Clausewitz's Timeless Trinity

A Framework For Modern War

Colin M. Fleming

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781032017327
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317165217
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This is the first book to apply the Clausewitzian Trinity of 'passion, chance, and reason' to the experience of real war. It explores the depth and validity of the concept against the conflicts of former Yugoslavia - wars thought to epitomise a post-Clausewitzian age. In doing so it demonstrates the timeless message of the Trinity, but also ties the Trinitarian idea back into Clausewitz's political argument. Intended to build on the existing corpus of scholarship, this book differs from the existing literature in two ways. By applying the Trinity to the wars of former Yugoslavia 1991-1995, it explores war at its micro-foundations, assessing the complex cause-and-effect nexus of reciprocity produced by actions between belligerents embroiled in dynamic competition perpetuated by their own interaction. Providing valuable insights into the complexities of real war fuelled by passion, undermined by chance, and shaped by reason, it is the first study to bridge the Clausewitzian world of theory with real experience. Examining each part of the triad separately, the book explores the multiple manifestations of hostility and chance, before then assessing the influence of these elements on the policies of the belligerents as the war evolved.

1 Clausewitz's Enduring Legacy: Inspiration, and Methodology

DOI: 10.4324/9781315572376-2

If we are to understand and examine the contemporary merits of his Trinity appropriately, it is first necessary to assess Clausewitz's own unfolding understanding of war. This chapter consequently acts as a reference point for the remainder of the book. It explores the enduring interest in Clausewitz's work, and examines both his inspiration to write On War, and the complex methodological underpinnings which resulted in his ‘Wondrous Trinity’. As Clausewitz's early death complicates interpretation, before further presenting the Trinity it is important to provide a better appreciation of his inspiration and methodological approach.

On War's Enduring Legacy

Interpretive questions notwithstanding, Clausewitz's masterpiece continues to rank in the top tier in the canon of great books on war.¹ As the American strategist Bernard Brodie famously remarked, it is ‘not simply the greatest but the only truly great book on war’. It is a sentiment shared by Colin Gray, for whom On War remains ‘the Gold Standard of general strategic theory’.² Yet despite such evident homage, Clausewitz's ideas have resulted in a great deal of spilt ink over the years. The conjecture which now surrounds the Trinity should not be terribly surprising. It has aroused unending interpretative speculation since its posthumous publication. Of course, that its ideas continue to engender so much controversy is in large part because they are somewhat inaccessible; a consequence of the author's untimely death. As Clausewitz makes clear in a prefatory note written in 1830:

¹ Bernard Brodie, ‘The Continuing Relevance of On War’, in Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret transl., 50. ² Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 112.

The manuscript on the conduct of major operations that will be found after my death can, in its present state, be regarded as nothing but a collection of materials from which a theory of war was to have been distilled. I am dissatisfied with most of it … I intended to rewrite it entirely and to try and find a solution along other lines.³

³ Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Note of 1830’ (1882) On War, transl. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman's Library edition, 1993), 79.

Although Brodie considered the ideas within On War to be ‘generally simple and for the most part clearly expressed in jargon-free language’, this is somewhat misleading.⁴ The ideas in Clausewitz's opus have ensured him a degree of immortality, but the combination of complex ideas, a paucity of methodological clarity and the unfinished nature of his work does not facilitate easy reading. As one Clausewitzian scholar put it, ‘the fact that it (On War) towers above the rest of military and naval literature, penetrating into regions no other military thinker has ever approached, has been the cause of its being misunderstood’.⁵ It was a problem that Clausewitz was only too well aware of. Writing somewhat prophetically in his note of 1827, he remarked:

⁴ Brodie, ‘The Continuing Relevance of On War’, 50. ⁵ Herbert Rosinski, The German Army, edited and with an introduction by Gordon A. Craig (London: Pall Mall P., 1966), 122.

If an early death should terminate my work, what I have written so far would, of course, only deserve to be called a shapeless mass of ideas. Being liable to endless misinterpretation it would be the target of much half-baked criticism.⁶

⁶ Clausewitz, ‘Note of 10 July 1827’, On War, 74.

And Clausewitz's ideas have suffered from their fair share of criticism and distortion. In reference to this misrepresentation one thinks immediately of his alleged complicity as architect of the Great War (1914–18). Derided as the ‘Mahdi of mass and mutual massacre’ by Basil Liddell Hart, Clausewitz was accused of propagating the phenomenon of total war, of which the Great War seemed the ultimate manifestation.⁷ After all, was it not Clausewitz who instructed that war must reach its ‘ideal’ type – absolute war? Was it not Clausewitz who preached about the centrality of battle? In Chapter One, Book One, the only chapter Clausewitz considered completed, he argues that ‘war is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force’.⁸ On the face of it, it would seem his critics have a point. Yet, the problem for Clausewitz's opponents – past and present – is that extracts such as this only delimit Clausewitz's work when presented out of context.

⁷ Basil H. Liddell Hart, The Ghosts of Napoleon (London: Faber and Faber, 1933), 120. For more on Liddell Hart, see: Brian Bond and Martin Alexander, ‘Liddell Hart and De Gaulle: The Doctrines of Limited Liability and Mobile Defence’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 598–623. ⁸ Clausewitz, On War, 85.

Since his death, Clausewitz's ideas have been used to prop up a variety of political and theoretical projects which were patently not the intention of the author, shaped to meet the changing circumstances of each period.⁹ Liddell Hart's antipathy towards Clausewitz was linked to a misinterpreted fascination with total war, which is at odds with what Clausewitz was really saying. It has been tacitly inferred that Clausewitz was delineating the centrality of battle so as to expose the frailty of limited means.¹⁰ However, Clausewitz's opus is much more than a simple exposé of war's violent proclivities. Explicative rather than purely didactic, it strives to understand war in order to equip soldiers with guidelines, which would serve as the necessary foundation, a basis for action in a labile business requiring intellectual acuity. On War was not intended to inculcate soldiers with immutable rules; Clausewitz believed prescription deleterious, criticizing such efforts not least because they are likely to impede action by stifling the intuition of the commander. His real/ideal dichotomy, though the source of a great deal of confusion and rancour, does not propound the mantra of annihilation that many commentators previously assumed. Clausewitz's conception of ‘ideal’ or ‘absolute’ war was an abstraction which can never be reached. Its reification is not attributable to Clausewitz, but to later scholars who moulded his ideas to support their own contentions.

⁹ Probably the most extreme case was the use of Clausewitz to underpin the message of the Nazi Party in Germany. At a time of national introspection, Nazi ideologues were quick to draw parallels with Clausewitz's own experience. Clausewitz too had suffered the humiliation of defeat and his message of an existential struggle could be unpackaged to prepare Germany for the new struggles of the day and to overcome the shame of defeat in 1918. See: P.M. Baldwin, ‘Clausewitz in Nazi Germany’, The Journal of Contemporary History, 16 (1981). Although Clausewitz's writings were frowned upon by Stalin, Clausewitzian ideas have a long history in Soviet military thought. See: Heuser, Beatrice, Reading Clausewitz (London: Pimlico, 2002), 143–50. For a thoughtful exposition of Clausewitz's influence on German Military thought, see: Antulio J. Echevarria II, After Clausewitz, German Military Thinkers Before the Great War (University Press of Kansas, 2000). ¹⁰ Important works include: Stephen J. Cimbala, Clausewitz on Escalation; Friction in War and Military Policy (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2001).

As Raymond Aron, one of the twentieth century's great proponents of Clausewitz complained, the problems in drawing out Clausewitz's core message are compounded by the fact that different parts of his tome seem to contradict each other. Aron remarks, ‘you can find what you want to find in the Treatise: all that you need is a selection of quotations, supported by personal prejudice’.¹¹ It is a problem which continues to arouse reproach. As one recent critic has argued, the fact that Clausewitz's ideas can produce infinite interpretations makes it ‘of little practical utility’.¹² Another detractor, Bruce Fleming, a Professor of English at the United States Naval War College, has even gone as far as to argue that it should be regarded as poetry, ‘as an expression of the intrinsic contradictions of the human condition’.¹³

¹¹ Raymon Aron, Clausewitz, Philosopher of War, transl. by Christine Booker and Norman Stone (London: Routledge, 1983), 235. ¹² Tony Corn, ‘Clausewitz in Wonderland’, Policy Review – Web Special (September, 2006), http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/4268401.html (accessed 23 October 2013). ¹³ Bruce Fleming, ‘Can Reading Clausewitz Save Us from Future Mistakes?’, Parameters (Spring 2004), 76.

Of course, as Bruce Fleming also points out, the very fact that its ideas are open to interpretation is one of the reasons why On War continues to sustain such enduring interest; provoking varied conclusions for the people who read it.¹⁴ It may generate dissonant views, but the fact that people continue to engage with the subject is in itself no bad thing. Being open to interpretation has positive as well as negative effects. Antulio Echevarria, for instance, has described it as an ‘unfinished symphony’, which he suggests should remain unfinished. As he puts it, ‘While the temptation to finish such works may be great, the results are rarely satisfying. We always seem to be left with the nagging sense that the master would have done it differently’.¹⁵

¹⁴ Ibid. ¹⁵ Antulio J. Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7.

He may well be right. On War’s unfinished nature is partly responsible for it having retained such salience in a subject that, technologically and characteristically at least, has undergone such profound changes since the events which first inspired Clausewitz to write about it – the upheavals of the French Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic wars. That his ideas remain so redolent today is partly attributable to his vivid insights regarding war's nature and the nexus between war, policy and strategy. Unlike those of his contemporaries, Clausewitz's arguments and ideas continue to inform. If approached carefully and thoroughly, On War’s content has the power to influence and educate the modern reader; the Trinity is a case in point. On the down side, while Clausewitz's explication of war's nature stands in contradistinction to the theories of his contemporaries, the explanatory purpose of this is confused because the remainder of his treatise has a normative function, advising soldiers and strategists of the best ways to overcome war's unpredictable tendencies. The explicative side of war sits rather awkwardly with Clausewitz's instructions to his readers.¹⁶ It would be useful to explain specifically which parts of the book comprise Clausewitz's ‘explication of war's nature’.

¹⁶ See: Jon Tetsuro Sumida, Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2008).

Nonetheless, this process of stripping bare the complexity of Clausewitz's work has been particularly helped by On War’s current popularity; although the profusion of critical texts can engender problems of their own. The development of Clausewitzian thought in English was propelled in 1976 following the publication of the Michael Howard and Peter Paret translation of On War, which has opened Clausewitz's ideas to a much wider audien...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Clausewitz’s Enduring Legacy: Inspiration, and Methodology
• 2 Clausewitz and the Tale of Two Trinities
• 3 Hostility
• 4 ‘Chance and Uncertainty’
• 5 Policy
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index