By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic, Ex-University Professor, Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic StudiesBelgrade, Serbia
The Focal Questions About Wwar
In dealing with both theoretical and practical points of view about war, at least six fundamental questions arise:
1) What is war?
2) What types of war exist?
3) Why do wars occur?
4) What is the connection between war and justice?
5) The question of war crimes?
6) Is it possible to replace war with the so-called “perpetual peace”?
Probably, up to today, the most used and reliable understanding of war is its short but powerful definition by Carl von Clausewitz:
War is merely the continuation of politics by other means. [On War, 1832].
It can be considered the terrifying consequences if, in practice, Clausewitz’s term “merely” from a simple phrase about the war would be applied in the post-WWII nuclear era and the Cold War (for instance, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962).
Nevertheless, Clausewitz became one of the most important influencers on Realism in international relations (IR). To remind ourselves, Realism in political science is a theory of IR that accepts war as a very normal and natural part of the relationships between states (and after WWII, of other political actors as well) in global politics.
Realists are keen to stress that wars and all other kinds of military conflicts are not just natural (meaning normal) but even inevitable. Therefore, all theories that do not accept the inevitability of war and military conflicts (for instance, Feminism) are, in fact, unrealistic.
The Art of War Is an Extension of Politics
A Prussian general and military theorist, Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (1780−1831), the son of a Lutheran Pastor, entered the Prussian military service when he was only 12, and achieved the rank of Major-General at 38. He was studying the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and became involved in the successful reform of the Prussian army.
Clausewitz was of the opinion that war is a political instrument similar to, for instance, diplomacy or foreign aid. For this reason, he is considered to be a traditional (old-school) realist.
Clausewitz echoed the Greek Thucydides, who had described in the 5th century B.C. in his famous The History of the Peloponnesian War the dreadful consequences of unlimited war in ancient Greece. Thucydides (ca. 460−406 B.C.) was a Greek historian but had a great interest in philosophy too. His great historiographical work, The History of the Peloponnesian War (431−404 B.C.), recounts the struggle between Athens and Sparta for geopolitical, military, and economic control (hegemony) over the Hellenic world. The war culminated at the end with the destruction of Athens, the birthplace of both ancient democracy and imperialistic/hegemonic ambitions.
Thucydides explained the war in which he participated as the Athenian “strategos” (general) in terms of the dynamics of power politics between Sparta and Athens and the relative power of the rival city-states (polis). He consequently developed the first sustained realistic explanation of international relations and conflicts and formed the earliest theory of IR.
In his famous Melian dialogue, Thucydides showed how power politics is indifferent to moral argument. This is a dialogue between the Melians and the Athenians, which Thucydides quoted in his The History of the Peloponnesian War, in which the Athenians refused to accept the Melians’ wish to remain neutral in the war with Sparta and Spartan allies. The Athenians finally besieged the Melians and massacred them. His work and dark view of human nature influenced Thomas Hobbes.
Actually, Clausewitz feared that unless politicians controlled war, it would degenerate into a struggle with no clear other objectives except one – to destroy the enemy. He served in the Prussian army during the Napoleonic Wars until his capture in 1806. Later, he helped reorganize it and served in the Russian army from 1812 to 1814. He finally fought at the decisive Battle of Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, which brought about Napoléon’s ultimate downfall from power.
The Napoleonic Wars influenced Clausewitz to caution that war is being transformed into a struggle among whole nations and peoples without limits and restrictions, but without clear political aims and/or objectives. In his On War (in three volumes, published after his death), he explained the relationship between war and politics. In other words, war without politics is just killing, but this killing with politics has some meaning.
Clausewitz’s assumption about the phenomenon of warfare was that war has its origin in a political object, then, naturally, it means that this original motive should also continue to be the first and highest consideration in its conduct. Consequently, the policy is interwoven with the whole action of war and must exercise a continuous influence upon it. It is clearly seen that war is not merely a political act, but as well a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. In other words, the political view is the object while war is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.
Another important observation by Clausewitz was that the rising power of nationalism in Europe and the use of large conscript armies (in fact, national armies) could produce in the future absolute or total wars (like WWI, WWII), that is, wars to the death and total destruction rather than wars waged for some more or less precise and limited political objectives. However, he was particularly fearful of leaving warfare to the generals. Their idea of victory in war is framed only within the parameters of the destruction of enemy armies. Such an assumption of victory is contradicts the war aim of politicians, who understand victory in war as the realization of the political aims for which they started the particular war.
Nevertheless, such ends in practice could range from very limited to large, and according to Clausewitz: “… wars have to be fought at the level necessary to achieve them”. If the aim of the military action is an equivalent for the political objective, that action will, in general, diminish as the political objective diminishes”. This explains why “there may be wars of all degrees of importance and energy, from a war of extermination down to the mere use of an army of observation” [On War, 1832].
Generals and the War
Strange enough, Clausewitz: was of the strong opinion that generals should not be allowed to make any decision concerning the question of when to start and end wars or how to fight them, because they would use all instruments at their disposal to destroy an enemy’s capacity to fight. The reason, for his concern was the possibility of converting a limited conflict into an unlimited and, therefore, unpredictable war.
This outcome occurred during WWI. The importance of massive mobilization and striking first was a crucial part of the war plans by the top military commanders. It simply meant that there was not enough time to negotiate in order to prevent war from breaking out and be transformed into unlimited war with unpredictable consequences.
In practice, such military-driven strategy effectively shifted the decision about whether and when to go to war from political leadership to the commanders as political leaders had, in fact, little time to take all matters into consideration. They were pressed by the military leadership to quickly go to war or to accept responsibility for the defeat. From this viewpoint, military plans and war strategies completely reversedthe relationship between war and politics and between civil politicians and military generals that Carl von Clausewitz had advocated a century earlier.
It has to be recognized, nonetheless, that Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, in fact, predicted the first total war in history in which generals dictated to political leaders the timing of military mobilization and pressed politicians to take both the offensive and strike first. The insistence, in effect, of some of the top military commanders on adhering to pre-existing war plans, as it was, for instance, the case with Germany’s Schlieffen Plan and mobilization schedules, took decision-making out of the hands of politicians, i.e., civilian leaders. Therefore, in such a way, it circumscribed the time those leaders had to negotiate with one another to prevent bloodshed. Furthermore, the military leaders also pressured civilian leaders to uphold alliance commitments and consequently spread a possibly limited war across Europe into a European total war.
As a matter of illustration, the best-known is Germany’s Schlieffen Plan, as it was named after German Count Alfred von Schlieffen (1833−1913), who was the Chief of the German Great General Staff from 1891−1905. The plan was revised several times before WWI started. The Schlieffen Plan, like some other war plans created before WWI by the European Great Powers, was founded on the assumption of the offensive as essential to success. The key to the offensive, however, was a massive and very quick military mobilization, i.e., quicker than the enemy could do the same. Something similar was designed during the Cold War when the primacy of a nuclear first strike was at the top of military plans’ priority by both superpowers.
Nevertheless, a massive and even general military mobilization meant gathering troops from the whole country at certain mobilization centers to receive arms and other war materials, followed by the transportation of them together with logistic support to the frontlines to fight the enemy. So in order to win the war, a belligerent had to invest huge expenses and significant time to be able to strike the enemy first, i.e., before the enemy could start its own military offensive.
In the run up to the Great War, the German top military leaders understood massive mobilization was crucial because their war plans anticipated fighting on two fronts – French and Russian: they thought that the single option to win the war was by striking rapidly in the West front to win France and then decisively launching an offensive against Russia. Russia came second as the least advanced country of the European Great Powers and Germany believed Russia would take the longest to mobilize and prepare for war.
A Trinitarian Theory of Warfare
For Clausewitz, war has to be a political act with the intention to compel the opponent to fulfill the will of the opposite side. He further argued that the use of force has to be only a tool or a real political instrument, as, for instance, diplomacy, in the arsenal of the politicians. War has to be just a continuation of politics by other means or instruments of forceful negotiations (bargaining), but not an end in itself. Since the war has to be only initiated for the sake of achieving strictly the political goals of civilian leadership, it is logical for him that:
… if the original reasons were forgotten, means and ends would become confused [On War, 1832] (something similar, for instance, occurred with the American military intervention in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021).
He believed that when original reasons for war are forgotten, the use of violence will be irrational. To be usable, war has to be limited.
However, developments of the last several hundred years like industrialization or enlarged warfare, have taken warfare in direction that had alarmed Clausewitz. In fact, he warned that militarism can be extremely dangerous for humanity – a cultural and ideological phenomenon in which military priorities, ideas, or values are pervading the larger or total society (for instance, Nazi Germany).
The Realists, actually, accepted Clausewitz’s approach, which later after WWII, was further developed by them into a view of the world that is distorted and dangerous, causing the so-called “unnecessary wars”. In general, such kinds of wars have been attributed to the US foreign policy during and after the Cold War around the globe. For example, in South-East Asia during the 1960s the US authorities were determined not to appease the Communist powers that they likened to the German Nazis of the 1930s. Consequently, to avoid a Communist occupation of Vietnam, the US became involved in a pointless and, in fact, unwinnable war, confusing Nazi aims of geopolitical expansionism with the legitimate post-colonial patriotism of the people of Vietnam.
Carl von Clausewitz is by many experts considered to be the greatest writer on military theory and war. His book On War (1832) is generally interpreted as favoring the very idea that war is, in essence, a political phenomenon as an instrument of policy. The book, nevertheless, sets out a trinitarian theory of warfare that involves three subjects:
- The masses are motivated by a sense of national animosity (national chauvinism).
- The regular army devises strategies to take account of the contingencies of war.
- The political leaders formulate the goals and objectives of military action.
Critics of the Clausewitzian Viewpoint of War
However, from another side, the Clausewitzian viewpoint of war can be deeply criticized for several reasons:
- One of them is the moral side of it, as Clausewitz was presenting war as a natural and even inevitable phenomenon. He can be condemned for the justification of war by reference to narrow state interest instead of some wider principles, like justice or so. However, such his approach, therefore, suggests that if war serves legitimate political purposes, its moral implications can be simply ignored, or in other words, not taken at all into account as an unnecessary moment of the war.
- Clausewitz can be criticized for the reason that his conception of warfare is outdated and therefore not fitting to modern times. In other words, his conception of war is relevant to the era of the Napoleonic Wars, but surely not to modern types of war and warfare for several reasons. First, modern economic, social, cultural, and geopolitical circumstances may, in many cases, dictate that war is a less effective power than it was at the time of Clausewitz. Therefore, war today is an obsolete policy instrument. If contemporary states are rationally thinking about war, military power can be of lesser relevance in IR. Second, industrialized warfare, and especially the feature of total war, can make calculations about the likely costs and benefits of war much less reliable. If it is the case, then war can simply stop being an appropriate means of achieving political ends. Thirdly, most of the criticism of Clausewitz stresses the fact that the nature of both war and IR has changed and, therefore, his understanding of war as a social phenomenon is no longer applicable. In other words, Clausewitz’s doctrine of war can be applicable to the so-called “Old wars“ but not to the new type of war – “New war“. Nevertheless, on the other hand, in the case that Clausewitz’s requirement that the recourse to war has to be based on rational analysis and careful calculation, many modern and contemporary wars would not have taken place.
© Vladislav B. Sotirovic 2025
One could argue that with the development of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, war as a means of continuing politics as a concept is no longer possible, because, according to Clausewitz, war has a tendency to become absolute, and a weapon as a means that destroys its end can no longer be used.
That’s why the Clausewitzian Raymond Aron was of the opinion, that nuclear war will not occur, so non-nuclear war is more likely.
But because non-nuclear wars still have the inherent tendency to become absolute, it cannot be ruled out that they will become nuclear.
Nothing has changed in this logic, except that the relative stability of the Cold War, in which Aron argued, has disappeared
> relative stability of the Cold War, ,,, has disappeared
Perhaps we should rebrand “Victory gardens” as “Nuclear Winter gardens”
> War is merely the continuation of politics by other means. [On War, 1832].
War is politics directly lethal. Following Turchin’s view of Price’s Equation, co-operation at the level of the state is driven by the severity of the selection pressure of losing, which in war is lethal to gene and culture. Within that frame, politics is less-lethal competition. Who’s inside the polis walls, whom’s not. Mean Girls.
One of the core skills of the elite is staying alive, reducing the selection pressures on the self, family, and friends. For a long time that was holding the keep of the castle, and when the minions were done, the Knightly Ransom served the same purpose. But cultural variation reduces the civilized, honorable elite back-scratching. In the oscillation of offense and defense, this has driven heavy machinery deep underground, in tunnels and bunkers an hundred meters deep.
In this framework, the announced intended assassination of the Iranian religious leadership drives the selection pressures through the roof. The response to conditions on both sides has been to increase the stakes for elites, and whether big-bomb bunker busters or hypersonic long-range missiles, the message is that there’s no where to hide.
Technically, this reduces the power differential and could encourage elites toward more egalitarian approaches. But Aurelien notes ‘For the western ruling class, then, defeat is literally unthinkable: the required neurones are not present.’ And for all, Yossarian: The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.
I prefer Sun Tzu.
From Sun Tzu
‘War is contrary to virtue…’
‘The Acme of skill is to subdue an enemy without fighting’
From Chapter 12…
Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has been destroyed cannot be restored; nor the dead brought back to life. Hence the enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution. This is the way to keep a country at peace and an army intact.’
I believe Sun Tzu’s view on war is far more useful AND he realized the appropriate moral gravity of war, and hence he advocated that war should not be used unless the state was in danger. Clausewitz view is too ‘Left Brained’ and rational utilitarian sounding, without realizing that human life and human society is more important than mere political objectives (which in the 18th and 19th century were more about balance of power calculation in order to gain and control colonies, or National pride among the elites. Also, Clausewitz speaks from the point of view of the political/industrial elites who do not themselves bleed in the war, hence they might be able to stay cool and rational, but what about the ordinary citizens who lose their sons to the wars… do they continue to feel magnanimous or do they not start to feel anger, thirst for revenge or feel despair, and hence the culture of goodwill and civility begins to decline on the national scale.
Fan here of Sun Tzu as well. He had a lot of warnings about the cost of going to war and though it has been many years since I read Clausewitz, I don’t think that he emphasized this like Sun Tzu did. There is the saying that war is the health of a nation but they are wrong. Only a small group achieves wealth while the nation itself becomes impoverished-
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sun-tzu/works/art-of-war/ch02.htm
Though I agree with you wholeheartedly that the saying war is the health of a nation is almost always wrong (see the US today), there are exceptions, see Russia today. Key will be if Russia gets off the war-footing once its aims have been achieved (rather than ever-growing and shifting aims).
Russia has repeatedly said it would end its war footing in the Ukraine, if the war makers in Kiev/Washington, D.C. would simply stop threatening their security.
As a country, the war has galvanized Russia, pulling on the goodwill of the nation to form a more functional and stronger country. But at the individual level, there is probably 100’s of thousands of Russian soldiers who have been permanently injured physically, or worse, mentally and emotionally. I cannot imagine the fear and anxiety they must feel at the sound of artillery or the buzzing drone that follows them, to hear the screams of the wounded, to smell burnt and rotting human flesh. If Russia achieves its objectives , the euphoria of victory will have some ameliorative effects, the mental/emotional trauma on these men will still emerge and bear poisonous fruit for themselves, their families and the community for decades to come, and could lead to the nations collective decay and downfall in the decades to come.
I am sure what I have said, applies even more so to the Ukrainians… suffering more loses, and if they lose this war, the feeling of defeat will intensify the trauma and despair…
No. That Randolph Bourne saying was “war is the health of the STATE”, and he drew a sharp distinction between the state and the nation.
War is the health of the “state” is the libertarian quote, and the state is the set of forceful and hortatory mechanisms to get people to fo things that they wouldn’t do if they were left to their own devices–so of course war is the health of the state.
One interesting vontrast between Sun Tzu and Claysewitz is that the former thought the general in the field should no longer obey the king blindly while the latter thought armies should be subordinated to “politics.”. I always took this to mean that Sun was wary of war becoming cynical plaything of the powerful who saw little of the costs of the war but saw political advantages of warmongering–something not unheard of in Imperial Chinese history–while the latter still thought in terms of the ideals of the “philosopher king” or the “enlightened” governance of reason or whatever.
I suspect that the saying is “war is the health of the state” rather than the health of the nation — the distinction is perhaps instructive?
Republican Rome also understood that war is a continuation of politics by other means, this is why Roman troups were not allowed to cross the city limes and enter Rome. Politics was confined to just politics: words, arguments, threats, beatings, mobs, stabbings (politics being a contact sport).
The world village is in a way too big now and we are still only tribes.
As such Sun Tzu is a better model.
In his novel Creation, Gore Vidal walks us through the Axial Age, from Persia and Babylon to India and China and finally to Greece. For the main character, Confucius was the wisest of them all.
Confucius’s most important quote regarding change and its impact is, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” He emphasized the concept of “rectification of names” (zhengming), which highlights the importance of clear and accurate language to establish social order and understanding. By ensuring names accurately reflect reality, Confucius believed one could then proceed with effective governance and achieve societal harmony. Here’s a more detailed explanation:
Rectification of Names (Zhengming):
This concept, central to Confucius’s philosophy, emphasizes that names should correspond to their true essence or function.
Impact on Society:
When names are not properly used, it leads to confusion and disorder in speech and action, ultimately hindering progress in all aspects of life, including governance and social rituals.
Importance of Precision:
Confucius believed that clarity in language is essential for clear thinking and effective action. By using precise language, individuals and leaders can better understand their roles and responsibilities, leading to more effective governance and social order.
Beyond Semantics:
The rectification of names goes beyond mere semantics; it is about aligning language with reality and ensuring that actions correspond to the roles and expectations associated with those actions.
So, is war just politics?
The main problem with Sun Tzu is that there is little scholarly consensus on what he actually meant in his writing – just read some of the various translations, they could be entirely different books. Much of his claimed philosophy of war owes more to the prejudices of his translators (including those who translate his books from Middle Chinese to modern mandarin) as to what he actually wrote, which is obscured by ambiguity over the true meaning of the various concepts he was describing.
Ironically, he was quite obscure in China until he became popular with western military theorists who were actively searching for an Asian Clauzewitz. Mao, who was a librarian, hadn’t read or heard of him until relatively late in his martial career.
War is merely the continuation of politics by other means
Not an expert on Clausewitz, but there are several possible ways to understand this statement:
1.) The decisions around whether to use force and the ends of its use should be made by political leaders independent of military commanders. This supposes societal institutions independent from the military, which in Prussia early 19th century would have been the monarchy (not even sure if they had anything like a parliament or if it was just counselor’s to the King). In this view, the statement is normative and presupposes a kind of constitutional order which is not universal. Whether we are “pro-Junta” or anti, there are places and times when you have warlords (Tokugawa Japan or the Chinese warlord period) in which there could be no war in this sense.
2.) There is the Schmittian politics as the fundamental friends/enemy distinction based on existential animosity, in which Clausewitz’s statement can be seen as a descriptive in the sense of war being the natural expression of an existing and irresolvable enmity between rival groups/factions/parties/nations.
3.) There is the American version, where you have a global hegemon with elected representatives dependent on cash and support from ethnic lobbies to get elected who push foreign policy decisions, including warfare, because they ware worried about the Cuban-American vote or AIPAC. Because of relative power disparities, America has been in a position to fight wars, direct and through proxies, without significant domestic consequences, to appease powerful lobbies, so the ends of warfare are not military objectives but related to domestic electoral support. I do not believe this is something Clausewitz contemplated, as Prussia was a monarchy, the French revolution decayed into a dictatorship, England was building an empire and had a parliament but they didn’t have the luxury of elective wars in the same way. If so, this would imply an inadequacy of Clausewitz’s in discussions of war in a “democratic” age as it were.
I don’t know if any of the above are the “correct” interpretations, and it could be that Clausewitz’s work is “pregnant” in the sense that he means perhaps two or three things at the same time.
Clausewitz, influenced by Kant, may have been subject to the philosopher’s disease, formulating his thoughts as abstractions and losing definite and intended meaning to ambiguity with the absence of concrete context. It is why, in trying to explain his work, the search for illustrative examples is always featured. The only example that makes historical sense is Napoleon.
On that basis, Clausewitz might have observed, but tellingly didn’t, that all war is revolution or counter-revolution. The wars of Louis XIV might have been a continuation of policy by other means, but Napoleon was the symbol and instrument of political modernity despite his own personal reluctance to serve in that role. And, Napoleon was also the embodiment of the hubris of generals pursuing war for its own sake, which is to say, a war addict who could never accept a practical and favorable peace when another war tempted him.
The Napoleonic Wars made a chaos of Germany and Central Europe, exacerbating the social and political conflicts embedded in a medieval “constitutional” structure. Imagining the state as a unitary actor with definite and limited aims — like Louis XIV — may be a way to enchant the experience of dynasties, great and small, trying to put the lid back on a pot boiling over. Not contending with each other so much as contending with their own merchants, peasants and servants. That the reactionary program of 1815 succeeded for a time only to end in 1914 in a war run by incompetent generals that turned out to become the greatest of all revolutions is an irony of history.
von Clausewitz had a first row place in stopping Napoleon’s Grande Armee in Russia, where he was working in the staff of lieutenant-general von Phuel (who according to Alexander I was the main advocate of the “scorched earth” withdrawal – after Napoleon had by-passed his “von Phuel”-line in Drysa, Belarus), also observing the feats of Bagration and Barclay.
Now, Russia was also at war with Ottomans and Persia at the time, and Russian army had deep understanding of logistics, since the battlefields in Caucasus were 1000 km away from the base of the Russian Army (or Orroman or Persian army, for that matter). The Prussians in Russian service, like von Phuel and von Clausewitz, were quick to realize that war with distances like those in the eastern Europe and Eurasia was something completely different.
Forming an army and sending it to fight to a place weeks or months of marching away means that the army commander needs to have a well defined mission with a clear understanding of success and failure. At the time Imperial Russian Army was pretty good at fighting superior forces with a smaller, well trained army maneuvering quickly and choosing battles.
It’s quite plausible to assume that his experience in Russia (he saw with his own eyes the already wretched condition of the Grande Armee after Borodino) made von Clausewitz to wonder if there was more to warfare than just the order of formations on the battlefield.
“There never was a good war, or a bad peace.”–Ben Franklin, in a letter to an old friend.
Indeed. How did all that Prussian theorizing work out for Germany? Cut to Berlin, 1945.
Here’s suggesting that Clausewitz is bunk and a prime example of Man the rational, er, rationalizing animal. Men go to war because they like to fight. The notion that our irrational side can be channeled rather than suppressed fails the test of history. The Prussians thought they had it all figured out under Bismark and then came the Kaiser, another child-man like our current leaders.
Carolinian,
Speaking for Leg Infantry, I did not meet a single soldier who went in because they wanted to fight, but had to go because they were sent. All tried to do best of a bad job given the circumstances. You might remember that Col. Hackworth openly called Rumsfeld an “asshole” for sending U.S. troops to Iraq.
Well at least the old men like to fight and times may have changed. Our Sothrons thought they were out to lick the Yankees pronto and Germans cheered as their young men went off to fight and die in WW1.
There were those who enlisted for Vietnam. Not all were draftees.
You are correct; there are some who like to fight for fight’s sake, and Hackworth was one. But most were convinced, through propaganda, to fight for something they believed in, and sent to the front. You might know the old poem “Pro Patria Mori” by Wifred Owen. Here is how it ends:
” …
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”
Many of the draftees into the Vietnam War had parents who were involved in WW II. There were familial currents encouraging the sail to distant shores. The enticement of a mere 13 month service and then funds for college (GI Bill) were a strong inducement for the many ‘middle class’ inductees. Many enlisted in the Navy to stay out of the Army. I found a way to stay out of fighting peasants in Southeast Asia altogether.
I had college roommates whom were GI Bill enlister’s. Their experience left them supremely jaded, their loud nightmares penetrating through bedroom walls. Most dropped out.
Clausewitz was simply trying to answer the question: why is there war? why do nations go to war? His answer is simple: they go to war as part of their political process – if they can’t get the other side to give them what they want, they go to war.
Then he talks about two types of war (this part is not that clearly written – he died before he could revise it): total war, where one or both sides go all in to elimenate (and I mean kill all, destroy all) the other. Logically / politically, this makes no sense – if everyone is dead and all resourses are destroyed, what is the point? You can’t get work or blood from the dead… So Clausewitz didn’t spend many pages on this type. Instead he spent his pages on trying to understand and categorize the various aspects of a war for conquest / economic gain / etc. Since this work covers a very large and complex mass of men (and women) with material, and the mass consists of constantly moving parts, his work appears as different things to different people. Indeed the best reflection I’ve seen on Clausewitz is that how one sees Clausewitz is very much dependent on where one is in one’s military career. Early on, one appreciates Clausewitz’s views on the fog and friction of war, later, as a staff officier, one may appreciate Clausewitz’s concern with the “why” of war.
And yes, like Adam Smith, Clausewitz is usually quoted as supporting the very thing he did not believe in.
“War is legalized theft” (or something along those lines) Joseph Boronowski (physicist in this “Ascent of Man”)
Not a Clausewitz expert, but “On War” is a mess if viewed as a dissertation. Clausewitz didn’t finish the book, and his wife supposedly revised many portions—-the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Cluasewitz is like Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”…..everyone cites it but few, outside of academics, have read the whole thing…let alone read it in the context of its period
Clausewitz has aged well. Whereas the true war in Europe has been minimal for the last six or so decades, for the rest of the planet, war has been a continuous phenomenon, mostly involving Western powers and colonial/imperial exploitation.
Moreover, all the widely trumpeted post-WW2 moral superiority of the new western man (and woman) were revealed by the Israeli genocide to be a veneer overlying a Hobbesian core (as with the now war hawk Greens – war is one of the most environmentally unfriendly of human activities).
After 2 centuries, Clausewitz is still invaluable for those interested in understanding the state of the world. Thanks for highlighting!
Very apropos, Bret Devereaux has a post up today talking about realism, Thucydides, and such.
https://acoup.blog/2025/06/27/fireside-friday-june-27-2025-on-the-limits-of-realism/
The best metaphor for the state of war post 1945 is the phantom limb phenomenon. Nuclear weapons make large-scale war impractical, but the nuclear powers still believe that this arm of policy has not been amputated. Meanwhile, advances in conventional weaponry, robotics, and AI are rapidly raising the cost and destructiveness of sub-nuclear armed conflict. Because war has enormous cultural inertia, it is going to take a long time for the new reality to sink in: that war is becoming increasingly pointless. To paraphrase Clausewitz, war has become an expression of irrationality by costly means.
I have often wondered whether or not Clausewitz’s dictum is subject to the transitive property and therefore can also be written “politics is merely war by other means”?