The strategic and realist perspectives: An ambiguous relationship

ABSTRACT

This article aims at clearing up a widespread misunderstanding in previous research that the classical strategic perspective, based on the writings of Carl von Clausewitz and his contemporary followers, shares ontological assumptions with realism. Although both perspectives perceive a constant state of disharmony in international politics, they differ substantially in their assumptions about state-centrism, actor behaviour, and the role of unpredictability. As the relationship between the perspectives is ambiguous, the article argues that scholars should treat them as two separate theoretical entities. The greater scholarly relevance of the article lies in its contribution to conceptual clarity.

KEYWORDS:

• Clausewitz
• Realism
• State-centrism
• Strategic perspective
• Unpredictability

Introduction

This article challenges the widespread belief that the classical school of strategic theory shares ontological assumptions with the realist perspective on international politics and foreign policy.¹ This belief has led scholars to treat the strategic and realist perspectives as synonymous, or near-synonymous, thus unintentionally creating conceptual confusion in international studies. For instance, in an introductory textbook on strategy, the editor argues that the strategic perspective ‘is based upon the realist interpretation’ of international relations, as both ‘feature a distinctive world view based on assumptions about the nature of the political environment, the characteristic manner in which political actors interact with each other’.² In another textbook, it is claimed that strategic scholars ‘share a set of assumptions about the nature of international political life, and the kind of reasoning that can best handle political-military problems. This set of assumptions is often referred to by the term realism’.³

This simplified view of the relationship between the strategic and realist perspectives is also found in many original works from the last decades. Hugh Smith, for example, argues that Carl von Clausewitz belongs to the realist tradition.⁴ Moreover, Neta Crawford claims that strategic scholars ‘tend to view international relations from the [realist] perspective of anarchy in a Hobbesian sense’.⁵ In addition, Michael Williams links the strategic perspective to a ‘neo-realist framework within which it has traditionally been located’.⁶ Furthermore, Tarak Barkawi claims that the strategic perspective ‘logically entails a realist policy science of international politics’,⁷ and Isabelle Duyvesteyn and James Worrall argue that the realist ‘paradigm has formed a cornerstone of the field [of strategic studies]’.⁸ By others, the strategic perspective has even been described as the ‘military-technical wing’ of realism.⁹

Despite the widespread belief that the strategic perspective is based on realism, this article presents and elaborates on the argument that the relationship between the two perspectives is, in fact, ambiguous. Therefore, scholars should treat them as separate perspectives, although they do share some key similarities and overlaps. Thus, the article aims at clearing up a misunderstanding in a large body of literature on international politics, foreign policy, and strategy. Although some previous research has already touched on different aspects of this issue,¹⁰ there is room for further research. In contrast with previous research, this article adds to our understanding by providing a more comprehensive and nuanced account about major similarities and differences between the perspectives. The greater relevance of the article lies in its contribution to conceptual clarity, which facilitates precise communication of theoretical knowledge and the development of theory.

The strategic perspective takes its point of departure in Clausewitz, focusing on ‘how to make force a rational instrument of policy rather than mindless murder’.¹¹ In addition to Clausewitz, the perspective builds on a selection of contemporary strategists, who have elaborated on Clausewitz’s ideas (Richard Betts, Lawrence Freedman, Colin Gray, Edward Luttwak, and Hew Strachan).¹² Although these scholars do not agree on every aspect of war, warfare and strategy, or even on how to interpret Clausewitz correctly, they do share a few key assumptions.¹³ In the subsequent analysis, these assumptions are compared to those of realism, which is here divided into three branches, with each branch represented by some of its most influential authors: twentieth century classical realism (Edward Hallett Carr, Hans Morgenthau), neorealism (Kenneth Waltz, John Mearsheimer), and neoclassical realism (Gideon Rose, Norrin Ripsman, Jeffrey Taliaferro, Steven Lobell). This can demonstrate whether the strategic perspective has more or less in common with a particular type of realism, thus providing further nuance about the differences and similarities between the perspectives.

For the purposes of this article, it is not necessary to include every influential strategic or realist scholar out there. An illustrative selection of highly influential thinkers facilitates a coherent and systematic comparison between the perspectives.¹⁴ If the article was based on many passing references to a myriad of different thinkers, a critical reader could argue that we would make it very easy for ourselves. Using such an approach, finding differences between the perspectives would be a ‘walk in the park’. The chosen approach also guards against ‘getting lost in the jungle’, that is, loosing focus in the endless stream of detail.

The remainder of the article presents the results of a comparison between the realist and strategic perspectives, starting with a discussion about the major similarities. Then, the article discusses, one at the time, three assumptions on which the perspectives differ substantially, namely state-centrism, actor behaviour, and the role of unpredictability. The comparison in each section starts with describing the classical realists before turning to the neorealists, the neoclassical realists and, finally, to the strategic thinkers. Therefore, unless stated otherwise, each section moves back and forth between grand strategy (the use of all possible means for political purposes) and military strategy (the use of military means for political purposes), and between concepts such as peace, war and warfare, depending on the focus of the individual author.¹⁵ The article ends with a summary and an elaboration of the main argument.

International disharmony and the creation/use of force

The article has identified the major similarity between the strategic perspective and realism as their mutual assumption of disharmony in international politics and the accompanying importance of creating and using force for actors living in the disharmonic state of affairs.¹⁶ Both the realist and strategic scholars examined here are sceptical about the possibilities to create a permanent harmonic relationship between international actors. We can observe shorter (or occasionally longer) periods of peace, but these periods will eventually be disrupted by increasing tensions, hostilities, or war. In contrast with liberal and Marxist theories of international relations, there is no ‘end of history’¹⁷ in neither realist nor strategic theories. In liberal thinking, a harmonic state of affairs can be created, for instance by spreading liberal democracy to non-democracies, as liberal democracies are assumed to not wage war against each other.¹⁸ For Marxists, such as Hobson, Lenin and their followers, capitalism is the main cause of war, claiming that international socialism will bring about peace.¹⁹ For the realist and strategic theorists, this is naïve, although the causes of international disharmony differ between individual scholars.

Let us begin with classical realism. After the Second World War, a disillusioned E.H. Carr explained the failure of the ‘utopian’ peace projects of the inter-war years on the basis of a lack of balance between utopia and realism.²⁰ If better balanced, utopian projects may fare better than the League of Nations, however, in the end, there is no ‘escape from the logical consequences of realism’, as all utopians become ‘tainted with self-interest and hypocrisy’.²¹ For Carr, ethics and morality are the products of power, preventing any permanent ‘harmony of interests’.²² Similar, although not identical, ideas are found in Morgenthau’s works, stating that politics is based on ‘objective laws that have their roots in human nature’.²³ According to Morgenthau, the human desire for power, which is timeless and universal, is the main cause of conflict among states.²⁴ Regardless of individual qualities, political leaders ‘think and act in terms of interest defined as power’.²⁵

The father of neorealism, Kenneth Waltz, argues that security competition is the result of the anarchic international system, which implies that states have no central authority above them. He assumes that states have the same interest, survival, and must rely on self-help to achieve this objective²⁶: in ‘the absence of an external authority, a state cannot be sure that today’s friend will not be tomorrow’s enemy’.²⁷ In Mearsheimer’s view, power increases the prospects for survival in an anarchic system, and the greatest power means the greatest insurance of survival.²⁸ Therefore, states ‘are fated to clash as each competes for advantage over the others’.²⁹

Similar thinking is also the foundation of neoclassical realism, as presented by Ripsman, Taliaferro and Lobell in their ambitious attempt to forge a neoclassical realist research programme. They perceive ‘international politics as a never-ending struggle among states for power and influence in a world of finite resources and uncertainty about each other’s intentions and capabilities’.³⁰

The notion that bad times always return in international politics is also found in the strategic perspective. For Clausewitz, war was ‘part of man’s social existence’.³¹ He perceived war as a chameleon that adapted to changed circumstances and to radical shifts in conflict dynamics or advances in technology, while remaining the same at its core. Thus, actors need to prepare for war, even in peacetime, since enemies, new or old, will always (re-)appear.³² As noted by Gray, ‘the game of polities does not change from age to age, let alone from decade to decade’.³³ In addition, when Strachan confronts researchers who predict ‘dramatic changes, presenting major threats in that recurrent cliché, “an increasingly globalized world”’, he makes a case for the continuity displayed in the wars of the early twenty first century.³⁴ Despite superficial changes, these wars are merely reversions to how wars were fought centuries before.³⁵ With his focus on the ironic character and paradoxical nature of strategy, Luttwak is also sceptical of the possibility of creating permanent harmony in international life.³⁶

Because of these various reasons, there is a general dislike for liberal security solutions, including democracy promotion, globalisation, arms control, disarmament, collective security, international institutions/law, and free trade, among realist as well as strategic scholars.

Because of international disharmony, both the realist and strategic scholars assume that the creation and use of force are vital for international actors. In Carr’s view, power consists of several factors, but military power is of supreme importance.³⁷ For Morgenthau, ‘military preparedness’ is one of the most important components of national power.³⁸ However, the key component in a state’s power arsenal is its ‘quality of diplomacy’,³⁹ separating Morgenthau from most other realists. Yet, for Morgenthau, the principal instrument in balance of power politics is deemed ‘armaments’,⁴⁰ and the military instrument is still a vital source of power. Waltz relates power to material factors, such as population, territory, economic capability and military strength.⁴¹ However, military strength, especially nuclear weapons, stands out, and force is deemed ‘the ultima ratio of international politics’.⁴² In a similar vein, Mearsheimer assumes that a state’s potential power is a function of population and wealth, which are the main elements of military power.⁴³ For the neoclassical realists, power can also be measured using a state’s material capabilities, especially defence spending, size and composition of the armed forces, and military development.⁴⁴

In strategic theory, armed force can be used to ‘compel our enemy to do our will’,⁴⁵ thus perceiving it as a necessary political instrument, although its success is always constrained by factors outside the control of the warring parties. As eloquently put by Hedley Bull, strategists, just like realists, ‘take the fact of military force as their starting point … The most that can be expected from a total disarmament agreement is that it might make armaments and armed forces fewer and more primitive’.⁴⁶ The reason is that such agreements are only valid for as long as peace is still in effect.⁴⁷ Wars can always be fought by more primitive weapons and the exclusion of specific modern weapons may do little more than shift the offense-defence balance between states. As noted by Freedman, armed force is the ultimate source of power: ‘The threat posed is one no individual or group or state can ignore because it challenges their whole existence’.⁴⁸

The assumption of international disharmony, and the importance assigned to force, separate realism and the strategic perspective from liberal and constructivist perspectives. After the Cold War, scholars from these two perspectives have claimed that force has declined in importance,⁴⁹ or even that major wars have been made obsolete.⁵⁰ Such claims go against the ontological core in the realist and strategic perspectives.

Different assumptions about state-centrism

The first major difference between the realist and strategic perspectives concerns the centrality of the role of the state. While the realists examined here are focused on sovereign states, either the behaviour of states (for example, a government decision to send troops abroad) or international systemic outcomes (for instance, formation of great power alliances), the strategic scholars are interested in understanding actor behaviour, regardless of whether the actor is a state or not.

Classical realism focuses primarily on state behaviour, although both Carr and Morgenthau provided sketchy ideas about anarchy and the distribution of power as causes of international outcomes. For Carr, states, especially the great powers, were ‘the most effective units’.⁵¹ Morgenthau’s theory sets out to ‘understand the forces that determine political relations among nations’,⁵² thus also adhering to a state-centric perspective.

Waltz focuses exclusively on explaining systemic outcomes,⁵³ and his theory takes as its point of departure the great powers, because ‘the units of greatest capability set the scene of action for others’.⁵⁴ In his defense of state-centrism, he says that states ‘are the units whose interactions form the structure of international-political systems. They will long remain so’.⁵⁵ Mearsheimer also focuses on the great powers, since these have the largest impact on international politics,⁵⁶ although, compared to Waltz, he is less clear on whether his theory also can explain state behaviour.⁵⁷

For the neoclassical realists, the state is the major player in international politics, and their theories are developed to explain state behaviour or systemic outcomes.⁵⁸ For these scholars, ‘the international system is largely state-centric’ and ‘other actors in the international system can achieve important objectives internationally only when they enlist the support of powerful states’.⁵⁹

Thus, for the realists included here, sovereign states in general and great powers in particular are the most important actors. Although non-state actors can cause quite the ruckus on the battlefield, they operate inside the jurisdiction of sovereign states, and are, therefore, not engaged in international relations the same way that sovereign states are. This places them outside the scope of realism. Since realism was designed to explain the behaviour and relations between states, taking as its point of departure state-based concepts such as sovereignty, territorial security, polarity and balance of power, we should not be surprised that it is inadequate for analysing non-state actors.⁶⁰

In strategic theory, the actor is not necessarily a state, rather it can be described as a polity, which goes against the state-centric focus of realism.⁶¹ A polity consists of a group of people who are collectively united by a self-reflected cohesive force and who has the capacity to mobilise resources under an institutionalised hierarchy. This includes sovereign states but also other entities, such as unrecognised states (Republic of China), terrorist organisations (Islamic State), revolutionary groups (National Liberation Army in Colombia) and other non-state actors. Military strategy is about connecting political ends with military means, but beyond that, strategic theories do not have boundaries that exclude some polities but not others. For Clausewitz, powerful states are important actors,⁶² however, he never argued that the study of war and strategy should be limited to states. All polities that can make war can be understood through his conceptual lens, including ‘Tartars, the republics of antiquity, the feudal lords and trading cities of the Middle Ages’.⁶³ The need to anchor the understanding of war to being fought by specific types of polities is, thereby, unreasonable from the strategic perspective, as all polities wielding military power can be understood strategically.⁶⁴

Thus, the widespread belief in previous research that state-centrism constitutes the kernel of the intellectual relationship between realism and the strategic perspective is a misunderstanding. The traditional view is that state-centrism dominated among both strategists and realists during the Cold War, and that the two perspectives developed in tandem. However, as argued by one observer:

In the retrospective construction of mainstream security thinking, (neo)realism and security studies came to be seen as almost synonymous, whereas, in actual history, they emerged as part of separate communities, shaped by different dynamics and with only limited personal overlaps. It is easy today to look at a distance and describe the leading strategists of the early post-war years as ”realists” … but actually most of them couldn’t care less about categories from IR debates.⁶⁵

Thus, without digging too deep into the intellectual history of these perspectives, which would lie beyond the purposes of this article, it is suffice to say that they have different roots and trajectories, which have contributed to their different assumptions.⁶⁶ The centrality provided to the state is stronger in realism, compared to the strategic perspective. What unites different strategic theories is not state-centrism but an interest in the political uses of force.⁶⁷

Different assumptions about actor behaviour

The second major difference between the realist and strategic perspectives concerns the drivers of actor behaviour: What can explain an actor’s grand or military strategic choices?⁶⁸ While realists of all stripes, especially neorealists, highlight the importance of power in explaining behaviour, the strategic perspective considers a broader set of factors, in which strategic skill stands out. This implies that realism is more parsimonious in its assumptions about actor behaviour, although some realists are closer to strategic theory than others. While realism, particularly neorealism, investigates the deep and underlying drivers of behaviour, the strategic perspective examines to a greater extent its immediate and precipitating causes.

Carr’s general explanation of war is that, while states that are satisfied with the status quo seek peace, states that are unsatisfied seek to overthrow the status quo, preparing for war.⁶⁹ Thus, war is the product of a clash of diverging interests between states, often in search of greater military power.⁷⁰ In Morgenthau’s theory, political leaders are driven by power, that is, to establish/maintain control of the actions/minds of other men.⁷¹ Thus, wars are fought for the purpose of power and ‘not per se the conquest of territory and the annihilation of enemy armies’.⁷² Moral and ideological arguments are most often ex post facto rationalisations of human behaviour.⁷³ However, for Morgenthau, power (the amount of or the pursuit of) is not the only factor explaining behaviour, as there is also room for ethics, values and, most importantly (for the purposes of this article), strategic skill, or the lack thereof:

A nation that sets it sights too low, forging foreign policies well within its reach of its power, abdicates its rightful role in the council of nations … A nation may also set its sights too high and pursue policies that cannot be successfully executed with the available power.⁷⁴

However, for Morgenthau, power is the most important factor explaining state behaviour, including both grand and military strategy.⁷⁵ In contrast with the classical realists, neorealists make a distinction between the domestic and international spheres, arguing that anarchy is the defining ‘ordering principle’ of the international system.⁷⁶ As argued by Waltz, state behaviour is ‘affected by the system’s structure. In itself a structure does not directly lead to one outcome rather than another. Structures affect behaviour within the system but do so indirectly’.⁷⁷ For Waltz and Mearsheimer, states are only differentiated by their power and not by their ends, ideologies, regimes or leaders.⁷⁸ Thus, what matters is ultimately the distribution of power, that is, the number of great powers, as anarchy is a constant and cannot explain changes in international politics.⁷⁹ Another difference between classical and neorealism is that Waltz and Mearsheimer perceive power as a means for states to reach the goal of survival (Waltz) or hegemony (Mearsheimer), rather than as both a goal and as a means. However, according to both branches, ‘there is one rational goal to achieve, [power, survival or hegemony] and states possess different means in order to do so’.⁸⁰

To explain the causes of war, neorealists perceive the distribution of power as the most important factor. Mearsheimer, for instance, notes that wars are most likely in a system of unbalanced multipolarity, and are least likely in a bipolar system.⁸¹ Thus, what neorealism can offer in terms of explaining war is that some distributions of power are more likely to lead to war than are others.⁸² However, it is not designed to explain particularities, such as specific strategic choices:

[Neorealists are] not capable of explaining precisely how often war will occur in one kind of system compared to another. Nor are they capable of predicting exactly when wars will occur. For example … the emergence of Germany as a potential hegemon in the early 1900s made it likely that there would be a war involving all the European great powers. But the theory cannot explain why war occurred in 1914 rather than 1912 or 1916.⁸³

Neoclassical realists assume that ‘the scope and ambition of a state’s foreign policy is driven first and foremost by its place in the international system and especially by its relative material power capabilities’.⁸⁴ Thus, state behaviour, including grand and military strategy, is primarily the result of pressures from the international system, as ‘the slightest misstep could lead to defeat in war’, implying that neoclassical realists share an ‘environment-based ontology’.⁸⁵ However, they do not subscribe to the neorealist notion that states react ‘fluidly and mechanically to changing international circumstances’.⁸⁶ The reasons are, first, that systemic influences are modified by external factors such as geography or the offense-defence balance in military technologies.⁸⁷ Second, whether and how states react to systemic pressures is also affected by domestic intervening variables, including perceptions of decision-makers, strategic culture, and domestic institutions.⁸⁸ Thus, neoclassical realists try to marry structural theory to a more contextual approach.⁸⁹

In contrast with realism, the strategic perspective assumes that actors are driven by a unique combination of structural and unit-level factors.⁹⁰ Thus, the drivers of actor behaviour include more than power (as a means or as an ends), self-interest or domestic variables confined to intervening status, and the immediate causes of war are more important than the deep and underlying causes. As stated by Clausewitz, periods of peace between two hostile polities ‘cannot be explained by the concept of balance. The only explanation is that both are waiting for a better time to act’.⁹¹ Since war has always been a part of human societies, regardless of their time and place, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find a single factor that has had a decisive influence on why polities go to war and how they fight them. As war is a true chameleon adapting to its social circumstances, different wars, fought by different peoples in different times and places, will be fought for different reasons and have different causes.⁹²

Clausewitz recognised the diversity of political goals, and never tried to organise them under ‘a unique concept of direction’.⁹³ For him, war was always influenced by the political goals, captured in the famous dictum, war is ‘the continuation of policy by other means’.⁹⁴ More specifically, ‘politics decides for war not because of its military capacities to wage it victoriously, but because it seeks something other than military victory. Military victory is itself a means to achieve the political end’.⁹⁵ Because of his focus on military strategy, Clausewitz says nothing about what the political goals are, such as power, survival or hegemony. He emphasised that goals differ over time, and the more grandiose the political ends, the closer war gets to its absolute nature.⁹⁶ As noted by Raymond Aron in his commentaries of Clausewitz, ‘politics determines the end, that is not reduced to power and which would consist much more of a peaceful coexistence of nations, each of them independent, each free to express itself’.⁹⁷ The view that goals will vary between different polities is also shared by the contemporary strategists:

At the level of grand strategy, some governments above all seek power over other states or actual territorial expansion; other governments desire only to keep what external power and influence they have, while dedicating their greater efforts to domestic purposes … some are active on the world scene primarily to claim economic aid in various forms … others see a fullness of success if they are simply left alone, and still others seek external support precisely to be left alone by states they fear.⁹⁸

The strategic perspective also downplays the importance of the international system in explaining behaviour. Rather, the perspective assumes that primary explanatory relevance should be given to unit-level factors. According to Luttwak, state goals can be formulated on the basis of ‘tradition, dictatorial whim, bureaucratic preference, or democratic choice’,⁹⁹ or by ‘whoever happens to be in charge, usually because of entirely unrelated political strengths, and informed mostly by passing conceits’.¹⁰⁰ For Gray, grand and military strategies come from ‘the particular details of particular cases unique to time and place’, found in seven contexts: social-cultural, economic, technological, military, geographical, historical, and political.¹⁰¹ Freedman, a self-confessed constructivist,¹⁰² believes that realism, especially neorealism, should be less dogmatic and acknowledge ‘the impact of social, economic, cultural, and local political factors on state behaviour’.¹⁰³ The fact that war is caused by a myriad of factors ‘underline[s] the difficulty of any attempt to study war without addressing its broader social and political context’.¹⁰⁴ For the strategic theorists, understanding strategy thus requires the understanding of human behaviour.¹⁰⁵

And this human behavior, be it most directly political, strategic, operational, or tactical, is not performed by interchangeable automatons. Different people can behave differently. Almost as much to the point, the same people can behave differently from day to day.¹⁰⁶

Thus, in terms of explanatory power, the strategic perspective ranks unit-level factors above the incompatibility of state interests (Carr), the desire for power (Morgenthau) and the state’s position in the system (neorealism and, but to a lesser extent, neoclassical realism). Therefore, for most types of realism, but especially for neorealism, the role of strategy becomes puzzling as there is an assumed direct link between the power of states and how they act on the international arena: in effect, there is less room for strategy in realism, compared to the strategic perspective. The realist scholars investigated here have not incorporated the qualities of the individual strategist, such as creativity, mental stability, physical robustness, strategic education and intuition, which are vital in strategic thinking.¹⁰⁷ In the words of Clausewitz, ‘military genius’ contains ‘all those gifts of mind and temperament that in combination bear on military activity’.¹⁰⁸ Thus, a realist focus on power comes at the expense of understanding both the strategic mind and the role of other unit-level factors in the making of grand and military strategy. Freedman, perhaps more than the other strategic thinkers, emphasizes the art of using power in different forms, rather than just being driven by it. For the realists, strategic skill is, at best, a second-order cause.

A sceptic of the argument that realism perceives different drivers of behaviour, compared to strategic theorists, may claim that the two perspectives differ in which questions they attempt to answer. The sceptic might say that, while realists ask questions about the causes and consequences of war, strategic scholars ask questions about the conduct of war, that is, military strategy (and its operative and tactical execution). Therefore, it is only natural that the assumptions differ between the perspectives. However, questions of why wars are fought and how wars are fought are inseparable from each other. Betts explains why:

Strategic studies is concerned with all three phases of war because they are interdependent: conduct becomes cause, as mechanisms of violence shape decisions about its political application. It is impossible to understand impulses and choices in the political dimension of war or peace without understanding constraints and opportunities in the military dimension. Options for how to make war affect whether war is made, who wins or would win, and thereby the shape of the postwar world.¹⁰⁹

For Betts, it would be impossible to explain, for instance, Germany’s defeat of Britain and France in May/June 1940 without taking into account how the Wehrmacht utilised armoured warfare to innovate combat operations. This cannot be explained by measuring German capabilities in relation to those of Britain and France. The latter two would actually score higher on the realist indices of power.¹¹⁰

The distinction between why and how is further complicated by the fact that wars are far from always easily separated by time and space. Counterinsurgency, cyber warfare and hybrid warfare include the use of force for political ends (as well as other means), but it lies in their specific characters a lack of clearly defined battlefields and a temporal distinction of cause and conduct. Beyond these examples, any use of force will naturally affect the decision-makers of the warring parties. It is clear that the European leaders who entered into the First World War did so based on different calculations than they did when deciding to continue fighting for the next four years. Technological innovation, doctrinal evolution and the human losses caused by war played, and play, a decisive role in shaping policy.

Different assumptions about the role of unpredictability

The third major difference between the realist and strategic perspectives concerns the role played by unpredictability for the execution of military strategy. To what extent do these perspectives acknowledge unpredictability as a hinder for the pursuit of political objectives through the use of force? The answer is, in short, that both perspectives are based on the idea that actors are rational in a bounded sense, that is, they try to achieve their objectives according to an instrumental logic involving ends and means, sometimes resorting to war as a political instrument.¹¹¹ However, while the realists investigated here do not present any explicit propositions about the role of unpredictability, the strategic theorists pay considerable attention to the unpredictability of war created by interaction, chance and friction.

For Carr, states are only limited by their aims and their relative military strength, thus leaving no room for unpredictability as a hinder for the pursuit of political objectives through war. However, he recognises that the aims of war may change during the course of a war,¹¹² but he never elaborates on why. Morgenthau also acknowledges that the interaction between belligerents may alter their initial objectives: ‘Thus a war that was started by the victor as a defensive war … transforms itself with the approaching victory into an imperialistic war’.¹¹³ Moreover, he recognises that decision-makers may be guided by misperceptions, leading to failed military strategic decisions.¹¹⁴ However, compared to the strategic perspective, Carr and Morgenthau provide scant attention to unpredictability.

For neorealists, rational states face few hinders created by unpredictability in their pursuit of political objectives. Waltz’s parsimonious theory leaves little room for unpredictability as a major cause of systemic outcomes. However, Mearsheimer discusses unpredictability to a greater extent. He recognises that states can miscalculate because of imperfect information, and that states ‘are often unsure about how their own military forces … will perform on the battlefield. Fighting wars is a complicated business in which it is often difficult to predict outcomes’.¹¹⁵ He acknowledges that power is not a reliable predictor of victory, since non-material factors, including strategy, intelligence, and weather, also matter.¹¹⁶ However, despite acknowledging unpredictability, Mearsheimer seems to downplay the importance of this factor for the execution of military strategy in other parts of his works. The lasting impression of Mearsheimer’s theory is that states are able to identify situations in which war will be beneficial to them. States are ‘aware of their external environment and they think strategically about how to survive in it’,¹¹⁷ implying that, most of the time, states know what they are doing. For Mearsheimer, war is even the principal strategy states use to increase their relative power.¹¹⁸ Before great powers attempt to expand, they weight the costs of offense against the likely benefits. For example, more powerful states will act more aggressively, as they have ‘the capability as well as the incentive to do so’.¹¹⁹ Thus, for Mearsheimer, unpredictability seems to be of minor importance, as states are able to calculate the probability of winning a war and seizing the opportunity when the odds are in their favour.

For the neoclassical realists, unpredictability in foreign policy, including military strategic decisions, and in international politics can occur as a result of irrationality.¹²⁰ First, even if leaders recognise challenges in the international system, the decision-making may be characterised by suboptimal processes, resulting in decisions at odds with systemic imperatives. This may be due to cognitive limits regarding information processing, leading to failure in identifying the entire range of options available to the decision-makers. Human beings ‘might be especially susceptible to failures of rationality, due to their unique temperaments, cognitive flaws, or historical experiences’.¹²¹ Second, domestic intervening factors also affect how leaders perceive systemic pressures and on how they implement policy. These include, but are not limited to, leader images, culture, and domestic institutions.¹²² However, the neoclassical realists provide primary explanatory relevance to the international system.

While the realists examined here, mainly the neorealists, much less so the neoclassical realists, seem to believe that actors who are considering the option of war are capable of calculating the risks associated with going to war, the strategic perspective focuses strongly on unpredictability. Clausewitz formulated criticism toward the ‘positivists’ of his own era:

They aim at fixed values; but in war everything is uncertain, and calculations have to be made with variable quantities. They direct the inquiry exclusively toward physical quantities, whereas all military action is intertwined with psychological forces and effects. They consider only unilateral action, whereas war consists of a continuous interaction of opposites.¹²³

Clausewitz saw policy, or reason, as one of three parts of a ‘trinity of forces’, the other two being passion and chance.¹²⁴ Passion seems to be the core of the matter and Clausewitz’s conception of ‘absolute war’, its purest form, was one of violence: a clash of wills that had an innate tendency to escalate.¹²⁵ Policy was then used by Clausewitz as the antithesis of violence, constraining the violence in war and therefore giving it purpose and logic.

For Clausewitz, unpredictability was created by interaction, chance and friction, meaning ‘that war is a profoundly nonlinear phenomenon’.¹²⁶ First, as war is a ‘continuous interaction of opposites’ (see above) in which my enemy ‘dictates to me as much as I dictate to him’,¹²⁷ the preconceived plans of both sides will be shattered when they face each other on the battlefield. Second, as war is characterized by ‘chance’, such as a stroke of bad luck with the weather or the sudden spread of disease among the troops, war is always ‘a gamble’.¹²⁸ Third, as war is permeated by ‘friction’, that is, ‘countless minor incidents – the kind you can never really foresee’, the ‘general level of performance … always falls far short of the intended goal’.¹²⁹ Friction then interacts with chance, thereby making ‘everything more uncertain and interferes with the whole course of events’.¹³⁰ Together, the endless possible combinations of varying degrees of interaction, chance and friction in war make every manifestation of it unique.

Following Clausewitz, more or less closely depending on the author, the contemporary strategic scholars admit that war ‘either is or threatens to become chaotic’, frequently confronting military strategists with ‘surprising dilemmas’, many of which ‘will not have been anticipated long in advance’.¹³¹ For Luttwak, it ‘is the struggle of adversarial forces that generates the paradoxical logic of strategy, which is diametrically opposed to the common sense, linear logic of everyday life’.¹³² Freedman argues that wars are characterised by opposing wills, violence and emotion, and they tend to create uncertainties, thereby resisting rationality.¹³³ Thus, as noted by Strachan, ‘what begins as one sort of war can turn into another’.¹³⁴ As summed up by Betts, unpredictability in war can be a result of elements such as good or bad luck, insufficient basis for estimating risks, cognitive biases and constraints, cultural blinders, friction, goal displacement through suboptimal organizational processes, resistance by the opponent, and political competition and compromises.¹³⁵ In the words of Freedman, effective military strategies depend on ‘a sustained act of will, required in order to master its terrible uncertainties and resulting from human frailties and the capricious impact of chance’.¹³⁶ Thus, compared to the different branches/authors of realism, the strategic theorists pay considerable more attention to unpredictability.

However, for the contemporary strategists, despite all of the difficulties involved in the execution of military strategy, success is possible, and, as noted by one of them, ‘there is no alternative but to engage in strategy unless one is willing to give up the use of force as an instrument of policy’.¹³⁷ It has been argued that it was precisely because of the unpredictability inherent in war that Clausewitz developed the concept of military genius,¹³⁸ however, there is no consensus on this in recent scholarship on Clausewitz.

Conclusions

This article has challenged the belief that the strategic perspective is based on realism, by demonstrating that there are major differences between the perspectives regarding state-centrism, actor behaviour, and unpredictability. That the two perspectives share the assumption of international disharmony and the accompanying importance of force is not a sufficient basis for placing them under the same umbrella.

However, the strategic perspective has more in common with some realisms and realist scholars over others. The greatest differences are found between the strategic perspective and Waltz’s neorealism. The latter’s sole focus on anarchy and the distribution of power deviates considerably from the more contextual approach of strategic theory. When it comes to Mearsheimer, the differences are less striking due to his interest in not only the international system but also in state behaviour, strategy and unpredictability, although these are on an ad hoc level. However, it would be far-fetched to speak of one single perspective uniting Mearsheimer and the strategic scholars: the primary reason being the former’s parsimonious and largely, but not wholly, systemic approach. Compared to neorealism, neoclassical realism is closer to strategic theory but, even here, there are significant differences, cautioning us about placing them under the same umbrella. Neoclassical realists would in all probability regard the strategic perspective as an Innenpolitik approach,¹³⁹ since strategic theories do not take as their point of departure the international system. In addition, strategic theories provide more explanatory power to unpredictability, compared to neoclassical realism. Thus, it seems that the strategic perspective is closest to classical realism, especially to Morgenthau’s works.¹⁴⁰ With both Carr and Morgenthau, strategic theories share a strong interest in explaining behaviour based on the actors’ interests while at the same time downplaying the role of the system. With Morgenthau only, the strategic perspective share a common point of departure in the individual leader/strategist, who seeks power (Morgenthau) or who is driven by non-specified goals (strategic theory). However, in contrast with Morgenthau, the strategic perspective pays more attention to, and tries to nuance, the concept of strategic skill. Moreover, the strategic perspective as a whole places more emphasis on unpredictability for the execution of strategy, implying that the relationship between the strategic perspective and Morgenthau, as with the strategic perspective and the other forms of realism, is permeated by ambiguity. Therefore, the scholarly community should treat the strategic and realist perspectives as two separate theoretical entities.

To further strengthen this argument, it can be pointed out that the strategic perspective also has similarities with liberal and constructivist perspectives.¹⁴¹ With these, strategic theory shares the idea that non-state actors should be considered, and the notion that to understand/explain actor behavior domestic political dynamics should be awarded high relevance.¹⁴² In addition, the strategic perspective has similarities with theories in foreign policy analysis. These theories share an actor-specific focus and seek to explain foreign policy on the basis of domestic and individual level factors.¹⁴³ Thus, it seems that strategic theories have a lot in common with non-realist perspectives on international relations and with theories of foreign policy. However, previous research has never argued that we should treat the strategic perspective and foreign policy analysis, or the strategic perspective and liberalism/constructivism, as two sides of the same coin. The reason is simple: the theoretical ground they share is not enough for justifying such an interpretation. For the same reason, the strategic and realist perspectives should not be seen as the same perspective.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Anders Ekholm, Niklas Karlén, Tom Lundborg, Nicola Nymalm, Chiara Ruffa, Daniel Smith, Oscar Steinholtz, Mikael Weissmann, Jerker Widén and Jan Ångström for their valuable comments. Much appreciated feedback was also provided by the two anonymous reviewers and the editorial team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The article did not receive any funding.

Notes on contributors

Fredrik Doeser

Fredrik Doeser is Associate Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defense University. He has recently published articles in Defense Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Contemporary Security Policy.

Filip Frantzen

Filip Frantzen holds a MSc in War Studies from the Swedish Defence University. This is his first published article, inspired by, and based on, his master’s thesis Strategic Studies Beyond Realism: A Theoretical Investigation.

Notes

¹ The classical school of strategic theory (henceforth ‘the strategic perspective’) builds on the writings of Carl von Clausewitz and his contemporary followers, and, just like the realist perspective (or simply ‘realism’), consists of different theories that are united by a set of mutual assumptions.

² Craig A. Snyder, ‘Contemporary Security and Strategy’, in Craig A. Snyder (ed.), Contemporary Security and Strategy (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2007), 4.

³ John Baylis and James Wirtz, ‘Introduction: Strategy in the Contemporary World’, in John Baylis, James Wirtz and Colin S. Gray (eds.), Strategy in the Contemporary World (Oxford: Oxford UP 2016), 6.

⁴ Hugh Smith, ‘The womb of war: Clausewitz and international politics’, Review of International Studies 16/1 (1990), 39–58.

⁵ Neta Crawford, ‘Once and Future Security Studies’, Security Studies 1/2 (1991), 292.

⁶ Michael Williams, ‘Neo-Realism and the future of strategy’, Review of International Studies 19/2 (1993), 104.

⁷ Tarak Barkawi, ‘Strategy as a vocation: Weber, Morgenthau and modern strategic studies’, Review of International Studies 24/1 (1998), 162.

⁸ Isabelle Duyvesteyn and James E. Worrall, ‘Global strategic studies: a manifesto’, Journal of Strategic Studies 40/3 (2017), 350.

⁹ Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen, The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2009), 16. For other works that treat the strategic and realist perspectives as synonymous, see Ken Booth, ‘Security and emancipation’, Review of International Studies 17/4 (1991), 313–26; Howard Williams, International Relations in Political Theory (Milton Keynes: Open UP 1992); Bradley Klein, Strategic Studies and World Order: The Global Politics of Deterrence (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1994); Steve Smith, ‘Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11ʹ, International Studies Quarterly 48/3 (2004), 499–515; Ralph Pettman, ‘Human Security as Global Security: Reconceptualizing Strategic Studies’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 18/1 (2005), 137–50.

¹⁰ Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2003); Murielle Cozette, ‘Realistic Realism? American Political Realism, Clausewitz and Raymond Aron on the Problem of Means and Ends in International Politics’, Journal of Strategic Studies 27/3 (2004), 428–53; Steven Miller, ‘The Hegemonic Illusion? Traditional Strategic Studies in Context’, Security Dialogue 41/6 (2010), 639–48; Pascal Vennesson, ‘Is strategic studies narrow? Critical security and the misunderstood scope of strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies 40/3 (2017), 358–91.

¹¹ Richard K. Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, World Politics 50/1 (1997), 8. Although Clausewitz was mainly a theorist of war, his thinking about strategy has served as a major source of inspiration for contemporary strategic studies. For an early conceptualization of the strategic perspective, see Michael Howard, ‘The strategic approach to international relations’, British Journal of International Studies 2/1 (1976), 67–75.

¹² In stark opposition to this perspective stands the critical school of strategic theory, which challenges, among other things, the Clausewitzian thesis that war is an instrument of policy. See for example Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (NY: Free Press 1991).

¹³ The article places its primary emphasis on the similarities between these strategic scholars, although some of the differences are touched on implicitly.

¹⁴ For reasons of space only a selection of illustrative works by each author is included in the footnotes/bibliography. The actual analysis of each author’s theoretical points of departure was based on a much larger collection of works by each scholar.

¹⁵ For instance, Clausewitz says very little about grand strategy, while he says very much about military strategy, although he never uses the term. What Clausewitz calls ‘operations’ is very similar to our conceptualization of ‘military strategies‘, meaning that operations ‘are strategy as action’. Colin Gray, The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford: Oxford UP 2010), 18.

¹⁶ What is of interest here are similarities regarding the descriptive assumptions of the perspectives. However, both perspectives are also theories of action with the purpose of guiding decision-makers to accomplish their objectives. The prescriptive nature of the perspectives is not the subject of this article.

¹⁷ However, Marxists would probably not use this concept, since it was invented by a liberal. Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest 16 (1989), 3–18.

¹⁸ Michael Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review 80/4 (1986), 1151–69.

¹⁹ Karel Kára, ’On the Marxist Theory of War and Peace’, Journal of Peace Research 5/1 (1968), 1–27. This does not mean that Marxist thinking has been irrelevant to strategy, as demonstrated by for example Mao’s contributions to guerrilla warfare.

²⁰ Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (NY: Harper & Row 1964 [1946]).

²¹ Ibid., 93.

²² Ibid., 41–42. For Carr, political action can involve moral considerations, however never alone and always in combination with power calculations. Ibid., 97, 102.

²³ Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, rev. Kenneth Thompson and David Clinton (NY: McGraw-Hill 2006 [1948]), 4.

²⁴ Ibid., 3, 13, 36.

²⁵ Ibid., 5.

²⁶ Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (NY: McGraw-Hill 1979), 91.

²⁷ Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘Structural Realism after the Cold War’, International Security 25/1 (2000), 10.

²⁸ John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (NY: W.W. Norton & Company 2001). With the publication of this book neorealism was split between defensive (Waltz) and offensive neorealists (Mearsheimer).

²⁹ Ibid., xii. See also John Mearsheimer, ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’, International Security 19/3 (1994), 5–49; ‘Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order’, International Security 43/4 (2019), 7–50.

³⁰ Norrin M. Ripsman, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro and Steven E. Lobell, Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics (Oxford: Oxford UP 2016), 44. The idea that neoclassical realism was a branch of realism in its own right was introduced by Gideon Rose, ‘Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy’, World Politics 51/1 (1998), 144–72.

³¹ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1976 [1832]), 149.

³² Ibid., 79–80, 388, 488. See also Howard, ‘The strategic approach to international relations’, 75; Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, 33; Lawrence Freedman, ‘International Security: Changing Targets’, Foreign Policy 110 (1998), 54–55; Gray, The Strategy Bridge, 34, 132.

³³ Colin Gray, ‘Clausewitz rules, OK? The future is the past–with GPS’, Review of International Studies 25/1 (1999), 163. In this article, Gray explicitly refers to himself as a neoclassical realist, however, the article as a whole is more of a celebration of classical rather than of neoclassical realism while containing harsh critique towards neorealism.

³⁴ Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2013), 254.

³⁵ Ibid., 282.

³⁶ Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (London: Harvard UP 1987); The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century CE to the Third (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 2016), xii–xvi, 157.

³⁷ Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939, 108–109.

³⁸ Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 133–37. In his complex notion of power, Morgenthau takes into account several components: geography, natural resources, industrial capacity, military preparedness, population, national character, national morale, and the quality of diplomacy.

³⁹ Ibid., 152.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 192.

⁴¹ Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘The Emerging Structure of International Politics’, International Security 18/2 (1993), 50.

⁴² Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 113.

⁴³ Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 43.

⁴⁴ Ripsman et al., Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics, 45.

⁴⁵ Clausewitz, On War, 75.

⁴⁶ Hedley Bull, ‘Strategic Studies and Its Critics’, World Politics 20/4 (1968), 599. See also Howard, ‘The strategic approach to international relations’.

⁴⁷ Luttwak, Strategy, 186–87; Colin Gray, Theory of Strategy (Oxford: Oxford UP 2018); Lawrence Freedman, ‘Does Strategic Studies Have a Future?’ in John Baylis, James Wirtz and Colin Gray (eds.), Strategy in the Contemporary World (Oxford: Oxford UP 2016), 386.

⁴⁸ Ibid. See also Richard Betts, ‘Is Strategy an Illusion?’, International Security 25/2 (2000), 46–50.

⁴⁹ John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War (NY: Oxford UP 1992); Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (NY: Columbia UP 1996); Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (NY: Cambridge UP 1999).

⁵⁰ John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major Wars (NY: Basic Books 1989).

⁵¹ Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939, 226–30.

⁵² Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 17.

⁵³ Kenneth Waltz, ‘International Politics is not Foreign Policy’, Security Studies 6/1 (1996), 54–57.

⁵⁴ Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 72.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 95.

⁵⁶ Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 5, 17.

⁵⁷ Ibid., Ch.6–8.

⁵⁸ Neoclassical realism was originally designed to explain state behaviour. Rose, ‘Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy’. Its transformation into an approach that also can explain systemic outcomes occurred with Ripsman et al., Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 36.

⁶⁰ For a similar argument, see Charles Glaser, ‘Structural Realism in a more complex world’, Review of International Studies 29/3 (2003), 407. Other realists have deviated from state-centrism, by looking, for instance, at the role of the security dilemma in causing ethnic violence. Barry Posen, ‘The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict’, Survival 35/1 (1993), 27–47. Furthermore, Robert Gilpin claims that the building blocks of realism are ‘conflict groups’, and that realism could be applied to other powerful manifestations of the conflict group, which have dominated previous eras of world politics. Robert Gilpin, ‘The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism’, International Organization 38/2 (1984), 287–304. Whether the realists included here would agree is doubtful, as all of them demonstrate an explicit interest in state systems and/or state behaviour. Even if they would agree, the difference to strategic theory remains, as realism focuses on the most powerful conflict group of a certain era, while strategic theory does not.

⁶¹ Luttwak, Strategy, 181; Strachan, The Direction of War, 42–43; Freedman, ‘Does Strategic Studies Have a Future?’, 384; Gray, Theory of Strategy, 65.

⁶² Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1986), 40–46.

⁶³ Clausewitz, On War, 586.

⁶⁴ Vennesson, ‘Is strategic studies narrow?’, 369–371.

⁶⁵ Ole Waever, ‘The history and social structure of security studies as a practico-academic field’, in Trine Berling and Christian Beuger (eds.), Security Expertise: Practice, Power and Responsibility (London: Routledge 2015), 85.

⁶⁶ The intellectual history of realism is captured in for example Nicolas Guilhot, After the Enlightenment: Political Realism and International Relations in the Mid-Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2017).

⁶⁷ Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’; Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: Oxford UP 2013); Strachan, The Direction of War; Gray, Theory of Strategy.

⁶⁸ As noted earlier, we need to address both levels of strategy here, since some of the authors place their primary emphasis on either grand or military strategy. In general, realists tend to focus more on grand strategy, while strategists tend to focus more on military strategy.

⁶⁹ Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939, ix, 105.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 60–62, 111.

⁷¹ Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 5, 11, 36. See also Morgenthau, Scientific Man versus Power Politics (Chicago, IL: Chicago UP 1946), 192–200.

⁷² Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 34.

⁷³ Although Morgenthau recognised that states at times act out of considerations other than power, he argued that, when they do so, their behaviour is not ‘of a political nature’. Ibid., 29. Furthermore, Morgenthau never argued against the use of moral claims as such. He stressed, for instance, that moral arguments are necessary for obtaining public support for a specific policy. Ibid., 368.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 156.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 191–192. See also Morgenthau, ‘Another “Great Debate”: The National Interest of the United States’, American Political Science Review 46/4 (1952), 961–988.

⁷⁶ Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 88–93.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 74.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 96–99; Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 10–11.

⁷⁹ Waltz, ‘Structural Realism after the Cold War’, 27.

⁸⁰ Cozette, ‘Realistic Realism?’, 433.

⁸¹ Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 5, 45, 335.

⁸² Kenneth Waltz, ‘The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18/4 (1988), 615–28.

⁸³ Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 335.

⁸⁴ Rose, ‘Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy’, 146.

⁸⁵ Ripsman et al., Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics, 20.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 41.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 59–60.

⁸⁹ Neoclassical realism has been accused of not being realist at all, mainly because of its incorporation of unit-level factors and its emphasis on explanatory power over parsimony. However, neoclassical realists should be seen as realists, as they stress the primacy of the international system over unit-level variables, and because they try to achieve a balance between explanatory richness and parsimony, rather than sacrificing parsimony altogether.

⁹⁰ Clausewitz, On War, 81–82, 87–88, 547; Lawrence Freedman, ‘General Introduction’, in Lawrence Freedman (ed.), War (Oxford: Oxford UP 1994), 3–8; Gray, The Strategy Bridge, 38–41; Strachan, The Direction of War, 282.

⁹¹ Clausewitz, On War, 82.

⁹² Ibid., 88.

⁹³ Cozette, ‘Realistic Realism?’, 439.

⁹⁴ Clausewitz, On War, 87.

⁹⁵ Cozette, ‘Realistic Realism?’, 439.

⁹⁶ Clausewitz, On War, 87–88, 606.

⁹⁷ As cited by Cozette, ‘Realistic Realism?’, 440–441.

⁹⁸ Luttwak, Strategy, 182.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, xii.

¹⁰¹ Gray, The Strategy Bridge, 39. See also Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford UP 1999), 26–31.

¹⁰² Lawrence Freedman, ‘Confessions of a Premature Constructivist’, Review of International Studies 32/4 (2006), 689–702. A ‘constructivist’ should here be understood as someone who acknowledges that actors are driven by a unique constellation of structural and unit-level factors, and that wars are inherently unpredictable (see below). These assumptions are shared by all of the strategic theorists examined here, although not all of them call themselves constructivists.

¹⁰³ Freedman, ‘Does Strategic Studies Have a Future?’, 384.

¹⁰⁴ Freedman, ‘General Introduction’, 5. See also Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy in theory; strategy in practice’, Journal of Strategic Studies 42/2 (2019), 179.

¹⁰⁵ For example, Freedman argues that the most important factor for the invasion of Iraq in 1991 was President George H.W. Bush and his perceptions, principles and analogical reasoning. Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990–91 (London: Faber 1993).

¹⁰⁶ Gray, The Strategy Bridge, 37. See also Clausewitz, On War, 81; Richard Betts, Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning (Washington: Brookings 1982).

¹⁰⁷ Clausewitz, On War, 100–112. See also Gray, The Strategy Bridge, 64; Freedman, Strategy, 92. Neoclassical realists often include individual factors in their theories, however, only as intervening or mediating variables, while retaining the international system as the major theoretical point of departure.

¹⁰⁸ Clausewitz, On War, 100.

¹⁰⁹ Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, 10.

¹¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹¹ This is obviously another similarity between the perspectives. However, it was not presented as such earlier, since the assumption of rationality is embedded in many other perspectives as well, such as liberalism and Marxism.

¹¹² Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939, 110–13.

¹¹³ Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 65.

¹¹⁴ Ibid., 173–74, 218–19.

¹¹⁵ Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 38.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., 58.

¹¹⁷ Ibid., 31.

¹¹⁸ Ibid., 30, 37–39, 138.

¹¹⁹ Ibid., 37.

¹²⁰ Rose, ‘Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy’; Ripsman et al., Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics.

¹²¹ Ibid., 23–24.

¹²² Ibid., 62–78.

¹²³ Clausewitz, On War, 136.

¹²⁴ This trinity is not to be confused with Clausewitz’s trinity of actors, used to describe where reason, passion and chance can mainly be found in society: with the government, the people and the military respectively.

¹²⁵ Ibid., 579–81.

¹²⁶ Alan Beyerchen, ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War’, International Security 17/3 (1993), 85.

¹²⁷ Clausewitz, On War, 77.

¹²⁸ Ibid., 85.

¹²⁹ Ibid., 119.

¹³⁰ Ibid., 101. In the page references to On War in this section, Clausewitz uses the term ‘operations’, but ‘operations’ in Clausewitizan terminology is very similar to what we mean by ‘military strategies’ (see Footnote 15).

¹³¹ Gray, Theory of Strategy, 67.

¹³² Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, 99.

¹³³ Freedman, Strategy, 86, 94.

¹³⁴ Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy and the Limitation of War’, Survival 50/1 (2008), 50.

¹³⁵ Betts, ‘Is Strategy an Illusion?’.

¹³⁶ Freedman, Strategy, 92.

¹³⁷ Betts, ‘Is Strategy an Illusion?’, 47.

¹³⁸ Terence Holmes, ‘Planning versus Chaos in Clausewitz’s On War’, Journal of Strategic Studies 30/1 (2007), 129–51. For an opposing view, see Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Empire of Chance: The Napoleonic Wars and the Disorder of Things (Harvard: Harvard UP 2015).

¹³⁹ Ripsman et al., Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics, 166–175.

¹⁴⁰ For a similar argument, see Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics.

¹⁴¹ See also earlier discussion about Freedman and constructivism.

¹⁴² Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security; Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics. However, the liberal and constructivist perspectives deviate from strategic (and realist) theory when it comes to the possibility of eternal change in international politics.

¹⁴³ Valerie M. Hudson and Benjamin Day, Foreign Policy Analysis: Classic and Contemporary Theory (London: Rowman & Littlefield 2020).