One quick parallel, one liberation long in coming

March 16th, 2016 by Lynn C. Rees

I suspect later Prussian and German military thinkers sensed this. Moltke’s nose curled at any interference in war making from civilians, even those with facial hair more formidable than his own like Bismarck. He may have sensed that, behind Bismarck, there were forces that would have stymied Wilhelm I’s Paris 1870, a reunion tour that rolled on to cataclysmic crescendo at Berlin 1945 after unscheduled stops at Marne 1914, Verdun 1916, and other blood-stained venues. Moltke may have sensed the feminine infiltrating his manly clubhouse. Politics is a game both men and women play. Acknowledging the role of politics in war may have led to even Moltke having to acknowledge that, GASP!!!, women might acquire a role in war as a logical continuation of their role in politics. That could have led to even more civilians stifling Moltke’s fun.

The horror.

And here, perhaps, is Marie von Clausewitz’s most compelling legacy: liberation of the study of war, and, perhaps ultimately, its governance, from its sole reliance on masculinity.

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Posted in 19th century, Clausewitzian | 5 comments

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  1. Bob Weimann:

    March 16th, 2016 at 2:54 pm

    Great article and great points…if we have another Boyd conference she should be invited as a speaker. Bob the Windmill Fighter

  2. T. Greer:

    March 16th, 2016 at 7:24 pm

    I have always thought of the Sunzi, for what it is worth, in a similar way. The Sunzi is not strictly organized according to any rational master plan, and it is clearly not the work of one master mind. Most likely it is a text made through accretion–perhaps a century’s worth of accretion. Where is the end of such a work? And how do we know its beginning? Who is to say what the original Sunzi–that is the man, not the text that stole his name for prestige points–would have thought of it all? At some point in the 3rd century the text became ossified; it solidified into what we know as the Sunzi today. But that is almost an accident really. It could have happened a few decades later or a few decades earlier. But it became canonical at the point that did, and that point was several centuries away from polished essays on statecraft and strategy designed start to finish to read as crisply and coherently as possible. Instead we are left with a text that requires “filling in the blanks.”

  3. Lynn C. Rees:

    March 16th, 2016 at 8:38 pm

    @ T. Greer:

     

    Your comment brings to mind a Boyd K. Packer quote:

    Individual doctrines of the gospel are not fully explained in one place in the scriptures, nor presented in order or sequence. They must be assembled from pieces here and there. They are sometimes found in large segments, but mostly they are in small bits scattered through the chapters and verses.

    You might think that if all the references on baptism, for instance, were assembled in one chapter of each standard work, and all references on revelation in another, it would make the learning of the gospel much simpler. I have come to be very, very grateful that scriptures are arranged as they are. Because the scriptures are arranged the way they are, there are endless combinations of truths that will fit the need of every individual in every circumstance.

    As in many facets of creation, Providence may be at work in the accreting. The Sunzi Bing fa may have an intentionality, but not one consciously at work in the minds of the Sun school. Like many works with vast open spaces waiting to be filled, the BIng fa abhors a vacuum. The result is as many Bing fas as it has readers. It is to Marie von Clausewitz’s credit that she did the same thing by design with On War rather than chance.

     

    On the other thread of this post, you have reminded of Roger T. Ames’ introduction to his more philosophically oriented translation of the Bing fa where he contrasts the more dualistic nature of Western philosophy with the more monist nature of Chinese philosophy. In Ames’ telling, the yin and yang embedded in much of Chinese thought are, though masculine and feminine, part of a single continuum.

     

    My totally ghetto translation of the “trinitarian” paragraph from Book 1 Chapter 1 of On War…

    War is a true Chameleon not only because his nature changes in each of his specific incarnations but also because, relative to his dominant tendencies, his overall form is an uncanny Trinity composed of:

    1) the violence of hatred and enmity (his original element), which should be considered a blind natural instinct,

    2) the play of probabilities and unforeseeable circumstances, which make him a free activity of the soul, and of

    3) the menial nature of a policy tool, making him fall prey to the naked intellect.

    …reflects the interesting circumstance that the inflections of its German original are, naively perhaps, phrased as masculine when translated by a machine into English rather the gender neutral phrasing human translators have applied to it. It seems fitting to me but, applying my admittedly unsophisticated understanding of Ames’ framing of Chinese philosophy to it, it may hint at a deeper continuum within the Uncanny Trinity where the Dao of War has three faces or more simultaneously.

     

    Marie’s touch perhaps? I have no idea.

  4. seydlitz89:

    March 16th, 2016 at 10:25 pm

    Haven’t read Bellinger’s book yet, but definitely plan to. Daase’s on Clausewitz and Kleinkrieg is next on my reading list. Amazing how after so long there is sooooo much to Clausewitzian thought to expand on . . . but then that is the beauty of the general theory . . . which of course has no peers.

  5. Vanya Eftimova Bellinger:

    March 20th, 2016 at 9:57 am

    Thank you so much for this post! For me, as the author, it’s amazing to see how people perceive my arguments and ideas, and then built upon them. And at that, in such eloquent way