His answer, in part, was that war was neither pure escalatory violence nor purely political. In the real world, wars rarely move to the extreme where both sides were doing everything to win.Ĭlausewitz then sets out to explain why war does not go to its theoretical absolute extreme form. But Clausewitz, having explored the extreme, injects a dose of reality. It was a thought experiment to understand the full dimensions of what war could be. In a purely logical sense, war should go up this tit-for-tat scale to its most extreme form, since both A and B know that war will get there eventually, they will jump to the most extreme measures right away. A shoots a tactical nuke at B, and B uses a thermonuclear device on A, and so on, back and forth, until they reach some sort of hypothetical extreme. A brings in the artillery and shells B, and B drops a 1,000 lbs.

B shoots A with a pistol, so A shoots B with a machine gun, and B responds by firing a bazooka at A. A kicks B, B hits A with a club, so A hits B with an axe. For example, imagine two polities, A and B, get into a violent confrontation in that lab.Ī slaps B, so B punches A. What he was saying was that if war took place in a pristine lab, it would go to a limitless extreme. 127), he was not calling for the overwhelming use of force-decisive battles-as the preferred way to wage wars. 96) or that “essentially war is fighting” (p. 75) or that “there is only one means in war: combat” (p. They are not prescriptive, and they should not be read that way.įor example, when Clausewitz writes about “the maximum use of force” in war (p. But neither book is meant to tell readers how to fight and win wars. The problem, due in large part to Clausewitz’s meandering style, is that too many influential commentators have treated those books as how-to manuals. Book Two is Clausewitz’s idea of what theory is-a guide to study of a complex phenomenon-and is not-a list of rules to follow-when it comes to war. Book One is meant to explain what war is-to define its fundamental characteristics and to distinguish it from other human interactions, especially in peacetime. Book One is “On the Nature of War,” and Book Two is “On the Theory of War.” That is literally all they are. A lot of readers over the years have misunderstood what Clausewitz was doing with Books One and Two. This distinction is a real problem with real ramifications. What War Is Is Different Than How You Fight a War Clausewitz can be useful and accessible -but getting to the usable parts means getting past the sections that were never meant to be used in the first place. But the reality is that the 19 th century Prussian text is also difficult, and most people, even military strategists, do not have the time or inclination to read it. Military leaders and politicians quote him, and it is rare to find a professional military education syllabus without excerpts of the book.

The problem, due in large part to Clausewitz’s meandering style, is that too many influential commentators have treated those books as how-to manuals.Ĭarl von Clausewitz’s text, On War, ascends to the status of sacred text in many circles.

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