Thoughts on War

Phillip S. Meilinger

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780813178929
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

War is changing. Unlike when modern military doctrine was forged, the United States no longer mobilizes massive land forces for direct political gain. Instead, the US fights small, overseas wars by global mandate to overthrow dictators, destroy terrorist groups, and broker regional peace. These conflicts hardly resemble the total wars fought and expected by foundational military theorists such as Carl von Clausewitz, yet their paradigms are ingrained in modern thinking. The twenty-first-century's new geopolitical situation demands new principles for warfare—deemphasizing decisive land victory in favor of airpower, intelligence systems, and indigenous ground forces.

In Thoughts on War, Phillip S. Meilinger confronts the shortcomings of US military dogma in search of a new strategic doctrine. Inter-service rivalries and conventional theories failed the US in lengthy Korea, Vietnam, and Middle East conflicts. Jettisoning traditional perspectives and their focus on decisive battles, Meilinger revisits historical campaigns looking for answers to more persistent challenges—how to coordinate forces, manipulate time, and fight on two fronts. This provocative collection of new and expanded essays offers a fresh, if controversial, perspective on time-honored military values, one which encourages a critical revision of US military strategy.

Part I

Theories of War

1 Busting the Icon Restoring Balance to the Influence of Clausewitz

MANY US MILITARY THINKERS and practitioners have embraced a view of war that is out of touch with current circumstances and consequently dangerous. This has a direct effect on the war against Islamic jihadists. There are two main problems: first, too many view war as a bloody clash of arms. For them, battles and occupation of territory are favored strategies, but recent operations have shown this to be ineffective. Second, American military leaders also do not sufficiently take into account the distinct traditions, behaviors, and beliefs of other peoples. The root of this myopia is the infatuation with the ground and Euro-centric ideas of Carl von Clausewitz.

* * *

Carl von Clausewitz was a Prussian general who fought in the Napoleonic wars two centuries ago. Afterward, he was director of the Prussian War Academy, where he wrote a number of historical and theoretical books.¹ He is an icon among military officers, and On War is taught in war colleges and service academies worldwide.

Clausewitz stressed the importance of psychological factors in war. He had just witnessed nationalistic wars and an outpouring of passion that had not been seen in Europe for generations. War had become a contest between peoples, not just princes. To help explain this phenomenon he used the metaphor of a trinity—society (passion or “natural force”), the military (chance and probabilities), and a country’s government (reason). These three factors were in constant interaction during the course of a war. It was necessary for a state to keep this trinity in equilibrium.² Finally, Clausewitz stressed the importance of focusing one’s energy. There were many things a commander could do when beginning a campaign, but he first had to think through the process of cause and effect: political objectives led to a military strategy, which in turn led to specific goals/tasks/targets to be affected, struck, or neutralized.

These ideas were not necessarily new, but Clausewitz was seminal because he was the first to examine them at length in his writings. Still, On War is a difficult read, partly because it has come down to us as a work in progress. Only the first chapter of the first book (there are 125 chapters comprising eight books) did Clausewitz consider complete.

The unusual style in which he wrote compounds the confusion. Clausewitz began with a paradigm of ideal war that tends to move toward the absolute, what today we term total war. After describing this paradigm, he then uses what has been called a dialectic approach—he contrasts ideal war to that actually occurring in practice. “Real war” is moderated by political goals, resources, chance, and friction that affect war as it unfolds. Yet, the wars shaping Clausewitz’s views were those of the Napoleonic era, which were as close to total as Europe had seen in two centuries, and he admitted that warfare “had assumed the absolute state under Bonaparte.”³ In short, during his era “real war” was close to “absolute war”—reality and theory converged. As a result, the historical examples used in On War usually relate to those “absolute wars.”⁴ This is significant because today’s wars are far from absolute—at least from our standpoint—so we must question the relevance of some of the Prussian’s assertions.

The unusual dialectic approach used in On War means that the opening pages must be approached warily. Clausewitz’s first chapter contains some of his most pithy and quotable lines: “war is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,” “in war the result is never final,” “defense is a stronger form of fighting than attack,” and “war is a pulsation of violence.” The temptation to seize on these polished and readable pages without absorbing the rest of the book has caused no end of confusion.

Worse, in notes written before his death, Clausewitz confessed that he had come to view his work in a new light. He believed two themes that he had largely overlooked until then should now dominate On War. The first concerned what has been labeled the “dual nature” of war—some wars are fought “to overthrow the enemy” while others seek a more limited goal. He wanted to distinguish between the near-absolute wars of his own era and the limited wars that had been the norm for the previous two centuries. The second new theme to be stressed was the inherently political nature of war. Clausewitz wrote that he had introduced these two themes in Book I, chapter 1, and had sketched them out in the concluding Book VIII, but he would need to rewrite virtually everything (except presumably the first chapter) to explain fully these two new foci.⁵ He apparently did not intend to nullify what he had already written, but rather to elaborate on some points.⁶ It also appears Clausewitz intended that there be a Book IX—presumably concerning absolute war—which was never written, even in draft.⁷

He died before completing those revisions. Nonetheless, one year later his widow published the unfinished manuscript. Marie von Clausewitz believed her husband’s work should be printed, despite its unfinished status. Still, she made changes to ensure a more acceptable reception, and thus “muffled” criticisms of Prussia’s King Frederick Wilhelm.⁸ That most of On War is a rough draft helps explain its contradictions and redundancies—as well as that the two new themes to be stressed are largely missing.⁹ The result of these omissions has been for readers to imagine what Clausewitz would have written had he been given the chance. Antulio Echevarria warns readers “to resist the temptation to finish it, to rewrite the famous opus according to the values of liberal democracy. At the same time, we must refrain from erasing what revisions its author did make, and allow On War to be no less than what it is, even in its unfinished state.”¹⁰

Clausewitz’s prose has also made translation difficult. The several English translations of On War appearing over the past 150 years read differently. Which captures the real intent? Moreover, there is doubt as to the actual wording of Clausewitz’s manuscript. Michael Howard and Peter Paret state that German editors in the 1850s introduced “several hundred alterations of the text” to the 1832 manuscript—which itself was riddled with “obscurities perhaps inevitable in the posthumous publication of so large and complex a work by a devoted but inexpert widow.”¹¹ To resolve these difficulties, Howard and Paret took an approach that should give the reader pause: “We have based our work on the first edition of 1832, supplemented by the annotated German text published by Professor Werner Hahlweg in 1952, except where obscurities in the original edition—which Clausewitz himself never reviewed—made it seem advisable to accept later emendations.”¹²

In other words, much of this is not the work of Clausewitz at all! Unfortunately, his handwritten manuscript disappeared long ago, so we cannot compare it with current variants. The result is a degree of confusion as to what it is, precisely, Clausewitz was trying to tell us two centuries ago. There is of course even more debate and confusion regarding what Clausewitz actually meant.¹³

Other concerns should trouble us. Nearly half of On War is now of little use. Most of Books V, VI, and VII (over half the work) deal with tactical maneuvers and topics such as organization, marches, camps, and defending mountain passes or swamps, subjects of minor importance today.

There are also major gaps in his discussion—his neglect of technology, sea power, and a disdain for intelligence.

The omission of technology is almost understandable, for the Napoleonic wars in which he participated were virtually devoid of technological advances. Armies of his era were little different in their weapons and equipment from those of Frederick the Great fifty years earlier. In fact, the Napoleonic era was unique in that it epitomized a Revolution in Military Affairs (to use the modern term) that did not include rapid technological change as one of its components.¹⁴ Even so, Clausewitz was a historian, and he well knew of instances where technology had altered the course of war and strategy in centuries past; he should not have ignored this topic.

Clausewitz’s neglect of sea power is even less excusable. The Royal Navy and its dominance of the seas had a major effect on Napoleon’s empire and strategy. Clausewitz knew that. More importantly, in his extended study of war strategy it is remarkable he would not discuss a form of war so different from war on land regarding its nature, objectives, and methods. As Julian Corbett wrote in 1911, “The object of naval warfare is the control of communications, and not, as in land warfare, the conquest of territory. The difference is fundamental.”¹⁵ During World War II, for example, around 90 percent of the time submarines attacked merchant ships, not warships. In short, navies do not attack an enemy’s strong point; they attack its weakest.¹⁶ Clausewitz’s focus on land warfare has led to a distorted view of strategy that impacts current military operations.

Clausewitz rejected the importance of military intelligence: “all information and assumptions are open to doubt.”¹⁷ This disregard for intelligence is usually passed off as being a simple anachronism that is inconsequential. The role of intelligence in war is most certainly not inconsequential, so this too is a major shortcoming. Even so, there are other criticisms more fundamental.

* * *

In the aftermath of World War I, Basil H. Liddell Hart in Britain was critical of what he saw as Clausewitz’s baleful influence and referred to him as the “Mahdi of mass and mutual massacre” whose belief in the necessity of slaughter led to the hecatomb of the Great War.¹⁸ Others agreed with Liddell Hart in that it was standard among historians and theorists to interpret Clausewitz as advocating climactic and bloody battles.¹⁹ It is not hard to see why readers have taken this interpretation. In Book IV (“The Engagement”) Clausewitz lists five “unequivocal statements” regarding war:

• Destruction of the enemy forces is the overriding principle of war, and, so far as positive action is concerned, the principal way to achieve our object.

• Such destruction of forces can usually [emphasis in original] be accomplished only by fighting.

• Only major engagements involving all forces lead to major success.

• The greatest successes are obtained where all engagements coalesce into one great battle.

• Only in a great battle does the commander-in-chief control operations in person; it is only natural that he should prefer to entrust the direction of the battle to himself.²⁰

These are dogmatic, “unequivocal” statements, and the only hint of moderation is the word “usually” in statement two, and note that that statement contradicts number three, which uses the word “only.” Moreover, a few paragraphs later, when discussing the unusual situation where victory can be achieved without the destruction of the enemy army, he treats it with disdain. Clausewitz writes that commanders who try to achieve victory without battle are pursuing “nonsense.” Rather, “only great victories have paved the way for great results,” and he is “not interested in generals who win victories without bloodshed”; rather, he lauds those who “seek to crown their achievements by risking everything in decisive battle.” Clausewitz concluded by stressing the “absolute necessity” of fighting a great battle. Also note that in Book I, chapter 1—the only chapter Clausewitz considered finished—he repeats with disgust his warning that “kind-hearted people may think there is some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed … [but] it is a fallacy that must be exposed.”²¹ A recent analyst confirms this focus, writing that the Prussian’s ideas were “combat centric” and “if we were to remove fighting or violence from Clausewitz’s system, it would collapse. Moreover, his other concepts, such as friction, danger, and uncertainty, would lose their significance.”²² This is a telling insight.

Yet, Clausewitz does suggest an interesting idea, that it is possible for some operations to have “direct political repercussions” that may disrupt or paralyze an alliance or favorably affect the political scene.²³ He gives no examples of such operations, however, implying that war is so unpredictable that any manner of unusual things may occur, but when settling down to the serious business of instructing his readers on how to actually conduct war, such aberrations are not even worthy of discussion. Clausewitz insisted that policy drove military operations, but although making allusions to such political factors and objectives, he gave no examples; meanwhile, his book is full of historica...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I. Theories of War
• Part II. War Through the Ages
• Part III. American Military Experiences
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index