{"id":4446,"date":"2011-11-03T03:51:21","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T03:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=4446"},"modified":"2011-11-03T03:54:27","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T03:54:27","slug":"on-war-as-an-unfinished-symphony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=4446","title":{"rendered":"On War as an Unfinished Symphony"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cvcforming.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On War<\/strong> <\/a>by Carl von Clausewitz<\/strong> <\/a>has been the most influential book on strategy\u00a0and war of all time.<\/p>\n

We can say this because On War<\/strong> is the standard by which all other works of strategy\u00a0are measured and only a few compared – notably Sun Tzu’s Art of War<\/a><\/strong> and The Peloponnesian War<\/strong> <\/a>by Thucydides<\/strong>. The odd thing is that we can say this despite the fact that On War<\/strong> is\u00a0more frequently\u00a0shelved, cited or understood secondhand rather than read, even by military professionals. And furthermore, within the narrow demographic that reads Clausewitz seriously and critically, there can be heated dispute over what he meant, due to the difficulty of the text. Then there are the secondary effects, historical and military, of Clausewitz having been misunderstood, forgotten, ignored or at times, his strategic philosphy consciously rejected.<\/p>\n

The shadow cast by On War<\/strong> is all the more\u00a0remarkable given it’s circumstances of publication. Clausewitz died in 1831, at fifty-one, of cholera, having finally\u00a0risen to a military post his talents merited. He had been writing On War<\/strong> since 1816 and it was far from completed or refined to his satisfaction and it is highly unlikely, in my view, that Clausewitz would have consented to it’s publication in the condition in which he left it. His\u00a0determined and intellectually formidible\u00a0widow, Marie von Clausewitz<\/strong>, further shaped the manuscript of On War<\/strong>, guided by her intimate knowledge of her husband’s ideas and was likely the best editor Clausewitz could have posthumously had.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, to my mind On War<\/strong> remains a magnificent unfinished symphony.<\/p>\n

What would On War<\/strong> have looked like if Clausewitz had lived another twenty-five or thirty some\u00a0years?\u00a0Assuming continued good health, Clausewitz\u00a0would have seen, perhaps commanded in, the First Schleswig War<\/strong> and at least\u00a0studied the Crimean War<\/strong> from afar. He would have had another quarter-century of reading and mature reflection on his subject.\u00a0Clausewitz, who had a keen understanding of history,\u00a0would have also\u00a0witnessed the grand European upheaval of liberal revolution in 1848 that rocked the Hohenzollern monarchy to it’s core. What new insights might Clausewitz have gleaned or expanded upon? Would his later chapters On War<\/strong> have evolved to equal the first?<\/p>\n

Having outlived Marie (who died in 1836), would Clausewitz have become a deeply\u00a0changed man?<\/p>\n

What I find it difficult to believe is that\u00a0Clausewitz, with his creatively driven and philosophically exacting mind,\u00a0\u00a0would have been content to let the\u00a0manuscript of On War<\/strong>\u00a0rest where it stood in 1831. Or that we read today what\u00a0Carl von Clausewitz\u00a0ultimately intended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On War by Carl von Clausewitz has been the most influential book on strategy\u00a0and war of all time. We can say this because On War is the standard by which all other works of strategy\u00a0are measured and only a few compared – notably Sun Tzu’s Art of War and The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365,216,46,133,559,604,389,21,524,51,78,336,652,418,39,367,218,522,445,481,127,530,13,18,217,557],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-19th-century","category-academia","category-analytic","category-book","category-clausewitz-roundtable","category-clausewitzian","category-counterintuitive","category-creativity","category-evolution","category-history","category-ideas","category-intellectuals","category-literature","category-logic","category-military","category-military-history","category-philosophy","category-questions","category-reading","category-strategist","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-theory","category-war","category-warriors","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}