Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
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.
* * *
Well, maybe at one level. BNut at another, Clausewitz's maxim is normative, not descriptive. It tells us that war has a point, a purpose, and isn't just an opportunity for glory or an occasion for the self-expression of a warrior elite. It's an attempt to achieve a purpose, and therefore should only be resorted to, as a matter of prudence, when it is likelt to achieve that purpose, and by means thatw ill not frustrate the purpose. So the maxim provides a basis for critiquing WWI, Vietnam, and GWII precisely because they have no rational relation, as war, to sensible political ends. They are not counterexamples to the maxim. They are targets of its critique.
jks
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