stress the difference between
civil and
international war. A civil war is
a pathological condition, since it represents the breakdown of normality. In
principle, states have methods of conflict resolution which forbid the use of
force; sometimes a problem emerges which cannot be contained by these
mechanisms, and violence – civil war, if on a large enough scale – ensues as
a result. International war is
not like this; as between states, war
is the
(ultimate) mechanism for the resolution of conflict.
This is a political account of war, and an account
of war as the product
of a rational choice, a weighing of the costs and benefits of the instrumen-
tal use of force. This sounds quite modern, but the writer who first set out
this position and identified the key points in the argument did so nearly two
centuries ago. This was the Prussian general and prototypical military intel-
lectual, Karl von Clausewitz, whose master work,
On War, was published
posthumously in 1831. Clausewitz was a moderately successful senior staff
officer, with campaign experience in the service
of the Czar and the King of
Prussia in wars against Napoleon, and later an instructor at the Prussian
Staff College, the most advanced centre for military thought of its day. In
this latter capacity he produced the drafts for
On War, and its origins are
reflected in the fact that most of its contents examine the minutiae of tactics
and strategy, and, given the changes in technology and society generally, are
of little relevance today. However, Clausewitz was an intellectual soldier,
a product of post-Enlightenment German thought, someone who was steeped
in current thinking on the state and society.
As a result, in addition to the
technicalities, his book also includes some (quite short) reflections on the
nature of war and its role in the international relations of the day – reflections
which have been required reading ever since.
The gist of these reflections is that war is (or should be) a controlled,
rational, political act. War is an act of violence to compel our opponent to
submit to our will; in famous words, it is not a mere act of policy but ‘a true
political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means’
(Clausewitz 1976: 87). Here we see the continuity between war and peace.
War is not the end of political activity, it is conducted for political purposes.
Clausewitz was a soldier, but a soldier who
stressed the importance of
political control of the armed forces. On his account, war rests on a triad of
factors – animosity directed against the enemy which is provided by ‘the
people’, the management of contingency which is the role of the army, and
the aims and objectives of the war which are determined by the political
leadership. It is crucial that these three moments are not confused; the army
are entitled to ask of the government that they be given resources appropri-
ate to the tasks in hand, but they are not to set these tasks. The government
sets objectives but should not interfere with the means chosen for their
achievement. The people should
support army and government, but not
restrict their freedom of action.
The Balance of Power and War
105
In a few pages of Clausewitz we see, in condensed form, the essential
features of the realist view of the world – and perhaps of any state-centric
view of the world (although theorists of international society and Wendtian
constructivists would resist this conclusion). The extent to which Clausewitzian
ideas chime with neorealist thought is striking. Although the former does
not use the terms ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ it is clear that this is what he under-
stands by the instrumentality of war. An interesting
question is whether
Clausewitz was an ‘offensive’ or a ‘defensive’ realist, to use the current
terminology. Defensive realists assume that states are essentially reactive,
prepared to defend their position but not likely to pre-empt potential oppo-
nents, while offensive realists assume that states will attempt to solve their
security dilemmas by striking first if they can get away with it (see Chapter 3
for more detail on the two positions). One suspects that he would have
sympathized with the latter position, but, at the very least, the prudent,
calculating manner he advocates involves the rejection of crusades and
vendettas. Moreover, for Clausewitz and his
philosophical contemporaries,
war is fought on behalf of the nation, and underwritten by national support,
but it is not fought by the nation. As in the writings of his great contempo-
rary Hegel, war is for armies and a clear distinction is to be drawn between
combatants and non-combatants. Civilian, or, at least, political, control, is
central – Clausewitz would have subscribed to Lloyd George’s maxim that
war was too important to be left to the generals, and would have had no
sympathy for the bombast of some
twentieth-century commanders, or the
view (held, for example, by Eisenhower against Churchill in the Second
World War) that war is a technical business and that politicians have no
business interfering in strategic concerns. A Clausewitzian approach would
have spared the twentieth century many disasters. The downside is also
readily apparent – a willingness to use force that seems not to grasp the
moral seriousness of the decision to employ violence for political ends, an
acceptance of the notion that states must always be the judges in their own
cases, an inability to see beyond the confines of the nation to a wider
humanity. In the nineteenth century we might
accept that a Clausewitzian
view of war is an accurate description of how things were, and, on the whole,
a more satisfactory view than the alternatives. In the twentieth century there
were many reasons for doubting this.
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