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On the Clausewitz of the Cold War: Reconsidering the Primacy of Policy in On War

U.S. Army War College, Antulio.Echevarria{at}us.army.mil

Throughout the Cold War, scholars gave considerable privilege to Clausewitz's observation that war is the "mere continuation of political activity (Politik) by other means." It is often referred to in intellectual shorthand as the primacy of policy. This article questions the extent to which emphasis on the primacy of policy has been overstressed, influenced perhaps by the strategic context of the Cold War. Clausewitz's trinitarian concept of war—hostility, chance, political purpose—which appears in what scholars generally agree is On War's only finished chapter, does not portray policy as more dominant than the other tendencies; instead, it presents them as equals, stressing only each one's uniqueness in relation to the others. Reinterpreting policy as equal to the other two aspects of the trinity tends to strengthen the relevance of Clausewitz's overall theory to contemporary wars.

Key Words: Clausewitz • primacy of policy • war and politics • war and policy • Clausewitzian trinity

References

• Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1976), book 1, chap. 1, 87. Since Howard and Paret have expressed concern on more than one occasion that their translation of On War might be "too clean," the translations in this essay are my own. The German text is found in Vom Kriege Hinterlassenes Werk des Generals Carl von Clausewitz, 19th Ed., ed. and intro. by Werner Hahlweg (Bonn, Germany: Ferd. Dümmlers, 1980), 210 (hereafter cited as Vom Kriege).
• Michael Howard, " British Grand Strategy in World War I," in Grand Strategies in War and Peace, ed. Paul Kennedy (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1991), referred to it as Clausewitz's "famous dictum," 31; Brodie, " A Guide," in On War, called it the Prussian's "great dictum," 645; see also his War and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 8-11, and Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1965), 67-68, 97; similarly, Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, [1966]2003), labeled it Clausewitz's "famous formula," 23. Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Anchor, 2003) and "Strategy: Causes, Conduct, and Termination of War," in Security Studies for the 21st Century, ed. Richard H. Shultz, Jr., Roy Godson, George H. Quester (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1997), 364-6; Paul Kennedy, "Grand Strategy in War and Peace: Toward a Broader Definition," in Grand Strategies, 1-10. John Baylis, Ken Booth, John Garnett, and Phil Williams, Contemporary Strategy I: Theories and Concepts, 2nd Ed. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1987) is a Cold War example of this view; it ascribes Clausewitz's importance to his role as the "leading exponent of the `political philosophy of war,'" 32.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, 990, 991, 993.
• On the Clausewitzian renaissance, see Christopher Bassford, Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America (Oxford, UK: Oxford University, 1992). For a sample of military memoirs, see Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1995); and Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001).
• Bassford, Clausewitz in English, 204. The Powell doctrine appeared in 1991-92, as a modification of the doctrine that Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger developed in 1984. The Weinberger doctrine consisted of six conditions for the commitment of U.S. forces to combat: (1) it should only be done to protect vital interests, (2) and with the clear intention of winning, (3) commitment overseas demanded clearly defined military and political objectives, (4) and it must be continually reassessed and adjusted based on the changing conditions of the conflict, (5) commitment is contingent on the support of the American public, (6) and it should only occur as a last resort. Casper Weinberger, "Speech Delivered at the National Press Club," on November 28, 1984, reprinted in Defense (January 1985): 1-11. Powell discusses his doctrine in My American Journey.
• Vom Kriege, "Nachtricht," 179. Book 8 was thus intended to serve as a sounding board of sorts for the revision of the rest of On War. Indeed, compared to the tightly argued first chapter of book 1, many of the chapters in book 8 appear rather raw, marked by tendentious or even circular logic and vague or contradictory ideas
• Others are: Military conflict "does not suspend the intercourse of governments and peoples or subject them to its own laws," but instead "political intercourse, in its essence, continues to exist, whatever the means it chooses to use"; the "political element does not force itself deep into the details of war," but it does influence the "plan of the war as a whole, and that of the campaign, and often even that of the battle;" since "the conduct of war in its major aspects is thus policy itself, which takes up the sword in place of the pen," the subordination of the "military point of view to the political one" is the only relationship that makes sense. Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, 991, 992, 998.
• Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1957), 20; and Limited War Revisited ( Boulder, CO: Westview, 1979), 10, which admitted that limited-war strategy was stimulated by the "perceived imperative of military containment in the nuclear age," and its the underlying rationale was the "Clausewitzian principle that armed force must serve national policy."
• Robert E. Osgood, " The Post-War Strategy of Limited War: Before, During, and After Vietnam," in National Security Management: Military Strategy, eds. Anthony W. Gray, Jr. and Eston T. White (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1983), 179-218, 185.
• Osgood, "Post-War Strategy," 185.
• Brodie, "Guide," 645.
• Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1966).
• Cited in Bassford, Clausewitz in English, 129-131.
• A point also made by Michael Howard, "The Influence of Clausewitz," in On War, 43, in an essay that is brilliant but all too brief.
• Osgood, Limited War, 23-24; Brodie, " Guide," 645, 706.
• Osgood, Limited War, 26.
• MacArthur's Address to Joint Meeting of Congress, April 19, 1951, cited in D. Clayton James, Refighting the Last War: Command and Crisis in Korea 1950-1953 (New York: Free Press, 1993), 51; see also Brodie, " Guide," 644.
• For evidence of such thinking, see: G.F. Freudenberg, " A Conversation with General Clausewitz," Military Review 57, 10, (October 1977): 68-71, and Col. Joseph I. Greene, "Foreword" to Karl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. O. J. Matthijs Jolles (New York: Modern Library, 1943), xiii.
• For all its faults, Harry Summers's On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA: Presidio, [1982]1995) uses Clausewitz to expose some of the difficulties in the theory of limited war.
• Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1960).
• For examples of the cult of the defensive see: Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1984); Stephen Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," in Steven E. Miller, Ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1985).
• Antulio J. Echevarria II, "The Cult of the Offensive Revisited: Confronting Technological Change before the Great War," Journal of Strategic Studies 25, 1 (March 2002): 199-214.[CrossRef][Web of Science]
• Osgood, Limited War, 26-27, states as much on both counts.
• Gerhard Ritter, Staatskunst und Kreigshandwerk: Das Problem des Militarismus in Deutschland, 4 Vols. (Munich, Germany: R. Oldenbourg, 1954). See also the work by the German expatriate Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military (New York: Meridian, 1959). While the first edition was published in 1937, and thus predated Ritter's work and the influences of the Cold War, it was not well known until the revised edition appeared in 1959; this edition included chapters on the growth of militarism during the Second World War and its aftermath. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871-1918, trans. Kim Traynor (New York: Berg, 1989), 154.
• Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1985), 58; Eliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1985), 22-4, takes a similar view.
• See text books such as John Spanier and Steven Hook, American Foreign Policy Since World War II, 14th Ed., ( Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1998); and works addressing civil-military relations in the United States, such as Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); and Suzanne C. Nielsen, Political Control over the Use of Force: A Clausewitzian Perspective (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2001). In contrast, Azar Gat, Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz ( Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1989) maintains that Clausewitz's views derived more from Prussian theories regarding the nature and primacy of the state (etatisme) than those of Western-style democracy; see also Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1976).
• One of the first to point out this dual meaning of Politik was Jehuda Wallach, " Misperceptions of Clausewitz' On War by the German Military," in Clausewitz and Modern Strategy, ed. Michael Handel (London: Frank Cass, 1986), 213-39; however, he only raised the issue rather than exploring its implications.
• Sir Michael Howard, conference on "Clausewitz in the 21st Century," Oxford University, March 18, 2005, question and answer session; Jan Honig, "Clausewitz's On War: Problems of Text and Translation," in Clausewitz in the 21st Century, ed. Hew Strachan (Oxford, UK: Oxford University, 2007), points out that the Howard-Paret translation is "remarkably consistent" in translating Politik as "policy" rather than politics: Politik appears nine times in chap. 1, book I, but is translated as "politics" only once; in chap. 6B, book 8, Politik is translated as "policy" in twenty-seven of forty-two cases, and as "politics" only twice; in addition, the adjective politisch is often translated as the noun "policy." Honig distinguishes policy as "a specific course of action pursued by an authority" from politics or "the medium, the milieu, or the system or body (as in body politic), which gives meaning to political activity."
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, p. 993.
• Clausewitz does not appear to have read Kant directly but was exposed to the philosopher's ideas by Dr. Johann Kiesewetter's lectures on logic at the Berlin War College. Paret, Clausewitz, 69; Hans Rothfels, Carl von Clausewitz: Politik und Krieg (Berlin, Germany: Dümmler, 1920), 22f, also refers to the role of Kiesewetter in the education of Clausewitz.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 3B, pp. 961-2. On War also reveals that he believed states as well as nonstates arrived at policy decisions in similar ways; his example of the Tartar tribes illustrates the case for nonstates, and demolishes the mistaken notion that Clausewitz thought only in terms of the nation-state model. Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 3B, p. 974. For examples of such views see Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War ( New York: Free Press, 1991) and John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Knopf, 1994). Tartar warfare, in fact, was shaped by available resources (means), the tribes' geopolitical position as an amalgam of Turkish and Mongol peoples in Central Asia, their nomadic culture and traditions, and the religious influence of Islam. Douglas S. Benson, The Tartar War (Chicago: Maverick, 1981).
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, p. 991; On War, 605.
• The letter was to Major von Roeder, in "Zwei Briefe des Generals von Clausewitz. Gedanken zur Abwehr," Militärwissenschaftliche Rundschau, 2 (1937), Sonderheft, 6. Partial English translations are offered in Peter Paret, Understanding War: Essays on Clausewitz and the History of Military Power ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1992), 123-9; Wallace P. Franz, " Two Letters on Strategy: Clausewitz' Contribution to the Operational Level of War," in Clausewitz and Modern Strategy, 171-94, provides some analysis. Honig, " Interpreting Clausewitz," challenges the translations.
• This is not to say that Clausewitz did not offer normative statements of his own—he did. However, Cold War interpretations did not necessarily discriminate between his objective and normative statements.
• Vom Kriege, book 1, chap. 1, 210; book 8, chap. 6B, 995.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, 994. Emphasis added.
• Vom Kriege, book 1, chap. 1, 210.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, 991.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, 990.
• Peter Paret, " Die politischen Ansichten von Clausewitz," in ed. Ulrich de Maiziere, Freiheit ohne Krieg: Beitrage zur Strategie-Diskussion der Gegenwart im Spiegel der Theorie von Carl von Clausewitz (Bonn, Germany: Ferdinand Dummlers Verlag, 1980), 333-48.
• Rühle von Lilienstern, Handbüch für den Offizier zur Belehrung im Frieden und zum Gebrauch im Felde, 2 Vols., ( Berlin, Germany: G. Reimer, 1817 -18), Vol. 2, p. 8; cited in Paret, Clausewitz, 314-5, and Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz ( Sydney, Australia: Pimlico, 2002 ), 30.
• Compare: Felix Gilbert, "Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War," in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1971), 11-31, and Paret, Clausewitz, 169-208.
• Andreas Herberg-Rothe, "Clausewitz und Hegel. Ein heuristischer Vergleich," in Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preußischen Geschichte. Jahrgang 10, Heft 1 (2000), 49-84, argues that Hegel's influence on Clausewitz was greater than hitherto acknowledged; Gat's treatment in Origins of Military Thought is fair; W.M. Schering, Die Kriegsphilosophie von Clausewitz (Hamburg, Germany: Hanseatische, 1935) is considered to have taken the issue of Hegel's influence too far; see Paret, Clausewitz, 84, 370, 443; and P.M. Baldwin, " Clausewitz in Nazi Germany," Journal of Contemporary History 16 (1981): 5-26.[Free Full Text]
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 3B, p. 962.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 3B, p. 962.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 3B, p. 974. The last three books (Defense, Attack, and The Plan of War) reflect this perspective.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, 991.
• G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1952 ). A similar teleology with regard to the role of war is evident in Kant's works; see Yirmiyahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1989), 8, 151-3. Clausewitz, however, does not impose a teleology on his concept. Paret, Clausewitz, 438.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 3B, 966-968.
• Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, 997.
• Carl v. Clausewitz, "Feldzug von 1815," in Schriften—Aufsätze—Studien—Briefe (Introduction) and ed. Werner Hahlweg (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), vol. 2, 956-8.
• Clark, Waging Modern War, 417-61.
• Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 1, 951.
• Cited from Aron, Clausewitz, 59; this text was not part of On War, but instead appears to be a working note to which Clausewitz referred while writing book 8 and chapter 1 of book 1.
• Keegan, Warfare, 24, 46; van Creveld, Transformation of War, 33-62, 124-6; and " The Transformation of War Revisited," Small Wars and Insurgencies 13, 2 (Summer 2002): 3-15.
• The exception is W.B. Gallie, "Clausewitz on the Nature of War," in Philosophers of Peace and War: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels and Tolstoy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1978), 37-65, which identifies the flaws in the logical structure that Clausewitz uses in book 1, chap. 1 of On War, but does not explore the Prussian's nature of war in depth.
• Hans Delbrück, "Carl von Clausewitz," Historische und Politische Aufsätze (Berlin, Germany: Walther & Apolant, 1887). See also E. Kessel, "Zur Genesis der modernen Kriegslehren," Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau 3, 9 (July 1953): 405-23.
• Paret, Clausewitz, 154, notes that Clausewitz used the same objective-subjective construct in an earlier essay entitled "Strategie und Taktik " (1804); Kessel, "Genesis," esp. 410-7, suggests that Clausewitz also viewed Politik as objective (universal) and subjective (particular) qualities. Johann G. K. Kiesewetter defined the terms in his Grundriss einer Allgemeinen Logik, 2 Vols., (Leipzig, Germany: H. A. Kochly, 1824), I, 463; a subjective basis is one that is true only for the individual, whereas an objective basis is true for every person.
• Vom Kriege, book 2, chap. 4, "Methodismus," p. 305. Objective principles are equally valid for all; subjective principles are valid only for those who adopt them.
• See book 1, chapter I, section 1, and the Table of Categories in any edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Practical Reason.
• Colonel James K. Greer, "Operational Art for the Objective Force," Military Review (September-October 2002): 22-9, is representative of this view.
• Vom Kriege, book 1, chap. 1, p. 213.
• Vom Kriege, book 1, chap. 1, p. 213.
• For examples of the trinity misconstrued, see van Creveld, Transformation of War, 35-40, 125-6; and Summers' On Strategy. For the correction, see Christopher Bassford and Edward J. Villacres, " Reclaiming the Clausewitzian Trinity," http://www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/Keegan/KEEG-WHOL.htm.
• Vom Kriege, book 1, chap. 1, pp. 212-3. The term government, as Clausewitz used it, stands for any ruling body, any "agglomeration of loosely associated forces," or any "personified intelligence." Similarly, the military represents not only the trained, semiprofessional armies of the Napoleonic era, but any warring body in any era. Likewise, Clausewitz's references to the "populace" pertain to the populations of any society or culture in any period of history. Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 3B, pp. 962, 964-5.
• A point Clausewitz also makes, Vom Kriege, book 8, chap. 6B, 995.
• Clausewitz does explore them in book 1, chap. 2, "Purpose and Means," but primarily from the standpoint of weighing costs versus benefits.
• The most prominent works on the so-called new wars are: Herfried Münkler, The New Wars (Malden, MA: Polity, 2005); Mary Kaldor, New & Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University, 1999); Kalev J. Holsti, War, the State, and the State of War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1996).
• Peter D. Feaver, "The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control," Armed Forces & Society 23 (1996): 154.

Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 34, No. 1, 90-108 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764206294175


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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Echevarria, A. J. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?