“I will weep for thee,” Professor Tom Nichols and Dr. Jamie Schwandt, “For this revolt of thine me thinks is like another fall of man.”
Okay, I exaggerate. Nichols and Schwandt aren’t quite Shakespearean heirs to the Southampton rebellion, but I disagree with their call to limit/end military instruction on the theories of Carl Von Clausewitz. Clausewitz was a 19th century Prussian general and military strategist who has long been taught in military schools across the western world. Here’s what Nichols had to say about Schwandt’s article.
I don’t know if we should stop teaching it entirely – war as a political activity is still a priceless subject – but yes, we could do with a lot less of him in the War Colleges. https://t.co/BoPTzSZjy1
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 3, 2019
To be sure, Dr. Jamie Schwandt, an Army reserve officer and innovative strategist, has an interesting, intellectual take. And his point is clear: he argues that Clausewitz’s theories simply aren’t that useful for military strategy.
Clausewitz, Schwandt says, overemphasizes the utility of maximum strength against an enemy “center of gravity” and wrongly ignores the utility of “the fog of war” (inherent confusion in military operations) as a tool rather than a vulnerability. And in his various critiques, Schwandt seems to view Clausewitz’s central weakness as misguided, conventional thinking.
I think Schwandt misses the bigger picture here.
First off, as Nichols hints in his tweet, Clausewitz’s primary utility is his provoking political analysis, not his rather tedious template for organizing forces and employing them towards victory. The following quotes from Clausewitz’s masterpiece, On War, stand out to me as a few examples of his unyielding utility for understanding war.
On why it’s easy but bad to be an armchair general: “the light of reason is refracted in a manner quite different from that which occurs in academic speculation.”
On why the best commanders aren’t static thinkers: “no great commander was ever a man of limited intellect.” They must constantly be “trained and educated by reflection and study.” Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is the great disciple of this precept. But Clausewitz also tells us that intellect isn’t enough: “the personalities of statesmen and soldiers,” he says, “are such important factors that in war above all it is vital not to underrate them.” Here we see the Patton-factor — that which makes somewhat flawed individuals great military commanders.
But it is the best-known of Clausewitz’s teachings that are his most important. He tells us that “war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.” And that “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” Clausewitz taught us that war ultimately serves the inherently political object of “will.” And thus also that “if we keep in mind that war springs from some political purpose, it is natural that the prime cause of its existence will remain the supreme consideration in conducting it.” Here we see Clausewitz’s flexible escape valve to blinded devotion to doctrine — namely, that politics is always the master of action and form.
This bears attention in light of Schwandt’s dislike for Clausewitz’s focal attention on destabilizing the enemy’s “center of gravity.” Pointing to God (jihadist groups) and asking “Where is the center of gravity in a donut?” Schwandt says that sometimes there is no center of gravity to an enemy. My flexible view of Clausewitz leads me to retort that donuts are not warriors, and that the jihadist’s center of gravity is identifiable. It his dominant indoctrination of others to his theological interpretation. As in the war on terror, the ultimate means of our victory over jihadists is to empower the more-moderate strains of Islamic teaching and governance. I would suggest that Clausewitz’s attuned political mind would embrace this.
So, for me, the key question when it comes to Clausewitz is not whether he be taught in abundance, but how he is taught. Schwandt has a point in arguing that Clausewitz is taught poorly and too rigidly in too many places. But that wasn’t my experience on the War Studies course at King’s College London. There, Clausewitz was taught as a guru, but one who must be always be assessed alongside other theorists, always in the context of his times, and always first as a political theorist.
