On War

This article is about the treatise on military strategy. For the manga series, see Neo Gomanism Manifesto Special - On War.

Title page of the original German edition Vom Kriege, published in 1832.

Vom Kriege (German pronunciation: [fɔm ˈkʁiːɡə]) is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife in 1832. It has been translated into English several times as On War. On War is actually an unfinished work; Clausewitz had set about revising his accumulated manuscripts in 1827, but did not live to finish the task. His wife eventually compiled his work, leaving out his later revisions, and finishing the final two chapters either herself or with assistance from an unknown government official.

Clausewitz integrates politics and social and economic issues as some of the most important factors in deciding the outcomes of a war. It is one of the most important treatises on strategy ever written, and is prescribed at various military academies to this day.

History

Carl von Clausewitz was a Prussian officer among those baffled by how the armies of the French Revolution and Napoleon had changed the nature of war through their ability to motivate the populace and thus unleash war on a greater scale than had previously been the case in Europe. Clausewitz was well educated and had a strong interest in art, science, and education, but he was a professional soldier who spent a considerable part of his life fighting against Napoleon. There is no doubt that the insights he gained from his experiences, combined with a solid grasp of European history, provided much of the raw material for the book. On War represents the compilation of his most cogent observations.

Clausewitz states that Napoleon's tactics were not revolutionary at all and that Napoleonic Warfare did not change anything greatly in military history. The technology of weaponry for the most part remained static, and new strategies weren't developed, but rather Napoleon refurbished old ones, mixing them into one grand strategy.

Synopsis

The book contains a wealth of historical examples used to illustrate its various concepts. Frederick II of Prussia (the Great) figures prominently for having made very efficient use of the limited forces at his disposal. Napoleon also is a central figure.

Among many strands of thought, three stand out as essential to Clausewitz's concept:

• War must never be seen as a purpose to itself, but as a means of physically forcing one's will on an opponent ("War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.").
• The military objectives in war that support one's political objectives fall into two broad types: "war to achieve limited aims" and war to "disarm” the enemy: “to render [him] politically helpless or militarily impotent."
• The course of war will tend to favor the party employing more force and resources (a notion extended by Germany's leaders in World War One into "total war"—the pursuit of complete military victory regardless of the political consequences).

Some of the key ideas (not necessarily original to Clausewitz or even to his mentor Gerhard von Scharnhorst) discussed in On War include (in no particular order of importance):

• the dialectical approach to military analysis
• the methods of "critical analysis"
• the uses and abuses of historical studies
• the nature of the balance-of-power mechanism
• The relationship between political objectives and military objectives in war
• the asymmetrical relationship between attack and defense
• the nature of "military genius"
• the "fascinating trinity" (Wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit) of war
• philosophical distinctions between "absolute or ideal war," and "real war"
• in "real war," the distinctive poles of a) limited war and b) war to "render the enemy helpless"
• "War" belongs fundamentally to the social realm—rather than the realms of art or science
• "strategy" belongs primarily to the realm of art
• "tactics" belongs primarily to the realm of science
• the essential unpredictability of war
• the "fog of war"
• "friction"
• strategic and operational "centers of gravity"
• the "culminating point of the offensive"
• the "culminating point of victory"

Clausewitz used a dialectical method to construct his argument, leading to frequent modern misinterpretation.

The West's modern perception of war is based on the concepts Clausewitz put forth in On War, though these have been very diversely interpreted by various leaders, thinkers, armies, and peoples. Western military doctrine, organization, and norms are all based on Napoleonic premises, even to this day—though whether these premises are necessarily also "Clausewitzian" is debatable.

The "dualism" of Clausewitz's view of war (i.e., that wars can vary a great deal between the two "poles" he proposed, based on the political objectives of the opposing sides and the context) seems simple enough, but few commentators have proven willing to accept this crucial variability—they insist that Clausewitz "really" argued for one end of the scale or the other. On War has been seen by some prominent critics as the place where the concept of total war was made explicit and it has been blamed for the level of destruction involved in the First and Second World Wars, whereas it seems rather that Clausewitz had merely foreseen the inevitable development that started with the huge, patriotically motivated armies of the Napoleonic wars. These resulted (though war's evolution has not yet ended) in the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with all the forces and capabilities of the state devoted to destroying forces and capabilities of the enemy state (thus "total war"). Conversely, Clausewitz has also been seen as "The preeminent military and political strategist of limited war in modern times." (Robert Osgood, 1979)

Clausewitz and his proponents have been severely criticized, perhaps quite unfairly, by competing theorists--Antoine-Henri Jomini in the 19th century, B. H. Liddell Hart in the mid-20th, and Martin van Creveld and John Keegan more recently. On War is a work rooted solely in the world of the state, says historian Martin Van Creveld, who alleges that Clausewitz takes the state "almost for granted" as he rarely looks at anything previous to Westphalia. He alleges that Clausewitz does not address any form of intra/supra-state conflict, such as rebellion, because he could not theoretically account for warfare before the existence of the state. Previous kinds of conflict were demoted to criminal activities without legitimacy and not worthy of the label "war." Van Creveld argues that "Clausewitzian war" requires the state to act in conjunction with the people and the army, the state becoming a massive engine built to exert military force against an identical opponent. He supports this statement by pointing to the conventional armies in existence throughout the 20th century.

There is some evidence that Clausewitz sought to widen his discussion of warfare to include war between non-state actors. His revisions to the book dating from 1827 and just before his death concentrated on guerilla warfare, counter-insurgency and other forms of war which are commonplace today but which were visionary when Clausewitz was writing. It is assumed that these passages were not included in the final text by Clausewitz' widow, but they may have been deliberately excluded by authorities seeking to strengthen the role and authority of European states.

Also, Clausewitz never saw these 20th-century states and armies—the states with which he himself was familiar were quite different. In any case, the "Clausewitzian Trinity" that Van Creveld condemns as consisting of a rigid statistic hierarchy of "People, Army, and Government," does not in fact consist of those three concrete actors. In fact, the words people, army, and government appear nowhere in the paragraph in which Clausewitz defines his famous Trinity. Rather, the Trinity of forces that drive the course of real-world war in Clausewitz's view are 1) violent emotion, 2) the interplay of chance and probability, and 3) political motive acting on reason. It seems unlikely that emotion, chance, and rationality will cease to play a role in war any time soon, whatever the fate of the state.

English translations

• 1873. Graham, J.J. translator. Republished 1908. Project Gutenberg eBook, a partial version
• 1943. O. J. Matthijs Jolles, translator.
• 1968. Edited with introduction by Anatol Rapoport. Viking Penguin. ISBN 0-14-044427-0
• 1984. Howard, Michael, and Peter Paret, editors and translators. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05657-9

See also

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
• The Art of War by Niccolò Machiavelli
• Arthashastra by Chankya
• The Book of Five Rings
• Philosophy of war

References

Notes

Explanatory notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Bassford, Christopher, 1994. Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America. Oxford University Press.
• Bernard Brodie, 1976. A guide to the reading of "On War." Princeton University Press.

External links

• The Clausewitz Homepage
• Online version of Vom Kriege - the 1832 German original
• Online version of On War - the 1873 English translation
• Bassford, Christopher, 2002, "Clausewitz and His Works." Describes the author's intent, and discusses interpretations and common misunderstandings. First version, 1992.
• Von Clausewitz On War at The Art Of War Archives