Strategy (17 page)

Before Jomini went out of fashion during the twentieth century he was the first port of call for any aspiring strategist and a model of lucidity and intelligibility. Jomini might not always have been a scintillating read, but he was much easier to follow than Clausewitz.

The relationship between the two was complex. The younger Clausewitz clearly borrowed from Jomini, and the second edition of the
Art of War
took into account Clausewitz's criticisms.
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The two men never met and did not speak warmly of each other. On many operational issues, the differences were not great. Jomini claimed to be aware of the dangers of theoretical pedantry, while Clausewitz grasped the importance of operational techniques. Jomini's prime purpose was instruction and he found Clausewitz's theorizing overblown. As Clausewitz developed his ideas, he differentiated himself from von Bulow's mathematical approach, but his criticisms might also be taken to apply to Jomini. He observed that efforts to “equip the conduct of war with principles, rules, or even systems” failed because they could not “take an adequate account of the endless complexities involved.” “Pity the soldier,” wrote Clausewitz, “who is supposed to crawl among these scraps of rules, not good enough for genius, which genius can ignore, or laugh at. No; what genius does is the best rule, and theory can do no better than show how and why this should be the case.”
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Clausewitz came to be celebrated as a greater theorist of war, but Jomini had enduring appeal to military planners. Because he developed his theories while Napoleon was at his peak, Jomini's writing showed an optimism that is lacking in Clausewitz. Hew Strachan notes how Jomini's confidence in his principles, his “rational and managerial,” “prospective and purposeful” theory of war and self-contained view of battle appealed to generations of American generals and admirals.
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In
On War
, Clausewitz was attempting something very ambitious. More than a textbook for an aspiring general, this was a whole theory of war. His achievement was to develop a conceptual framework that captured war's essence sufficiently for subsequent generations to return to it when seeking to make sense of the conflicts of their own time. The ambiguities and tensions in
On War
allowed Marxists, Nazis, and liberals to claim it as authoritative support for their own theories and strategies.
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Even those who considered
On War
wrongheaded and out of date entered into direct competition, as if their own credibility depended on undermining Clausewitz.
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Contributing to the advanced scholarship on Clausewitz now requires discussing the adequacy of the available translations, the interaction of biography and intellectual development, what might be read into occasional phrases that are suggestive of larger thoughts, and the dual meanings carried by key concepts and their application in particular cases.
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With this in mind, we can explore the theory of strategy that emerged from Clausewitz's theory of war. Clausewitz's most famous dictum, that war is a continuation of policy by other means, is a charter for strategists. The choice of the word
policy
in the translation by Michael Howard and Peter Paret reflected their view that the reference needed to be something above everyday “politics,” a word which they saw as having negative connotations in Britain and the United States. Bassford has argued that policy sounds too settled, unilateral, and rational, while politics has the virtue of conveying interactivity, binding rivals together in their conflict.
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Both meanings can be made to work. The key point is that insisting on political purpose takes war away from mindless violence. This dictum does not propose that war is always a sensible expression of policy, or that the movement from politics to war is from one defined state to another. The difference lies in the violence and the sharpness of the confrontation between two opposed wills. This in turn exacerbates the influence of those factors of emotion and chance that are evident in the political sphere but become so much more significant in the military, and constantly complicate war's conduct. So while Clausewitz by no means rules out an effective strategy, for this would render
On War
a pointless exercise, his stress was on the limits to strategy, the constraints that make it unwise to try to be too clever.

The challenge for politics, and therefore strategy, was to impose a semblance of rationality, in terms of the dogged pursuit of state objectives. Although his dictum came to be regularly cited as an authority for civilian primacy over the military, Antulio Echevarria cautions that many of
Clausewitz's thoughts on politics and international conflict, especially in the unrevised sections, were circular and deterministic. The key to Clausewitz's greatness as theorist of war lay instead in the observation that was at the heart of his mature thought, that war was shaped by a

remarkable trinity—composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes [war] subject to reason alone.
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His theory depended on the dynamic interplay of these three factors. The trinity superseded the dictum, for it suggested that politics was not in command but one factor among three. With respect to the survival of the state in a challenging international system—which was how Clausewitz understood the concept—politics must always set the terms for war, but politics could not challenge the “grammar of war” lest it reduce the chances of success and so the achievement of the ultimate objective. This could in turn lead to military actions with great political consequences. Despite the apparent subordination of the military to politics, the dynamic quality of the trinity helped explained why the relationship was not so simple.
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As a clash of opposing wills, a duel on a grand scale, war in the ideal sense tended to absolute violence. Having posed this possibility, Clausewitz pointed to the other two parts of the trinity to explain why it was unlikely to be realized. Politics was one source of restraint, but friction was another. This was one of Clausewitz's most significant contributions to military thought. Friction helped explain the difference between war as it might be—that is, absolute and unrestrained—and actual war. He explained the phenomenon in one of his most celebrated passages:

Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war … Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal.

The result was “effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance.” Friction thus caused delay and confusion. Action in war became like walking in water, and vision was regularly obscured. “All actions take place in something virtually akin to dusk, which in addition, like fog or moonlight, gives objects an exaggerated size and a grotesque view.”
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Generals in charge of military organizations were doomed to disappointment. Everything would take longer than it should, and it would be hard to generate the flexibility needed to keep up with events.

Within the paradoxical trinity, violence and chance could still be subordinated to politics and the application of reason. If the strategist did not apply reason, war would become progressively chaotic and unpredictable. The challenge for the intelligent strategist was to anticipate both the enemy and all those elements of friction and chance that got in the way. The correct approach was not to give up and assume that chaos and unpredictability would mock all plans and overwhelm best efforts but rather to prepare for such eventualities in advance. The test of a great general was making a plan that he could see through. Clausewitz wrote about the need for the commander to be a military genius, but he did not necessarily mean an exceptional, once-in-a-generation individual such as Napoleon. Genius required a grasp of the demands of war, the nature of the enemy, and the need to stay cool at all times. Indeed, Clausewitz was wary of the general who tried to be too smart. He preferred those who kept their imaginations in check and a firm grip on the harsh realities of battle.

So while his description of war suggested that the wise course would be to retain maximum flexibility and prepare to seize opportunities as they arose, he came to the opposite conclusion, arguing for a clear plan of conduct based on a series of connected, sequential steps. He preferred a stress on careful planning without distractions. The strategist must “draft the plan of the war, and the aim will determine the series of actions intended to achieve it.”
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A war should not be started without a plan for its conduct firmly in mind. Once implementation had begun, it should only be amended at times of unavoidable necessity.
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Clausewitz's definition of strategy as “the use of the engagement to achieve the objectives of the war” translated political goals into a military aim. The strategist would “shape the individual campaigns and, within these, decide on the individual engagements.”
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Preferring to enter war with a plan for victory was understandable. But why the confidence that any plan could be implemented?

Clausewitz offered three reasons. First, despite all the talk of unpredictability, not everything was a mystery. Certain actions had known effects. An enemy attacked from behind or caught in an ambush would exhibit lower morale and less bravery. Most importantly, it was possible to make relatively objective assessments of the opposing sides, taking into account their experience and their “spirit and temper.” While the enemy's own plans and responses to situations could not be known exactly, the laws of probability could be applied. Confronting an excitable visionary would require a
different plan than that for an enemy known to be hard and calculating. The bold would be granted more respect than the cautious, the active more than the passive, and the clever more than the stupid.

A second factor was the unreliability of intelligence. Without a robust starting plan, occasional reports might cause an undue deviation: “Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.” Furthermore, intelligence tended to have a pessimistic bias. The exaggeration of bad news led to gloomy and despondent commanders who conjured up landscapes of imagined perils: “War has a way of masking the stage with scenery crudely daubed with fearsome apparitions.” These vivid impressions overwhelmed systematic thought, and so “even the man who planned the operation and now sees it being carried out may well lose confidence in his earlier judgment.” He must therefore exorcise false appearances by trusting instead in “the laws of probability” and in his own judgment gained from “knowledge of men and affairs and from common sense.”
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With improved information gathering, Clausewitz's advice to ignore timely intelligence now appears as more of a recipe for disaster than a means of avoiding unnecessary panic.

Third, both sides were subject to friction, so it was a poor excuse for defeat. The question was who could cope with it better. The essence of good generalship was to triumph over friction, to the extent possible, through both careful planning and maintaining a presence of mind when the unexpected happened.
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“The good general must know friction in order to overcome it whenever possible, and in order not to expect a standard of achievement in his operations which this very friction makes impossible.”
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This important qualification warned against excessive strategic ambition.

So size mattered. Armies were “so much alike” that there was “little difference between the best and the worst of them.” The most reliable means to success, in both tactics and strategy, was therefore superiority in numbers: “The skill of the greatest commanders may be counterbalanced by a two-to-one ratio in the fighting forces.” Clausewitz could see the attraction of cunning, indirect strategies, which could confuse the enemy and lower morale. He noted that it might be thought that “strategy” took its name from “trickery,” but he saw little historical evidence that tricks (stratagems) could be effective and considered it dangerous to make a false impression by deploying large forces, which might be left in the wrong position when they were really needed. At the tactical level, surprise was important and attainable, but at the strategic level the mobilization and movement of forces were likely to give the game away. Friction was also a major factor, holding up the sort of movements necessary to catch the enemy unawares. So when it came to
the choice of force or guile, Clausewitz opted for the former. The “strategist's chessmen do not have the kind of mobility that is essential for stratagem and cunning … accurate and penetrating understanding is a more useful and essential asset for the commander than any gift for cunning.” His advice was to keep the plan simple, especially against a capable opponent. A simple plan would require the excellent execution of each engagement; for this reason, tactical success was vital. In this respect, the strategic plan survived so long as successive engagements were being won.

This put a premium on knowing when to stop. An enemy willing and able to redouble his efforts put a final victory out of reach. Another important Clausewitzian concept was the “culminating point of victory,” the point at which further attack could lead to a reversal of fortunes. It was “important to calculate this point correctly when planning the campaign.”
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This was about the developing balance of advantage as a campaign progressed. After being wounded, would the enemy collapse with exhaustion or be enraged? What were the distractions to be avoided, the opportunistic but diverting targets away from the main line of advance? There would be temptations to capture “certain geographical points” or seize “undefended provinces,” as if they had value in themselves as “windfall profits,” but that could put the main aim at risk. A consistent, focused approach should discourage disruption. Here were the reasons for Napoleon's failure in 1812.