power can be further analysed. Assuming a situation of an unrestrained polity, I present two ideal types of war and opposing poles: the policy-driven war and the politicised (politically determined) war.

In policy-driven war, the political logic of war is instrumental, systematic and mechanical. Policymakers and strategists investigate different possible future outcomes and mathematically decide on the optimal mixture of ends, ways and means in terms of national interest. The purpose of the war is evaluated solely by its effect in achieving a situation that serves the collective and changes the current situation for the better. The political body, including parties in the opposition, is not receptive or responsive to fluctuating public opinion or media framing. Setbacks are accepted as inherently associated with war and are not exploited in the political arena. Progress is measured by continuously taking the end into account and weighing it against the ways and means applied. A war continues until either the policy objectives have been achieved or its costs have exceeded the expected gains that the policy objective might achieve.

In a politicised war, the political logic is a product of internal political struggles. Political agents decide on war and its conduct solely in terms of optimising their power shares. Military expeditions typically start with public pressure or dramatic media pictures, creating a sense of urgency among politicians to do something in order to satisfy the consumer-citizen. Subsequent strategy-making is not about the purpose of the mission, long-term considerations or the utility of force but focuses solely on the question how to demonstrate to the keen public that something is being done. Political leaders seek the deployment of forces which have visible impact but are at low risk of being killed. Composition of the force its tasks and the mandate is strictly overseen, in order to balance the political risks associated with the deployment of troops with the public expectations. Success and failure are measured by public approval ratings, electoral gains and the amount of coverage on the six o’clock news. Progress and setbacks on the ground are judged by their media-worthiness, regardless of the factual situation on the ground. Political agents are not interested in what the forces are achieving but are only concerned on a day-to-day basis with what the troops are doing and how their conduct might affect their political position. When the war loses utility, i.e. loses popular support and ceases to win votes, the military conflict is either popularised, neglected or terminated. Here, neither the primacy of force, of military might or pride nor overarching policy goals but rather internecine power struggles and contentions provide the real frontline of the war.

These ideal types of war, the politicised and the policy-driven, are two ends to the political spectrum and do not represent reality. From a dialectical perspective, both types of wars are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum rather than distinct and incompatible constructs. A Clausewitzian synthesis would return to the assumption that in reality, the pendulum swings between the two ideal types of the political logic of war. The next question is then how can a war be analysed and explained on the basis of political forces of policymaking and politicking? In other words, how can it be shown what political forces determine the start, the course and the outcome of a given war? In order to comprehend and map the political logic of wars ranging from the ideal-type of the politicised war to the policy-driven war, I hypothesise three determining factors: the ‘sociopolitical condition’ in which politics takes place; the ‘agents’ being the political participants, and the threats, interests and opportunities being the ‘issues at stake’. These determinants explain the political logic of wars ranging from the ideal-type of the politicised war to the policy-driven war.

Determinants

First, the sociopolitical condition shapes the manoeuvre space for political agents within the polity, determines the framework within which policy is defined, and the way power operates and is distributed. The sociopolitical condition comprises the (macro)societal condition, international coalitions, the political system, the type of regime and the political climate, including the level of volatility, changeability and fluctuation of existing power structures. Attention should be paid to civil–military relationships, the susceptibility and responsiveness of the political to its people, the influence of media frames and public (in particular dissident) opinion.

Second, the agents comprise all participants in politics, including the formal bodies (government, bureaucracy, legislation, opposition) and other actors such as voters, pressure groups, media, dissidents, NGOs, terrorists, hacktivists and so on. Agents operate within the polity for the purpose of the (partly conflicting, partly overlapping) objects of power and policy. Their ideologies, belief systems, ambitions, intentions and motives of political agents shape the political discourse for war and consequently war’s logic. These transpire through discourses, narratives, frames, war plans, strategies, execution of policies and acts of politicking. Some influential factors may remain hidden and unspoken, such as party-political agendas, conflicting policy preferences and individual political ambitions.

Third, the ‘issues at stake’ pertain to the unceasing flow of events in the polity that shape political agents’ perceptions of threats, opportunities and interests for shaping policies and seeking power. From the outset, attachment to a policy objective at the expense of power-seeking is expected to be greater when a threat is perceived as imminent and existential (such as a hostile nuclear attack), while consequences for power distribution are increasingly prioritised when the issue is less urgent or threatening and as such as causes political division (e.g. the decision to send a peacekeeping force to another continent).¹²² This perception of threats, opportunities and interests differs per political agent (with its own beliefs, ambitions and motives) and is continuously shaped not only by endogenous factors as the war unfolds, such as dramatic events, intelligence reports, setbacks and successes, but also by exogenous events, such as alternative policies competing for resources, national elections or a change of governing parties.

Indicative research questions and analytical framework

These determinants generate research questions for looking at the political logic of a given war. The most fundamental and central question is how can the course of the war be explained by the political logic? Some subsidiary questions could be then: (how) can the political logic of the war be explained as the convergence of power struggles and policy objectives within a given polity? How does the sociopolitical condition shape the polity constellation and the way political agents perceive the policy–power nexus? How are political agents influenced by motivation for either achieving policy objectives and/or acquiring power? And to what extent are political agents susceptible to the continuous flow of endogenous and exogenous issues at stake?

Relevance for the field

I have tried to present a contemporary theory of war, including the conceptualisation of key concepts and ways of operationalising these in case studies. It is hoped that the field of Strategic Studies will be enriched with the provision of a broader analytical framework within which to understand the political logic of war. Although the aim here is to reinterpret the conceptual foundations of Strategic Studies, it is argued that this approach does not conflict with the fundamental Clausewitzian view of war as subordinate to politics. On the contrary, the reconceptualisation intends to revitalise the Clausewitzian imperative on war. Because the field of Strategic Studies is interdisciplinary, the analytical framework can benefit from a range of existing models and theories of International Relations, political science, sociology and history. The broader interpretation of Politik may also prompt a reconsideration of the logic of strategy in war, currently assumed to be about balancing ends, ways and means in a synchronised and systematic way in order to reach a policy objective. Strategy as envisaged in this paper is still about balancing ends, ways and means, but it also takes into consideration the politicians contemplating war, who not only have a policy objective in mind but also have a share of political power to defend or to obtain. When political power is factored into strategic thinking, this leads to a redefinition of strategy as a process in which political agents, acting in a polity that both restrains and enables, balance ends, ways and means in order to find an optimal equilibrium between achieving policy objectives and a favourable distribution of political power shares.

With the intention to add more depth to the field of Strategic Studies, this broader analytical framework of the political logic of war presents a new set of challenges for those who study war. Crucial as it may be to understand a war, a leader’s true motive for going to war is generally not announced in public.¹²³ Politicians normally express their motivation for war in terms of policy, ideology and collective interest, and not in personal benefit or electoral gains. This makes sense, as it is unlikely that a public would be attracted to serve a politician’s personal goal. In most cases, therefore, to discover to what extent politicking, such as vote-seeking or election-maximising, has influenced the political logic of the war, one has to resort to speculative analysis or at best the meticulous exclusion of other factors. This obviously reduces the scientific value of such analysis in general and detracts from the internal validity of research in particular. The complexity, ambiguity and changeability of politics thus add further to the challenge of determining the political logic in war: to what extent do these political forces – competing policies, power struggles and personal interests, both visible and below the surface – affect the course of a war?

The complexity of the analytical framework is justified by its explanatory power. Without delving too deep in the details of a single case study, combining the notion of policy, politics and polity enables us to better understand, for instance, the course of the Dutch mission in Uruzgan. A classical strategic studies approach, with its narrow policy perspective, would focus on whether the applied means served to achieve the formulated policy objectives. This would however miss the domestic political forces which heavily influenced the course of the Dutch contribution. The course of the mission in Uruzgan cannot be understood without factoring in the party political considerations over the mission from the outset. For example, in the early stages of the decision-making process in 2005, the party leader of Democratic Party D66, Boris Dittrich, deliberately attempted to destabilise the cabinet by his public declaration that his party (which was part of the government of that time) would not support the decision to contribute to ISAF. This politicised the Uruzgan mission from the outset, damaged the mission’s legitimacy and fuelled distrust among the opposition, the media and public opinion. Further, the broad and vague aims and descriptions of the nature and the purpose of the mission provided a window of opportunity for the rise of a counter-narrative on the Uruzgan mission as a ‘combat mission being sold as a reconstruction mission’. Accusations of non-transparency and even deception kept recurring until the cabinet collapsed over the mission in 2010.¹²⁴ The political power struggles widened the gap between the public understanding of the mission and the reality on the battlefield. The political debate also affected the soldiers on the ground. The deployed commanders of the Task Force Uruzgan found it difficult to avoid being sucked into the political fighting – reconstruction debate.¹²⁵ Extensive research among junior leadership demonstrates that the politicisation of the mission affected even the lowest levels of the Uruzgan force. In the eyes of platoon commanders, the political frames of the Uruzgan campaign unjustly simplified and misunderstood the complexity of the counter-insurgency operation they were involved in and obscured the fundamental purpose of their mission.¹²⁶

In a nutshell, the above example indicates that a broader conception of politics and the inclusion of power politics in the field of Strategic Studies are essential if one is to reach a better understanding of today’s challenges regarding fighting larger and smaller wars. This approach answers to the questions raised by Rupert Smith, who asked why ‘we fight to preserve the force’, or Daniel Borger, who tries to comprehend why ‘the West lost the war in Iraq and Afghanistan’.¹²⁷ More importantly, this structural inclusion of politics and polity in the domain of strategic studies underpins Emile Simpson’s statement that ‘war from the ground up’ looks different than before.¹²⁸ War on the ground indeed looks different today, it is however important to note that this is not because the instrumental relationship between war and politics has changed, but because politics as war’s determining variable has changed. Strategic scholars David Ucko and Robert Egnell concluded that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught the West the strategic lesson that governments should decide for military operations on terms that serve policy alone, separate from the sphere of domestic politics.¹²⁹ This may sound attractive as a practical advice, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that in the modern world, it is impossible to detach the political logic for the use of military force from power struggles in the polity.

Ultimately, the approach presented here is intended to lead to a better understanding of war, and in particular of the influence of the political imperative on the reasons why wars are waged and why they unfold the way they do.

Conclusion

In an attempt to contribute to the reinvigoration of the field of Strategic Studies and to overcome the overemphasis on the primacy of policy in literature, I have presented an original way to interpret Clausewitz’s political logic of war. Through a Clausewitzian lens, a broader understanding of politics is presented that fits within the contemporary sociopolitical condition. The liquid modern condition in the West presents a situation in which the fragmentation of state-level political power has decreased the effectiveness of force. It has resulted in a state of affairs where wars are fought without a clear beginning and without a clear end, a permanent state of conflict involving a fluctuating variety of militaries, non-governmental organisations, private military companies and civilians. In addition, the fluidity of politics and the decline of power in state-level politics have caused politicians who contemplate war to become increasingly occupied with electoral considerations at the expense of crafting sound policy objectives. One of the consequences is the growing disconnect between the bureaucracy and the political leadership when it comes to understanding the utility of force.

In addition, the Clausewitzian dictum of war being the continuation of politics has been refined to provide a contemporary theory and a novel analytical framework with which to study the political logic of in war. On the basis of my understanding that politics essentially consists of the core concepts of policy, power and polity, I propose that the political logic of war can be defined as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles and policy objectives within a given polity that entails restraining and enabling conditions. Further, three determining factors are hypothesised: the sociopolitical condition, the agents and the issues at stake. These determinants explain the political logic of different types of war, ranging from the ideal-types of the politicised war to the policy-driven war.

Clausewitz’s idea of the political logic of war has thus not been so radically transformed after all. Indeed, as Clausewitz already observed, war must be judged in the light of the sociopolitical zeitgeist and, because war is ‘a true chameleon’, it will adapt its characteristics accordingly.¹³⁰ Wars change because their primary determinant, politics, changes. The fundamental flaw in the reasoning of New War-istas is that these authors regard wars as being new merely because they are fought for novel reasons. The converse however is the case: because politics have evolved, its dependent variable, war, has changed accordingly. Had war not changed to what it is now, Clausewitz’s postulation of war being nothing more than politics would have been seriously compromised. The forms of war of today only confirm Clausewitz’s idea. What we see in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria today is not New War but rather a mirror of contemporary Western politics, attempting to tame, mould and utilise wars abroad in order to win wars at home.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Beatrice de Graaf, Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Frans Osinga and Alistair Reed for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George Dimitriu

George Dimitriu (MA MSc) is a PhD candidate of Utrecht University and a research fellow at the Netherlands Defence Academy. He has spent over 18 years in active military service and authored several articles on war and strategy in journals such as Small Wars & Insurgencies, Foreign Policy Analysis and Intelligence and National Security. He co-edited the Routledge volume ‘Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War’.

Notes

¹ Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jeffrey H. Michaels, ‘Revitalizing Strategic Studies in an Age of Perpetual Conflict’, Orbis, 60/1 (2016), 22–35; Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: University Press 2013), 105; John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (NY: Basic Books 1989); Richard Betts, ‘Is strategy an illusion?’, International Security 25/2 (2000), 5–50.

² Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organised violence in a global era (Stanford: University Press 1998); Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War (Cambridge: Polity Press 2005), 39–42; Donald Snow, Uncivil wars: International security and the new internal conflicts (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers 1996).

³ Kaldor, New and Old Wars, 218.

⁴ Siniša Malešević, The Sociology of War and Violence (Cambridge: University Press 2010); Antulio J. Echevarria II, ‘Deconstructing the Theory of Fourth Generation Warfare’, Contemporary Security Policy 26/2 (2005), 233–241; Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘New’ and ‘old’ civil wars: A valid distinction?’, World Politics 54/1(2001) 99–118.

⁵ Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Strategic Illiteracy. The Art of Strategic Thinking in Modern Military Operations, Inaugural lecture on the acceptance of the Special Chair in Strategic Studies at Leiden University, 10 June 2013; Lukas Milevski, ‘A Collective Failure of Grand Strategy: The West’s unintended wars of choice’, RUSI 156/1 (2011), 30–33; Michael Clarke, ‘The Helmand decision’, in: Michael Clarke (ed.), The Afghan papers (London: RUSI 2011), 5–29; House of Commons Public Administration Committee, Who does UK national strategy? Further report, London: House of Commons, 2010–2011.

⁶ Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press 2000).

⁷ Jan Willem Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War: Problems of Text and Translation’ in: Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz in the Twenty-first Century (Oxford: University Press 2007) 57–73; Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz (London: Pimlico 2002); Strachan, The Direction of War, 13–14, 35, 51–55; Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A history (Oxford: University Press, 2013); Betts, ‘Is strategy an illusion?’, 5–50.

⁸ Antulio J. Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War (Oxford: University Press 2007), 84–97.

⁹ Panajotis Kondylis, Theorie Des Krieges: Clausewitz–Marx–Engels–Lenin (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1988), 28; David Kaiser, ‘Back to Clausewitz’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32/4 (2009) 681. Thomas Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity (Oxon: Routledge 2016), 73–101; Andreas Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s Concept of the State’, in: Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Jan Willem Honig, and Daniel Moran (ed.), Clausewitz: The State and War (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2011), 28; Jan Willem Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics of Early Modern Warfare’, in: Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Jan Willem Honig, and Daniel Moran (ed.), Clausewitz: The State and War (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2011), 29–48.

¹⁰ Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War’, 57–73; Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe, ‘Introduction’, in: Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (ed.), Clausewitz in the twenty-first century (Oxford: University Press 2007), 7–10; Strachan,The Direction of War, 13–14, 35, 51–55; Harry Summers, American strategy in Vietnam: A critical analysis (New York: Dover Publications 1981); John Keegan, A history of warfare (London: Hutchinson 1993), 386–392; Martin Van Creveld, The transformation of war: The most radical reinterpretation of armed conflict since Clausewitz (New York: The Free Press 2008), 124–156; Kaldor, New and Old Wars.

¹¹ Duyvesteyn and Michaels, ‘Revitalizing Strategic Studies’, 22–35; Pascal Vennesson, ‘Is strategic studies narrow? Critical security and the misunderstood scope of strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies 40/3 (2017), 358–391.

¹² Richard K. Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, World Politics 50/1 (1997), 7–33.

¹³ Duyvesteyn and Michaels, ‘Revitalizing Strategic Studies’, 22–35.

¹⁴ Isabelle Duyvesteyn & James E. Worrall, ‘Global Strategic Studies: a manifesto’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 40/3 (2017), 347–357; Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, 7–33; Strachan, The Direction of War, 2013.

¹⁵ Betts, ‘Is Strategy an illusion?’, 5–50; Strachan, The Direction of War, 14, 41.

¹⁶ Bernard Brodie, War & politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973).

¹⁷ Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, 8; B. H. Liddel Hart, Strategy (New York: Penguin Group 1991), 321.

¹⁸ Kondylis, Theorie Des Krieges, 28; Kaiser, ‘Back to Clausewitz’, 681. Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity, 73–101; Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s Concept of the State’, 28; Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, 84–97; Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War’, 57–73; Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics’, 29–48.

¹⁹ Christopher Bassford, ‘The Primacy of Policy and the “Trinity” in Clausewitz’s Mature Thought’, in Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds.), Clausewitz in the twenty-first century (Oxford: University Press 2007), 74–90.

²⁰ Hew Strachan, The Direction of War.

²¹ Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (London: Penguin Press 2002), 79–87.

²² Machiavelli, ‘Discources on the first decade of Titus Livius’, in: Allan Gilbert (trans.), Machiavelli: The chief works and others volume I (Durham and London: Duke University Press 1989), 218–219, 240–242. Nicolai Rubinstein (ed.), Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance Statesman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1965), 121.

²³ Kari Palonen, ‘Four Times of Politics: Policy, Polity, Politicking and Politication’, Alternatives 28/1 (2003), 171–186.

²⁴ Kari Palonen, Eine Lobrede für Politiker, Ein Kommentar zu Max Webers ‘Politik als Beruf’ (Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien 2002), 40–42.

²⁵ Jack Levy, ‘Domestic Politics and War’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18/4 (1988), 653–673.

²⁶ ‘Paths to War, Then and Now, Haunt Obama’ New York Times, 14 September 2014.

²⁷ Colin Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: University Press, 1999), 10, 17, 20, 60.

²⁸ Michael Howard, ‘The Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy’, Foreign Affairs 57/5 (1979) 975–986; Hew Strachan, ‘The lost meaning of Strategy’, Survival 47/3 (2005), 41.

²⁹ Strachan, The Direction of War, 260.

³⁰ Stephen M. Saideman and David P. Auwerswald, ‘Comparing Caveats: Understanding the Sources of National Restrictions upon NATO’s Mission in Afghanistan’, International Studies Quarterly 56/1 (2012), 67–84.

³¹ Milevski, ‘A Collective Failure, 30–33; Colin Gray, ‘Strategic thoughts for Defence Planners’, Survival 52/3 (2010), 159–178; Patrick Porter, ‘Why Britain doesn’t do Grand Strategy’, RUSI 155/4 (2010), 6–12.

³² Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle: The Political Theory of War (Oxford: University Press 2007), 34.

³³ Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, 84; Raymond Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War (London: Routledge 1985).

³⁴ Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern, Handbuch für den Offizier zur Belehrung im Frieden und zum Gebrauch im Felde (Zweite Abteilung) (Berlin: Reimer 1818), 8.

³⁵ Carl Von Clausewitz, On war (Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret) (Oxford: University Press 1976), 252; Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, 84.

³⁶ Clausewitz, On War, 14.

³⁷ Karl von Clausewitz, Hinterlassene Werke über Krieg und Kriegführung, Zweite Auflage (Berlin: Dümmler, 1857), 24; Clausewitz, On War, 28.

³⁸ Clausewitz, On War, 252–258; Andreas Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s concept of the state‘ in Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Jan Willem Honig, and Daniel Moran (eds.), Clausewitz: The state and War (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2011), 20, 28.

³⁹ Strachan and Herberg-Rothe, ‘Introduction’, 9; Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity, 90–91; Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz, 30–33.

⁴⁰ Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics’, 29.

⁴¹ Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Considerations sur la manière de faire la guerre á la France’, in: Werner Hahlweg (ed.), Carl von Clausewitz: Schriften-Aufsätze-Studien-Briefe, vol. I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1966), 58–63.

⁴² Paul Donker, Aphorismen über den Krieg und die Kriegführung as the first version of Clausewitz’s masterpiece: A textual comparison with Vom Kriege (Breda: Netherlands Defence Academy 2016), 30–31; Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 24.

⁴³ Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, 104.

⁴⁴ Clausewitz, On War, 254.

⁴⁵ Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s puzzle, 146–147.

⁴⁶ Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s Concept of the State’, 20–21.

⁴⁷ Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (eds.), Carl von Clausewitz: Historical and Political Writings (Princeton: University Press 1992), 268; Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the politics of warfare’, 47; Brodie, War and Politics, 438.

⁴⁸ Bassford, ‘The Primacy of Policy’, 88; Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics’, 47.

⁴⁹ Paret and Moran (eds.), Carl von Clausewitz, 223–235; Hans Rothfels, Carl von Clausewitz, Politik und Krieg, Eine ideengeschichtlich Studie (Berlin: Dümmlers Verlagsbuchhandlung 1920), 198. Translation by the author.

⁵⁰ Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change (Cambridge: University Press 2011), 319–320.

⁵¹ For some exceptions, see: Hew Strachan, ‘Clausewitz and the dialectics of war, in: Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds.), Clausewitz in the twenty-first century (Oxford: University Press 2007), 26–28.

⁵² Basil Liddell Hart, ‘Limited war’, Harper’s Magazine, 192/3 (1946), 193–203.

⁵³ Basil Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: Penguin Books 1991), 322.

⁵⁴ Liddell Hart, Strategy, 319–360; Edward Mead Earle, ‘Introduction’, in: Edward Mead Earle (ed.), Makers of modern strategy: Military thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton: University Press 1943), viii.

⁵⁵ Earle, ‘Introduction’, vii–xi.

⁵⁶ However, there were some notable exceptions, see Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War’, 72–73.

⁵⁷ Summers, American Strategy in Vietnam, 113–222.

⁵⁸ Van Creveld, The transformation of war, 124–156.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Keegan, A history of warfare, 386–392.

⁶¹ Kaldor, New and Old Wars.

⁶² Kalyvas, ‘”New’’ And ‘“Old”’ Civil Wars’, 103; Strachan, ‘Clausewitz and the Dialectics of War’, 43; Malešević, The Sociology of War, 65; Herberg-Rothe and Strachan, ‘Introduction’, 7.

⁶³ Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle, 164.

⁶⁴ Betts, ‘Is Strategy an Illusion?’, 25.

⁶⁵ Peter Moody, ‘Clausewitz and the Fading Dialectic of War’, World Politics 31/3 (1979), 417; Hew Strachan, ‘Making strategy: Civil-military relations after Iraq’, Survival 48/3 (2006), 59–82.

⁶⁶ Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: University Press 2010), 495, 499.

⁶⁷ Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War’, 70–71; Freedman, Strategy: A history, 86.

⁶⁸ Clausewitz, On War, 14.

⁶⁹ Ian Roxborough, ‘Clausewitz and the Sociology of War’, The British Journal of Sociology 45/4 (1994), 619–622.

⁷⁰ Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s concept of the state’, 20.

⁷¹ Bauman, Liquid Modernity; Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernisation: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge: Polity Press 1994).

⁷² Zygmunt Bauman, In Search of Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press 1999), 5, 74; Mikael Carleheden, ‘Bauman on Politics – Stillborn Democracy’, in: Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Poul Poder (eds.), The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman: Challenges and Critique (Oxon: Routledge 2008), 181.

⁷³ Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 14.

⁷⁴ Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, 230–231, 469, 814; Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (London: Penguin Group 2008), 66.

⁷⁵ Keith Dickson, ‘War in (Another) context: Postmodernism’, Journal of Conflict Studies 24/2 (2004), 78–91.

⁷⁶ Bauman, In Search of Politics, 8.

⁷⁷ Ibid., and Bauman, Liquid Modernity.

⁷⁸ Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, 226.

⁷⁹ Piero Ignazi, ‘Power and the (il)legitimacy of political parties: An unavoidable paradox of contemporary democracy?’ Party Politics 20/2 (2014) 163; Lekakis, ‘A liquid politics?’, 321; Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, 224–225.

⁸⁰ Jusin Fisher and Edward Fieldhouse, The Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion (Oxon: Routledge 2017).

⁸¹ James Dalton, ‘Citizen Attitudes and Political Behaviour’, Comparative Political Studies 33/6&7 (2000), 912–940.

⁸² Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, 230–231.

⁸³ Bauman, In search of politics, 4.

⁸⁴ David R. Mayhew, Congress: The electoral connection (New Haven: Yale University 1974), 100.

⁸⁵ Bauman, In search of politics, 52, 179.

⁸⁶ Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid times: Living in an age of uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity 2007), 3.

⁸⁷ Bauman, In search of politics, 20, 172–173.

⁸⁸ Shaw, The New Western Way of War, 55; Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday, 219.

⁸⁹ Emma Ashford, ‘Not-So-Smart Sanctions: The Failure of Western Restrictions on Russia’, Foreign Affairs 95/1 (2016), 114–126.

⁹⁰ ‘Paying China with territory’, New York Times, 28 June 2018, page 1.

⁹¹ George R. Lucas jr, ‘Postmodern War’, Journal of Military Ethics 9/4 (2010) 290.

⁹² Betts, ‘Is strategy an illusion?’, 5–50.

⁹³ The Netherlands Parliament, Second chamber records, Parlementaire handelingen [Official Parliamentary Reports], 27925, no. 415 (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij 2011).

⁹⁴ The Netherlands Parliament, Second chamber records, Parlementaire handelingen [Official Parliamentary Reports], 27925, no. 494 (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij 2011); Marno de Boer, ‘In Kunduz was er te weinig werk’ Trouw, 24 juni 2014, retrieved at https://www.trouw.nl/home/in-kunduz-was-er-te-weinig-werk~a87c964b/.

⁹⁵ Max Mutschler, ‘On the Road to Liquid Warfare? Revisiting Zygmunt Bauman’s thoughts on liquid modernity in the context of the “new Western way of war”’, BICC Working Paper 3, (2016), 17.

⁹⁶ Nick Turse ‘American Special Operations Forces Are Deployed to 70 Percent of the World’s Countries’, The Nation, 2017, retrieved at https://www.thenation.com/article/american-special-forces-are-deployed-to-70-percent-of-the-worlds-countries/.

⁹⁷ Max Mutschler, ‘On the Road to Liquid Warfare?’, 10.

⁹⁸ Retrieved on 8 November 2017 at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence and at https://www.defensie.nl/onderwerpen/missies/huidige-missies.

⁹⁹ Paret and Moran, Clausewitz: Historical and Political Writings, 22; Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics’, 33.

¹⁰⁰ Rupert Smith, The utility of force: The art of war in the modern world (London: Penguin 2006), 9, 25.

¹⁰¹ James Strong, ‘Interpreting the Syria vote: parliament and British foreign policy’, International Affairs 91/5 (2015), 1123–1139; Hansard (Commons), 29 August 2013, vol. 566, col. 1535.

¹⁰² Smith, The Utility of Force, 332–345.

¹⁰³ Paul D. Shrinkman, ‘A Year After Charlie Hebdo, a Glimpse at French Revenge’, US News and World Report, 2016, retrieved at https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016/01/07/a-year-since-charlie-hebdo-heres-what-french-revenge-looks-like.

¹⁰⁴ Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 187–189; Mutschler, ‘On the Road to Liquid Warfare?’, 7.

¹⁰⁵ Strachan, the Direction of War, 13, 54–55, 207.

¹⁰⁶ Smith, The utility of force, 9, 12, 25.

¹⁰⁷ Max Muttschler, ‘On the Road to Liquid Warfare?’, 7.

¹⁰⁸ Strachan, The Direction of War, 260.

¹⁰⁹ Colin Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (London: Orion Books 2005), 111.

¹¹⁰ Beatrice de Graaf, George Dimitriu and Jens Ringsmose, Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War: Winning domestic support for the Afghan war (London: Routledge, 2015).

¹¹¹ David P. Auerswald and Stephen M. Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting together, fighting alone (Princeton: University Press 2014).

¹¹² Frans Osinga and Julian Lindley-French, ’Leading military organizations in the Risk Society: Mapping the new strategic complexity’, in: Joseph Soeters, Paul C. van Fenema and Robert Beere (eds.), Managing Military Organizations: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge 2010), 17–28.

¹¹³ Andreas Krieg & Jean-Marc Rickli, ‘Surrogate Warfare: the art of war in the 21^st century?’ Defence Studies 18/2 (2018) 118–130.

¹¹⁴ Auerswald and Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan, 5.

¹¹⁵ Richard Hooker, ‘The strange voyage: A short précis on strategy’, Parameters 42/4 (2013), 59–68.

¹¹⁶ Christopher Elliot, High command: British military leadership in the Iraq and Afghanistan war (London: Hurst and Company 2015), 124.

¹¹⁷ David Ucko and Robert Egnell, Counterinsurgency in crisis: Britain and the challenge of modern warfare (Columbia: University Press 2013), 166.

¹¹⁸ Emile Simpson, War from the ground up: Twenty-first century combat as politics (New York: Columbia University Press 2012), 2–4.

¹¹⁹ Palonen, ‘Four Times of Politics’, 179.

¹²⁰ Ibid., 176; Bassford, ‘The Primacy of Policy’, 85.

¹²¹ Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity, 83–88.

¹²² Strachan, The Direction of War, 16.

¹²³ Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity, 97.

¹²⁴ G.R. Dimitriu, and B.A. de Graaf, ‘The Dutch COIN approach: three years in Uruzgan, 2006–2009’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21/3 (2010), 429–458.

¹²⁵ Theo Koelé, ‘We gaan doen wat nodig en mogelijk is [We are going to do what is necessary]’, de Volkskrant, 5 juli 2006; Hans van Griensven, ‘It’s all about the Afghan people’, Eén jaar 1(NLD/AUS) Task Force Uruzgan’, Atlantisch perspectief, 17/6 (2007), 4.

¹²⁶ Jos Groen, Task Force Uruzgan: Getuigenissen van een Missie [testimony of a mission] (Elijzen producties: Ede 2012).

¹²⁷ Smith, The utility of force, 292; Daniel Borger, Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing 2014).

¹²⁸ Simpson, War from the ground up.

¹²⁹ Ucko and Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis, 166.

¹³⁰ Clausewitz, On War, 30, 240.