Clausewitz in the 21st Century Essay Example

develop his own ideas (objective knowledge of war), fuelled by his talent (subjective capacity and application). The phenomena of war are more diverse than ever: from terrorism to inter-state war, from information war to riots in rural areas, from air strikes to intifada. Loose networks of limited wars have replaced the expectation of a nuclear apocalypse that characterized the Cold War.

The differences and contradictions between the various conclusions and corresponding analyses regarding a strategic situation are but a reflection of the variety of military conflicts and the diversity of perspectives from which these conflicts are observed. These perspectives depend on time, culture, and political context. This phenomenon has been analyzed through the concept of strategic culture, that is ‘a distinctive and lasting set of beliefs, values and habits regarding the threat and use of force, which have their roots in such fundamental influences as the geographical setting, history and political culture’.

States (e. g. Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Iranians, Indians etc. ) tend to have different perspectives on strategic problems, and the reason for these divergences probably goes beyond the defense of short-term interests. The extremely heterogeneous situation of the phenomena of war is analyzed from very different lenses of different strategic cultures, and hence makes states’ theories of war difficult to critique. Moreover, it is difficult to validate the doctrines that reflect these different theories by the use of examples of operational success or failure.

Therefore, the need for a theory-of-theories of war remains valid. An overarching theory of war will take into account the influence of the interaction between the thinker and his object and can form the framework required

to analyze the strategic debate. Clausewitz thus continues to remain relevant to analyze strategic problems of the 21st century as he had developed a theory about the theory of war.

Research Approach

Clausewitz recognized that Napoleon had overreached himself and the theoretical significance that a consistent, single military strategy could have different historical outcomes. In his own realization – evident in his note of 1827 – that any theory of war had to accommodate two sorts of war: war to overthrow the enemy; and war that is the basis of negotiation with him. Four fundamental contrasts are emphasized between the early and later Clausewitz because they remain central to contemporary debates about his work: (1) The primacy of military force versus the primacy of politics. 2) Existential warfare, or rather warfare related to one’s own identity, which engaged Clausewitz most strongly in his early years, as against the instrumental view of war that prevails in his later work. (3) The pursuit of military success through unlimited violence embodying ‘the principle of destruction’, versus the primacy of limited war and the limitation of violence in war, which loomed increasingly large in Clausewitz’s later years. (4) The primacy of defense as the stronger form of war, versus the promise of decisive results that was embodied in the seizure of offensive initiative.

It is not the intent or purpose of this paper to summarize Clausewitz’s works, given its scope, or to challenge the assertions of specific anti-Clausewitz writers such as Martin van Crevald, John Keegan or even Alvin and Heidi Toffler. The paper will instead highlight the seeming unbounded-ness of war (or armed conflict) and

violence in the twenty-first century, and propose a strategy of containment of war and violence. This will relate later Clausewitz’s concepts of war and politics to our current reality. At the outset, I will provide an analysis of Clausewitz’s concept of the nature of war.

Additionally, given the research question’s implication that Clausewitz should be marooned due to his lack of regard for ‘non-state actors’ and that his writings were in a time of slow ‘technological change’, I will also demonstrate that Clausewitz was well-aware of the influence of non-state actors and their ability to wage war; and his thoughts has continued relevance in our time of rapid technological changes. The Nature of War For Clausewitz, war was likened to a chameleon, allowing for changes to its appearance, but suggesting that its underlying nature remains unchanged.

The character of war has certainly changed or morphed since his time. His critics argue that some changes can alter war’s very nature, and the nature of war today is radically different from the nature of war then, the age of Napoleon. In other words, the changes are more fundamental than can simply be accounted by shifting characteristics. The most recent English translation of the text, by Michael Howard and Peter Parat, renders its opening sentence thus: ‘War is more than a true chameleon that slightly adapts its characteristics to the given case. As a total phenomenon its dominant tendencies always make war a remarkable trinity. Clearly, a chameleon remains a chameleon whatever color it adopts for the time being. The crucial two words in the translation are ‘more than’, which imply that the circumstances of war

can cause war to change more than its characteristics: War in other words is not like a chameleon. However, this translation did not capture the nuance of Clausewitz’s original: ‘Der Krieg ist also nicht nu rein wahres Chamaleon, weil er in jedem konkreten Fall seine Natur etwas andert, sondern er ist auch seinem Gesamterscheinungen nach, in Beziehung auf die in ihm herrschenden Tendenzen, eine wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit’.

The implication here is that war may indeed be a chameleon, in that it changes its nature slightly in each individual case (its ‘character’), but not its nature in general, which is made up of the ‘trinity’ (addressed later). The translation thus reads: ‘War is not only a true chameleon, because it changes its nature slightly in each concrete case, but it also, in it is overall appearance, in relation to its inherent tendencies, a wondrous trinity’. The Primacy of Policy and the ‘Trinity’ War is an instrument of policy. ’ It ‘is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means’. Clausewtiz’s aphorism on the relationship between war and policy was now being dismissed not because war had no utility but because it is being waged for reasons that are not political or policy-driven. Critics argue that Clausewitz no longer have a place in the current strategic and security studies debates, where war was no longer the province of armed forces but also of non-state actors.

The question was whether strategy, traditionally-defined, continues to be the best way of looking at what was, revealingly, no longer even called war, but armed conflict. Clausewitz understood a community as having its own political and social

identity, even if it lacked statehood. Such an interpretation is consonant with Clausewitz’s own interest in wars before 1648, where he specifically linked the weaknesses of states to ‘exceptional manifestations in the art of war’.

In his review of the history of war, he described ‘the semibarbarous Tartars, the republics of antiquity, the feudal lords and trading cities of the Middle Ages, eighteenth-century kings and the rulers and peoples of the nineteenth-century’ as ‘all conducting war in their own particular way, using different methods and pursuing different aims’. Despite this variability, Clausewitz stresses that war is all these cases remains a continuation of their policy by other means. In doing so, however, he suppresses the difference between the policies of states and the intentions of other communities which wage war.

Therefore, it makes sense to supplement the primacy of policy as a general category with the affiliation of belligerents to a warring community. If the communities are states, we can speak of politics in the modern sense; if they are ethnic, religious, or other communities, the value systems and goals of those communities (their ‘cultures’) are the more important factors. Based on this, we could replace Clausewitz’s meaning of state with the notion of it being that of the intentions, aims or values of the “warring community,” thus remaining much more faithful to his understanding of what a state embodies.

Otherwise, we would implicitly express a modern understanding of Clausewitz’s concept of state. Clausewitz’s concepts of war (including armed conflict) and violence continue to be relevant so long as they are motivated by interests and policy and not hate, rage, boredom, the

need for personal meaning and bonding. Die Wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit (The Wondrous Trinity) Clausewitz describes the trinity as composed of: (1) Primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are regarded as a blind natural force; (2) The play of chance and probability, within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and 3) Its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to pure reason. Read in tandem with Clausewitz’s metaphor of war’s appearance from case to case as a chameleon, the trinity addresses the underlying forces that drive those changes. His message was that the relationship among these three elements was inherently unstable and shifting. To quote, ‘the task…is to keep our theory [of war] floating among these three tendencies’, and not try to set, or to count on any fixed relationship among them. Clausewitz and a New Containment

The Removal of the Inhibitions on War and a New Containment The twenty-first century appeared for a time an age defined by economics and, to a great extent, peace. These expectations quickly disappeared with the massacres and genocides in Africa, return of war to Europe, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with their continuing, violent consequences and the Arab Springs. A struggle against a new totalitarianism of an Islamic type appears to have started, in which war and violence is commonly perceived as having an unavoidable role, and perceived to be becoming more ‘unbounded’ than ever before.

Spatially, the terrorist are potentially ever present. Temporally, there seems no end-in-sight to their attacks. We face new types of threats such as the development of atomic bombs by ‘problematic’ states like

Iran and North Korea and the possession of weapons of mass destruction by terrorists. The emergence of China as a potential superpower and perhaps great powers, like India, may lead to a fresh arms dynamic, with the possibility of a nuclear dimension. Violence seems to be going out of rational control, an image that the media has not hesitated to portray.

There is a grave portent of mankind confronting a ‘coming anarchy’ of unknown dimensions. Hence, a new strategy of containment is needed. There is no longer one exclusive actor to be contained. A strategy for military containment of China similar to that used against the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, will likely provoke all kinds of crises and even conflict, which such a strategy intends to avoid. Therefore, a different concept of containment is needed, one that is not perceived as a threat by China.

The second difference is that current developments in the strategic environment display fundamentally conflicting tendencies. A strategy designed to counter only one of these conflicting tendencies may be problematic with respect to the others. Therefore, there is a need to strike a balance between competing possibilities. The third difference is that the traditional containment was perceived mainly as military deterrence of the Soviet Union. The new containment must combine traditional, military containment on one side and a range of opportunities for cooperation on the other.

That is necessary with respect not only to China, but even to political Islam, in order to reduce the appeal of militant Islamic movements to millions of Muslim youths. In response to this unbounded-ness on war and violence, a

conception for their containment is needed to provide a sustained and continual limitation through the ‘fencing in and encircling of the same forces’. The guiding perspective is that of a peaceful, or rather a pacified, global society. This perspective cannot be equated with “peace” since in order to reach this goal, non-peaceful, violent and even military means must in some cases be employed.

Clausewitz’s Concept of Politics The defeat of Napoleon was the turning point of Clausewitz’s theory, where he faced the problem of dealing with strategies of limited war within the same conceptual framework as those leading to total defeat of the enemy. He realized that there are very different and even contrasting kinds of war and strategy. The conflicting tendencies in war, especially between ‘limited’ and ‘unlimited’ war compelled Clausewitz to conclude that the unifying general principle was politics. However, which kind of politics could serve to contain war and violence in the twenty-first century?

Clausewitz’s notions of limited warfare have their foundations in the last parts of book VIII. They find some reflection in book I, chapter 2: 'Be that as it may, we must always consider that with the conclusion of peace the purpose of the war has been achieved'; and further on: 'Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration. ’ In book VIII, he stated: 'In this way the belligerent is again driven to adopt a middle course.

He would act on the principle of using no greater

force, and setting himself no greater military aim, than would be sufficient for the achievement of his political purpose. To turn this principle into practice, he must renounce the need for absolute success in each given case. ' It is a natural step to evolve from his strategy of limited warfare to one of the limitations of war and violence as the overarching purpose of political action in the twenty-first century. This perspective is still based on Clausewitz's statement that war is a continuation of politics by other means, while trying to actualize his concept of politics.

Clausewitz describes war on the one hand as a continuation of politics, but on the other side as waged with other than political means. This implicit tension is the basis of the explicit contrast between the first and the third tendencies of Clausewitz’s trinity. Furthermore, one could argue that globalization and the ubiquity of information technologies have created a worldwide political space from which no one can escape, however much his actions might be derived, in their immediate motivation, from private interests or from the cultural practices of ethnic or tribal communities.

Hence, the role of politics is intensified and reaction time within all three tendencies of Clausewitz’s trinity is reduced. Containing War and Violence in World Society The concept of containment is associated with the insight that we cannot expect in the foreseeable future to see fully non-violent societies or a non-violent world society. In addition, the aspiration to a world without conflicts as such fails to recognize that in the course of history conflicts and conflict solutions have frequently been necessary for human development.