Jim F.
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003 21:10:23 -0500 (EST) Michael Pollak
<mpollak at panix.com> writes:
>
> 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
>
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