Peace and War

A Theory of International Relations

Raymond Aron, Paul Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351500401
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Peace and War by Raymond Aron is one of the greatest books ever written on international relations. Aron's starting point is the state of nature that exists between nations, a condition that differs essentially from the civil state that holds within political communities. Ever keeping this brute fact about the life of nations in mind and ranging widely over political history and many disciplines, Aron develops the essential analytical tools to enable us to think clearly about the stakes and possibilities of international relations.

In his first section, "Theory," Aron shows that, while international relations can be mapped, and probabilities discerned, no closed, global "science" of international relations is anything more than a mirage. In the second part, "Sociology," Aron studies the many ways various subpolitical forces influence foreign policy. He emphasizes that no rigorous determinism is at work: politics—and thus the need for prudent statesmanship—are inescapable in international relations. In part three, "History," Aron offers a magisterial survey of the twentieth century. He looks at key developments that have had an impact on foreign policy and the emergence of what he calls "universal history," which brings far-flung peoples into regular contact for the first time. In a final section, "Praxeology," Aron articulates a normative theory of international relations that rejects both the bleak vision of the Machiavellians, who hold that any means are legitimate, and the naivete of the idealists, who think foreign policy can be overcome.

This new edition of Peace and War includes an informative introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson, situating Aron's thought in a new post-Cold War context, and evaluating his contribution to the study of politics and international relations.

PART ONE

THEORY
Concepts and Systems

chapter I

Strategy and Diplomacy
or
On the Unity of Foreign Policy

“War … is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”¹ This famous definition will serve as our point of departure: it is no less valid today than at the moment is was written. War, insofar as it is a social act, presupposes the conflicting wills of politically organized collectivities. Each seeks to prevail over the other. “Physical force … is therefore the means; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object.”²

1. Absolute War and Real Wars

From this definition, Clausewitz deduces the tendency of war to escalate or even to become total. The basic reason for this is what we might call the dialectics of the contest.

“War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds; as one side dictates the law to the other, there arises a sort of reciprocal action, which logically must lead to an extreme.”³ Any belligerent that refuses to resort to certain brutalities must fear that the adversary will gain the advantage by abandoning all scruples. Wars among civilized nations are not necessarily less cruel than wars among savage tribes. For the basic cause of war is the hostile intent, not the sentiment of hostility. In general, given the hostile intent on both sides, passion and hatred soon animate the combatants, but in theory a major war without hatred is conceivable. The most one can say apropos of civilized peoples is that “intelligence exercises greater influence on their mode of carrying on War, and has taught them more effectual means of applying force than these rude acts of mere instinct.”⁴ The fact remains that the desire to destroy the enemy, inherent in the concept of war, has not been hindered or repressed by the progress of civilization.

The goal of military operations, in the abstract, is to disarm the adversary. Yet since “the enemy is to be reduced to submission by an act of War, he must either be positively disarmed or placed in such a position that he is threatened with it.” But the adversary is not an “inert mass.” War is the impact of two living forces. “As long as the enemy is not defeated, he may defeat me; … he will dictate the law to me as I did to him.”⁵

War is won only when the adversary submits to our will. If necessary, we measure the means at his disposal and determine our own effort accordingly. But the will to resist cannot be measured. The adversary proceeds in the same fashion, and each side augments its preparations to allow for the hostile intent, so that the competition once again leads to extremes.

This dialectic of the contest is purely abstract; it does not apply to real wars as they unfold in history, but reveals what would happen in an instantaneous duel between adversaries defined solely by reciprocal hostility and by the will to conquer. At the same time, this abstract dialectic reminds us what might actually occur each time passions or circumstances bring a historical struggle close to the ideal model of combat and, thereby, of absolute war.

In the real world “war [does not become] a completely isolated act, which arises suddenly, and is in no way connected with the previous history of the combatant states.”⁶ The adversaries know each other in advance, they form an approximate idea of their respective resources, even of their respective intent. The forces of each of the adversaries are never entirely mustered. The fate of nations is not staked on a single moment.⁷ The intentions of a victorious adversary do not always involve an irreparable disaster for the vanquished. As soon as these various considerations intervene—the substitution of real adversaries for the abstract concept of the enemy, the duration of operations, the apparent intentions of the belligerents, the accumulation and use of every means in order to conquer and disarm the enemy—it becomes a venturesome action, a calculation of probabilities varying with the information accessible to the partner-adversaries in the political game.

For war is a game. It requires both courage and calculation; calculation never excludes risk, and at every level the acceptance of danger is alternately manifested by prudence and audacity. “From the outset there is a play of possibilities, probabilities, good and bad luck, which spreads about with all the coarse and fine threads of its web, and makes War of all branches of human activity the most like a gambling game.”⁸

Yet, “War is always a serious means for a serious object.” The initial element, animal as much as human, is animosity, which we must consider a natural blind impulse. Belligerent action itself, the second element, involves an interaction of probabilities and risks which makes war a “work of a free enthusiasm.” But a third element must be added to these, one which ultimately dominates them: war is a political action, it rises out of a political situation and results from a political motive. It belongs by nature to pure understanding because it is an instrument of policy. The emotional element involves chiefly the people, the problematical element the commander and his army, and the intellectual element the government; and it is this latter element that is decisive and that must control the whole.

Thus Clausewitz’s famous formula—“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”⁹—is not the expression of a bellicose philosophy, but a simple observation of fact: war is not an end in itself, military victory is not the goal in itself. Commerce between nations does not cease the day guns begin to speak; the belligerent phase takes its place in a continuity of relations always controlled by the collectivities’ intentions toward each other.

The subordination of war to policy as a means to an end, implicit in Clausewitz’s formula, establishes and justifies the distinction of absolute war and real wars. Escalation is the more to be feared, and real wars risk coming closer to absolute war, the more violence escapes the control of the chief of state. Policy seems to vanish when it takes the destruction of the enemy army as its single goal. Even in this case, war assumes a form that results from political intentions. Whether or not policy is visible in the belligerent action, the latter remains dominated by policy if we define policy as “the intelligence of the personified State.” It is still policy—i.e., the total consideration of all circumstances by statesmen—that rightly or wrongly decides to assume as its sole objective the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces, without regard for ulterior objectives, without reflection as to the probable consequences of victory itself.

Clausewitz is a theoretician of absolute war, not a doctrinaire of total war or militarism, just as Walras is a theoretician of equilibrium, not a doctrinaire of liberalism. Conceptual analysis, concerned with isolating the essence of the human act, has been mistakenly confused with the determination of an objective. Clausewitz, it is true, sometimes seems to admire the war that tends to realize its own nature completely, and to reserve his contempt for the imperfect wars of the eighteenth century in which maneuvers and negotiations reduced the combatants’ engagements, their brutality and fury, to a minimum. But granted that these sentiments appear on occasion, they express simple emotions. When confronted with war driven to its extreme, Clausewitz feels a kind of sacred horror, a fascination comparable to that wakened by cosmic catastrophes. The war in which each adversary proceeds to the absolute of violence in order to vanquish the enemy’s will, which stubbornly resists, is in Clausewitz’s eyes both awe-inspiring and horrible. Whenever great interests are at stake, war will approach its absolute form. As a philosopher, he is neither delighted nor indignant. As a theoretician of rational action, he reminds leaders of war and peace of the principle both must respect: the primacy of policy, war being merely an instrument in the service of politically determined goals, a moment or an aspect of relations among states, each of which is obliged to submit to the political realm, i.e., the perception of the collectivity’s lasting interests.

Let us agree to call strategy the conduct of military operations as a whole, and diplomacy the conduct of relations with other political units. Strategy and diplomacy will both be subordinate to politics, that is, to the conception on the part of the collectivity or its leaders of the “national interest.” In peacetime, politics makes use of diplomatic means, not excluding recourse to arms, at least when threatened. In wartime, politics does not exclude diplomacy, since the latter conducts relations with allies and neutrals, and continues to deal tacitly with the enemy, threatening defeat, or offering a possibility of peace.

Here we are considering the “political unit” as an actor, enlightened by intelligence and prompted by will. Every state has relations with other states; as long as the states remain in peace, they must somehow manage to live together. Unless they resort to violence, they attempt to convince each other. The day they fight, they attempt to constrain each other. In this sense, diplomacy might be called the art of convincing without using force (con-vaincre), and strategy the art of vanquishing at the least cost (vaincre). But constraint, too, is a means of convincing. A demonstration of force causes the adversary to yield, symbolizing rather than actually imposing constraint. The side possessing a superiority of weapons in peacetime convinces its ally, rival or adversary without having to make use of such weapons. Conversely, the state which has acquired a reputation for equity or moderation has a better chance of achieving its goals without proceeding to the extremity of military victory. Even in wartime it will convince more than it will constrain.

The distinction between diplomacy and strategy is an entirely relative one. These two terms are complementary aspects of the single art of politics—the art of conducting relations with other states so as to further the “national interest.” If, by definition, strategy, the conduct of miliary operations, does not function when the operations do not take place, the military means are an integral part of diplomatic method. Conversely, words, notes, promises, guarantees and threats belong to the chief of state’s wartime panoply with regard to allies, neutrals, and even today’s enemies, that is, to the allies of yesterday or tomorrow.

The complementary duality of the art of convincing and the art of constraining reflects a still more essential duality which Clausewitz’s initial definition reveals: war is a test of will. Human insofar as it is a test of will, war by its nature involves a psychological element best illustrated by the celebrated formula: he is not conquered who dares not admit defeat. Napoleon could only win, Clausewitz writes, if Tsar Alexander admitted he was beaten after the taking of Moscow. If Alexander did not lose courage, Napoleon, though apparently the victor at Moscow, was already virtually defeated. Napoleon’s plan of war was the only one possible, but it was based on a gamble which Alexander’s steadfastness caused the emperor of the French to lose. The English are beaten, Hitler howled in July 1940, but they’re too stupid to realize it. Not to admit they were defeated was indeed the first condition of final success for the English. Whether it was courage or lack of awareness is of little account: what mattered was that the English wanted to resist.

In absolute war, in which extreme violence leads to the disarmament or the destruction of one of the adversaries, the psychological element ultimately disappears. But this operates as a limiting case. All real wars bring into conflict collectivities which are united in expressing one will. In this regard, they are all psychological wars.

2. Strategy and the Goal of War

The relation of strategy and policy is expressed by a double formula: “War is to harmonize entirely with the political views and policy, to accommodate itself to the means available for War.”¹⁰ In a sense, the two parts of the formula might seem contradictory, since the first subordinates the conduct of war to political intentions and the second makes political intentions depend on the available means. But Clausewitz’s thought and the logic of action leave no room for doubt: policy cannot determine the goals apart from the means at its disposal, and, further, “the political element does not sink deep into the details of War. Vedettes are not planted, patrols do not make their rounds from political considerations; but small as is its influence in this respect, it is great in the formation of a plan for a whole War, or a campaign, and often even for a battle.”¹¹ Examples will illustrate the scope of these abstract propositions.

The conduct of war requires the determination of a strategic plan: “every War should he viewed above all things according to the probability of its character, and its leading features, as they are to be deduced from the political forces and proportions.”¹² In 1914 all the belligerents were mistaken as to the nature of the war they were about to wage. On neither side had the general staffs or the ministries conceived or prepared mobilization of industries or populations. Neither the Central Powers nor the Allies had counted on a prolonged conflict whose result would be decided by the superior resources of one of the two camps. The generals had rushed into a “fresh and joyous” war, convinced that the first engagements would be decisive as they had been in 1870. The strategy of annihilation would produce victory, and the statesmen of the winning side would dictate the terms of peace to the vanquished enemy.

When the French victory on the Marne and the stability of the eastern and western fronts had dissipated the illusion of a short war, policy should have reasserted itself, since it is effaced only at that moment of belligerent paroxysm when violence rages without restraint and each of the belligerents is concerned only with being physically the stronger. Of course, policy did not cease to function between 1914 and 1918, but, particularly on the Allied side, it seems to have had no other goal than to sustain the war itself. The victory that the Allies had first sought by a strategy of annihilation they later attempted through a strategy of attrition. But at no time did they seriously consider the goals they might have been able to attain without total victory; disarming the enemy and a dictated rather than negotiated peace became their supreme war goals. The war itself approached its absolute form insofar as the statesmen abdicated in favor of the army chiefs and substituted for political goals, which they were incapable of determining, a strictly military goal, the destruction of the enemy armies.

Perhaps this collapse of policy was inevitable under the circumstances. Would Germany ever have renounced Alsace-Lorraine unless it had been obliged to by the defeat? Could French public opinion ever have been forced to accept a compromise peace, with neither annexation nor indemnities, after so many sacrifices had been imposed upon the people and so many promises lavished by the government? The secret treaties concluded among the Allies sanctioned so many revenges and recorded so many solemn promises that any impulse toward negotiations without victory risked dissolving the fragile coalition of the future victors. Finally, hostilities themselves created a new, ineffaceable fact which upset previous conditions: the status of all Europe seemed jeopardized, and statesmen did not believe that the return to the status quo ante afforded a likelihood of stability.

Perhaps major wars are precisely those which, by reason of the passions they release, ultimately escape the men who have the illusion of controlling them. Retrospectively, the observer does not always perceive the conflict of interests that would have justified the passions and excluded the compromise. Perhaps, as I am tempted to believe, it is the very nature of industrialized warfare which ends by communicating hatred and fury to the masses and inspiring statesmen with the desire to disrupt the map of the old continent. The fact is that the first war of the century illustrates the transition toward the absolute form of a war whose political stake the belligerents are incapable of specifying.

The substitution of the military objective—victory—for the objectives of peace is still more strikingly evident in the Second World War. General Giraud, a soldier who had not given much thought to Clausewitz, repeated in 1942: a single goal, victory. But it was more serious that President Roosevelt, though he did not coin this phrase, acted as though he believed it. The fastest possible destruction of the enemy’s armed forces became the supreme imperative to which the conduct of operations was subordinated. By demanding unconditional surrender, a civilian war leader naïvely bore witness to his incomprehension of the relations between strategy and policy.

Unconditional surrender corresponded to the logic of the War of Secession. What had become the stake of the war was the existence of the United States, the prohibition of the states from leaving the Union. The Union victory involved the annihilation of the Confederacy. The demand for unconditional surrend...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Preface to the American Edition
• Introduction: The Conceptual Levels of Comprehension
• Part 1. Theory - Concepts and Systems
• Part 2. Sociology - Determinants and Constants
• Part 3. History - The Global System in the Thermonuclear Age
• Part 4. Praxeology - The Antinomies of Diplomatic-Strategic Conduct
• Index