The Clausewitz Myth
Or The Emperor’s New Clothes
By
Azar Gat
M. P. Ross 10-09-24
Two gentlemen faced one another. They stood on a high point overlooking fields and roads, rivers and towns.
“I must ask you sir, is this the hill that you will choose to die on?”
“I don’t know…it doesn’t speak to me. Can we have another look at that first hill that you showed me?”
“Certainly. And, I have one more that I think you will find quite well suited to your requirements.”
Voiceover: “Napoleon met his Waterloo in Belgium, and so can you!”
This ad brought to you by the Belgian War and Treaty Convention Bureau.
Conflict has been a common feature of society for as long as there has been human society. In what form it has been expressed as combat and warfare, both within and between societies (and individuals and every combination in between), has of course changed over history. War between Westphalian sovereign states, fought by regular armies in formation on a field of battle, as was the often the case during the 18th and 19th centuries, was the norm for only a short period during the span of human history, and while dominant, was not exclusive even then. Irregular warfare was practiced during the French and Indian War, and an army of French citizen, non-professional soldiers, from the levée en masse of the Revolution to the Grande Armée, fought with Napoleon.
Exactly what is the nature of war? Given its prevalence, cost, and consequences one would expect a long trail of definitions and explanations, or at least accounts, going back to antiquity. The two best known tracts on war are Sun Tzu’s 5th century BCE The Art of War, and Clausewitz’s On War (posthumously published in 1832). The latter is the subject of prominent Clausewitz scholar Azar Gat’s latest book, The Clausewitz Myth, Or the Emperor’s New Clothes.
“Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) is by far the most celebrated military theorist, whose reputation has reached new heights. This book is as much about the Clausewitz phenomenon as it is about his ideas. It argues that many of his interpreters, struggling to make sense of his work, have not admitted—to themselves, no less than to their readers—that they did not quite figure it out. Hence, the ‘emperor’s new clothes.’”
Gat articulates a convincing argument that the Clausewitz we have today, or during any given period since the publication of On War, is the Clausewitz that best serves the prevailing zeitgeist. As Clausewitz wrote of absolute and real war, so Gat writes of the absolute and real Clausewitz; the form of the myth and the content of the actual person. Did he really chop down a cherry tree, own up to it, never one to tell a lie? Well, likely neither did George Washington, whose reputation likewise remains intact. If not exactly who many in academia, government, or the military portray him to be, he did nonetheless prove himself an estimable figure, of personal and intellectual integrity, whose contributions to political theory continue to be valued.
From early in his career, Clausewitz sought a theory of war. Such a theory would have to meet our test for applied political theory, an essence in two senses, that it would express a universal principle of war, as well as being an essence that could be applied by commanders in the field. For examples, he focused on wars of the previous hundred years, rather than a survey of all wars. The “fog of war” results in the kind of chaos Tolstoy describes in the battle passages in War and Peace, the same battles that occupied Clausewitz’s thoughts. Means and technology advance, the “manner” of war is not constant, it is the “spirit of war” that endures, and that spirit drives vigorous, violent battle. The nature of war and its conduct resists universal prescription, it operates on contingencies.
“War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.” Defense is stronger than offense, but will be chosen only by the weaker party, who would otherwise take the offensive. This is the through-line in Clausewitz’s thought.
There are two concepts in On War for which Clausewitz receives the most attention. One is that wunderliche Dräfaltigkeit, that curious or peculiar trinity which concerns the population, the military, and the government—as Clausewitz tells us, and as it is generally construed. The second is his formulation on war and politics.
Colonel Graham’s translation reads the “wonderful trinity”; “wonderful” rather than the more direct “strange” denoting one might surmise being full of wonder, as in “what the hell?” rather than “isn’t this just great?” In any case, Clausewitz is referring to war as encompassing the interests of the entire society, a conflict fought between Westphalian states, which was the case in his time, and as such the focus of his concerns. Our contemporary, Martin Van Crevald, in The Transformation of War, takes issue with the modern relevance of the trinity, with its emphasis on state to state conflict in a time when wars now often involve non-state actors. It is worthwhile taking note of van Crevald’s work in the greater context of war—non-state groups were the norm in some eras of human history just as they are now, but this is not material for us in our current discussion of Clausewitz within his own historical context. Clausewitz’s trinity is not present beyond a brief mention in Gat’s argument.
On the second point, of war and politics, we arrive at a major juncture for Clausewitz, where he turns completely around, reexamines his earliest positions, and endeavors to resolve a key dialectic, resulting in a major revision of Vom Kriege. We should not be surprised. The middle-aged Clausewitz had been in the game going on twenty years. An intellectually honest person should reconsider and adapt accordingly when faced with contrary facts.
Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetanng der Politik mit andern Mitteln. War is a mere continuation of politics with other means. With all due credit to Clausewitz, this had been an obvious and well-recognized concept. But, he said it best; concise, comprehensive, and catchy. It also puts the brakes on a pedal to the metal, full speed ahead, conception of war. It is arguably the point on which the Clausewitz of myth turns, where the actual Clausewitz fades away and he rises as an indecipherable genius.
The On War with which we are most familiar is the product of revision and translation. It appears more dialectic than intended, with uncertain resolution in a third term. There is absolute and real war; total and limited war; defense and offense; and the relationship of war and diplomacy. Why?
This is the question taken up in The Clausewitz Myth. Gat offers two main points. The first is that earlier translations and commentary ignored the crucial context of the intellectual and social context in which Clausewitz wrote. The second, which follows from the error committed by the first, is the creation of a mythological Clausewitz, again the absolute Clausewitz his followers needed him to be, not the real Clausewitz, exposed as the naked emperor.
Clausewitz’s life spanned the exact period when Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment collided. (The book’s subtitle, The Emperor’s New Clothes, is a play on the literary and cultural tropes of Counter-Enlightenment Romanticism.) We can thank the Enlightenment for modern liberal democracy, rational thought over superstition, and the scientific method. However, as the Folly of the Pure Model tells us, you can have too much of a good thing, and the Enlightenment took rational, scientific thinking too far—it rather fell short when applied to, as it turns out, less than fully rational humans.
The Counter-Enlightenment sought to correct this intellectual overreach. Laws of physics and mathematical equations could scarcely circumscribe the passions, emotions, and even genius of a flesh and blood human. This sentiment was especially strong in Germany. Not that the Germans rejected science. As Tolstoy’s Prince Andrei muses: “A German is self-assured…because he imagines that he knows the truth, science, which he has invented himself, but which for him is the absolute truth.” Romanticism, though, was no less prone to taking a good thing too far. Reading Clausewitz’s contemporary, Goethe, a man of many talents and yet fully embracing Sturm und Drang, one feels the urge to put down one’s Sorrows and speak up, “for crying out loud, get young Werther the help he needs, and give poor Charlotte a break!”
There we have Clausewitz, his entire life and career taking place on an active intellectual, social, and cultural fault line. Yet, as we read in The Clausewitz Myth, this seismic circumstance little figures in the work of Clausewitz scholars. Liberals claim him for the Enlightenment, the right (and most notably, the far-right) for the Counter-Enlightenment, each as serves their own needs. Gat gives us a more nuanced take. While clearly a Romanticist, rejecting rigid universal principles as inadequate and inapplicable to the dynamic circumstances of war, and a champion of the genius appropriately schooled in the art of war, armed with the full suite of human capacity, Clausewitz nonetheless retained his intellectual integrity, willing to challenge his own assumptions, demonstrated by the revisions he made to his already completed first draft of Vom Kreige.
Throughout his career from his Oxford doctoral studies to the present, Gat has written on Clausewitz in numerous books. Like Clausewitz, he evinces an openness to revisit long held positions in light of newly uncovered material. The Howard-Paret translation came out in 1976. Gat received his doctorate in 1986. It is only in the last number of years that a treasure of previously unpublished Clausewitz writings have become available. Notes, papers, revisions, and personal correspondence. It became possible to more accurately map the evolution of Clausewitz’s thoughts from his first writings as a young officer, to the first draft of Vom Kriege, to the version published in 1832.
What had appeared to previous scholars as puzzling dialectics, the cryptic work of a genius, once compared with the new documents, showed the U-turn of which Gat writes. The early Clausewitz was still there, arguing for prosecuting total devastating war, but gradually coming to paint a broader canvas, where limited war or a strategy of defense had a place, and of key importance to his legacy, the relationship between war and diplomacy took greater prominence.
We know this because we can now compare the first draft of Book I with the first published version. Vom Kriege was yet a work in progress. It was brought to print after his death from cholera by his closest colleague and confident, his wife, Marie. What we do not know is what further revisions would have included had Clausewitz lived just a few years longer. Gat does, however, make a convincing case for the real Clausewitz, supported by the previously unavailable writings.
Azar Gat has considerable credentials as a Clausewitz scholar. His doctoral advisor at Oxford was Michael Howard. Howard and Peter Paret (also a student of Howard’s, though nearly the same age) are the translators of the English edition of On War from Princeton University Press (who recently published the new translation of Marx’s Capital reviewed on this website). Quite a distinguished lineage.
Reading both The Clausewitz Myth and On War, we find a feature that will be familiar to students of philosophy. The authors directly address a specific audience of their colleagues, sometimes by name. In Gat’s case, who else is as well qualified to write on Clausewitz, but that circle of colleagues? As with his previous book, Ideological Fixation, he is nuanced, open to a range of opinions, yet intellectually honest and rigorous, firm in his position, while retaining the same affability.