Continuing relevance of Clausewitz in understanding nature and character of warfare in 21st century While many scholars attempted to theorize war in human history, only few were credited for constructing consistent theories on which people could base and further their understanding of war and warfare. Those include Greek Thucydides, Chinese Sun Tzu, and Indian Kautilya all three from 3-4th century BC; Prussian Carl von Clausewitz and Swiss Antoine-Henry Jomini both from 19th century.
All of those prominent theorist had a lot to offer and therefore had great influence on our thinking in war, warfare, and strategy. However, Clausewitz’s theory offers more insight if one carefully and purposely studied the “paradoxical trinity” identified in his famous magnum opus “On War”. Therefore, this paper first examines strategic environment in 21st century, and secondly it examines relevance of the theorists, thirdly it illustrates practicality of the tendencies of the trinity using the current war against ISIS as a tool.
Finally, it concludes Clausewitz’s theory is more relevant in understanding of nature and character of war the 21st century warfare as his contribution weights more than the others. In 21st century, occurrence of state on state war have dramatically decreased yet increase of civil and ethnic wars have come to fore. Out of 220 armed conflicts ensued worldwide since 1990, only 4 per cent were state on state wars and 11 per cent were war within state with outside intervention whilst rest of 85 per cent were either tribal or domestic wars or armed conflicts.
It is true that intrastate conflicts fueled by ethical and civil differences have always been there throughout human history. As Professor Hew Strachan rightly described “Today’s wars are being fought for very traditional reasons – for religious faith, political ideology, nationalism and ethnic identity”. However, the challenge the world facing in this century is different in some perspectives. For example, the insurgents like ISIS use mass availability of information technology to gain public support by stimulating their passion to fight against the Christian world.
Also the insurgents fight mainly among the people in cities and towns as a result of drastic urbanization to increase their chance to provoke a war. Moreover, most of insurgent organizations have their own agenda to pursue such as the ISIS’s policy is to establish Islamic caliphate and to end foreign (American) intervention. Given the statistics and brief assessment of international security environment shown above, it seems intrastate, asymmetric, and low-intensity wars waged by insurgents would dominate in the 21st century. However, which theorist would give us more insight on understanding nature and character of this kind of war?
The theorist had some influences over military thinking worldwide from whom Clausewitz was most successful. Thucydides was aware of the roles of passion and reason as he said “War is eternally and universally possible because human beings in politi-cally organized societies can always be sufficiently motivated by some mix-ture of “fear, honor, and interest” to choose to fight”. Jomini discussed mainly about state affairs and divorced war from policy as he said “The action of a cabinet in reference to the control of armies influences the boldness of their operations”.
Meanwhile, Kautilya, from a pure realist perspective, saw war as an act of conquering others states and he discussed all warfare (open, concealed, and silent wars) were ways to expand the kingdom. Moreover, Sun Tzu discussed in length about war as an ultimate instrument of state as saying “… vital interest to the state, a question of survival or ruin”. However, the four theorists’ theories are not so sufficient to address the nature and character of warfare in 21st century due to following reasons.
First, the all four were talking from realist standpoint where state is center player and the state’s war aim was expansion. Secondly, Jomini did not think war was extension of policy and generals should have independence. Third, they did not provide clear idea to provoke future military thinker’s understanding. Nevertheless, Clausewitz’s theory is more applicable as his “paradoxical trinity” addressed all three challenges of 21st century’s warfare: passion, chance, and reason which examined earlier.
Clausewitz stated that “War is more than a true chameleon that slightly adapts its characteristics to the given case. As a total phenomenon its dominant tendencies always make war a paradoxical trinitycomposed 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 it subject to reason alone”. Moreover, he said that those tendencies generally associate with people, military and government respectively.
This insightful statement gives us a very clear understanding about nature and character of war: war’s subordination of policy, a result of passion, and game of chance are the very nature of war itself; while policy, passion, and chance, and their interaction with war are character of war. It might seem blurry yet it is what the Old Prussian attempted to tell us. However, it would be useful to examine the three tendencies in depth in order to analyze real applicability of Clausewitz’s theory using the current strategic environment challenges.
To begin with, People’s passion is one of major factors to determine the existence of current wars. Like French population’s overwhelming support to the Napoleonic wars amazed Clausewitz, the widespread support of people to Al Qaida, ISIS and Taliban is astounding. Reasons range from political, religious, and nationalism to enmity, hatred, and selfinterest. So Clausewitz’s theory of “war is violent clash of will” better explains current challenges: the ISIS names the U. S. nd its allies as crusaders and calling the Muslim world to join them to exterminate the U. S. presence, and to fight with Christians while the U. S. and its allies are trying to pacify that region. Availability of information technology especially social media enabled the ISIS to recruit more fighters, more public support for their cause while public of the U. S. and allies become more reluctant to support their government policies. The allies understood this problem a long time ago and tried to address accordingly.
The main focus was to establish friendly relations with local populations in order to cut off their support to the insurgents. “[The U. S. and coalition] seek to establish in the minds of the people and their leaders that the ever-present option of conflict is not the preferable course of action” as General Rupert Smith suggested. Clausewitz was well aware of this 200 years ago as he noted, “temper of the population greatly influences the mission objectives”. However, addressing passion or enmity of the people involved require more challenging effort and strategy.
Nevertheless, it is important to understand that passion of people is serious problem in today’s wars as Clausewitz correctly identified yet there is also reason to provoke the people’s passion. Turning to reason tendency, Clausewitz’s suggested that “… war is not merely an act of policy but true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means”. Unsurprisingly, this statement generates criticism on applicability of Clausewitz’s theory with the increase of intra-state wars since the end of Cold War.
For instance, H. P Willmott and Michael B. Barrett argued that Clausewitz’s theory is overly simplistic, and according to the Prussian, war has only one simple nature which is its subordination to policy and the theory lost its legacy as a result of absence of inter-state war since the first Gulf War. At first glance it might seem that war is inherently subservient to a government as it usually generates politics and directs policies. However, governments are not only policy makers and wage wars on another yet emergence of non-state actors brought change in the current security environment. In fact, Clausewitz had an answer to his critics if one read his book carefully.
Essentially he said that “….. the feudal lords and trading cities of the Middle Ages, eighteenth-century kings and the rulers and peoples of the nineteenth century – all conducted war in their own particular way, using different methods and pursuing different aims”. It is therefore fair to assume that he was aware of other actors who would have different aims/policies than those of states. With regard to the ISIS, its main aim is to create Islamic caliphate and its actions against Iraqi and Syria governments, and against the West are continuation of its policies.
Therefore, it is fair to say that Clausewitz’s hypothesis on war’s subordination to policy is still applicable while policy itself, in other word, war’s one of characters changing over time. War has been and would be always continuation of policy yet policy makers would decide to provoke it under their assumption of chance to succeed as well. For chance context, Clausewitz said “No one starts a war–or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so–without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.
He further said the chance and probability lies with military, however, he did not dismiss other factors as he said “second mainly concerns army and its commanders”. For nowadays operating environment, ISIS doesn’t have shortage of fighters as a result of passion of people as well as they have increased their chances as they tend to fight amongst people, in towns, and using asymmetric tactics. Moreover, economical sustain nability from oil revenue and taxation enables the ISIS to continue their brutal activity in Syria and Iraq simultaneously.
It is therefore difficult to defeat them but it is not impossible. General David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency doctrine enabled by the “surge”, massive increase of military effort, in 2007 allowed the coalition to establish a securer environment in Iraq which eventually led to the coalition withdrawal is example of possibility. In general, every opponent seeks to increase his chances to win, for ISIS case, the insurgents have some advantages such as ever-growing number of fighters, fighting amongst people, and economic sustainability.
However, there is still possibility to exploit the ISIS’s weaknesses like cutting of their revenue would degrade their ability to fight and so on. To sum up, Clausewitz’s argument of war is a game of chance is still useful for analyzing contemporary warfare. In conclusion, Clausewitz’s left us an invaluable gift nearly 200 years ago on which military strategists base their thought to analyze war and warfare while the other four theorists failed to identify true nature and character of warfare one way or another.
Based on witz’s trinity and their interaction, the coalition should exploit the ISIS’s weakness would it be passion of people, chance materialized by their tactics, economic support or may be their policy. This paper argued that as Professor Antulio J. Echevarria said “his [Clausewitz’s] conception of war, his remarkable trinity, and his grasp of the relationship between Politik and war will endure as long as states, drug cartels, warrior clans, and terrorist groups have a mind to wage war” Military strategists and civilian policymakers should read “On War” carefully to grasp what this gifted theorist could suggest for today’s and future challenges.
