I get it. I really do. I’ve been dead for almost 190 years. The world has changed a lot since my time. You have a computer. There weren’t even typewriters around back then—if there were, I might have finished my masterpiece before I died instead of leaving it . . . well, we’ll come back to that. You have the internet, pretending to be a genius on #MilTwitter and cranking out 800-word strategic thinkpieces in a single thread. Please. I had Scharnhorst and actually had to put pen to paper and prove my genius. You have Wikipedia for research. I had Borodino.
So, yeah, I’ve heard your oh-so-original criticism before. You think I’m stuck in the past. My writing is too abstract. My thinking is too kinetic. You and every other armchair strategist with a few years fighting it out on the keyboard know all about war. You sit there in your cushy leather office chair with your copy of John Boyd in one hand and your end-of-tour Bronze Star in the other, dragging me across Twitter to the gleeful squeals of people barely able to communicate in memes. You lean back and smirk condescendingly, “The old Prussian just didn’t get it. War is so much more complex today than he could possibly understand.”
Dude, I get complexity. I was into complexity before complexity was cool. Well, to be fair, I was into complexity before it was even invented. Why do you think it took me so long to finish Vom Kreig? So, go ahead and criticize me for writing in metaphors. You, my friend, seem to have all the answers. You try writing about a subject when the necessary taxonomy won’t exist for another 130 years. Yeah, we’ll see who laughs last.
And, don’t think I didn’t see you roll your eyes every time someone talked about the Taliban center of gravity. “What if there is no center of gravity?” you said derisively, snickering to your minions. Don’t make me go Industrial Age on you. Your problem is that your thinking is limited by a lack of imagination. Remember, bruh, I’m the guy who talks in metaphors. A center of gravity is a source of power, not the business end of plow horse. Maybe there’s one source of power, maybe there’s more. But everything draws power from somewhere. Work with me here, Einstein.
Now, let’s talk about my supposed fascination with mass. I think sometimes you forget that our options were a lot more limited. Sure, we had artillery and cavalry, but I doubt the cavalry were much different in my day than they are today. Our idea of maneuver was marching into battle in lines, columns and squares; great for concentrating firepower, but not the most efficient way to leverage mass. Okay, I don’t want you to miss this next part, so scoot that leather chair up close to the screen for a minute. MASS IS RELATIVE! When I wrote about decisive mass, it meant something different at Jena-Auerstedt than it does today. I’m dead and I understand that. What’s your excuse?
I don’t know, maybe being underground for so long has made me irritable, a little short-tempered. But, even six feet under I can still feel the knife in my back. Attritionist? Really? Did I focus a lot of attention on annihilating the enemy’s forces? Yeah, I guess. In my time, that was the surest method to defeat the will of your opponent. Today, all it takes is a fire team of Russian bots on Twitter and your national will crumbles like week-old lebkuchen. I’ll make you a deal: you ease up on the “attritionist” stuff and I won’t post any memes about Asian murder bees.
Finally, you can stop dissing me with the “That’s what Marie said!” crap. We both know that I didn’t finish Vom Kreig. Let me tell you, when you go to your grave unable to find the words for “complex adaptive system,” it helps to have someone like her to pull it all together. I feel bad enough for her without you Rochambeauing me over it. She had to make sense of all that chicken scratch I left behind, and that was no small task. If you think Book 3 was bad, you should have read it in the original Klingon. Let me tell you, Marie earned her countess pay on that one.
So, let’s cut to the chase: I’m dead, I’m not irrelevant. Even if all I do is get you talking about war, that’s a start. Maybe along the way you’ll do some thinking. That’s a novel idea. Here’s another one: come up with your own theory of war. Trash talking the dead is no way to go through life, son.
– von Clausewitz
Steve Leonard is a Senior Fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point; the co-founder of the national security blog, Divergent Options, and the podcast, The Smell of Victory; co-founder and board member of the Military Writers Guild; and a member of the editorial review board of the Arthur D. Simons Center’s Interagency Journal. Published extensively, his writing focuses on issues of foreign policy, national security, strategy and planning, leadership and leader development, and, occasionally, fiction. An alumnus of the School of Advanced Military Studies, he led the interagency team that authored the U.S. Army’s first stability operations doctrine, spearheaded the reintroduction of operational art into capstone doctrine, and wrote the guiding principles for the Army Design Methodology. He is the author, co-author, or editor of four books, numerous professional articles, countless blog posts, and is a prolific military cartoonist.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Yep. Clausewitz is totally still relevant; all we have to do is reinterpret most of his ideas so they mean something completely different to what he wrote about or experienced.
So war isn't about human politics anymore?
Some parts endure, mostly in books 1 and 8, but they do so without needing gross misinterpretation. The trinity, fog of war, and friction all stand up on their own terms.
Most of the rest of it has dated, and pretending that you can redefine some of his terms to the point where you completely alter the meaning doesn't suddenly make him relevant again.
It seems you missed the entire point of the article…thanks for proving it
Go on then, why don't you enlighten us about the point of the article given that you seem to think it's something different to what the words on the page mean…
They definitely missed the entire point of the article and the allegories contained within. It's ok though. In due "time" many people will get what was written. Historical and epic!!! Like the lost city of Atlantis 😉
My, that was a quick backpedal.
“Three Days to the Meuse !” Best mission Command guidance ever
“England expects every man to do his duty” is another great example of mission command.
I have always said that Clausewitz was superior to Sun Tzu. Why waste time? History is kind to those who knew how to win decisively. Our last example was Patton. Since then, America worships Sun Tzu.
Wait! The sounds I hear in the background are the students in SAMS currently going through their comprehensive exams, trying to remember how to spell Jena-Auerstadt, and what makes attrition someone else's annihilation, or is it all exhaustion….
Somehow I doubt an 18th-19th century Prussian soldier was that snarky in life, but death might have given him more of a sense of humor. But the post is spot on.
From an AF point-of-view, I had to put up with all of the "new" ideas that John Warden came up with for fighting the air war of the first Gulf War. They weren't new. Heck, they weren't even unfamiliar to those of who had actually read and understood classical military strategy and doctrine. Unfortunately, they were new to loads of folks who had never picked up even a summary of Clausewitz (or not read their issued one).
As to Clausewitz vs Sun Tzu…. Sun Tzu is definitely more concise. He takes strategy and boils it down to Confucius-like principles that can apply to almost anything. So, people read him more. If old Karl had managed to keep it down to even three volumes, he'd be higher up the best-seller list.
It's Krieg.
Nice letter from our good buddy Chuck Clausewitz, but I'm also interested in the clever modifications to his portrait. Who's idea was that?
Isn't it quite obvious that he is not pleased with those who don't try hard enough to understand him, call him irrelevant or worse but fail to prove him wrong! And right he is! His look expresses his mood brilliantly!
… the cartoonist within the writer … or did Marie take up the brush and paint again?
Only a person who has studied Carl well beyond his magnum opus would notice his changed state of mood! 😉
(hint for those who got interested in the modifications: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clausewitz.jpg)
Despite his epic application of Reason to War, he warned us to beware of "Pure Warfare," i.e., all the talk that sounds like "We have X systems, they have Y systems, therefore it is inevitable that outcome Z will occur." Unlike so many today, he saw the flaws in his own side of the equation.
And unlike Sun Tzu, he stood on a battlefield or two.
Jena, Borodino, and Waterloo. Yeah, he saw some war.
He could have just said "back in my day we won wars."
Warfare is a duel on a larger scale. Whether we add technology or different medians of the battlefield (air, space, cyber) , it's still exactly what Clausewitz said it was–what's irrelevant about that? Also, comparing Clausewitz to Sun Tzu is like comparing Clausewitz to Jomini–totally different. Clausewitz wrote about the phenomenon and theory of war while Sun Tzu and Jomini wrote about the theory for victory in warfare. All are relevant theories.
I'm not sure who this essay is supposed to be speaking to. The author provides no links or citations to authors who argue that Clausewitz is irrelevant. The broad consensus among military professionals and scholars is that many of Clausewitz's ideas still matter. The author comes off like a guy at a bus stop talking to no one.
I thought the same but this seems more of an opinion/satirical post that actually poses an interesting topic and an interesting conversation if taken seriously. This looks like an attack to those who are sitting on their laurels in regards to strategy.