Infinity Journal – Spring 2011
Infinity Journal has released it’s second issue today, featuring an article by Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II on “Reconsidering War’s Logic and Grammar” (free registration required).
The principal problem with using the logc-grammar analogy is, as with most of Clausewitz’s expressions, is the gap between what he said, which is not always clear, and what we believe he meant.
Infinity Journal has also been newly formatted for the iPad and Android.
March 24th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
It still amazes me that Clausewitz is taken so seriously. Most of the situations he was writing about no longer pertain. And also, as with the point that you pulled out, it’s unfinished, it’s little more than a curio.
Now, back to the history of Afghanistan!
March 24th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Hi Joe,
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Well Joe, you have a very valid point. The On War we know is highly unlikely to be the On War we would have if CvC lived for another 25 years of reading, thinking, observing and fighting. Some chapters he heavily re-drafted and personally edited while others received less of his attention and were edited posthumously.
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I am not someone who regards Clausewitz as holy writ but I am very impressed with his intellectual powers, which is why I think some of his views would have inevitably evolved if he had lived longer, Clausewitz was a dedicated and serious critical thinker. Many of his best insights are uniquely brilliant, some of Clausewitz’s ideas seem more like a product of a specific era and place to me. Others have different opinions. Ultimately, On War is a work of philosophy which means reinterpretation to fit circumstances and not a closed-system blueprint or cookbook that excludes the user from competing ideas
March 24th, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Joe’s comment just sooo well sums up the state of strategic thought in the US today . . . what more could I add?
What about Sun Tzu?
March 25th, 2011 at 2:32 am
Hi seydlitz89,
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"What about Sun Tzu?"
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Ha! My first effort at real academic writing, way back in the 80’s, was a paper comparing Sun tzu and Han Fei-tzu. Was still using a typewriter.
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Comparing Sun Tzu to Clausewitz on strategy is a little like comparing Homer to Thucydides on warfare. Both are great but not in the same way – even when they teach similar lessons.
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While I believe that Sun Tzu in the depths of time was like Confucius (or for that matter, Homer) a real figure and a wise one, his The Art of War like The Analects most likely represents the polished culminating effort of a school of thought rather than the product of one man. I suspect it was distilled from a much larger body of thought Sun Tzu and his immediate disciples produced and pared back and presented as a literary work of principles, much like the lessons of The Illiad. I lean toward the theory that The Art of War was not written down until very long after Sun Tzu was dead.
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Without going into a very long post, in a nutshell, the difference between Sun Tzu and Clausewitz was that CvC was grasping at the essence of war itself, of which strategy is the required instrument while Sun Tzu was concerned with the essence of strategy, which war made necessary but was not the only field in which strategy was applied ( and, in fact, something to be avoided, if possible, by adept strategists).
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March 25th, 2011 at 3:50 am
Someone needs to read The Children’s Illustrated Clausewitz.
March 25th, 2011 at 5:55 am
Guys, no offense but you’ve completely misunderstood Clausewitz if you think he’s irrelevant. You need to do some re-reading. I would suggest Colin Gray and Michael I. Handel for starters.
March 25th, 2011 at 6:42 am
Well I maybe being offensive. This is why folks do not understand strategy!!Clausewitz not relevant? This is why the discussion of strategy is in the crapper, because we have moronic statements like this. Firstly, go and read Clausewitz. 99.99% of the folks who criticise Clausewitz either have not read him or don’t understand the words. Moa read Clausewitz. The entire structure of Maoist insurgency is derived from Clausewitz. Clausewitz applies to any armed Conflict, in any age. So called Narco-terrorism in Mexico breaks down along Clausewitzian lines. “Killing Pablo” is textbook Clausewitz. Even the TV-show “Sons of Anarchy” about a biker gang, channels Clausewitzian teaching. American Strategy has problems because folks do not read Clausewitz or worse do not understand what he wrote. All the good strategic thinkers start with Clausewitz. All the bad ones, who keep screwing up, reject Clausewitz. There may be a clue in their somewhere. Go read Colin S. Gray. Go read HR Smith. Go read Echevarria. – then tell me where they are wrong. If you reject Clausewitz, then you simply have no clue as to what Strategy is.
March 25th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Hi Zen-
Nice post and comments btw.
I think Wilf’s comment brings up one of the little noticed simularities between Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, that being follow-up commentary. Clausewitzian thought is based on the writings of Clausewitz, which are not limited to On War, and especially on his General Theory of War which I attempted to introduce/emphasize during the roundtable discussion we both participated in.
But there is also further development of his ideas by others, including Mao, Svechin, Galula, Schelling, Rupert Smith and others . . . so by simply rejecting Clausewitz as "outdated" one dismisses the basis of a whole lot of much more recent and directly applicable thought as well. Sun Tzu has been around for 2,000+ years. Clausewitz wrote – for the most part – a little more than 200 years ago, that give us Clausewitzians at least another 1,800 years to go . . .
March 25th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Good Lord….
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Gents,
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I think we need to clarify: Joe Dixon rejected Clausewitz. Joseph Fouche made an obscure, inside blogger’s joke regarding Clausewitz but did not reject him. Seydlitz89 is a dedicated Clausewitzian. I did not "reject" Clausewitz in responding to Joe or in answering seydlitz’s query regarding my views on Sun Tzu .
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Nor have I ever "rejected" Clausewitz – On War is a seminal text and the seminal text of strategy in the modern era, it just isn’t the *only* text. Reading CvC in his historical context and critically reflecting on it is not a "rejection" of Clausewitzian ideas or influence, it’s intellectual inquiry. It’s what we are *supposed* to be doing whenever an author is worth reading at all.
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Now, seydlitz, scholarly fellow that he is, clearly understood my analogy but it is possible that to others, I was unclear.
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Fine. If so, I’ll be happy to explain it. It is equally likely that some ppl here may disagree with the analogy I drew. That’s ok too. I’m ready to hear why I am wrong or why my analogy was poorly chosen. But when ppl pop in here and just assert that I misunderstand Clausewitz sans specifics, that comes across less as making a coherent argument and more like being a patronizing goofball.
March 25th, 2011 at 5:18 pm
American politics are incoherent. If you ask any red-blooded American if they want small government and low taxes or government benefits like Social Security or Medicare, they will say "yes". This gap between maximalist ends and minimalist means dates from the 60s. It’s a hangover effect from the massive wealth and the possibility of massive ends that followed America’s emergence from WWII with all of its economic assets intact, an effect that faded away by the end of the 60s. Unfortunately, the taste for big talk didn’t end with the WWII wealth effect. Americans had come to expect that for every problem there would be a dramatic solution. American elites are desperate to paper over this gap between big dreams and bare cupboards because public awareness of that gap might interfere with their long-term program of looting 200 years of accumulated wealth within a single generation and reducing the American people to a new state of peonage. It makes sense that American wars are a continuation of American political incoherence with the addition of other, usually violent and messy, means. In this sense American strategy is Clausewitzian in spite of itself. Clausewitz is the Copernicus of war because he cut to its essence deeper than anyone before or since. All wars are Clausewitzian because all wars are political. If every president, senator, representative, or official in Washington read their children to sleep with the Children’s Illustrated Clausewitz and then read themselves to sleep with their heavily annotated personal copies of On War complete with autographs from Michael Howard, Peter Paret, Michael Handel, Beatrice Heuser, and Christopher Bassford, it wouldn’t resolve the fact that while American politics remain as incoherent as they are than American strategy will be equally incoherent. Clausewitz’s great insight is that war is an eternal tug of war between irrational and violent passion, arational chance and probability, and rational thinking subordinated to a proper balancing of ends and means. Modern strategic theory tends to be reason heavy and passion and chance light. This one-legged stool, whether it be Clausewitzian, Crevedlian, Hartist, Robbist, or some other currently fashionable flavor, will be fatally imbalanced however clever the formulation. The continual demand for an all encompassing American strategy overlooks the fact that there is no all encompassing American coherence or public to support such a castle of the imagination. More often than not, in the course of human affairs, a questionable strategy based on flawed but bloody-mindedly pursued ad-hocracy will best a clever strategy that is weakly pursued. American success in war prior to Vietnam may be based more on a shared sense of cultural assumptions so strongly held that the contradictions within them were disregarded. This gave them the fortitude to endure to the end despite mind numbing strategic incoherence. The power of passion and chance in the Trinity may push a political community over the top despite its shortfalls in reason. Leaning on the one, potentially weaker, reed of reason, however Clausewitzian, at the expense of the other two elements of the Trinity is unClausewitzian. This is an essential part of the Clausewitzian legacy. As to the coherence or incoherence of American strategy compared to other nations, you’ve never read Clausewitz until you’ve read him in the original American, freshly translated from the original Klingon.
March 25th, 2011 at 10:34 pm
Zen-
We’re fine . . .
Joseph-
First part of your comment was very nice, but then you said this . . .
"Modern strategic theory tends to be reason heavy and passion and chance light. This one-legged stool, whether it be Clausewitzian, Crevedlian, Hartist, Robbist, or some other currently fashionable flavor, will be fatally imbalanced however clever the formulation."
Disagree, since what you are describing could not be Clausewitzian by definition, since you are imposing a dominance of one element of the trinity – one "code of law"- over the others, and where is the Clausewitzian who is going to agree with that given Clausewitz’s distinct warning against exactly that . . . ?
I notice that you did not include "Boydians", or rather Boyd’s legacy, in your list of confusion.
I would.
March 25th, 2011 at 11:46 pm
@JF you said, "…there is no all encompassing American coherence or public to support such a castle of the imagination. More often than not, in the course of human affairs, a questionable strategy based on flawed but bloody-mindedly pursued ad-hocracy will best a clever strategy that is weakly pursued." You nailed the essence of the problem confronted to those who aspire to an American strategy. I’m guessing this is a product of our system more than anything else, but I’m not sure we’ll have the luxury in the future, but at the same time, I’m not sure there is an alternative. Every four years we have opportunity make fairly dramatic changes, and in 08 we did. Consistency is counter to our system, and without consistency long-term strategy is difficult-to-impossible.
March 26th, 2011 at 12:57 am
@seydlitz89 – My list was not meant to be exclusive. If I wanted to include true strategic lunacy I would have added the perennial champion: Douhetism..http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/03/strategy-and-airpower.html.@J. Scott – The big disadvantage of our fixed electoral process is the opportunity it gives to potential U.S. enemies to just run out the clock on a timetable. This was true in 1864 with the Lincoln-McClellan faceoff and it’s true today.
March 26th, 2011 at 7:36 am
Zen, let me be clear. I was not referring to you, but to the comment that Clausewitz as a "curio"….but, Clausewitz does provide explicit guidance, that is more than fit for purpose. Once you master the basic arguments he is quite clear, and coherent. Moreover he was writing for his peers, who were mostly men of exceptional education.Now I am not being a snob, but Strategy and Tactics is not something that anyone with an opinion can talk about. Clausewitz provides a substantial portion of the insights and observation required to hold a discussion in this area, to the extent that sensible discourse is near impossible without him. Understanding Clausewitz is as critical to strategy as Newton principle work is to physics.
March 26th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
To what Wilf commented I would only add that the National Security Council as originally formed, and executive decision making as so defined was based on Clausewitzian principles.
That this system was hopelessly corrupted by the actions of 2002-3 is something that we have to live with. That we still have yet to come to terms with that reality is reflected by the state of strategic theory in the US today . . . the system is broken and unquestioningly dismissing Clausewitz is a symptom of that serious condition, our strategic confusion . . . imo.
Maybe some day . . .
March 27th, 2011 at 2:10 am
Thanks Wilf. Clausewitz is paradigmatic like Newton – he was also a beneficiary of Newton who helped embed the scientific revolution’s perspective in Western intellectual culture. I don’t think you could get a Clausewitz in the Europe of, say, medieval scholasticism or of classical antiquity (though you’d be closer there than the former) because they would approach war with different assumptions and, of course, we did not get a Clausewitz in those periods.
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Seydlitz89 – I think the NSC worked that way to a great degree under Ike, unsurprisingly but few other presidents have used it that way. The NSC was very *powerful* under Nixon and Ford *weak* under JFK and Carter and *erratic* under Reagan but it seldom could have been described as "Clausewitzian" under those administrations. As an institution, the NSC’s legal existence (unlike State or DoD) is skeletal by statute and president’s fill out the details and staff to suit their personal preferences and political desires rather than to ensure good strategic thinking.
March 28th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Zen-
Agree, but I was thinking more in terms of basic theory, the application of specific means based on accurate information applied to policy ends. Also think that in times of transition, a more practical approach would be necessary. Clausewitz assumes an interaction of theory and praxis. When theory is unclear, praxis would continue based on the actions of the "military" or even "political genius" who would in turn retrospectively expand the range of theory. The genius thinking in terms of strategic theory . . .
Which brings us back to 2002-3, when pre-existing and irrational policy (from this perspective) abused the system to provide justification for its execution. Many profited from this abuse and corruption of our institutions and thus the contamination has gone far. As Lenin correctly observed, the fish rots from the head.
March 29th, 2011 at 5:18 am
Zen, "On War is a seminal text and the seminal text of strategy in the modern era, it just isn’t the *only* text." That’s exactly what I was getting at. I don’t know if it’s just because I have limited scope in the blogs that I read, but it seems that throughout the blogosphere there’s an over-reliance on the Prussian.
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@Joseph Fouche: I saw the Children’s Illustrated Clausewitz this morning, and I’m very excited about it!