“I work for crazy too.”, Here Clausewitz explains: Part II: Hu’s on first?
Having now successfully brought the column to a halt, [Tank Man] climbed up onto the hull of the buttoned-up lead tank and, after briefly stopping at the driver’s hatch, appeared in video footage of the incident to start calling into various ports in the tank’s turret. He then climbed atop the turret and seemed to have a short conversation with a crew member at the gunner’s hatch. After ending the conversation, [Tank Man] alighted from the tank. The tank commander briefly emerged from his hatch, and the tanks restarted their engines, ready to continue on. At that point, [Tank Man], who was still standing within a meter or two of the side of the lead tank, leapt in front of the vehicle once again and quickly reestablished the [Tank Man]-tank standoff. Video footage shows that two figures in blue attire then pulled the man away and absorbed him into the crowd; the tanks continued on their way.
The reason we’ve returned to this place and time is to ask the Clausewitz head whether this scene we are witnessing is consistent with his well-known observation that, “War is the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means.” The Clausewitz head may deign to speak to us. It may remain tactfully silent. It may merely nod its assent by inclining forward, perhaps even rotating vertically 360 degrees.
Freaky.
It may choose to shake its head in profound disapproval, perhaps so emphatically that it rotates horizontally 360 degrees.
Even freakier.
For purpose of argument: we’ll channel the Clausewitz head here: its answer is yes. In fact, the Clausewitz head is in such total agreement with our question that it is currently rotating on its horizontal axis like the disembodied floating planet Uranus.
Clausewitz Agrees
How is it that both Tank Man and a PLA tank column find themselves in agreement with a foreign devil disembodied floating head’s most famous catchphrase? This unwitting agreement with the mighty Clausewitzian head unfolds on many levels, transcending the particular time, place, and participants of Tank Man’s moment. Some of this agreement is the direct result of what happened on that street, with those people, with those armored vehicles, and with those shopping bags. Some of this agreement is what others have made and will make of what happened on that street, with those people, with those armored vehicles, and with those shopping bags.
Clausewitz’s absolute war, though an abstraction, is a very aggressive abstraction. If it suddenly manifested itself manifested in this particular tank column, Tank Man is gone. Barely discernible thump: no more Tank Man. The only annoyance Tank Man would cause the People’s Liberation Army is the effort of cleaning him out of the tank treads. But then scraping unarmed civilians out of tank treads is what peasant conscripts are for. Not only that, there are a lot of tanks in that column.
M Tanks
Even if you replaced Tank Man with Mr. T, that’s a lot of tanks for one shopper to take out.
Here is where real war replaces absolute war. The factor that differentiates the two is politics, acting as a ratchet to scale real war back from hypothetical extremes of absolute war. While, in purely military terms, Tank Man is hopelessly outmatched, on the political level the tanks are hopelessly outgunned. Tank Man has the advantage. He has that entire column of tanks trapped in a political gray zone. Tank Man seems to have been returning home from shopping when, suddenly, he decided to stand in front of a column of tanks. It was an unintentional moral ambush: Tank Man surprised the lead tank driver. He may have surprised himself.
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