Round-up from The Clausewitz Roundtable
Thought I would catch-up to the excellent work of my fellow participants at The Clausewitz Roundtable at Chicago Boyz. First though, I’d like to say “thank you” to Ron Coleman for linking to my most recent post at the roundtable at Dean’s World and at his own blog, Likelihood of Success. Much appreciated!
The Roundtable continues….
Book III
Sam Liles – Clausewitz, On War Book 3: A consideration of cyber strategy
Matthew Borton – Clausewitz, On War, Book 3: The Shape of a Strategic Force.
seydlitz89 – Carl von Clausewitz, Book III, General Comments
josephfouche – Clausewitz, On War, Book III: Painting by Numbers
Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book III: The Substance of Strategy
Lexington Green – Clausewitz, On War, Book III: Factors to Be Considered in Making and Executing Strategy
Cheryl Rofer – Clausewitz, On War: Book 3: Boldness
Kotare – Clausewitz, “On War”, Book 3: the Prussian as prophet
Zenpundit – Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book III: Calculation
Book IV.
Matthew Borton – Clausewitz Book IV: Still Relevant.
seydlitz89 – Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Book IV (and VI): Contingency and Carl von Clausewitz: Book IV, Some Comments
Lexington Green – Clausewitz, On War, Book IV: The Rise and Fall of Battle
Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book IV: Attrition Writ Large
Kotare – Clausewitz, “On War”, Book 4: keep it simple stupid
Book V.
Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book V: Jointness à la Carl
josephfouche – Clausewitz, On War, Book V: Freedom is Worth the Mass
Lexington Green – Clausewitz, Book V: Military Forces (Circa 1830)
Book VI.
Shane Deichman – Clausewitz, On War, Book VI: The Best Defense is a Good Offense
February 18th, 2009 at 2:26 am
Zen, thanks for this compendium. We are getting a lot of interesting thinking, as I hoped we would.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:14 am
You’re welcome!
You write some pretty "heavy lifting" stuff there, mister!
February 18th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Hi Ron,
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Thank you, sir. At times. On other occasions, we’re not above indulging in pure nonsense 🙂
February 18th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Zen: why don’t you encourage your Clausewitz brain trust to focus some energy on the solving the economic dilemmas now threatening a meltdown of our "connected" world.
Our economic "fog" could use some clear thinking too. Can studying and grokking Clausewitz’ strategy have applications in dealing the financial mess we’re in globally?
Can you consider stimulating the collective IQ of your colleagues in this direction? If we don’t solve our financial problems we won’t be able to afford the military adventures you are so immersed in strategizing.
If disconnectedness means danger – we are in dire danger of coming apart at the seams of our robotically-driven financial world. No money- no military – no sysadmins – no survival.
What say you?
February 18th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Hi Dave,
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Ok, fair enough. here is my take.
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If, say, Andrew Mellon rose from the grave, his advice – which is what he told Hoover in 1929 – would be that the vast amount of debt has to be liquidated before a recovery can occur. Hoover in turn said something like " You are nuts Andy – in an oligopolistic market, that kind of liquidation would lead to a Revolution because everyone would be unemployed!" Even in a global market, we still have many industries that are oligopolistic in the technical sense of the term, so we can’t liquidate all of the debt or most of it but we can target some of it.
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What part? Not US government debt, we want the Federal government to be as strong as possible in a depression so no hint of a default can even be floated. US securities need to be seen as better than gold.
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Healthy banks need to be segregated from sick banks while they recover under a "Swedish Plan" of temporary government ownership/receivership/sequestering -whatever you’d like to call it. in turn these banks need to be segregated from toxic banks and investment houses that need to be sent to the tar pits to die. Ruthless choices have to be made to sever gangrenous limbs in the financial systems in all advanced countries at the same time – the US going solo on this won’t work. When sick banks recover, re-privatize them.
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A Bretton Woods for toxic debts. Much of the alleged $ 450 trillion in global derivative market debt is and always was fantasy figures. An international conference should devalue all derivative securities across the board on a sliding scale of greater the risk, the greater the devaluation and then freeze the sale of old derivatives for six months with a phase in period to marketize them again. Call it a "jubilee" policy.
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Policies that favor entrepreneurship, capital formation, start-ups, venture capitalism.
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These are just ideas off the top of my head and I make no claim to being an economist. The stumbling block to action is political and everyone knows it. Some powerful ppl in the international investment community will have to go join Madoff in bankruptcy and disgrace rather than be bailed out indefinitely by governments running printing presses and socking taxpayers as if the whole planet is Japan during the 1990’s