On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Jim Farmelant wrote:
> Its always good to keep in mind Cluaswitz's old maxim that "war is
> politics carried out by other means."
Clauswitz's model only applied to a vanished world in which countries could plausibly be reduced to points of policy because they were all autocracies. The will of each state was the will of one man. Domestic politics didn't matter at all his world. That wasn't the "politics" he was talking about. For all he learned from Napoleon, his model assumed mass mobilization was no different that using a professional army caste. He was right in 1870 (which was when his book became famous, not because of what he said, but because it of what German generals did, which people wanted to learn the secret of). He was dreadfully wrong in 1914, when every country had imitated Germany. If there was ever a war that didn't further any country's interests, that was the one.
>From that point on, Clauswitz's model ceased to be able to describe the
dynamics of either major clashes or major guerrilla wars. The only thing
it continues to apply to are precisely those imperial police actions that
are so clearly venal that they don't need a theory to explain them.
That doesn't mean that smart people can't say smart things after ritually citing Clauswitz. But I think it would be better if we retired the ritual.
Michael