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This article was downloaded by: [University of Kent] On: 16 December 2014, At: 10:23 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rdis20 War without End(s): The End of Clausewitz? ANDREAS HERBERG-ROTHE a & JAN WILLEM HONIG b a Institute for Social Science Humboldt University Berlin , Unter den Linden 6, D-10099, Berlin, Germany E-mail: b Swedish National Defence College , Drottning Kristinas väg 37, SE-11593, Stockholm, Sweden E-mail: Published online: 01 Mar 2011. To cite this article: ANDREAS HERBERG-ROTHE & JAN WILLEM HONIG (2007) War without End(s): The End of Clausewitz?, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 8:2, 133-150, DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2007.9672950 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2007.9672950 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Kent]On: 16 December 2014, At: 10:23Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of SocialTheoryPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rdis20

War without End(s): The End of Clausewitz?ANDREAS HERBERG-ROTHE a & JAN WILLEM HONIG ba Institute for Social Science Humboldt University Berlin , Unter den Linden6, D-10099, Berlin, Germany E-mail:b Swedish National Defence College , Drottning Kristinas väg 37, SE-11593,Stockholm, Sweden E-mail:Published online: 01 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: ANDREAS HERBERG-ROTHE & JAN WILLEM HONIG (2007) War without End(s):The End of Clausewitz?, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 8:2, 133-150, DOI:10.1080/1600910X.2007.9672950

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2007.9672950

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”)contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and ourlicensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publicationare the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor &Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independentlyverified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and usecan be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: War without End(s): The End of Clausewitz?

A N D R E A S H E R B E R C - R O T H E

A N D J A N W I L L E M H O N l C

War without End (s): The End o f Clausewitz?

This article argues that both anti- and pro-Clausewiaians have tended to base their views on an incomplete understanding o f Clausewitz. We claim that the so-called 'new wars' do not require a new analytical paradigm, as is suggested by anti-Clausewitzians like Martin van Creveld and John Keegan. But this does not mean that the prevailing pro-Clausewitzian discourse cannot be challenged. Clausewia, as is well-known, em- ployed a dialectical method o f arguing in extremes. But whereas we suggest that Clau- sewia sought to situate actual war between extremes, the modern discourses share the mistake o f seeing the extremes as incompatible alternatives. We argue that a deeper understanding o f Clausewia's theory, and in particular his views on the state, on poli- cy and politics, as well as on his so-called 'trinity' of competing forces ofwar, provides a framework for analysis that is still valid. This also implies that the attempt to replace Clausewitz with another classical thinker, Sun Tzu, may not be necessary; it may in fact be unproductive. Our approach furthermore suggests that a strong strand in anti- Clausewitzian discourse, which sees the new wars as endemic and marked by irrational, barbaric, and purposeless violence, is at least partly mistaken. The wars o f the future may be endless, but they are unlikely to be without ends.

K E Y W O R D S

C~sewrewrtz; contemporary conflict; Keegan; 'new wars? state as wamhg community; Sun Tzu; trinity; van Creyeld.

Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century

The great brutal i ty o f the wars in Chechnya, Bosnia, and Kosovo as well as in Sub-

Saharan Africa shattered the optimism o f the early 1990s when it seemed that the end

o f the Cold War would be the harbinger o f a largely peaceful twenty-first century in

which economics, no t war, would dominate. The numerous conflicts in Africa and, most recently, the 'war o n terrorism', have given rise t o a growing pessimism. A t the

same time, questions have arisen as to whether the traditional paradigm o f under-

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standing war as a political phenomenon is still appropriate. At first sight, contempo- rary warfare does not readily fit the mould of classical Clausewitzian interstate, polit- ical war. Two names can be invoked to capture this emerging paradigm shift: the dis- course on war is moving from Clausewitz to Nietzsche. War no longer is 'the continu- ation of policy by other means', as Clausewitz so famously maintained (Clausewitz, 1984: 87), but rather, as Nietzsche would say, an existential struggle in which violence itself gives meaning to conflict and in which the agents of violence, the fighters, achieve such a degree of autonomy that any higher, political rationale for conflict dis- appears. As Martin van Creveld, one of the central proponents of this Nietzschean turn has argued: 'the outburst ofviolence is best understood as the supreme manifes- tation of existence as well as a celebration of it' (1991: 143).

This article argues that Clausewitz remains a valuable guide to understanding war, also including contemporary non-state forms of warfare. It does so by criticizing a number of positions which are either claiming a post-Clausewitzian position or dis- playing an incomplete understanding of Clausewitz. We aim, by demonstrating the sophistication and adaptability of Clausewitz' theory, to argue for a renewed Clausewitzian approach to the understanding of war.

Clausewitz's famous book On War is not a dogmatic treatment of how one could achieve victory in every war and it is not merely relevant for traditional state-to-state wars of a previous epoch. On the contrary, we argue, war is conceptualized in Clause- witz's theory as a scale, a continuum between opposing extremes. Clausewitz thus developed what one could call a 'dialectical' theory of war (for details see Herberg- Rothe, 2005; 2007a). Interpreters, both opponents and proponents, invariably tend to take these extremes to be alternatives. In contrast, we emphasize that these extremes can conflict with one another, but that they also combine within each war, as Clausewitz wrote in an often neglected passage:

Once again, we must remind the reader that, in order to lend clarity, distinction, and emphasis to our ideas, only perfect contrasts, the extremes of the spectrum, have been included in our obser- vations. As an actual occurrence, war generally falls somewhere in between, and is influenced by these extremes only to the extent to which it approaches them. (Clausewitz, 1984: 517)

In connection with his 'wondrous trinity' ofviolent emotion, chance, and rational pol- icy - which is something different from so-called trinitarian war, which assumes a clear division between army, government, and people (Summers, 1984; van Creveld, 1991) - Clausewitz asserted: 'Our task therefore is to develop a theory that maintains a balance between these tendencies, like an object suspended between three magnets' (1984: 89). The consequence is that Clausewitz's main concepts must be understood as one-sided poles on a continuum, which is defined as a whole by two opposing extremes.

We argue, firstly, that the extremes of such a continuum should not been regarded as alternatives in such a way that only one should be used to describe war as a whole.

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The history of Clausewitz interpretations is full of cases in which only one of these extremes has been taken as the basis for the interpretation, as if these one-sided con- cepts were representative of the whole of war, be it the apparent principle of destruc- tion by the German Generals during and after the First World War or the assumed rationality of deterrence during the Cold War. By taking only one of the extremes of this continuum as a conceptualization of the whole, these interpretations neglect the opposing tendencies in each war. This has led to an unproductive dichotomy where war is understood as either rationally or irrationally determined. During the Cold War, war was predominantly seen as a rational endeavor. Today this understanding is replaced by one that sees irrationality dominate. This characterization of war as irra- tionality alone is accompanied by a paradigm in which the violent struggle gives meaning to human life, as van Creveld claimed. In contrast, our proposal for under- standing Clausewitz is that each war is composed of the conflicting tendencies of rationality and irrationality, just as Clausewitz described the conflicting tendencies as a trinity comprising 'the initial violence' of war; the peculiar character of force, sub- ject to chance and probability; and finally the subordinate nature of war as a political tool.

Secondly, if one considers his historically determined understanding of what a state embodies, Clausewitz provided a framework for analyzing nearly all wars. His concept of the state in fact means any kind of 'community at war'. The assumption for this understanding is that Clausewitz used a very wide concept of the state and the related concept of the political, which implies that the latter could embody any pur- pose and value assigned to it by a warring community. Instead of having to create an unbridgeable gap between the propositions of whether war is a continuation of poli- tics or not or even the reverse, whether politics is a continuation of warfare, Clause- witz's famous formula enables us to explore the tension between the influence of po t itics on war and the violent tendencies in each war, which are becoming increasingly independent in some cases.

That most of the previous Clausewitz interpretations have taken only one pole as an expression of his entire theory becomes clear in the relation between war and poli- tics. Taking into account Clausewicz's very broad understanding of the concept of the state, which dffers from a modern understanding, enables us to pursue a theory in which the changing character of the relation between politics and war can be elabo- rated with reference to changes in warfare, politics, and society. In such a conception there is no need to eliminate any influence of the politics of a state or the goals and values of an organized community (like Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Taliban) on warfare totally. Admittedly, the relationship between politics and war has changed insofar as politics might have a (temporarily limited?) lesser influence on war in some cases at present but one cannot deduct from this that politics will have no influence on war- fare in the future, as a consistent anti-Clausewitzian approach would imply.

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Contemporary Developments and Clausewitz's Critics

Virtually all wars now take place within states. In complex ways, they are also seem- ingly intricately tied up with the process called 'globalization'. Either way, wars bypass the state. It often appears that, as a result, war is slipping from the grasp of politics and civil society. Uncontrolled violence, anarchy, and even genocide seem to be on the rise. Martin van Creveld, one of the most trenchant critics of Clausewitz, has been one of the most insightful and influential proponents of this shift away from a Clause- witzian approach. In 1991, he published a seminal book which, in Europe, came out under the deliberately chosen Clausewitzian title 'On Future War' (in the US the title was changed to 'The Transformation of War', van Creveld, 1991). He argued that nuclear weapons had made interstate war obsolete. These weapons were so destructive that they made such wars pointless. Instead, he claimed, the wars of the future would be 'low-intensity conflict'. Such conflicts could not be fought and won by the tradi- tional armies that had been designed to fight interstate war. While conventional armies might appear strong, they would be defeated by the 'weak' who chose to fight with persistent low-intensity violence.

There was, according to van Creveld, already an ample historical record to prove this. Because of an irresolvable dilemma the Israeli army had lost the 'occupied terri- tories', just as the US had lost Vietnam and the Soviet Union Afghanistan: despite their might, the Israeli, US, and Soviet armies did not possess the right to overcome their enemies. As he put it in an interview with a German newspaper, 'when you're fighting against an opponent who is much weaker and you kill him, you're a criminal. When you're fighting a much weaker opponent and let him kill you, you're an ichot.' The paradoxical relationship between might and right, he added, is 'of course, pure Nietzsche' (van Creveld, 2000). In this argument, future wars would no longer be polit- ical in the sense that states, governments, and armies would cede pride of place to non-state actors. The distinction between civilian and military would increasingly fade, while the opportunities and autonomy of those seeking a violent way of life would increase. Violence would likely become endemic and endless.

The worries about loss of state control and increasing violence and brutality are central features in the new wars/old wars debate of the 1990s (see Kaldor, 1999; Snow, 1996; 1997; Tofler and Tofler, 1994; for an overview Duyvesteyn and Angstrom, 2005). As part of this debate, Trutz von Trotha predicted a development for Europe similar to the one that could already be observed in subSaharan Africa (von Trotha, 1999). Von Trotha argued that in world-historical terms, the heritage of the Greek polis, the idea of the primacy of the public good incorporated in the state, was an 'exotic' one. The Western world, he claimed, stood in serious danger of returning to historical 'nor- maliry'. This normality had always existed in Africa and its key characteristic was the overriding loyalty to whoever is nearest, rather than the distant state with its vague notions of some 'public' good to be shared equally amongst all. This warning is all the more powerful since von Trotha discerns two worrying developments in the West

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which bode ill for the state. The first is the emergence and social acceptance of'special interest' groups. The second is the celebration of individualism and risk-taking. In Africa, the combination of the two fragments societies into a multitude of competing camps for each of whom self-interest is king. There exists no state and no monopoly of force. Violence is pervasive and genocide becomes possible (von Trotha, 1999: 92-94). 'The future', von Trotha gloomily concludes, 'lies in Africa' (2000; see for a similar, though less andytical, argument Kaplan, 1994).

The range of academic disciplines and perspectives that reach the conclusion that war is spiraling out of control is remarkable. Even the two dominant, yet very con- trasting perspectives on the future technologies with which war will be fought, share the same serious concern with the loss of political control. One school of thought claims that 'knives and machetes' will dominate. The simplicity of the weaponry makes violence a ready option and thus opens the way for war becoming a 'way of life'. In short, such 'primitive' wars reinforce the tendency towards non-state controlled, 'privatized' wars (e.g., Miinkler, 199s; 2002; 2004). Others, in contrast, see the signifi- cance of sophisticated weapons technology increase to such an extent that a rwolu- tion in warfare is taking place (Nooy, 1997; for a comprehensive overview, see Lonsdale, 2004). But, rather than increasing political control, some argue that 'cyborg soldiers', 'autonomous weapons', as well as 'integrated' forms of combat, will also complicate the exercise of political control by civil society (Gray, 1997: 240-42,2~8-59). In short, it seems, technology is yet one more factor that is conspiring against state control ofvio- lence. War, the overwhelming conclusion seems to be, cannot remain a continuation of state-policy for much longer.

The History and Future of War in the Anti-Clausewitzian Approach of Keegan

Few in this anti-Clausewitzian hscourse arrive at an optimistic conclusion. The only exception appears to be the prominent military historian John Keegan. He claims that the Clausewitzian idea that war is a continuation of politics led to a politicization and ideologization of war in the twentieth century (Keegan, 1993; Bassford, 1994). It was the influence of politics and 'civil' society on warfare since the French Rwolution, with Clausewitz as the theoretician of this process, which resulted in the total, all-consum- ing wars of the twentieth century. Keegan is rather unclear about the extent to which this development is now part of history or whether it is still a significant issue. He also takes a rather unsophisticated view of future security challenges, seeing conflict as caused by an amorphous mass of 'ethnic bigots, regional warlords, ideological intran- sigents, common pillagers and organized international criminals' (Keegan, 1993: 391-92). But Keegan is clear on two things. First, Clausewitz is a bad guide to the prac- tice of war. Second, the development of an elitist, aristocratic warrior consciousness, and the code of honor connected with it, would make it possible to limit war and vio- lence in the twenty-first century and definitively break with the past. The military, he

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claims, fosters its own culture, which limits and restrains organized violence through the development of conventions, professionalization, and rituals. The culture of 'war- riors' does not apply force excessively (see also Ignatieff, 1998). Indeed, the military have long held that it was the modern 'civil' age that created and also unleashed the unprecedented potential of violence in human history. Keegan concludes that only if we turn away from Clausewitz and his theories will mankind have a chance of survival

(Keegan, 1993: 385). The professionalization argument, which is primarily based on Keegan's personal

experience in teaching the British armed forces with its strong, 'civilizing' regimental system, is not entirely original or new. It can also be found in the work of the cele- brated British strategist Basil Liddell Hart. Like Keegan, Liddell Hart saw profession- alization of the armed forces as a hedge against total war. His famous 'strategy of the indirect approach', as well as his advocacy of armored 'lighrning' warfare, for example, were part of his attempt to construct an approach to the conduct of war that would allow a small elite army to defeat any opponent, including the much larger conscript- ed hordes of the totalitarian states (Liddell Hart, 1941; 1944). Unlike Keegan, however, Liddell Hart was clear that war was a political instrument, and that it could not, and should not, exist in a political vacuum. Preferably, this politics should be a liberal one. But Liddell Hart's times were not conducive to a liberal politics conducting war with small elite armies. Hence his practical foreign policy advocacy for Britain in the face of the totalitarian threat of the 1930s centered on the idea of 'limited liability', or keep- ing the country's involvement in the continent of Europe limited to financial support and sage advice, but certainly not troops (Liddell Hart, 1932). But even that advice proved of little practical value. The British people and government could not escape the political developments on the continent and the world war it brought (Bond, 1977; Howard, 1972). And perhaps luckily for Britain and the rest of the world, the British government did not long insist on fielding against Germany just a small professional army.

The example of Liddell Harts illustrates that one must be careful about advocat- ing a particular instrument without thinking clearly about its purpose. Liddell Hart was so enamored by his small band of professionals that he failed to see how the threat of 'totalitarian' politics conspired against him and his favored strategy. Keegan has a sense of purpose - his piofessional warriors are 'protectors of civilization' - and a sense of the threat (Keegan, 1993: 391-92). But, like Liddell Hart, he is so preoccupied with his preferred instrument that it remains unclear how the warriors and their cul- ture will actually succeed in protecting civilization. A small professional army practic- ing 'restraint' and 'ritual' in and of itself offers no effective strategy of dealing with security problems. Michael Ignatieff recognized that there was an issue here and sug- gested that a solution might be to extend the warrior culture to include trouble-mak- ers. But even he was only half-convinced that this would work in wars where cultural differences are substantial (Ignatieff, 1998: 109-63).

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Further issues with Keegan's views on the relationship between the warriors and the use of force are, first of all, that his perspective contrasts fundamentally with that of not only Clausewitz, but also much of the literature on militarism (Berghahn, @I), as well as the popular view of the military's natural proclivities. Clausewitz argued that the use of force tends to the extreme. The powerful argument he develops in the first chapter of Book I of On War is that, if force were to follow its own laws, it would be applied without limit. The simple reason is that any failure to apply maximum force by one party would hand an opportunity to the opposing party to use more force and thus prevail.

As a result, the opponents find themselves locked into an escalatory interaction in which each side simultaneously aims to make the other defenseless (Clausewitz, 1984: 75-77; Herberg-Rothe, 2oo7a; Honig, 2007a). To overcome the immanent logic of war and violence and introduce restraint and meaning, Clausewitz argued, requires an external influence. In Clausewitz's eyes, that influence can only be exercised by politics and, by implication, the norms and values of civil society. This is a view that has caught on in the 'militarist' explanations of the world wars, which have also influ- enced the popular imagination. This view maintains that the military is a natural advocate of war and the exclusive application to all problems of the one instrument it knows, force. It was precisely the dominant role the German military played in German society and political life which is seen as the major cause of the World Wars.

Even if one goes along with the argument that the military itself favors restraint, Keegan, like Liddell Hart before him, tends to overlook that this can only work if it is reciprocated. All the parties involved in the fighting must be prepared to recognize each other fundamentally as equals. The code of honor must be commonly shared among the warring parties. Chivalrous warfare in the Middle Ages, for example, worked to the extent it did, because knights on all sides accepted the same basic chival- ric code of restraint. When warfare involved social outsiders, the conduct of war tend- ed to escalate (Contamine, 2003). This, in itself, suggests that the degree to which the 'warrior' can isolate himself from civil society broadly defined, and political society more specifically, is very limited. As Michael Ignatieff has also suggested, the separa- tion of the military from civil society caused by the creation of professional armies, as well as the way the military came to see itself, as a 'profession' with an appropriate 'sense of honor', may actually contribute to the limitation of war and violence in the twenty-first century. But this only works as long as all armies to the conflict remain tied to a civil society and do not become independent in the form of a 'state within the state' (Ignatieff, 1998). One could conclude that Keegan fails to persuade us that mankind only has a chance to survive if it turns away from Clausewitz (Keegan, 199s: 543-44). Keegan's warriors ultimately lack the autonomy they need to act in anon- or anti-Clausewitzian manner.

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The Distinction between Combatants and Non-Combatants

In relation to Keegan it is van Creveld who offers the more fundamental critique of Clausewitz. Van Creveld denies that warriors can be distinguished as a separate cate- gory in society in the wars that are now emerging. The distinction between combat- ants and non-combatants no longer applies. There is thus no civil society and no instrumental, politically purposeful war. Instead there is existential war, where the only differences are between victors and losers, warriors and victims. However, accord- ing to van Creveld, existential fights do not mean that we will experience a Third World War. Rather, the future will be characterized by innumerable 'little' and 'dirty' 'low-intensity conflicts' (van Creveld, 2000).

As was already suggested in the introductory pages, van Creveld's views have influ- enced and at the same time reflect a major current of concern and pessimism regard- ing future conflict. It often seems that there are no agreeable ways to respond to exis- tential wars or wars that represent a way of life. This is a common thread in the 'new wars' literature when it so often settles on 'barbarization' as the main characteristic of these wars (see Kaldor, 1999; Miinkler, 2002; Duyvesteyn and Angstrom, 2005). If, as van Creveld asserts, states face a choice of either coping with low-intensity conflict or disappearing - yet are 'damned if they do and damned if they don't' (1991: 25) - then any attempt to counter or combat the trend is superfluous. Many other analysts, how- ever, are tempted by an answer that already found expression in one of Napoleon's maxims and which, among others, Carl Schmitt also picked up in his project to explain the extreme violence into which Europe had been plunged in the Second World War: only partisans are capable of fighting partisans (Schmitt, 1963). In other words, in order for states or nations and communities successfully to conduct future wars of intervention, both outside as well as within state territory, it is necessary that they adopt the irregular warfare practiced by their enemies. In particular, they should abandon the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.

Taking the Viemam War as an example, van Creveld explicitly argues that the US Army slowly disintegrated and lost the war as a result of an inability to resolve the fol- lowing dilemma: how could one make the moral claim that the distinction between combatants and non-combatants was being maintained, and that the laws of war in respect to this claim were being observed, while in practice the ongoing guerilla war prevented them from being implemented effectively while also winning the war? Although we would agree that respecting this distinction between combatants and non-combatants will be very difficult during future civil wars as well as non-state wars, and presumably even during the smaller number ofwars between states, this does not mean that we must abandon it in advance, as van Creveld has proposed. A civil socie- ty and the state belonging to this society cannot, in principle, give up this basic dis- tinction without calling themselves into question. The differentiation between the 'civil' and the 'military', and the associated idea of the distinction between the legiti-

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mate and illegitimate application of force, however controversial and disputed, are ultimately the basis of every civil society, and indeed of society as such.

Contrasting Tendencies in Clausewitz

But what would an argument look like which makes the case that one can avoid becoming like one's enemy? Here Clausewitz can offer a starting point. Although the early Clausewitz was a supporter of the Napoleonic strategy of destroying the enemy's means of resistance by unleashing maximum force, he came to the opposite conclu- sion after Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. While Napoleon's overwhelming military defeat of the Prussian army at Jena in 1806 (which Clausewitz witnessed as a twenty-six year old) decisively inspired his early theory, it was only after Napoleon's defeat that he slowly reahzed that the very strategy which had made the Emperor's early successes possible had ultimately led to his downfall. The mature Clausewitz concluded that the primacy of decisive destructive battle might be successful in the short term, but in the long run its pursuit would lead not only to defeat, but to com- plete disaster. The reason is not simply that the allied coalition eventually mobilized more force and overwhelmed Napoleon. Rather, the key is that they ultimately pos- sessed the more meaningful politics (Herberg-Rothe, 2007a).

Unpacking this debate in Clausewitz provides the arguments for contextualizing and decisively responding to Keegan, van Creveld and all the others who see war mov- ing into a non-Clausewitzian universe. Keegan is criticizing the early Clausewitz, the supporter of Napoleon's strategy and of the imperative of destruction as a military method. Van Creveld, on the other hand, is attacking the later Clausewitz and his instrumental view of war, which seems to be by definition limited war (van Creveld, 2000). Both critiques moreover show that the current attempts to develop a non- Clausewitzian theory of war in reality move within a field of antitheses, the pararne- ters ofwhich were set out by the early and later Clausewitz himself. This is because the very late Clausewitz emphasized not only the instrumental view of war, but the antithesis between warfare with limited and unlimited aims, which became the criti- cal point of departure for his intended revision of his whole work together with employing the primacy of politics in all parts of the book (which he never managed to complete, see Clausewitz's note from July 1827 in Clausewitz, 1984: 69-70). Although the early Clausewitz was orientated towards the Napoleonic strategy of uncondtion- al offensive and the destruction of the enemy, the position of the later Clausewitz was defined by other priorities resulting from Napoleon's failures in the Russian campaign and his defeats at Leipzig and especially Waterloo. In this later period, the difference between limited and unlimited warfare and the insight into the necessity of war limi- tation became the focal points of his thinking.

Clausewitz used this antithesis to create a discursive field within which the theory of war, in its essentials, still moves today. The major criticisms of Clausewitz today thus do not so much amount to a fundamental dsagreement with his theory, but

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rather reflect Afferent emphases which his theory allows. This can first of all be seen when one considers more closely Clausewitz's celebrated 'formula', as Raymond Aron called it (Aron, 1976). By describing war as a continuation of politics, Clausewitz sug- gests that war is, in a sense, not a means that only belongs to politics itself (1984: 87). The formula thus contains two parts which constitute two extremes: war described either as a continuation of politics, or as something that mainly belongs to the mili- tary sphere. Clausewitz emphasizes that politics uses other, non-political means. This creates an implicit tension between war's status as a continuation of politics and the distinctive nature of its 'other' means. Beatrice Heuser has demonstrated, in her overview of the historical impact of Clausewitz's ideas, that a resolution of this ten- sion has tended to favor one side by leading to a primacy of the military (Heuser, 2002). It is not by accident that critics of Clausewitz, including van Creveld and Keegan, nearly always quote the obvious half of the formula, which simply states that war is a continuation ofpolitics. Their interpretations ignore the second part that pol- itics in warfare uses 'other' means as well. In other words, the formula implies that war and politics will interact, and therefore politics will be intimately affected by the other means it employs.

Clausewitz's Legacy: The Trinity

In particular, such a narrow interpretation ignores or misunderstands one further conceptual step which Clausewitz took. Towards the end of his life, he sought to resolve these antitheses. In 'Consequences for Theory', a t the end of the first chapter of Book I in On War, he proposed that war must be seen as a 'trinity' (1984: 88-89). He emphasized that war is more than a chameleon, which only slightly adapts its charac- teristics to the given case, but that it is a 'wondrous trinity' ('wunderliche Dreifaltig- keit' in German). This trinity is made up of three contradictory tendencies: 'the initial violence' ofwar; the peculiar character of force, subject to chance and probability; and finally the subordinate nature of war as a political tool. It should be noted immedi- ately that, although Clausewitz explicitly maintained the primacy of politics here, he also said that this primacy is at the same time only one of three basically equal ten- dencies which make up every war (1984: 89). As Michael Howard has rightly written 'Such was Clausewitz's conclusion. It would be a good place for any contemporary strategic thinker to begin' (Howard, 2002: 77). However, in contemporary interpreta- tions, only one of these conflicting tendencies - be it the primacy of politics or the imperative of destruction - tends to receive emphasis and the choice is usually elevat- ed to an absolute. The complex relationship of all three elements with one another, and their place within the trinity as a whole, is at worst neglected or at best under- explored.

It must be emphasized once again, that Clausewitz saw all three as equal in prin- ciple and as such they had to be taken together as characteristic of every war. A further complication arose, which can easily lead to misinterpretation and unjustified simpli-

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fication, when Clausewitz associated each of the three tendencies with what might easily appear as a necessarily hierarchically-linked set of institutions: the people, the military, and the government. This, it must be noted, is just a historical limited exam- ple of the more Fundamental 'wondrous trinity' for Clausewitz, even though he may have favored its incarnation in this specific hierarchical relationship fo; the real world of his own time. Beatrice Heuser (2002) has labeled this the 'second trinity'. And, because its constituent elements look remarkably like the main constituent elements of the state, many interpreters only consider this second trinity and consequently arrive at a conception of trinitarian war which presupposes that Clausewitz's theory only applies to interstate warfare (van Creveld, 1991; Summers, 1984). However, the 'wondrous trinity', does not have to be only the state if we consider Clausewitz's con- cept of the state, which is quite different from the modern understanding.

The State as Warring Community in Clausewitz's Conception

Politics seems to have had its day. The state, be it in Iraq or the US, is incapable of stemming the rising tide of anarchical violence. Yet, ifwe do not use Clausewitz's well- known (but reductionist) formula as the sole basis of our reflections, but concentrate instead on its 'consequences for theory', the trinity, his theory remains valid and insightful. But we need to develop Clausewitz's concept of politics towards something like the political-social constitution of a community. However, this makes it impossi- ble to express the dfference between the policy of states and the values of the com- munities waging war. It would therefore make sense to supplement the primacy of politics as a general category by the affiliation of the belligerents to a wider commu- nity. If these communities are states, one can speak of politics in the modern sense; if they are racial, religious or other communities, the value systems and goals of these communities (their 'culture') are the more important factors. If we start with Clausewitz's (somewhat modified) wondrous trinity of war, consisting of the primor- dial violence, the fight between two or more opponents, and the affiliation of the war- ring parties to a political, social or religious community, we can concentrate on the developments ofeach of the three tendencies as well as on their interaction, instead of eliminating one of them entirely in the cases where one of them has changed marked- ly. In contrast to an anti-Clausewitzian approach, undsputed changes in one of the three tendencies do not invalidate the others entirely; it only changes their interaction. We only need to ask, for example, what understanding of the concept of the state Clausewitz used in his description of the relationship between state policy and war. As can be shown (Herberg-Rothe, 2007b), Clausewitz employed a very wide concept of what a state embodied. A modern term which expresses this better would be commu- nity and especially 'warring community', not state in a modern sense.

The key thing is that when, however weak, the three tendencies of the trinity are present, we must call the resultant war political. The inspiration and motivation for

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war may lie elsewhere, far away from the traditional 'raison d'Ctat', but the balancing act that the trinity expresses, which involves organizing force and thus rationalizing and instrumentalizing it, cannot be called but a political process. In most actual con- flicts, it is not difficult to recognize the political, and even the very traditionally polit- ical. Take for instance the Palestinian Intifida, which was the key inspiration for van Creveld's predictions about future war: What was the Intifada other than the yiolent expression of a Palestinian state-building project? In the case ofAl-Qaeda and the 'new terrorism', the trinity, even in its simplest version, also applies. Who could deny that Al-Qaeda has its leaders, fighters, and popular base? How could one not call the process of l e d n g and motivating the fighters and building and appealing to a sup- port base, political? And the same applies, certainly with hindsight, to the wars in the former Yugoslavia, which inspired Mary Kaldor and so many other adherents of the 'barbarization of war' thesis (Kaldor, 1999; Snow, 1996; 1997; Toffler and Toffler, 1994; Duyvesteyn and Angstrom, 2005). Who could disagree now with the current claims to statehood in Kosovo that the 'Yugoslav war of dissolution' involved, at its root, com- peting state-builhng projects (Gow, 1997; 2003)? Even such an egregious act of vio- lence as the Srebrenica genocide possessed a politico-strategic meaning that does not require a non-Clausewitzian explanation (Honig, 2007b).

Clausewitz's approach therefore must be interpreted as a discourse of conflicting tendencies, where one's personal (political or academic) preferences may not always be met in the real world. But wars will nonetheless always have, to some degree, their lead- ers, fighters, and popular base. To be sure, these actors, and the tendencies they repre- sent, can be more or less distinct, but it is unlikely that one will prevail over all others. Violent passion, military chance and probability and political reason, which make up Clausewitz's wondrous trinity, will remain noticeable and distinguishable and each war will depend on their conflicting and interacting developments within different (or sometimes similar) socio-historically determined circumstances.

An Imperfect Clausewitz Renaissance in the USA

Much of the criticism of Clausewitz can also be seen as a reaction against the remark- able renaissance of the Prussian's work in the USA in particular since the Vietnam War. His theory proved to be the crucial starting point for understanding the trau- matic defeat. The former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secre- tary of state, Colin Powell, has argued that Clausewitz's thoughts were like a revela- tion to him and those of his generation who had served as junior officers in Vietnam. Clausewitz's work On War was like a 'beam of light from the past' helping to under- stand contemporary military problems (Powell, 1996: zoo). But even Powell, and many others who found solace and inspiration in Clausewitz, have tended to focus on one particular, extreme position of Clausewitz rather than seeing the whole. According to Powell, Clausewitz suggested that one should not begin a war without being absolute- ly clear what one wanted to achieve by it. Powell commented that this omission had

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been the main mistake made by US policy in Viemam. But it also caused, in his view, a second major error. Not only must the political leadership specifL a political aim, the people must support the war as well. In Viemam all three parties, government, army, and population, failed to live up to the challenge. But the military and the population could be excused, because it was the government that had Fded to take the lead and set a clear agenda Without that agenda, the military and the people could not define their place.

PoweU's understanding of Clausewitz is typical of those who emphasize his con- tinuing relevance. It invokes the trinity, but only does so in a superficial manner. As the doctrine of 'overwhelming force' associated with Powell (1992) also attests, he and the US military are guided primarily by the imperative of destruction. The role of gov- ernment is fundamentally seen as one of creating the conditions, including establish- ing sufficient popular support, in which force can be applied overwhelmingly so as to destroy the enemy in the shortest possible time with the least number of US casualties (see also Summers, 1984). The powerful proponents of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' subscribe to the same view of war. They believe that advances in technology - in particular, the combination of precision-guided weaponry with information tech- nologies - are creating better opportunities than ever before in identitjing and destroying the enemy quickly, effectively, and efficiently (Krepinevich, 1994; Owens, 1995; Cohen, 1996). This understanding of the nature of war and its corresponding approach to fighting wars is meeting its match in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. A real- ization is growing that the singular emphasis on 'killing', however well-targeted and well-executed by the US armed forces, may be counterproductive and fan the flames of opposition and disorder (Ricks, 2007). This direction of some of the Clausewitz re- naissance and the apparent anarchy in Iraq means that many 'Clausewitzians' are not well placed to respond to criticism and have proven such an easy target for anti- Clausewitzians, as well as real-world insurgents (for one stinging critique, see Corn, 2006).

Clausewitz or Sun Tzu: Paradigms of Warfare in the Twenty-First Century

The weaknesses in the prevailing Clausewitzian and anti-Clausewitzian discourses have tempted some to look for an alternative, 'grand' authority to provide a viable, guiding theory to modern war. The ancient Chinese writer, Sun Tzu, has emerged as a contender to take the place of Clausewitz. In our view, however, certain fundamen- tal problems in his work imply that he should not be takes as seriously as he is. Sun Tzu has achieved a remarkable reputation and influence ever since the Clausewitz crit- ic, Liddell Hart, sponsored a translation by US Marines Colonel Samuel B. Griffith in the early 1960s (Sun Tzu, 1963). Many more translations into English, and several other languages, have appeared, especially since the early 1990s. The attractions are obvious. Instead of hundreds of pages of often complicated arguments in Clausewitz, Sun Tzu

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offers a collection of pithy, one-liner aphorisms which were penned in an era, just like ours, of seemingly never-ending wars (Kaplan, 2002).

A further reason is that Sun Tzu has been connected to the highly fashionable 'Revolution in Military mairs ' (RMA). Concepts such as 'Strategic Information War- fare' (SIW) and '4th generation warfare' have made wide use of Sun Tzu's thought to explain and illustrate their claims (Lonsdale, 2004). One commentator in the Asia Times even went so far as to claim that Sun Tzu was the 'real father' of the 'shock and awe' offensive that brought down Saddam Hussein's Iraq in a technological blitz in 2003 (Macan-Markar, 2003). Another pundit claimed criumphancly that Sun Tzu had defeated Clausewitz in this war, because the US armed forces seemed to have con- ducted che campaign in accordance wich principles of Sun Tzu, whereas the Russian advisers of the Iraqi army had relied on Clausewitz and the Russian defense against Napoleon's army in his Russian campaign of 1812 (Peters, 2003). This actually was at odds with the US Army's own view of its inspiration for the operational plan, which was the very tradtional ideal of General George S. Patton's Blitzkrieg breakout from Normandy in 1944 (hence the planners also code-named their operation 'Cobra', just adding a '11', see Gordon and Trainor, 2006). Be that as it may, both approaches to operations shared a disregard of the broader political dimensions of the war. Sun Tzu is attractive to the modern military, and to the wider Western society, because he emphasizes that through low-cost cleverness one can achieve bloodless victory. What overall political aim this victory might serve is something on which Sun Tzu leaves us very much in the dark.

Sun Tzu and the theoreticians of Strategic Information Warfare and 4th genera- tion warfare concentrate too much on success in the short term. They underrate or ignore the process of transforming military success into political victory (see Eche- varria, 2005; Lonsdale, 2004). Arguably, three core elements of Sun Tzu's strategy can- not easily be applied to our times (Sun Tzu, 1963). Deceiving che enemy, which Sun Tzu values as such a critical tool, also runs the risk of deceiving one's own population. In a democracy, that can be problematic and cause a decrease in vital public support. Sun Tzu's heavy emphasis on influencing the wiU and mind of the enemy runs two further risks. One is that an excessive faith in one's ability to conduct psychological warfare could lead one to weaken one's physical military capabilities, thereby under- mining deterrence against an adversary who might be tempted to act pre-emptively. In war, furthermore, an indirect strategy which seeks to exploit psychological weakness in preference to an outright attack on an enemy's physical resources, could hand the enemy an opportunity to evade defeat. By allowing him to preserve his physical means of resistance, his weapons and his forces, he could conceivably fight another day. As the young Clausewitz concluded, the surer way to defeating one's enemy is through the destruction of his physical means of resistance. In the end, the will to resist is meaningless without the physical capability to resist.

One might win battles and even campaigns with Sun Tzu, but it is difficult to win and conclude a modern war by following his principles. There is little sense in Sun Tzu

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of the importance of shaping the political-social conditions one desires to see after the war and how this impacts on the 'calculations' one makes while conducting the war (Clausewitz, 1984: 78). Clausewitz, once again, is far richer: he notes explicitly that what one does in war depends on what one wants to achieve after war. As politics changes, the character ofwar changes. Sun Tzu's focus, to use a modern expression, is on the operational level that is situated within an essentially static view of the gener- al political context. He is not interested in fundamental political change. The role of force in the period of the 'warring states' in China was to preserve not only oneself, but also to preserve the political order in which one operated. Political and military actors sought to keep the losses to themselves limited. That meant, by implication, that the losses they could inflict on others were limited too. Today, politics is differ- ent. As the debates discussed in this article exemplify, we live in an era of unquestion- able, but difficult to understand, political changes. Indeed, the changes seem so dra- matic that it has been doubted - as we have argued, wrongly - that this process can be understood as political. But whether one agrees or not with this terminology, one would accept that the role and purpose of force are changing. Sun Tzu is a problem- atic guide in understanding either process. The wars of the future will perhaps be without end - that all depends on the politics. As long as communities can be mobi- lized and organized to use violence, there will be war. Those wars of the future, how- ever, will not be without ends. For communities to fight and sustain conflict they require organization. This, in turn, requires purpose and meaning. Politics negotiates that gap between meaning (whether it is ultimately religious, existential, Nieuschean or whatever) and organization by assigning purpose or, to use a different expression, by creating policy. This politics may not be controlled by the state as organizer and 'policy-maker', but that does not make the wars any less political.

Clausewitz may have been inspired too much by the state as an ideal. He may also have disliked, or even dismissed, the possibility that the state was a passing phenome- non in history. He nonetheless managed to create a theory that remains a fruitful starting-point for understanding future war, ifwe start with the trinity, and the inter- action and conflict between its three tendencies. Above all, Clausewitz is not a dogmat- ic thinker but a theoretician of the changing character of war due to developments in either the social-political or military world. Although he substantiated the following methodological proposition differently from us, Clausewitz is right in saying:

It is a very difficult cask to construct a scientific theory for the art of war, and so many attempts have failed, that most people say it is impossible, since it deals with matters chat no permanent law can provide for. One would agree and abandon the attempt, were it nor for che obvious fact that a whole range of propositions can be demonstrated without difficulty. (Clausewiu, 1984: 71)

The trinity, in which the primacy of policy is just one tendency, must be understood against the background of this statement: in Clausewitz's approach, war is composed of three conflicting and interacting tendencies.

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- - - -- - -

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Andreas Herbq-Rothe is at present a private (senior) lecturer in Political Science at the Institute for Social Sciences, Humboldt-University Berlin. An associate of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme 'The changing character of War' (2004-200s), together with Hew Strachan he was the convener of the conference 'Clausewitz in the twenty-first century' (Oxford 21-23 March zoos). He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science (2005-06). His most recent publications include Ckausewik's Puzzle: B e Political Beory of War (Oxford University Press, 2007) and (as co-editor with Hew Strachan) Clausewik in the Tweng-First Century (Oxford University Press, 2007) as well as 'Privatized Wars and World Order conflicts', THEORIA (South Africa) 110,2006: 1-22.

ANDREAS HERBERG-ROTHE Institute for Social Science Humboldt University Berlin Unter den Linden 6 D-10099 Berlin Germany herberg-rothe9web.de

Jan Willem Honig holds a degree in medieval history from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in War Studies from the University of London. He is Professor in Military Strategy at the Swedish National Defence College, and Senior Lecturer in War Studies at King's College, London. His recent publications include 'Clausewitz: Text and Translation', in Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds) Ckzusewik in the Tweng-First Century (Oxford University Press, 2007); 'Strategy and Genocide: Srebre- nica as an Analytical Challenge', Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studzes 7(3), 2007: 399-416; 'Introduction to the New Edition', pp. xv-xxiv in Carl von Clausewitz On War, tr. J. J. Graham (Barnes & Noble, 2004). He also co-authored, with Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (Penguin, 1997).

JAN WILLBM HONIG Swedish National Defence College Drotming Kristinas vag 37 SE-11593 Stockholm Sweden janwillem. honig9fhs.se

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