Center for a New American Security

For Republican politicians,

For Republican politicians, war is more important than strategy since having vanquished the Confederacy, everything else has been easy and ... profitable. During the late-19th century, for instance, the industrial tariff not only boosted industry in Republican states but generated enough revenue to pay generous Union Army pensions and to dabble in imperialism with parody of the Royal Navy.

Today, the GOP (establishment) has inherited Eisenhower's military-industrial complex as well as Lyndon Johnson's agro-military pork barrel. But, these lucrative positions are an electoral death-trap for them. They are just not that well aligned with the GOP "base vote" much less the American electorate.

So, Barack Obama has the "Party of Lincoln" plus ,,, a shot at Texas.

Alas, he will lose Texas voters -- Democratic non-voters, actually -- but is doing fine with Texas donors -- lawyers, mostly. I cannot blame him, this is entirely a problem the Texas Democratic Party has inflicted upon itself.

In any event, the next election gets Barack Obama four more years in the White House and a Commander-in-Chief role that he is very good at. It does not get him a functional Congress or Federal Reserve Board. And, he has, perhaps, the most reactionary Supreme Court of any President. Seriously: those berobed nerds are huge Magna Carta fans -- not republicans or democrats.

In civil-military relations and, also, in "4gen" warfare, the main question will be what the President, as Commander-in-Chief, does with the police (pension funds) and banks (chosen instruments of the CIA). President Lincoln had to fire General McClellan and hire General Grant to win the Civil War. President Obama really needs to fire Tim Geithner and hire Jamie Galbraith.

John Robert BEHRMAN
Executive Committeeman, SD-13
Texas Democratic Party

aelkus- "Clausewitz

aelkus-
"Clausewitz simultaneously describes violence as an outgrowth of the political process (which could imply a negative impact) and calls for politics to be placed at the head of military operations."

I think you missed Clausewitz' aim here. His thesis is that the aim of military operations is to achieve a political end. Many of his contemporaries (and even more officers that followed him and incorrectly cited him as their authority) believed that governments attempt to accomplish a goal through "politics," and once that fails, they enter war, the aim of which is the complete destruction of the enemy's military. Clausewitz's argument was that all military operations drive towards the political goal the government wishes to accomplish, which isn't necessarily tied to the complete destruction of the enemy's military. And that to pursue the latter may be to the detriment of the former.

BEHRMAN-
"For Republican politicians, war is more important than strategy since having vanquished the Confederacy, everything else has been easy and ... profitable."

This sentence is non-sensical. Do you mean to say that, for Republicans, being at war is more important than having an aim for that war? If that's the case, what do you have to say about Vietnam?

Ndorop-
Clausewitz firmly believed in the subordination of military strategy to the aims of a country's government. There is a difference between a politician organizing the drill of military units and a politician directing his military leaders to achieve a specific political end.

On War can be unclear. In two

On War can be unclear. In two letters (a form that restricts the length of words and sentences even in German), Clausewitz was much more clear and concise. As translated by Peter Paret, on December 22, 1827, Clausewitz wrote this review of a war game submitted to him by Major Roeder of the Prussian Army:

You have asked me, dear friend, to give you my opinion of the strategic problems and the two solutions you have sent me. I do so with the understanding that you will treat my communication, which is made purely in the interest of scholarship, as entirely confidential.

Forgive me if I start at the very beginning; but nowhere is a basic understanding, the true and unambiguous recognition of inescapable facts, so lacking as in the so-called science of strategy.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main lines of every major strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political character increases the more the plan encompasses the entire war and the entire state. The plan for the war results directly from the political conditions of the two belligerent states, as well as from their relations to other powers. The plan of campaign results from the war plan, and frequently-if there is only one theater of operations-may even be identical with it. But the political element even extends to the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it be without influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to this point of view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great strategic issue, nor of a purely military scheme to solve it. That it is essential to see the matter in this way, that the point of view is almost self-evident if we only keep the history of war in mind, scarcely needs proof. Nevertheless, it has not yet been fully accepted, as is shown by the fact that people still like to separate the purely military elements of a major strategic plan from its political aspects, and treat the latter as if they were somehow extraneous. War is nothing but the continuation of political efforts by other means. In my view all of strategy rests on this idea, and I believe that whoever refuses to recognize that this must be so does not yet fully understand what really matters. It is this principle that makes the entire history of war comprehensible, which in its absence remains full of the greatest absurdities.

How then is it possible to plan a campaign, whether for one theater of war or several, without indicating the political condition of the belligerents, and the politics of their relationship to each other?

Every major war plan grows out of so many individual circumstances, which determine its features, that it is impossible to devise a hypothetical case with such specificity that it could be taken as real. We are not referring simply to trivialities, but to the most important issues, which nevertheless have almost always been ignored. For instance, Bonaparte and Frederick the Great are often compared, sometimes without keeping in mind that one man ruled 40 million subjects, the other 5. But let me call attention to another, less noticeable and yet very significant distinction: Bonaparte was a usurper, who had won his immense power in a kind of perpetual game of chance, and who, for the greater part of his perilous career, did not even possess an heir; while Frederick the Great disposed of a true patrimony. Had nature given both men identical psychological qualities, would they have acted in the same manner? Certainly not, and that alone makes it impossible for us to measure them by the same standard. In short, it is impossible to construct a hypothetical case in such a way that we can say that what was left out was not essential. We can of course think of many characteristics of the opposing armies and states that are identical, and have the effect of canceling each other out; but solving such problems would be no more than a useful exercise. Our best solutions could not be applied to real conflicts.

If, therefore, such exercises allow us to leave many things out of consideration because we believe they neutralize each other, we still cannot ignore those conditions that have brought about the war and that determine its political purpose. The political purpose and the means available to achieve it give rise to the military objective. This ultimate goal of the entire belligerent act, or of the particular campaign if the two are identical, is therefore the first and most important issue that the strategist must address, for the main lines of the strategic plan run toward this, goal, or at least are guided by it. It is one thing to intend to crush my opponent if I have the means to do so, to make him defenseless and force him to accept my peace terms. It is obviously something different to be content with gaining some advantage by conquering a strip of land, occupying a fortress, etc., which I can retain or use in negotiations when, the fighting stops. The exceptional circumstances in which Bonaparte and France found themselves since the Wars of the Revolution, allowed him to achieve major victories on almost every occasion, and people began to assume that the plans and actions created by those circumstances were universal norms. But such a view would summarily reject all of the earlier history of war, which is absurd. If we wish to derive an art of war from the history of war -and that is undoubtedly the only possible way-we must not minimize the testimony of history. Suppose we find that out of fifty wars forty-nine have been of the second kind- that is, wars with limited objectives, not directed at the total defeat of the enemy -then we would have to believe that these limitations reside in the nature of war itself, instead of being in every case brought about by wrong ideas, lack of energy, or whatever. We must not allow ourselves to be misled into regarding war as a pure act of force and of destruction, and from this simplistic concept logically deduce a string of conclusions that no longer have anything to do with the real world. Instead we must recognize that war is a political act that is not wholly autonomous; a true political instrument that does not function on its own but is controlled by something else, by the hand of policy.

The greater the extent to which policy is motivated by comprehensive interests, affecting the very existence of the state, and the greater the extent to which the issue is cast in terms of survival or extinction, the more policy and hostile feelings coincide. As policy dissolves into hostility, war becomes simpler; it proceeds according to the pure concept of force and destruction, and satisfies whatever demands can be logically developed from this concept, until all its component parts come to possess the coherence of a simple necessity. Such a war may seem entirely apolitical, and on that account has been considered the norm. But obviously the political element exists here no less than it does in other kinds of war. It merely coincides so completely with the concept of force and destruction that it vanishes from sight.

One reason why Clausewitz is misunderstood by English speakers is that most of the Clausewitzian corpus has not been translated into English. This includes not only letters such as the one quoted above but the many historical studies that Clausewitz wrote as preparation for finishing On War. Lacking that body of work, most English readers of Clausewitz are left counting how many Corsican Ogres can dance on Michael Howard's head.