Editors Introduction to Clausewitz' On War
Anatol Rapoport, 1967

The chapter on Clausewitz in Walter Goerlitz's History of the German General Staff is entitled `The Philosopher of War', as if to say that there is 'a' philosophy of war, of which Clausewitz was the author or the discoverer, or, at least, the most important proponent. In the Middle Ages Aristotle was called simply The Philosopher, somewhat in the same spirit.

We now know that there are several philosophies and that Aristotle was the proponent of only one of them, albeit a very important one. Similarly, if we take stock of what has been written on war before and after Clausewitz, we see that several philosophies of war have emerged. Clausewitz was the proponent of one of them, a very important one.

The philosophy of war reflected in the present volume has had a profound influence on European military and political thought in the nineteenth century. Because of this influence, and because the, philosophy was formulated with extraordinary clarity, On War is justly called a classic, along with other such works, each an exposition of an important philosophy. Examples are Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (a philosophy of science), Machiavelli's The Prince (a philosophy of politics), Hobbes's Leviathan (a philosophy of society), Hume's Inquiry into Human Understanding (a philosophy of knowledge), Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (a philosophy of economics), Marx's Capital (a philosophy of both economics and society). In all these works the authors sought to impart not merely knowledge of what they thought to be the case, but also an understanding of what underlies it; that is, an understanding of a philosophy.

To understand a philosophy may mean two different things. In one sense, to understand a philosophy may mean to compare it with one's own view of the subject matter and, on the basis of such comparison, to accept or reject the philosophy in whole or in part. In another, deeper sense, to understand a philosophy means to see its logical structure, that is, the way its concepts and ideas relate to each other and how they are derived from other concepts or ideas. In order to understand a philosophy in the latter sense it is often necessary to compare it with other philosophies. A similar situation exists with regard to understanding a language. One can understand a language directly, that is, with reference to experience. A three-year-old child already understands his mother tongue in this sense. In another sense, to understand a language means to see how it is put together; that is the way a linguist perceives it. To understand the structure of a language it usually helps to compare it with other languages in order to see both the similarities and the differences among structures. With a view of emphasizing the deeper meaning of Clausewitz's philosophy, we shall compare it with other philosophies.

It is important to compare several philosophies of war for still another reason. The problem of war is universally recognized as one of the most awesome problems with which the human race is presently confronted. To deal with this problem we must understand the nature of war. If different philosophies give different answers to the question `What is war?' we are faced with the problem of resolving the differences. One way is to accept one answer and reject the others. Another way, more sophisticated, is to conclude that war has many facets, and that the various philosophies of war merely reflect the fact that different thinkers have singled out different facets for attention.

There is still a third way of viewing these different conceptions of the nature of war: the nature of war is itself to a large extent determined by how man conceives of it. It is a common peculiarity of man-made phenomena that, unlike natural phenomena, they are influenced (sometimes very strongly) by what we think or say about them. Thus the answer to the all-important questions (no longer philosophical ones) of whether civilization will be destroyed by a global war, or whether war will persist as a chronic or recurring condition in human affairs, or whether war will be eradicated, may depend in no small measure on how people think, talk, and write about war, i.e. on which philosophies of war prevail. We would be well advised to inquire into the way the acceptance or rejection of a particular philosophy of war is likely to influence the role of war in human affairs and so profoundly affect our lives.

The three philosophies of war to be compared we shall call the political, the eschatological, and the cataclysmic. Clausewitz is an outstanding proponent of the political philosophy of war. (An earlier exposition was given by Machiavelli, and we shall be concerned also with its very recent ' Neo-Clausewitzian' version.)

Clausewitz views war as a rational instrument of national policy. The three words `rational', `instrument', and `national' are the key concepts of his paradigm. In this view, the decision to wage war `ought' to be rational, in the sense that it ought to be based on estimated costs and gains of the war. Next, war `ought' to be instrumental, in the sense that it ought to be waged in order to achieve some goal, never for its own sake; and also in the sense that strategy and tactics ought to be directed towards just one end, namely towards victory. Finally, war `ought' to be national, in the sense that its objective should be to advance the interests of a national state and that the entire effort of the nation ought to be mobilized in the service of the military objective.

We have paraphrased Clausewitz's philosophy in terms of what, according to its precepts, war ought to be. Actually, Clausewitz says what war is. At the same time he is well aware that actual decisions to wage war or to avoid it were often made without due considerations of relevant circumstances; that strategies and tactics were often determined by matters irrelevant to the objectives of war; and that, until his own time, wars had not been national wars. Thus the discrepancy between what Clausewitz says war is, and what many wars actually were, is not to be ascribed to ignorance of facts. Tradition, rooted in the ideas of the ancients and continuing throughout the centuries of European thought, ascribed to philosophy the task of discovering the essences of phenomena. Whether the essence was in the origin of the phenomenon in question (as Plato thought) or became manifest in the unfolding of the phenomenon (as Aristotle thought), it (the essence), rather than the accidental and variable realizations of the phenomenon, was traditionally assumed to be the proper subject of a philosophical investigation. Therefore, for Clausewitz, the difference between `what is' and `what ought to be' was not as sharp as it may appear in our more empirically oriented age. In depicting war as rational, instrumental, and national, Clausewitz thought that he was revealing the `true nature' of war, stripped of nonessentials with which it may have been encumbered in particular historical contexts.

The explicit distinction between what war is and what it `ought' to be is drawn by Clausewitz on another level of abstraction. His `ought' must be understood at the outset in its logical, not its prescriptive sense¹. Clausewitz starts out by defining war: War is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will. From this definition it follows logically (according to Clausewitz) that every war ought to end in a complete victory of one side over the other, and also that `moderation in war is an absurdity' since failure to utilize all the force at one's disposal defeats the purpose of war. War conceived in this way Clausewitz calls `war in the abstract' or `absolute war'. (Its relation to `total war', of which we had a foretaste in our century, will be discussed below.)

Real wars differ from abstract war, says Clausewitz, because idealized conditions are never realized. Mobilization of forces is not instantaneous; events are governed not only by strict causality but also by chance; psychological factors are important determinants of decisions made by men, etc. Clausewitz subsumes all these perturbing circumstances under the concept of `friction', an obvious allusion to the analogous concept in physics, which is invoked to explain the discrepancy between real and idealized mechanical processes.

It therefore seemed to Clausewitz that having taken `friction' into account, he has grasped the `true nature' of real war and so made the connexion between theory and experience. From the vantage point of a comparative philosophy of war, however, we can see that even Clausewitz's `realistic' theory is only one of several possible idealized abstractions. It rests on a fundamental assumption, namely, that the actor in a real war is a perfectly defined entity called the State. This assumption is not made in other philosophies of war; consequently war appears in each of them in an entirely different light.

The eschatological philosophy of war comprises many variants. The common element in them is the idea that history, or at least some portion of history, will culminate in a `final' war leading to the unfolding of some grand design - divine, natural, or human. Two main variants are to be noted. In one - the messianic - the agency destined to carry out the `grand design' is presumed already to exist, frequently as a functioning military organization. For example, in this view, crusades and holy wars are seen as means of unifying the known world under a single faith or a single ruler. In recent times the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the Nazi doctrine of the Master Race were expressions of a messianic philosophy of war. In some versions the victors are assumed to be destined to carry out the mission of imposing a just peace on the world and so of eliminating war from future history. For example, most Americans believed that their entry into the First World War (and later the Second World War) would çonvert the war into a `war to end war'.

In another, `global', variant of eschatological philosophy the agency of the `design' is presumed to arise from the chaos of the `final war'. In Christian eschatology this agency is sometimes represented by the forces which will rally around Christ in the Second Coming; in Communist eschatology the `world proletariat' is expected to convert the imperialist war into a class war and, after the victory over the bourgeoisie, to establish a world order in which wars will no longer occur. In a film made in the 1930s called Things to Come, based on the ideas of H. G. Wells, this role is given to a community of scientists who stop the `final' world war by a tranquillizing gas and establish a temporary benevolent dictatorship which ushers in a rational and peaceful world order.

The cataclysmic view pictures war as a catastrophe that befalls some portion of humanity or the entire human race. The prophets, for example, who spoke of war as a scourge of God, subscribed to this view. Cataclysmic philosophy, like the eschatological, also appears in two variants, the ethnocentric and the global. In the ethnocentric version, war is something that is likely to happen to us, specifically something that others threaten to do to us. We see ourselves as deriving no benefit from war. Our own defensive measures appear to us not as means of pursuing goals but merely as means of forestalling disaster or alleviating its effects. (The necessity for contemporary civil defence measures - blast and fall-out shelters, etc. - is usually justified by its proponents on the basis of an ethnocentric-cataclysmic view of war.)

In the global version, on the other hand, war is a cataclysm which afflicts humanity. No one in particular is held to be responsible for war and no one is expected to gain from it. A philosophy of war of this sort is explicitly stated in the concluding chapter of Tolstoy's War and Peace. Tolstoy attributes wars to the action of hitherto unknown historical forces and declares the decisions of princes and the manoeuvres of generals to be irrelevant to either the outbreaks or the outcomes of wars. Tolstoy's philosophy of war is thus the polar opposite of Clausewitz's.

A cataclysmic philosophy of war underlies also some recent attempts to formulate scientific theories of war. In such theories war is usually regarded as related to certain dynamic properties of an `international system' which, like physical systems, may persist at times in a relatively stable equilibrium and at other times `break down' or `explode', because the stresses and strains within the system have passed beyond certain critical limits.

To put it metaphorically, in political philosophy war is compared to a game of strategy (like chess); in eschatological philosophy, to a mission or the dénouement of a drama; in cataclysmic philosophy, to a fire or an epidemic.

These do not, of course, exhaust the views of war prevailing at different times and at different places. For example, war has at times been viewed as a pastime or an adventure, as the only proper occupation of a nobleman, as an affair of honour (e.g. in the days of chivalry), as a ceremony (e.g. among the Aztecs), as an outlet of aggressive instincts or a manifestation of a 'death wish', as nature's way of insuring the survival of the fittest, as an absurdity (e.g. among the Eskimos), as a tenacious custom, destined to die out like slavery, and as a crime.

Vom Kriege first appeared in 1832, in the year following Clausewitz's death. Clausewitz entered military service in 1792 at the age of twelve. According to Maria von Clausewitz (the widow), who wrote the preface to the first edition, Clausewitz began work on Vom Kriege in 1816. Thus his entire life from the end of childhood to the beginning of work on his magnum opus coincided almost exactly with the era of Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The intellectual stature of Clausewitz is manifest in the clarity with which he saw this period as a transition between two historical epochs. On one side was the European international system of 1648-1789, which Clausewitz saw in a remarkably illuminating historical perspective. On the other side was the European international system of 1815-1914, of which Clausewitz became the prophet. Like Beethoven, Clausewitz stood astride two centuries. Building upon the fundamental concepts of the eighteenth, he laid the foundations of the conceptual edifice which dominated the nineteenth.

The actors in the Clausewitzian paradigm of international relations are, as has been said, sovereign states which for all practical purposes can be considered as persons. This paradigm (which today is recognized by many political scientists to be a highly abstract idealization) was a moderately realistic model of the international system which Clausewitz knew best, namely the European system prevailing in the century which ended with the French Revolution. Decisions to wage war and to conclude peace were made by sovereigns, whose staffs may have advised them on the expected costs and gains. These were estimated in terms of the sovereign's interests and ambitions; and the latter were stated fairly simply in terms of territorial gains and losses, alliances honoured or broken, rises or falls in prestige, etc., all measured by standards which were rather uniform among the `society' of sovereigns. In other words, the eighteenth-century sovereign had about as clear a notion of his `interests' as an owner or a manager of a middle-sized business has nowadays about the interests of his firm.

The world, then, which Clausewitz saw through the prism of history, was a `society' of sovereign states, say ten or twenty, each headed by a prince with a set of `interests'. The prince pursued these interests by various methods which were by and large accepted by his peers as legitimate; for the peers, too, pursued their interests in a similar fashion. The eighteenth-century methods included bargaining and coalition formation (by means of intricate diplomacy and intrigue); marriage strategies (important because territories might go with dowries and could be enlarged by matrimonial mergers, and because the legitimacy of succession was based primarily on geneological lines); and war.

This international system had been functioning since 1648. The Treaty of Westphalia marked the end of the previous epoch dominated by the religious wars initiated by the Reformation. Central Europe had been devastated by the last (Thirty Years') war of that epoch, and the issue between the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church in Central Europe and Protestant decentralization of religious authority remained unsettled. However, aside from the ambiguity of that outcome at the close of the Thirty Years' War, the idea of the sovereign state under secular authority was firmly established in European political thought. Concurrently, the notion of supra-national authority, which had dominated the Middle Ages, receded into obscurity. For a century and a half no one undertook to bring Europe or even any larger portion of it under a single authority, religious or secular. The princes circumscribed the horizons of their ambitions and looked only towards modest opportunistic objectives. If an occasion arose which promised an increase of holdings, influence, or prestige, they seized it. Otherwise they made the opportunities or waited for them to arise.

The wars of this period were limited in scope and were fought for limited objectives. Not the least important cause of this restraint was the character of the eighteenth-century army. Composed largely of highly trained professionals recruited for long periods of service, the eighteenth-century army was an expensive tool. If it were destroyed it could not be easily replaced. Understandably the princes were reluctant to risk large losses of personnel. The generals, too, had little to gain and much to lose from serious fighting. They were specialists with no internalized permanent loyalty to their sovereigns except to the extent that such loyalty was demanded by the ethics of their profession. Frequently generals left the service of one prince to join that of another, regardless of their nationalities, much in the manner of modern executives and attorneys who serve now one corporation, now another. Since all the generals were in that position, it is not unreasonable to suppose that a tacit understanding among them developed, so that campaigns were conducted with a view of minimizing dangers and even discomfort.²

Pitched battles were generally avoided in the pre-Napoleonic era. The object of the campaign frequently was to reach a situation (by proper manoeuvring) in which it could become clear that one's own side had a strategic or tactical advantage over the other. Because of a universal acceptance of strategic and tactical principles by the homogeneous military community, such situations were sufficiently clear to all concerned. Hence a `decision' could be awarded to one side or the other, or the situation might be seen as a `draw'. Capitulation was not a disgrace. A general could no more entertain the idea of `fighting to the last man', than a good chess player would consider continuing to play an obviously lost game.

The ` art of war', as it was conceived in the eighteenth century, was largely an art of manoeuvre. It contained important elements of aesthetics and protocol. An army was judged by its appearance on the battlefield as much as by its skill and prowess. To be sure, some of the `aesthetic' requirements could be defended on pragmatic grounds. The effectiveness of a fighting unit certainly depends on the coordination of its parts. This is especially true if the parts are to move in response to commands given by voice. Such commands can be effective only if the soldiers remain packed close together, whether they are standing or moving. Consequently, intensive training in close-order drill (which makes for attractive parade manoeuvres) also made sense as a preparation for the eighteenth-century battlefield. The one and only soldierly virtue demanded of the man in the ranks was obedience. Indeed, not much more could be demanded of him, since he had no stake in the outcome of the war, nor even any idea of the objectives of a campaign or of a battle.³ His `skill' was the ability to execute automatically each of a repertoire of movements in which he had been trained. The skill of an officer was like that of a conductor of an orchestra - to coordinate the movements of a unit of a specified size (depending on his rank), as required by the 'well-known' principles of tactics. The distinction between a well-executed battle and a well-executed parade (or, for that matter, a ballet) was not sharp in the eighteenth century.

This conception of war was challenged in the last decade of the century. In the wars of the French Revolution and in the Napoleonic wars armies took to the field and manoeuvred just as they did in the eighteenth century. But the meaning of these events changed. Failure to realize the change was costly to the opponents of France.

The revolutionary French Army was composed not of professionals, nor of conscripts who had neither a stake nor an understanding of the war they fought, but of `patriots' - a new concept in European. politics. These people believed that they were fighting for something. At first the wars were fought in defence of the Revolution against the onslaughts of the monarchical powers who sought to crush it. Soon the French passed over to the offensive. Many of them felt that they were carrying the Rights-of-Man on the points of their bayonets across Europe. Their spectacular successes kept their martial elan at a high pitch, and it eventually was carried over into the imperial Grand Armée. Revolutionary ardour was supplanted by the adoration of Napoleon Bonaparte. At any rate, whether the French fought for the Revolution or for France, for liberty or for an empire, the high-pitched morale of the French soldier was an entirely new factor in the war.

Napoleon understood the tremendous importance of this new factor. He nurtured and intensified the enthusiasm of the man in the ranks by dramatic speeches and by postures of solicitude. He was thus enabled to make use of tactics unthinkable in the context of eighteenth-century battle dispositions, in which the initiative of the individual soldier played no role. Having the entire economic and human resources of France behind him, he was not concerned with costs or personnel losses. He used murderous artillery fire. His objective in a battle was nor merely to outmanoeuvre but to annihilate the opposing force. Above all, he demolished the eighteenth century tradition by destroying old political structures. He redrew the map of Europe to suit his ends and placed his relatives on thrones with no more thought to `legitimacy' than if they were so many police commissioners. In this way, devoid of a shred of dynastic legitimacy himself, he made shambles of dynastic politics which had been the backbone of eighteenth century international relations. At his coronation he symbolized the demise of both dynastic legitimacy and of the Holy Roman Empire by taking the crown from the hands of Pius VII and placing it on his own head .⁴

By deeds and words (Napoleon had an impressive gift of eloquence), Napoleon taught one great lesson: the universal currency of politics is power, and power resides in the ability to wreak physical destruction. Clausewitz embodied this lesson in unifying a philosophy of politics with a philosophy of war. What Napoleon expressed in cannonades and aphorisms, Clausewitz presented as a coherent system of thought, remarkably lucid and unencumbered by the ponderous metaphysical speculations which his professorial contemporaries took to be an essential mark of profundity and erudition.

Clausewitz was able to grasp the full significance of the lessons taught by Napoleon, because his was a military mind and an open one. A military mind is one which embraces war as an essential, productive, and inspiring component of human existence, quite in the same way as a scientific mind embraces science, an artistic mind embraces art, and a religious mind embraces religion. One is tempted to say that for a military mind war needs no justification (in terms of extraneous goals) any more than art or science need such justification for the artist or scientist. However, this is not always the case. Not every artist espouses `art for art's sake' (though many do), and many outstanding scientists have derived inspiration from other than the purely cognitive functions of science. In his constant emphasis on war as an instrument of politics, Clausewitz expressly rejected the idea of `war for war's sake'. However, if we examine Clausewitz's conception of politics, we find that it does not differ from his conception of war. His famous dictum stated in reverse would express his philosophy with equal accuracy: `Peace is the continuation of struggle only by other means'.<sup>5</sup> Thus the rejection of `war for war's sake' is no more than a recognition that war' has two equally important components, the military and the political. In quite the same way a scientist dismisses `theory for theory's sake' or `experiment for experiment's sake'. Each must justify the other. Science is the fusion of the two.

In this extended sense, i.e. the combination of the military and political aspects, war (that is, a struggle for power) needed no further justification in Clausewitz's mind. He assumed it to be a fundamental condition of human existence. Incidentally, -he also thought of war as a prerequisite of his personal happiness. In a letter to his fiancée, Countess von Brühl, we read:

My fatherland needs the war and - frankly speaking - only war can bring me to the happy goal. In whichever way I might like to relate my life to the rest of the world, my way takes me always across a great battlefield; unless I enter upon it, no permanent happiness can be mine.'⁶

Clausewitz's open mind was no less important in facilitating his acceptance of the lessons derived from the Napoleonic wars. Despite Clausewitz's modest disclaimers of competence in philosophy, he was actually a very able philosopher. He grasped the relationship of the idealized model to the reality it purports to represent; he understood the continual interaction between theory and practice in the development of a science, the vast complexity of causal relations in human affairs, the dilemma posed by the role of genius in the unfolding of the historical process. Above all, he despised dogmatism7 and at the same time realized the importance for productive thought of abstract conceptual schemes. In short, Clausewitz thought like a philosopher-scientist in the broadest sense of this term: he sought simplicity and he distrusted it.

`Everything is very simple in war,' he wrote, `but the simplest thing is difficult.'

When Napoleon broke the `rules of civilized warfare', Clausewitz hailed him as a genius, not only because Napoleon exposed the sterility of eighteenth-century formalized military dogmas but also because he revealed (as Clausewitz thought) the essential principles of war and at the same time demonstrated the importance of intangibles (morale, intuitive grasp of the total situation, chance), so that war appeared as an amalgam of a science and an art. This is indeed how science as a whole (as distinguished from special sciences) appears to a scientist with a broad outlook: not as a code of standardized procedures but as a creative process.

A lesson is learned most firmly when the application of what has been learned turns failure into success. The failure, in Clausewitz's estimation, was the humiliating defeat suffered by Prussia in î8o6. He attributes this failure to Prussia's adherence to eighteenth-century methods of warfare against an opponent emancipated from the limitations of those methods. The success, as Clausewitz saw it, was the resurgence of Prussia as a military power and the victory over Napoleon in 1813-15. Clausewitz attributes this resurgence to the replacement of the small professional (eighteenth-century model) army by a mass (citizen) army; that is, by recourse to the weapon with which France dominated Europe for almost two decades. In other words, Prussia achieved full nationhood by accepting the principle of the national war.

The power of Clausewitz's ideas derives (somewhat ironically, in view of their later social meaning) from their consistency with the new political climate engendered in Europe by the French Revolution. In urging the replacement of cabinet wars by national wars, Clausewitz was saying in effect, `Give the War to the People! The State is the People P The task of completely ` democratizing' war was to be carried out a century later by the Nazis.

The change in outlook did not come easily. Opposition came from both military and political sources. Career soldiers often resist innovations, because innovations tend to make their special competence obsolete and to sharpen competition. Political opposition came from those who feared an armed citizenry more than they feared foreign invasions. A peasant with a gun may get ideas about his own place in society. In fact, the most energetic proponents of the mass army were the liberals who envisaged far-reaching social reforms as prerequisites of strengthening the nation. Such reforms were actually initiated in 1807 and continued until Napoleon's defeat.8 The danger having passed, the reins of absolute rule were re-tightened. Nevertheless, the mass army came to stay and to dominate the European international system for the next hundred years.

Clausewitz himself was politically conservative and was probably aware of the potential danger which a mass army presented to absolutism. Nevertheless he favoured it, because foremost in his mind was the concept of the monolithic militarized national state, ready and willing at all times to exert its national will by a total mobilization of its destructive power.

As has been said, if Clausewitz's conception of the relation between war and politics is examined with reference to the ends and means of each, it appears that the two are interchangeable. The function of the military is to implement the will of the state; the will of the state is tacitly assumed to be directed towards continually increasing its power vis-à-vis other states, hence to seek and seize opportunities to gain strategic advantages for future struggles. In short, the interests of the state and of the army coincide in Clausewitz's conception of the state. Nevertheless, in his philosophy of war Clausewitz gives priority to civilian authority over the military. The military is supposed to serve the state, not vice versa. The reason for this distinction in Clausewitz's mind is his estimate of the perspectives open to the military and to the civilian leadership respectively. The military leader is a specialist. His horizon may not stretch beyond what appears as necessary for carrying out military tasks. The statesman (or monarch) encompasses the whole gamut of power relations, both political and military. In this way the statesman appears in Clausewitz's paradigm as a super-general who must possess the final authority over the general, in the same way as the general (who views the war as a whole) must possess supreme authority over his colonels and captains (who see only portions of the war).

In nineteenth-century Europe the relations between civilian and military authority were much more complex than the simple hierarchical structure envisaged by Clausewitz. However, the international system did gradually assume the form envisaged by him.

The nineteenth century was dominated by an unprecedented rise of science and technology and with it the emergence of a new dominant social class, the bourgeoisie, which derived its wealth, prestige, and eventually political power from being directly associated with the sciences and with technology and its by-products (industrialization, expanded trade, education, etc.). In the early nineteenth century the bourgeoisie was not primarily interested in war. It was not averse to wars, provided they did not cost too much and brought in profits (e.g. colonial conquests). But the bourgeoisie had no professional stake in war and did not relish the idea of donating their sons to fight for the glory of the state at a time when the nobility was still very much in evidence and largely in control of the military establishments. Consequently, in spite of the fact that the mass (conscripted) army remained as a fixture in Europe after the Napoleonic wars, the military profession continued as a special-interest group. The concerns of the military, like those of any professional group, were with promotions, social prestige, self-esteem, etc. Particularly in Prussia, the military remained the profession of the nobility. Hence professional and class interests coincided in that group.⁹

In the first decades after the Napoleonic wars the bourgeoisie, being engrossed in peaceful and profitable pursuits, was not favourably disposed towards the military. After the suppression of the revolutions of 1848-9, however, the military appeared to them in a more favourable light, namely as a bulwark against the ever growing threat of revolution.¹⁰ At the same time the middle classes became more interested in commercial and political goals, such as national sea-ports, canals, trade privileges, and prestige, which could be attained and kept only with the help of the military.

Militarization of the national state progressed especially rapidly in Prussia, and with it the crystallization of the Clausewitzian model of the national state. Bismarck, the greatest of the Junkers, was keen enough to perceive that concessions to liberalism were one sure way to consolidate nationalist sentiments. The other sure way was to win easy military victories. These were reaped in the short decisive wars against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1870). With the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 the Clausewitzian state almost became a reality in the shape of imperial Germany.

Of all Europeans, the Germans learned best the Clausewitzian prescripts (this time from victories), namely that boldness, an integrated diplo-military policy, a campaign strategy aimed directly towards the destruction of the opposing forces, an army based on mass conscription - that all of these spell power; and that the fruits of power used at the right moment against the right adversary bring more power.

France, too, learned-this time from her defeat. After crushing the short-lived Paris Commune and consolidating its political power, the French bourgeoisie, like the German, entered on the road to militarization. Defeated by a mass army, France staked her future on a mass army. The goal was revanche. About that time Clausewitz was discovered by the French military and was avidly read and quoted by the officers. It is interesting to note, however, that the French were most attracted to Clausewitz's emphasis on the `spiritual' rather than the material components of military might. In view of France's inferiority in men and material vis-à-vis Germany, this was understandable. The offensive (pictured as an irresistible shock of a massed attack) became the French military dogma. We now know the price paid for this confidence, in the vast French losses in the battles of Verdun and at the river Somme in the First World War. It is difficult for us, who have seen the `martial spirit' replaced by the mechanized juggernaut, to believe that even the famous red pantaloons of the French infantry were not discarded for something more modest and less conspicuous until the First World War was well under way.

The British, too, learned. As the showdown with Germany approached, the British military bemoaned what they thought was a naïve reliance on the efficacy of international law and the inhibitions placed on the military caste by certain notions of gentlemanly conduct. Paraphrasing Clausewitz's democratization of war in terms easily understood in a commercial culture, Col. F. N. Maude wrote in 19o8:

Most of our present-day politicians have made their money in business - a `form of human competition greatly resembling war', to paraphrase Clausewitz. Did they, when in the throes of such competition, send formal notice to their rivals of their plans to get the better of them in commerce? Did Mr Carnegie, the archpriest of Peace at any price, when he built up the Steel Trust, notify his competitors when and how he proposed to strike the blows, which successively made him master of millions? Surely the Directors of a Great Nation may consider the interests of their shareholders - i.e. the people they govern - as sufficiently serious not to be endangered by the deliberate sacrifice of the preponderant position of readiness which generations of self-devotion, patriotism and wise forethought have won for them?"

The century 1815-1914 is conventionally (and at times nostalgically) pictured as a century of comparative peace, stability, and progress in Europe. Another way of seeing it, grimmer but perhaps more instructive, is as an incubation period. There have been other such periods. The pre-Napoleonic era (16481789), because of the comparatively limited magnitude of the wars, also appeared to be a stable period. But this era too was pregnant with the seed of its own destruction, which blossomed in the French Revolution. Several centuries earlier there was a quiescent era in Italy, when the wars between the mercantile city states (fought entirely by mercenaries) were almost totally bloodless. Machiavelli mentions, as an example, the battle of Zagonara (1424), a 'defeat renowned throughout all Italy [in which] there died only Lodovico degli Obizzi, with two of his men-at-arms, who falling from horseback, were smothered in the mire'.1²

That era ended when the French invaded Italy in ₁₄₉₄ and made short work of the 'system', much in the same way as Napoleon did exactly three centuries later. A few years after the French invasion Machiavelli was expounding the same 'lessons' that Clausewitz was to expound three centuries later is

Machiavelli denounced the mercenaries, criticized harshly the hesitant and ineffectual methods of Italian warfare, and demanded the inoculation of the soldiers with the spirit of pugnacity, self-sacrifice, discipline, and loyalty to their land of birth.

A similar reaction followed the end of the League of Nations era, to which the Nazi Blitzkrieg put an end. Again the 'lesson' learned was put in an almost exact paraphrase of Clausewitz. Edward Mead Earle of the United States wrote in ¹943

Strategy ... is not merely a concept of wartime, but is an inherent element of statecraft at all times.... In the present day world, then, strategy is the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation - or a coalition of nations - including its armed forces, to the end that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and secured against enemies, actual, potential, or merely presumed.... The very existence of a nation depends upon its concept of the national interest and the means by which the national interest is promoted; therefore it is imperative that the citizens understand the fundamentals of strategy. We do not have and do not wish to have a military class to whom these matters will be delegated with plenary powers. Our armed forces, including our officer corps, are recruited on a democratic basis. This is as it should be, since there is only one safe repository of the national security of democratic state: the whole people."

It is, of course, impossible to defend the thesis that Clausewitz set once and for all the direction to be followed by the diplo-military history of Europe. Clausewitz merely gave clarity to ideas and tendencies which were already shaping up.

In this respect Clausewitz was more a prophet than an innovator. In particular, Clausewitz's concept of `absolute war' (the sort which, in his opinion, would be the rule if it were not for 'friction', i.e. limitations of time, space, chance, and human frailty) began to turn into reality in 194. Battles then became massacres which transcended Napoleon's boldest dreams. The formidable bloodiness of the First World War can be ascribed to many causes: the murderous technology; the magnitude of the engagements; the replacement of the war of movement (in which disengagement was possible) by trench warfare, in which opposing masses were locked in a firm grip. Victory always seemed within grasp if only a sufficient mass could be hurled against the positions of the enemy to achieve a breakthrough, as for example, in the five-month battle of Verdun. Actually the decisive victories of the Germans on the Eastern Front in the first months of the First World War were the last such to occur in that war. Thereafter the war, although approaching the Clausewitzian 'absolute war', lost a vital ingredient of the Clausewitzian model - decisiveness. There was no decision. The nations were bled white.

In the paroxysms of the revolutions that followed the First World War the Clausewitzian conception of the state as the ultima ratio, the keystone of the political philosophy of war, suffered irreparable damage. Thereafter all war had to be justified by other than 'reasons of state'. As is known, such justifications were not lacking in the half-century to follow; but the conception of war as a normal and perpetual state of affairs (assuming all politics to be a variant of war) was never again to dominate political thought as completely as it did in Europe in the era 1648-1914, which spawned Clausewitz and learned from him.

After the First World War, the eschatological and the cataclysmic philosophies of war were in ascendance. Embittered public opinion was quick to ascribe the disaster of 1914 to the plottings in the chancelleries, to German militarism, to French revanchism, to British imperialism, to the munitions cartels, etc. There was a fundamental change of attitude towards war and towards the elites (the two were strongly linked in the minds of war-weary populations). In 1919 the slogan Nie wieder Krieg (no more war) found as much response in the German masses as Gott strafe England (God punish England) did in 1914. In Russia the Bolsheviks hammered away at the foundation of the old order with a quadruple slogan: Doloi voinu! Zemlia krestianam! Fabriki rabochim! Vsia vlast' sovietam! (Down with war; land to the peasants; factories to the workers; all power to the councils [of workers' peasants' and soldiers' deputies].) The Bolsheviks were successful in gaining a mass following precisely because their opponents, including socialist parties, still clung to the notion of `carrying the war to a victorious finish' before deciding on Russia's political future. Indeed, whatever rationale the counter-revolution (led by the officers corps) could muster was only that of `national interest'. The White Guardists insisted that they were not fighting for the restoration of the monarchy, nor even for any specific social order, but only for `Russia'. They failed. Evidently, whatever `national feeling' may have been mobilized at the start of the First World War had dissipated in the trenches. The image of the well-fed, well-dressed, well-mannered burzhuy, not of the German, became the principal target of mass hatred.

Similar but lesser shifts of mood occurred in Western Europe; but they were not sufficient to ignite social revolutions or, in the case of Germany, to carry the revolution to completion. The old German military establishment was badly wounded but not killed. It retired into temporary obscurity to recuperate.

In short, while many features of the old order survived in Europe, the `Proud Tower '<sup>15</sup> collapsed. The international system would no longer be represented by a `society' of sovereigns and function as a game of strategy played by chancelleries and general staffs. Revolutionary ideologies (of Right and Left), public opinion, internal political strife, unrest in the colonial world, and global concepts (embodied in the League of Nations, the World Court, the Locarno Treaty, the Briand Pact) muddied the classical Clausewitzian picture of international relations.

The rival philosophies of war, the eschatological and the cataclysmic, never attained the clarity of the Clausewitzian system. They appear mostly as ingredients of mixed philosophies. International institutions of conflict resolution reflected the view that war is something that happens to nations (i.e. an aggravation of conflict in the absence of conflict-reducing institutions) rather than something used by nations to attain goals not otherwise attainable. To be sure, since `self-defence' was still recognized as an unalienable right of sovereign states and entrusted to their individual military establishments, these remained, flourished, and grew, augmented by the technologies developed during the First World War. Still the rationale in support of the military machines became almost exclusively defensive. In France this rationale permeated military strategy itself (the Maginot doctrine); in the Soviet Union it was reflected in the invariable portrayal of the next war as an attack on the U.S.S.R. by a coalition of capitalist states. We have subsumed these attitudes under the ethnocentric-cataclysmic philosophy of war. Later, when conquest once again became a frankly avowed instrument of policy (specifically of totalitarian states), it was rationalized in terms of ideologies with strong eschatological overtones; e.g. as a civilizing mission (the Japanese doctrine of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere), as the renaissance of the Roman Empire (proclaimed by Mussolini), or as the prerogative of a Master Race (in Hitler's Mein Kampf).

Therefore, in pursuing our aim of comparing the political philosophy of war with other philosophies, we cannot match the classically `pure' Clausewitzian system with other equally representative examples. The best we can do is select an example from each broad category, keeping in mind that eschatological and cataclysmic philosophies never found a soil as fertile as that which nurtured Clausewitzian thought from 1815 to 1914.

In Lenin's paradigm of international relations the actors are no longer monolithic states whose wills are limited only by those of other states. The main seams of the power struggle are not along national boundaries but along chasms separating the interests of social classes. In each state there are two principal classes, the exploited and the exploiters. The latter control the state apparatus and use it to advance their class interests. Note the fundamental difference: in the Clausewitzian image, the state is an autonomous entity; it has interests. In the Leninist image, the classes have interests, and the ruling class uses 'it' (the state) to promote its own.

The dynamics of capitalist economy are such (according to Marx, in whose theories Lenin's philosophy of war is rooted) that the needs for new sources of materials, new markets, new supplies of cheap labour are constantly growing.¹⁶ As the industrialization of Europe progressed, these supplies and markets were sought in the underdeveloped continents where the European powers staked out possessions and spheres of influence. There the several competing - or, as Lenin saw them, marauding - groups clashed. Already in the eighteenth century, England and France fought over the control of American territory and over India. Germany, having entered the race for colonies late, found England and France already in control of enormous colonial empires; and so the pressure of German expansion was directed to the Balkans and the Middle East. This pressure (der Drang nach Osten) was a threat to Russia's ambitions. Military alliances, linking France with Russia, Austria with Germany, and directed against each other, polarized the system. Thus when a clash was triggered by the assassination at Sarajevo, all the major powers were drawn into the struggle. This is the classical economic interpretation of the First World War, the prototype of an `imperialist' war in Lenin's terminology. The main thrust of this interpretation was aimed at one of the pillars of Clausewitzian philosophy, namely that of `national interest', conceived entirely in terms of an organically unified state. What was proclaimed as 'national interest' appears in Lenin's paradigm as only the interest of the ruling class and in no way the interest of the exploited class. Thus Lenin's philosophy depicts the 'true nature of war' in terms of concepts which do not occur in Clausewitz's framework of thought at all.

As has been said, the actors in Lenin's image of international, war are the ruling (capitalist) classes of Europe. These actors must contend with their own populations, in particular the working classes, most. of whom have everything to lose and nothing to gain from international wars." Nevertheless, the actors are still identifiable; hence war is still conceived in instrumental terms, in the sense that it is instigated by the ruling classes in pursuit of economic gains or, at times, for the purpose of diverting the attention of the. populations away from revolutionary tendencies. But war is no longer rational in Lenin's philosophy, for two reasons. First, the outbreak of any particular war is no longer necessarily a deliberate act of a clearly defined actor. Nations may be impelled towards war. That is to say there are forces acting on the system of class interests. These forces may set events in motion over which individual decision makers may have little or no control. Second, wars may have consequences completely unforeseen by the classes in whose interest the wars are presumably waged. For example, the First World War resulted in the dissolution of three empires. It set off revolutions throughout Europe, one of which `went to completion', that is, resulted in the complete demise of the old elite. Certainly these events were not foreseen by the initiators of the First World War. Moreover, when it appeared that the war was deadlocked and was draining the life blood of the participant nations, none of the belligerents was able to stop it. Such a state of affairs had never been imagined by Clausewitz.

A philosophy, like a plant species, flourishes where the soil and the climate are right for it. We have seen how the conditions in nineteenth-century Europe were just right for the Clausewitzian philosophy of war. Lenin's eschatological philosophy had a much more limited habitat and a shorter life span. It found the most fertile soil in revolutionary Russia, where the concept of `national interest' became meaningless to the vast majority of the people, if, indeed, it ever had any meaning. Bolshevik propaganda declared 'patriotism' to be a fraud perpetrated by the bourgeoisie in order to divert the masses from the pursuit of their own class interests, which were international in scope. The war-weary masses responded promptly. They overthrew Kerensky's Provincial Government (committed to `war to a victorious finish') and voted against the war with their feet, as Lenin observed with grim humour. The army disintegrated; the front was opened to the Germans, and the new Soviet government immediately sued for peace. To Lenin's way of thinking the peace terms did not matter, for Lenin expected them to be annulled as soon as the proletarian revolution (which he believed to be inevitable) occurred in Germany.

Lenin was only partially right. The separate peace treaty (of Brest-Litovsk) was indeed annulled, but not by a victorious proletariat. It was annulled at Versailles by the victorious Allies, who promptly proceeded to build a cordon sanitaire, a chain of states hostile to Bolshevism, around the borders of Russia. The European patchwork of nation states was re-established and with it a semblance of stability. The situation was reminiscent of 1648 and 1815, but the basis of `order' was no longer a `balance of power'. It was now a system of 'collective security' embodied in the League of Nations, from which Russia was excluded. With the `final imperialist war' and its sequel, the world proletarian revolution, the dénouement of Communist eschatology receded into an indefinite future. In the meantime Soviet power was to depend on its own resources. Since the nation state was the only known form of consolidated power, the Soviet State was established on that principle. Consequently threats to Soviet power were identified with threats to the Soviet State, and the only conceivable way to meet these threats (in the minds of the revolutionaries who became its rulers) was with military power. The imminence of a world social revolution may have remained as an article of faith, but it ceased to nurture the Leninist outlook on war.

Actually the Soviet leaders' outlook on war had already begun to undergo an essential change during the civil war of 1918-21. The realities of war demanded the creation of an organized war machine. The dilemma faced by the Soviet leaders was how to reconstruct an army after the old army had been deliberately destroyed by Bolshevik propaganda (pacifism, anti-patriotism, singling out the officers corps as the class enemy, etc.). In theory the problem seemed solvable. The army was to consist of workers and peasants; loyalty to tsar and country was to be _replaced by loyalty to Soviet power and the world working class; discipline, formerly based on blind obedience, was to be replaced by the discipline of class consciousness; the hierarchical chain of command was to be replaced by a democratic organization. But events did not wait for the transformation to take place. Men had to be sent into battle at once, and they had to be led by men who knew something about tactics and the use of weapons. Nor was it practicable to make military decisions in open meetings.

The organization of the new (Red) army was entrusted to Leon Trotsky, who envisaged it as a complete rehabilitation of the armed forces of the Russian Republic. Trotsky saw no way of accomplishing this task other than by undoing the antimilitary indoctrination which had destroyed the old army. This meant the restoration of stringent military discipline bordering on terror (death-penalty for failure), infusion of truly martial (not merely revolutionary) attitudes and, above all, the installation of former tsarist officers (almost the only available ones) in positions of leadership. To watch over the loyalty of these officers, Communist party members of unquestioned reliability were installed as commissars. The extent of militarization (in the established sense of the word) of the Red Army can be seen in Trotsky's reference to these commissars as `a new Communist Order of Samurai - without caste privileges - who are able to die and to teach others to die for the cause of the working class'. ¹⁵

There was violent opposition to Trotsky's policy of employing former tsarist officers. It may have stemmed partly from ideological shock. Guerrilla units operating deep in enemy territory, not a centralized army, an adjunct of a capitalist state, were the proper military arm of a revolution, Trotsky's opponents declared. There is no doubt, however, that the opposition to Trotsky's methods was also a reflection of a power struggle between Trotsky and his enemies, Stalin, Frunze, and Voroshilov.

The debate touched on all aspects of military doctrine - the relative merits of offensive and defensive operations, of a professional standing army versus a decentralized militia, etc. As is well known, the political struggle ended in the consolidation of absolute power in the person of J. V. Stalin. However, Stalin, regardless of his military views during the civil war, eventually embarked on the task begun by Trotsky, namely that of building a war machine in many ways not different from the war machines of other militarized nation states, for that is what the Soviet Union became.

Along with the restoration of officers' ranks (with corresponding caste privileges), decorations, epaulettes, etc., came the resurgence of military-nationalist traditions. Kutuzov and Suvorov, who had fought Napoleon, were promoted the heroes of Russian History. The veneration of Suvorov was especially noteworthy, because one of his accomplishments was the crushing of the largest peasant revolt in pre-revolutionary Russia (the Pugachev Insurrection of ¹773^-5).

After the failure of Litvinov's attempt to weld an antiAxis coalition, Stalin decided to rely exclusively on the military might of the Soviet Union in the pursuit of now frankly `national interests'. The German-Soviet pact of 1939, the partition of Poland, the war against Finland, the annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, and Bessarabia were all `seized opportunities' in the pure Clausewitzian tradition of `continuing a national policy by other means'. This policy of seized opportunities was apparently resumed immediately after the end of the Second World War.

Those who see the Soviet Union as a military threat to the non-Communist world perceive Soviet foreign policy as a messianic eschatological one, tempered only by shrewd calculations of risks. In this view the world revolution has remained the ultimate goal of the Communist leaders, and they are expected to use military power whenever the proper opportunity arises in order to extend the Communist Empire. This view is usually supported by the fact that Communist regimes were established in Eastern Europe under the cover of Soviet military forces.

Those who tend to discount the importance of ideological determinants of international relations see the foreign policy of the Soviet Union in purely Clausewitzian terms. To them the

Soviet Union appears simply as a `great power', intent on resisting encroachments on its sphere of influence by whatever means are available, and committed to augmenting this sphere by whatever means seem feasible.

This view finds strong support in the Soviet-German accord of 1939 and in the favourable allusions to Clausewitz in Soviet military writings. It must be noted that in all Soviet writings a theoretical or philosophical bent, evaluations of theories, of philosophies, and of individual thinkers must conform (or at least must appear to conform) with whatever had been said on the subject by the Founding Fathers (formerly four, now three) of Marxism-Leninism. Thus, since Marx repudiated Malthus, Malthusian ideas are either excluded or labeled differently in discussions of population dynamics. Ernst Mach remains the archvillain of `bourgeois' philosophy of science, because Lenin so presented him.¹⁹ Similarly Lenin's favourable references to Clausewitz find repeated echoes in Soviet military thought. For example, Marshal V. D. Sokolovsky writes:

In describing the essence of war, Marxism-Leninism takes as its point of departure the premise that war is not an aim in itself, but rather a tool of politics.

In his remarks on Clausewitz's On War, Lenin stressed that `politics is the reason, and war is only the tool, not the other way around. Consequently, it remains only to subordinate the military point of view to the political. ¹²

We must also be aware that for the military mind the Clausewitzian outlook is the most comfortable one. The professional military man is preoccupied with the problem of using military power effectively. Such power is used most effectively (and moreover is sanctioned by tradition) when it is at the disposal of a politically stable nation state and directed against other states. This is the Clausewitzian paradigm of war. Thus the Soviet Military professional finds two mutually reinforcing sources of support in accepting the Clausewitzian view: his profession and the pronouncement of the Highest Authority.

As for Lenin's approval of Clausewitz, it probably stems from his obsession with the struggle for power. The whole Marxist conception of history is that of successive struggles for power, primarily between social classes. This was constantly applied by Lenin in a variety of contexts. Thus the entire history of philosophy appears in Lenin's writings as a vast struggle between `idealism' and `materialism'. The fate of the socialist movement was to be decided by a struggle between the revolutionists and the reformers. Clausewitz's acceptance of the struggle for power as the essence of international politics must have impressed Lenin as starkly realistic.²¹

However, Lenin did not project the Clausewitzian paradigm beyond the `world proletarian revolution', which he believed to be imminent. Nor did he envisage the Soviet Union as a participant in a Clausewitzian system of very similar nation states. Nor did this come about. Instead the Soviet Union found itself first in a position of a pariah among the `society of nations', then in that of a leader of an ideologically united bloc, then in that of a rival in the struggle for ideological leadership. None of these situations are envisaged in the Clausewitzian system.

The avowed foreign policy of the Soviet Union has remained from its incipience that of insuring world peace. In the light of the all-too-frequent discrepancies between proclaimed and actual aims of foreign policies, the avowal need not, of course, be taken seriously. It must, however, be taken into account in evaluating a philosophy of war.

The Clausewitzian state, in its heyday, did not insist that the aim of its foreign policy was to insure world peace. Nor did it indoctrinate its population with the idea that peace is the most precious condition and that all efforts must be directed towards its preservation. On the contrary, the Clausewitzian state held war in great esteem and the abhorrence of war in contempt. It goaded public opinion with standing grievances against specific enemy states, grievances which would some day be rectified by force of arms. Lost territories were to be recovered; new territories gained, etc. The legitimacy of war as an instrument of national policy, and its efficacy as a means of winning prestige and the respect of other states, is an essential feature of the Clausewitzian philosophy.

The disavowal of aggressive war as an instrument of policyby the Soviet Union can perhaps be partly attributed to a change of climate in world public opinion : almost everyone is for peace. However, there is evidence that the disavowal represents a genuine orientation of the Soviet leadership, a reflection of the profound aversion to war of their population and of an intense standing commitment to build a great civilization on Communistprinciples. Actually, except for the brief period _1939-41 and possibly _1945-8, Soviet leaders did not subscribe to the Clausewitzian philosophy of international relations. Lenin's philosophy was, as has been noted, an eschatological one. When this conceptualization was dissipated (in the sense of ceasing to influence actual policy) it was supplanted by what was called above the ethnocentric-cataclysmic view of war. War was then seen as a disaster that threatened to befall the Soviet Union, and herculean efforts - economic, military, and diplomatic - were expended to meet this disaster. But with few exceptions - such as the attempt to build a system of collective security against the states which were openly planning or already actually engaged in aggressive wars (Germany, Italy, and Japan), and the short-lived 'non-Aggression Pact' of 1939-41 with Nazi Germany - the Soviet Union has not sought allies among capitalist states. The expectation of war was based on the polarization of the world into ideologically opposed camps, not at all on the way war was conceived in Clausewitzian philosophy, namely as an instrument for promoting the interests of a single state essentially an equal in a `society' of states.

In summary, whatever the reason, whether the absence of martial inclinations in the Russian people, or the peculiar position of the Soviet Union in the international system, or the ideological underpinnings of Soviet foreign policy, or the preoccupation of the Soviet leaders with peaceful economic development, the Clausewitzian philosophy was never firmly established in the U.S.S.R. After a brief period of dominance the eschatological philosophy, in which the Soviet state was conceived, gave way to the ethnocentric-cataclysmic: now that the Communist state is stable and powerful, war is a disaster to be guarded against.²²

The habitat of the genuine global eschatological philosophy shifted to China, where it now has the status of an official doctrine.

The global cataclysmic philosophy differs from the others in that it views war in relation to humanity as a whole, not in relation to an actor, be it a state, a class, or any other power-oriented system. In this perspective, war (especially the sort of war waged in our era) loses the rationales ascribed to it by other philosophies; for whatever advantage war may seem to confer on some, the total effect is certainly negative, if one perceives it from the point of view of humanity. In principle any arrangement resulting from a struggle could have been effected by agreement (if the results of the struggle could have been foreseen) without the losses incurred by the participants. Consequently the global philosophy places at the centre of attention not the possible uses to which war can be put, but the prevention of war. The emphasis is on uncovering the causes of war and on inventing institutionalized methods of conflict resolution.

This orientation leads to the idea of peace research, a programme of investigation aimed at understanding the conditions conducive to war and to peace. This tacit assumption which usually underlies such a programme is that, once these conditions are understood, war can be attacked as a problem similar to other global problems, such as disease, poverty, natural disasters, over-population, etc. We shall examine this assumption in the next section. For the moment we shall examine some approaches to peace research in which the global-cataclysmic view is reflected.

Peace research proceeds along two parallel lines. One is represented by the system-theoretic approach, the other by the empirical.

The system-theoretic approach begins with some postulated properties of a system, that is, a collection of entities having a structural and functional relation to each other. The state of a system is described by a set of instantaneous values of certain variable quantities, selected as being somehow fundamental for understanding the behaviour of the system. These variables are interdependent: changes in the values of some bring about changes in the values of others. The theoretical problem is to derive the behaviour of the system (as reflected in the states through which it passes) from the postulated interdependence of the variables.

A relatively simple example of a complete theory of this sort is the dynamic theory of the solar system. The state of this system is described by the instantaneous positions and velocities of all of its elements (the sun, the planets, the asteroids, and the satellites). These variables and their rates of change are in constant interaction (through mutual gravitational attraction). Taking this interaction into account, astronomers are able to chart the `time course' of the system; that is, the positions and velocities of the planets at any specified time .²³ The accuracy of these predictions is very impressive. For example, eclipses of the sun and the moon can be predicted centuries in advance.

Some systems are so complex that the predictions of dynamic theory can be made only roughly. The atmosphere is an example. The variables of interest in this system are those which comprise the weather: velocities of air currents, gradients of temperature and humidity, quantities and time of precipitation, etc. All of these variables interact in ways which are well known, since the interactions are governed by established physical laws. Nevertheless weather prediction is difficult, simply because of the immense amounts of information that must be processed to `read' the state of the system at a given time and to calculate the succeeding states.

Another example of a complex system is the economic system of a nation, a region, or the world. Here the problem of prediction is further complicated by the fact that the laws of interaction among the variables of interest (production rates, prices, demand, etc.) are known only very roughly and may themselves undergo changes, being influenced by events not comprised in the economic system, e.g. psychological or political factors.

The object of study in the system-theoretic approach to peace research is the international system. Here the situation is still more difficult than in meteorology and economics, since the regularities or `laws' governing the interaction of the variables are practically unknown (if indeed such laws exist). Such `laws' can be postulated only hypothetically. Moreover, little is known about the relative importance of the different variables, nor of how they are to be reliably estimated.

The system-oriented peace researcher has only one recourse at the start: simply to guess or postulate both the relevant variables and the laws governing their interaction. Once this is done the hypothetico-deductive method of inquiry comes into play. For, having postulated some variables and their interactions, the system-theorist can deduce (mathematically) the consequences of his assumptions. If these consequences happen to correspond to observations made on the behaviour of the system or some aspect of it, to that extent the assumptions (the `model', as this point of departure is called) are corroborated. A theory is then built by combining assumptions whose consequences have been corroborated by observation. The problem, then, is to select the variables which are significant indices of the behaviour of the system and to guess how they interact; and if several different sets of variables and relations (and hence different models) seem to be corroborated equally well - which ones to pursue first, and how to find discriminating tests between them.

Lewis F. Richardson, a British meteorologist, pioneered this method.²⁴ He began by postulating a hypothetical international system consisting of two nations (or blocs). He defined the state of this system by a pair of variables representing the attitudes of the nations towards each other. Positive values of these variables represented hostility (or fear), as reflected in the armament budgets of the nations or blocs, while negative values represented goodwill, as reflected in the trade volume between the rivals. Next, Richardson postulated the laws of the interaction as follows. The rate of growth of the armament budget of each nation he supposed to be stimulated in proportion to the already existing size of the rival's armament budget and inhibited in proportion to the nation's own armament budget.

A pair of constant terms were added to represent the effects on the rate of change of the budgets, independent of the existing levels. These assumptions are expressed mathematically by a pair of differential equations. The solutions of these equations give the time courses of the variables. A growth of the variables, represents increasing armament budgets; a decrease represents disarmament or, in the negative region, increase in inter-bloc trade volume (cooperation). The constants of proportionality connecting the rates of change of the variables to the variables themselves constitute the system parameters, i.e. the properties of the system itself.

In order to compare the theory with observations it is necessary to select (a) a pair of rival blocs whose armament budgets and trade volumes are known in some time period, and (b) values of the system parameters. When these values and the initial values of the armament budgets (and/or trade volumes) are introduced into the equations, one can `read out' the time course of the variables and so compare it with the observed time course of the armament budgets (and/or trade volumes). Richardson did this. He chose the Entente and the Central powers of pre-First World War Europe. For the initial year he chose 1908 (when the intense armament race began). For the system parameters he chose values which would fit the calculated to the observed initial increments in the armament budgets. The solved equations then predicted the time course of the continuing arms race to the outbreak of the war.

Next, Richardson examined the stability of his (highly simplified) system, given the chosen system parameters. He found that such a system was inherently unstable. That is to say, it could not exist in a state of equilibrium, interpreted, say, as a balance of power (stabilized arms budgets). Regardless of initial values, the system had to move away from the (theoretical) equilibrium, not towards it. Which way it would move depended on where it started from. From certain initial conditions it would have to move in the direction of an accelerating arms race. But from certain other initial conditions it would have to move in the opposite direction, towards disarmament and ever-increasing trade volumes. The situation in 19o8 was such that the system was just barely on the arms-race side of the theoretical (unstable) equilibrium. Richardson remarks that if the combined armament budgets of the rival blocs had been just £5 million smaller (or, equivalently, the trade volume had been so much larger) the international system (or rather his model of it) would have moved towards a United Europe instead of towards a world war.

It must be stressed that the usefulness of the approach is not established by either the apparent agreement between the theoretical and the observed armament budgets or by the derived conclusion. The agreement may well have been spurious; the conclusion cannot at any rate be corroborated since we cannot `replay' the pre-First World War system, starting with different initial conditions. Moreover, the model is altogether too primitive to serve as a basis of a theory of so complex a matter as international relations. Rather, the value of this approach is a heuristic one. It illustrates a method and so provides a starting point for further more extensive and more sophisticated investigations. Using the same paradigm, future investigators can turn their attention to other possibly more important variables, postulate other possibly more realistic interactions among them, make use of more powerful mathematical machinery (for example, computer simulation which was not available to Richardson), increase the number of actors, etc.

Above all, the value of the approach should be seen not in terms of the answers it provides but in terms of the questions it raises. For example, Richardson's model of the arms race raises the question of whether the system property of stability (or instability) is applicable to international systems. There is evidence that it does apply to economic systems. Economic systems seem to have some regulating mechanisms, which sometimes appear to fail, as in run-away inflations and self-aggravating crises. Can it be that some aspects of international relations also have `built-in' dynamics and so are guided by an `invisible hand', which traditionally was supposed to be operating in a market economy? If so, how do these `blind forces' interact with supposedly rational decisions of statesmen, and to what extent are the latter merely rationalizations of the trends over which the decision-makers actually have no control? Can the behaviour of international, economic, ecological, and technological systems be studied by similar methods (for example the methods of cybernetics)? Does the understanding of the dynamics of an international system provide an opportunity of exercising a measure of control over it?

Clearly, the fruitfulness of the system-theoretic approach depends crucially on the recognition of the relevant variables. The search for these constitutes the other avenue of peace research - the empirical.

The empirical approach was pioneered also by Richardson and by his American contemporary Quincy Wright.²⁵ Both men devoted many years of toil to sifting mountainous masses of data pertaining to wars large and small, international and civil. Richardson extended the scope of his study to all `deadly quarrels', as he called encounters involving violent deaths from single murders to world wars. A principal object of these investigations was to uncover correlates of war; that is, conditions regularly present at or immediately preceding the outbreak of wars, or those characterizing nations who were engaged in many wars or in protracted or severe wars; and, conversely, conditions which appeared to inhibit the state of war.

In a way Wright's and Richardson's findings seem inconclusive. No outstanding correlate of war was found. However, this only bespeaks the immense complexity of the phenomenon and the difficulty of ascribing operational meanings (in terms of data which can be collected and analysed) to the concepts which dominate our thinking about war, e.g. nationalism, hostility, power, rivalry, polarization, integration, severity of conflict, perception of national interest, and so on.

Work along the lines indicated by Wright and Richardson is progressing.²⁶ It involves problems of collecting `hard data'; for example, compiling a catalogue of international wars, their magnitudes (as measured by several indices) and durations; problems of characterizing nation states by well-defined indices (demographic, political, industrial, military); problems of characterizing the state of the international system (with regard to trade, alliances, degree of polarization). The hope is that the incidence, magnitude, frequency, intensity, duration - in short, the epidemiological characteristics of wars - can be somehow related to other aspects of national and international life. The problem is conceived in a way similar to the way complex syndromes of disease (e.g. `cancer', `schizophrenia') are conceived in large-scale medical research.

The scientific investigations instigated by the global cataclysmic view of war are still in their infancy. The work goes on, largely through the efforts of individuals and small teams of researchers in universities where off-the-beaten-path investigations are encouraged or tolerated. Some of the groups have acquired the status of `centres' or `institutes'. The total effort (measured in allotted funds and personnel) is still infinitesimal compared with the research effort directed towards increasing the power and efficiency of weapons and the perfection of military tactics and strategy.

We have described three views of war in their most representative variants, bringing out contrasts and differences for the purpose of clarity. Actually, however, the views are in many ways. complementary rather than contradictory. For example, the events leading up to the First World War can be described in terms of concepts borrowed from all three views. In particular, Leninist and Clausewitzian as well as Richardsonian concepts can be utilized in describing the arms race of 1908-14. In listing the `forces' which then drove Europe towards war, the virtual hegemony of the Clausewitzian view in the chancelleries and cabinets of Europe can certainly be included, and so can the appetite for markets on the part of the large industrial complexes.

But one must constantly keep in mind that, although the theories derived from the cataclysmic view are stated in quasi-physicalist terms (i.e. have a formal resemblance to physical theories), the strains and forces attributed to the international system are not physical strains and forces. Rather they are consequences of the way events are singled out for attention and interpreted by human minds. In accordance with these interpretations men make decisions and act. These decisions and acts are, in turn, events, which are singled out for attention, interpreted, and acted upon. Thus the key role attributed to calculations and decisions in the political (instrumental and rational) view of war is not necessarily simply the result of a misconception (as has been argued, for example, by Tolstoy in War and Peace). Moltke and Schlieffen designed the German military policy on the basis of Clausewitzian ideas.²⁷ The actual events in August 1914 were a realization of these ideas. They were consequences of specific orders given by specific individuals via a pre-designed system of ramified communication channels. The plan was realized (at first) because the orders were carried out; and they were carried out because millions of individuals had been pre-trained to understand and to obey the orders. Thus the vast German military machine, wheeling counter-clockwise across Luxembourg, Belgium, and France, was for a time a well-functioning `instrument' put in motion by specifiable actors whose clearly defined goal was the destruction of the French war machine.

When, however, the German and French war machines clashed on the Marne, they could no longer be used as `instruments' any more than an automobile stuck in a snow bank can be used as an instrument of location. Clausewitzian principles of strategy and tactics became useless. The military technology which had developed since 1870 made movement and manoeuvre impossible in 1914. From the time that the armies were immobilized the war ceased to serve the political aims of either side.

The fact that the stalemated war continued on the Western Front for four years can no longer be interpreted in Clausewitzian terms. The now senseless slaughter must be ascribed to the systemic properties of the war itself rather than to the use of war as an instrument of policy. Similarly the rejection of the idea of the `national war' by large portions of the European population in the 1920s and the post-war revolutions and near-revolutions in central and eastern Europe must be attributed at least in part to the penetration of the class-war concept into public consciousness.

It seems, therefore, that it is possible to develop a descriptive theory of war (at least in the period under consideration), which embodies all three views, their mutual interaction and their blending with one another.

It is a different matter when we consider the prescriptive implications of each type of theory. A prescriptive theory can be derived from a descriptive one if certain outcomes of action are singled out as more desirable than others. For example, physiology and pathology are descriptive sciences, since they only describe the processes going on in living organisms. Medicine, on the other hand, is largely a prescriptive science. A physician prescribes remedies; i.e. procedures which are known or thought to be effective in preventing or combating disease. Similarly there exist descriptive and prescriptive theories of grammar. The former are systematic descriptions of actually occurring patterns of speech; a prescriptive grammar is a set of rules which one is advised to follow if one wishes to produce speech patterns satisfying the standards of a particular speech community (usually a social elite). Political theories also can be descriptive and prescriptive. The former describe political institutions and practices actually occurring; the latter specify institutions or practices by means of which certain goals can presumably be achieved.

Each of the three views of war outlined in the foregoing contains an explicit or implicit prescriptive component. In Clausewitz's formulation the prescriptive component is quite explicit. Having defined war as a political instrument, Clausewitz proceeds to instruct a hypothetical client²⁸ on how this instrument is to be used in the pursuit of certain goals.

The Leninist view also has a prescriptive component. Having traced the sources of war to the clashes between rival groupings in competition for markets, etc., Lenin proceeds to instruct his client (the `proletariat') on how to utilize the clashes of interest among the ruling groups in order to promote `his' interests. We have placed `proletariat' and `his' in quotation marks to indicate that `the proletariat' is a much more diffuse agent than a prince or a general (Clausewitz's clients). Consequently Lenin's prescriptive theory must (and does) contain specifications of actions without which it would be impossible for the proletariat to act as an agent - that is, in an organized way. Clearly these prescriptions have not been carried out on a world scale. In Russia it may be said that they have been carried out to a certain extent; namely, a numerically small but highly organized party was created which was able to seize the apparatus of state power, and to inspire the Russian masses to convert the war against Germany into a civil war and to destroy completely the power of the old elite. This party was identified in Bolshevik political theory as a sort of executive committee of the proletariat.

The prescriptive component of theories based on the cataclysmic philosophy of war is only implicit, and for the most part vague. The aims of such theories are mainly those of a descriptive theory: to discover the characteristics of the international system which propel it towards or away from war. The task has certainly not been completed (it has hardly begun). The relevance of whatever systemic ` causes of war' have been singled out for attention so far can be only conjectured. Also, aside from the lack of a descriptive theory acceptable by scientific standards (to which the proponents of the system-theoretic approach would like to adhere), the difficulty of deriving specific prescriptions from the cataclysmic philosophy lies in the absence of a well-defined client-actor. Presumably a prescriptive theory based on the cataclysmic paradigm would indicate ways in which wars could be prevented or stopped. Such prescriptions could be implemented only by institutions ready and able to put recommendations into effect. But such institutions for preventing war do not exist, at least not with effective power. Supra-national bodies, like the United Nations, even though conceived as instruments for enforcing peace, typically find themselves unable to limit the actions of major powers `pursuing their national interests', while the actions of individual states, even though some of them may be willing to carry out the prescriptions, are not sufficient if the prevention of war depends on the dynamic properties of the entire system. Thus it may be impossible to translate the knowledge of the systemic properties of the global system into actions aimed at preventing war, because there is no actor (a decision body) which can affect the global system to a sufficient extent, and with sufficient speed. In summary, while it may be possible to integrate the three philosophies of war on the descriptive level, it is not possible to do so on the prescriptive level. The prescriptive components of the associated theories are addressed to different actors, some of which are only hypothetical. Moreover, while the theories themselves are not, the prescriptions of the various theories are incompatible with each other.

In a way the global problem of war (if war is so conceived) is no different from any other large-scale human problems. The solution of such problems depends not only on knowledge but also on the possibility of applying it. For example, the solution of the problem of eradicating typhoid fever depends in part on understanding the main source of the disease (e.g. a polluted water supply) but no less vitally also on the ability to install water-purifying plants (an engineering problem). A perfectly reliable, safe, and cheap contraceptive might or might not help to solve the problem of population control, depending on whether its use is accepted on a sufficiently wide scale. The problem of inducing acceptance is neither pharmacological nor physiological: it is a sociological and psychological problem.

Similarly, knowing the sources of war will not in itself help eradicate it. If there are groups who still subscribe to the Clause-witzian tenet that war can serve as a useful instrument in the pursuit of national interests, and if they are in a position to use the instrument, they are not likely to implement a programme which would make this instrument useless. It appears, then, that the identification of these groups and the development of means of dealing with them must form an integral part of any serious research programme.

A cursory glance at the contemporary international system reveals that large portions of it are no longer Clausewitzian. In particular, the European system of nation states can no longer be viewed as a realization of the Clausewitzian model. Certain overlapping regions have been integrated into peacefully cooperating blocs without territorial and imperialistic ambitions (e.g. the Scandinavian states). Others have submerged their military policies in those of large blocs (such as N A T O and the Warsaw Pact countries). Whatever territorial disputes smoulder in Europe are remnants of the Second World War (for example, the German-Polish border). Overseas empires have dissolved. There is reason to suppose that were it not for the continuing Cold War (whose poles lie outside of Western and Central Europe), the danger of a European war would be smaller today than it had ever been since the nation-state system came into being. War seems to have disappeared as a major item on the agenda of European politics. Europe seems to have unlearned the lessons taught by Machiavelli and Clausewitz.

Elsewhere, however, there are prominent danger spots, especially in the Middle East and potentially in Africa. The patchwork of states in those regions is still very new, and nationalism is still a vigorous, driving, political force. Inter-state wars can be therefore expected to occur in those regions. Machinery for extinguishing such war exists. Whether it is used or not depends on whether the major powers act in their individual interests (as traditionally conceived) - that is, in support of one or the other belligerents in the hope of thereby extending their own spheres of influence - or whether they act in their collective interest to maintain peace. In other words, whether wars occur among the newly emerging nation states, and whether they spread, depends on whether the political or the cataclysmic view of war prevails in the minds of the super-power leaders.

As for the danger of a war between the super-powers themselves, it has been maintained that the ability of each to destroy the other within a few hours has been an effective deterrent. To what extent the so-called balance of terror is actually a deterrent is not known, because the non-occurrence of a nuclear war is certainly no evidence of its impossibility. Nor can the so-called `probability' of a nuclear war be meaningfully estimated. Probabilities of events are estimated from the frequencies of their occurrence. Thus it makes sense to speak of the probability of an air crash, a fire, a tornado, but not of a nuclear war, unless such wars become recurring events, which does not seem likely. On the other hand, as long as war does not break out between major powers there is no evidence that the balance of terror has not been a deterrent. We are therefore free to choose either assumption. Choosing, for the moment, the optimistic hypothesis, we have, in summary, the following image of the present international system, in particular of its susceptibility to war:

i. The super-powers may be deterred indefinitely from fighting each other by the balance of nuclear terror. z. There are states which either have been integrated into cooperative sub-systems of the international system or cannot hope to compete for power in the international arena. Neither the leadership nor the populations of these states seriously think of war as a political instrument.

3. There are states whose diplo-military policies are dominated by the super-powers. Their policy makers are not in a position to think in Clausewitzian categories.

4. There are states which might well attempt to pursue their `national interests' by war if necessary; but such wars can be easily extinguished by the super-powers unless the latter are ready and willing to fight each other.

The Israeli-Arab war of June 1967 comes readily to mind in this connexion. Whichever side instigated the war did so `in the pursuit of national interests' as these have been traditionally understood. Whether this war was `extinguished' by the superpowers (via the United Nations Security Council) or only temporarily halted remains to be seen. At any rate, the states of the Middle East are hardly likely to repeat the history of Clausewitzian Europe, where resort to war was held to be the normal procedure for settling international disputes. Further outbreaks of this sort are more likely to lead either to a settlement forced on the contestants from the outside, or to a world cataclysm.

In these contexts, then, war is not likely to be used both deliberately and successfully as an instrument of national policy, and the policy-makers concerned know this. In other words, the Clausewitzian conception of war has been rendered void in these contexts.

There remains, however, one context in which war can be used deliberately and, as it appears to the actual or prospective participants, successfully. That is in the context of the revolutionary war. Revolutionary wars are not `Clausewitzian' wars of sovereign states fighting each other for the usual objectives, these being increments of power or prestige within a matrix of comparable sovereign states. Revolutionary wars are not `symmetrical'. Strategies and tactics used by one side are not those used by the other. Technical superiority invariably belongs to the side which seeks to suppress a revolution. The revolutionists, on the other hand, usually have the advantages of fighting on familiar territory, of greater tactical flexibility, and of support by the civilian population. Indeed, they often are the civilian populations in arms. Therefore in counterrevolutionary warfare the first principle of the prescriptive Clausewitzian theory of war usually cannot be carried out, the true objective of military action being to destroy the military forces of the adversary. The `military forces' of the revolutionary adversary are diffuse. One is never sure whether one has destroyed them unless one is ready to destroy a large portion of the population, and this usually conflicts with the political aim of the war and hence also violates a fundamental Clausewitzian principle.

Following the Second World War, a number of European powers were engaged in the suppression of revolutions. The British were engaged in Greece and Malaya, the Dutch in Indonesia, the French in Algeria and Indo-China. Since 196o only one great power has been actively engaged in suppressing revolutions outside its borders - indeed in accordance with an explicitly stated policy; namely, the United States. At the same time, the polarity of the international system shifted from the United States versus the Soviet Union to the United States versus China. China proclaimed herself to be the champion of `wars of liberation'; the United States, of `world order'. Both countries have committed themselves to theories of war, corresponding to their respective political positions: China to Mao Tze-Tung's theory of guerrilla warfare; the United States to counter-insurgency.²⁹ Neither theory bears any resemblance to Clausewitz's theory of war, either politically or militarily, being entirely outside the scope of the international military system envisaged by Clausewitz.

Yet the Clausewitzian philosophy of war now enjoys the greatest prestige in the military circles of the United States and among their advisory entourage. It is instructive to inquire into the reasons for this resurgence of Clausewitzian philosophy in a country which has had practically no experience as a participant in the Clausewitzian system.

The wars waged by the United States in the nineteenth century were punitive or exterminating actions against Indian tribes, an unsuccessful expedition against Canada in 1812, and easy wars of conquest against Mexico and the moribund Spanish empire. Neither of the two serious American war experiences before the Second World War (the Civil War and the First World War) were perceived by Americans as wars in the Clausewitzian sense to `promote national interest'. On the contrary, the First World War (whatever may have been its actual underpinnings) was seen by most Americans as an ideological war, fought for principles, not for power. The entry of the United States into the Second World War appeared to Americans even more devoid of `Clausewitzian' motives ('reasons of state'). It is this perception, rather than the actual determinants of the participation, which is relevant to the argument which follows.³⁰

In view of the very real threat which Nazi Germany offered to whole populations, not just to states, the moral justification of the Second World War (irrelevant in the political philosophy of war) appeared unchallengeable. The crowning victory over the axis strengthened the Americans' conviction that the forces of righteousness triumphed over the forces of evil.

The experience of the Second World War was an exhilarating one for Americans because of the dramatic sequence of events initial defeats, followed by a turning of the tide and rapidly accumulating victories. War became fixed in the American imagination as an extreme effort which one undertakes only when provoked, hence only when one is in the right. Such aneffort, to Americans' way of thinking, was bound to be victorious. In other words, identification with the protagonists of good (as in mass-entertainment dramas) and a confident expectation of victory became the context in which the majority of Americans thought about war.

This thinking was carried over to the early post-war years. It turned out that the `total threat' did not disappear with the defeat of the Axis. Instead it was supplanted by another `total threat', namely the perceived (or imagined) threat of ` Communist domination of the world'. For the United States the response to this new threat was in terms of the same moralistic conception of war, in which America pictured herself as peaceful and passive yet ready for instant mobilization of her entire national energy to repel an attack - an ethnocentric cataclysmic view, a mirror image of the Soviet view. By this time an attack on any of the allies of the United States was regarded by the United States as an attack on itself. Simultaneously the concept of `allies' was extended to `The Free World', now defined as the entire world excepting the countries with well-entrenched Communist governments; and the concept of `attack' was extended to any change of regime thought to have been instigated by Communists.

U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's doctrine of massive retaliation reflected the American perception of war in the early 1950s. The doctrine stated, in effect, that the United States would retaliate against any act which it defined as a threat to its security, on any scale of violence it deemed necessary, against any one whom it held responsible.

As is known, `massive retaliation' was never applied, even though several events occurred in the late fifties and early sixties which were declared to be instances of `Communist aggression'. Probably a major factor in the restraint exercised by the United States was the fact that the Soviet Union had acquired its own retaliatory weapon, in consequence of which retaliation for infringements on the `Free World' became a risky matter.³¹

In the late fifties the doctrine of massive retaliation came under sharp criticism (Dulles died in _1959). The spearhead of the criticism was the argument that the effectiveness of a threat depends not only on the severity of the punishment threatened but also on its credibility. The credibility of a threat is impaired to the extent that the party who makes it also stands to suffer if the threat is carried out. Clearly a threat of a `massive retaliation' is of this sort, if the retaliation is itself expected to incur a counter-retaliation. Once the weakness (insufficient credibility) of the massive retaliation posture became clear, the problem of making threats credible as well as terrible became prominent in the writings of the American strategists.

The psychological aspect of credibility is discussed extensively in the writings of Thomas C. Schelling and of Herman Kahn .³2 Both consider the possible utility of postures which would in effect convince the adversary that in a particular confrontation the United States is actually unable to refrain from carrying out the threat if the adversary transgresses a certain clearly defined boundary. If the adversary could be convinced of this, it is argued, the threat would act as a potent deterrent and would cancel whatever counter-threat the adversary was using. Schelling cites several examples of this tactic from actual military practice. The act of cutting off one's own retreat, or chaining a machine gunner to his weapon, may have their own tactical value in battle in the sense of utilizing to the utmost the resistance to an assault. The strategy of threat, however, gives these measures an added dimension. If the adversary knows that a unit cannot retreat even if it wanted to, he may raise the estimate of the costliness of the assault. The object of such stratagems, from this point of view, is not so much to inflict maximum damage on the adversary as to convince him that an attack will be costly. 33

The ultimate version of this type of deterrence (perhaps meant as a caricature) is the so-called Doomsday Machine described by Kahn in On Thermonuclear War (p. 14.5 ff.). A Doomsday Machine is simply an accumulation of thermonuclear bombs set to go off if triggered by a pre-set signal. These bombs are massed on the territory of their possessors. Since they need not be air-lifted, there is no limit on the magnitude of the cache. It is therefore quite possible to accumulate enough of these devices so that the explosion, once set off, would destroy all life, for example, by blanketing the globe with radioactive fallout.

The signal which would trigger the explosion is under the control of the adversary. For example, the triggering mechanism of the Doomsday Machine bombs could be so programmed that a nuclear explosion anywhere within a given radius of the machine will set it off. This means that the adversary will set off the Doomsday Machine if he launches a nuclear attack against its possessor. Since the adversary would himself be destroyed in the ensuing holocaust, he is thereby deterred from initiating a nuclear attack. The Doomsday Machine differs from the ordinary counter-threat ('If you attack me, I shall attack you') in that it makes the retraction of the counter-threat impossible. This is accomplished by another triggering mechanism which sets off the explosion if an attempt is made to dismantle the Doomsday Machine (or to disconnect its main triggering mechanism). It follows that the adversary can neither use a nuclear threat' against the possessor of a Doomsday Machine nor make use of a counter-threat to force its neutralization.

Whether the construction of the Doomsday Machine has ever been seriously considered does not concern us here. The idea is offered as an illustration of the way the `credibility game' has become an essential part of the twilight zone between `diplomacy' and war. This game, like the `war game' proper, generates its own theories of offence and defence. The problem of offence is here essentially that of insuring that one's `resolve' (i.e. intent to carry out threats or counter-threats) is received, understood, and, above all, believed by the adversary. The problem of defence is that of preventing the opponent from doing the same. As Schelling points out, a kidnapper who has no means of communicating to the family of the victim is helpless, because his threat is effective only to the extent that it is received and believed.

Investigations of this sort have remained largely on the speculative level, stimulated, as they were, largely by the situation resulting from the balance of terror. That is to say, there was no way of testing the theoretical conclusion without invoking unacceptable risks. Accordingly the attention of the strategists was attracted to another doctrine which could be put to a test, .namely the doctrine of measured response, or limited war.³⁴

The underlying idea of the doctrine is that the magnitude of the response should be just enough to checkmate the attempted `aggression'.³⁵ The advantages to be derived from such a policy were the following:

i. By actually responding militarily, instead of merely threatening to respond to what the United States considered impermissible acts (e.g. the overthrow of the military junta by the Constitutionalists in the Dominican Republic in 1965), the United States could be sure of imposing its will throughout its sphere of influence, which, as we have seen, is now assumed to be the entire non-Communist world.

z. The real use of military action would make the threats of future military actions credible. It thus appears as a more effective deterrent than `massive retaliation'. 3. Since the military resources of the United States are practically inexhaustible, enough counter-force could always be marshalled against any increase in the intensity of the `aggressions' (the escalation principle). 4. There would be less danger of a mobilized public opinion, particularly abroad, against the use of force by the United States in the pursuit of its national interests. Whereas the threat of massive retaliation was difficult to reconcile with a defensive posture, by matching pressure with comparable counter-pressure the purely defensive posture of the United States (as a guardian of `peace', i.e. of order) would be more convincing.

These considerations seem at this writing (1967) to underlie the strategy and tactics of the war which the United States is currently waging in South-east Asia. This policy has to be defended both against the opponents of the war and against those who insist on bringing into play sufficient force to gain a swift and decisive military victory.

Both oppositions are parried by an appeal to `realism' and `responsibility', i.e. to the principle of `rational' use of force in the pursuit of national interests. A `realistic' foreign policy, it is argued, is one which recognizes that force still plays a preponderant role in international affairs. At any rate, as long as there are adversaries who will not hesitate to use force to gain their ends, the United States, it is argued, must be prepared to do likewise. On the other hand, a `realistic' approach to foreign policy also demands a sober appraisal of the costs and consequences of alternative courses of action. Ruthlessness is as risky in war as recklessness in business ventures, and besides it often defeats the political aims of the war.

This new military policy called for an extensive broadening of the military arsenal and of the repertoire of strategies and tactics. Clearly the reliance on nuclear capability, which had been consistent with the doctrine of massive retaliation, had to be abandoned. Emphasis was now given to the development of `conventional' weapons and of techniques of using them. In short, the military establishment devoted itself with great energy to mastering the `art of war' in its most diversified forms and to developing it further.

Nor was this intellectual effort confined to the military establishment. The military research industry in the United States now includes autonomous institutes financed by government contracts and extends deeply into the universities. Because of the traditional mobility of the American professional class, research talent moves easily from universities to military research institutes and back. Professors, free-lancers, managers and military officers attend the same conferences and share ideas related to basic and applied research, technology, strategy, and tactics. Early retirement age allows generals to move into lucrative executive positions in industry and so to `make up' for the financial sacrifices entailed by the modest salary scales of the military career. The retired generals bring their outlook with them and help to cement the solidarity between the business and the military worlds. Recall that this solidarity developed in Germany on the basis of the revolutionary-suppressing potential of the military. In the United States this is not a necessary consideration; rather the solidarity is cemented by the common appetites of the business and military machines. Both thrive on unlimited growth. The two establishments nurture each other. In short, there has developed an immense scientific-technical-managerial adjunct to the military establishment, offering unprecedented career and business opportunities, social prestige, and considerable intellectual challenge.

The militarization of American society is thus proceeding in ways which are in harmony with the American social structure and cultural climate. A military caste has not emerged; there was no social or historical base for it. Instead a military profession arose which encompasses a range of expertise far beyond the traditional military specialities. The State did not become totalitarian. For support of its predominantly military foreign policy it relies on the passive acceptance of the policy by a population traditionally ignorant of foreign affairs, insensitive to global problems, and accustomed to viewing war as a job that has to be done (and always can be done) somewhere outside the United States. Both the messianic and the ethnocentric-cataclysmic views of war, which had been dominant in the United States, receded into the background. Instead a 'Neo-Clausewitzian' view became dominant, vigorously defended by the new American school of international relations."

In details the Neo-Clausewitzian view differs from the classical Clausewitzian doctrine but agrees with it in essentials. The divergence stems from the radically different political and technological aspects of twentieth-century war. The Neo-Clausewitzians assume the stance of realism; hence they take into account the fundamental changes of the political and technological environment. The essential similarity between the modern and the classical forms of Clausewitzian philosophy of war is rooted in the basic conception of war as a political instrument and in the tacit assumption that the national interests of a state are clearly discernible and, in very large measure, identified with the power of a state vis-à-vis other states. Let us examine somewhat more closely these differences and similarities.

Although Clausewitz thought in terms of a general model of international relations, it is clear that when he thought about the State and its destiny, he thought of Prussia. Similarly American diplo-military strategists orient themselves almost exclusively towards what they believe to be the national interest of the United States.

There is a difference, however, between Clausewitz's orientation and that of the American strategists. In spite of Clausewitz's strong identification with Prussia - conditioned, no doubt, by the powerful emergent nationalism in post-Napoleonic Europe - he could still envisage his prescriptive theory in general terms. He expected that his theories could and probably would be adopted by all `civilized' states. Prussia was a state like other states. The United States, however, is not conceived by most American strategists as a state like other states. The problem of promoting American national interest, as most American strategists see it, is not that of preserving or extending the power of the United States vis-à-vis other similar states, which may at times be allies and at other times opponents. The problem is to preserve and increase the power of the United States (seen as the champion of the `Free World') against encroachment by a permanent and implacable enemy who is everywhere and who challenges the United States, not only by virtue of possessing a comparable military machine, but also by corrupting populations; that is, inducing in them a desire for overthrowing the present world order. Since the strategists see the United States as the only effective defender of the world order (here the unique role of the United States is apparent), it follows that all social revolutions must be viewed as hostile to the United States. The problem then is not primarily to win specific clashes with specific rival states (as Clausewitz saw Prussia's problem), but how to stem the tide of world revolution. ³⁷ The asymmetry of the present international system (contrasted with the symmetry of the Clausewitzian system) is well understood by the Neo-Clausewitzians.

The other departure from classical Clausewitzian philosophy is a consequence of taking into account the effect of total military effort in a clash between nuclear powers. Clausewitz took the supreme object of a war to be rendering the enemy incapable of

resistance. In his day this meant the destruction of the enemy's military machine. This could easily be envisaged in the eighteenth century, when professional armies, once destroyed, could not be immediately replaced. With the appearance of mass (`citizens") armies; the task of destroying a military machine became more difficult, because armies could continue to be replenished by mass conscription. (Recall that the almost total destruction of Napoleon's Army in the Russian campaign did not stop Napoleon from fighting for two more years.) Still, it was conceivable that a sufficiently rapid destruction of the opponent's field army would put him hors de combat, and would enable the victor to dictate the peace terms.

The large twentieth-century wars have not been fought on these terms. Total mobilization became a mobilization not only of soldiers but also of the entire industrial effort of a modern nation, hence of its labour force. To ensure victory, not only the immediate but also the potential military capacity of the opponent had to be destroyed, which meant attacking the centres of production and population. Aviation made this . possible; and we have seen the application of this principle in Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, and elsewhere.

It is important to examine here the difference between Clausewitz's conception of `absolute war' and the twentieth century notion of `total war'. It is doubtful whether Clausewitz ever envisaged `civilized' war as a slaughter of civilian populations. Even in his `absolute war' he saw slaughter confined to the battlefield. However, regardless of how Clausewitz pictured war `carried to its logical conclusion', in the present political and technological environment the actualization of Clausewitz's absolute war is total war, that is, genocide. The concept of the battlefield dissolved in twentieth-century war. The modern advocates of `total war', e.g. the Nazis and some partisans of `total victory' in the United States, explicitly included (and now include) civilian populations as military targets. For example, the United States Air Force ROTC manual, Fundamentals of Aerospace Weapons Systems defines a `military target', as follows: `Any person, thing, idea [sic],entity or location selected for destruction, inactivation, or rendering non-usable with weapons which will reduce or destroy the will or ability of the enemy to resist. ¹³¹

The differences between Clausewitz's conception and that of the Neo-Clausewitzians are largely due to the changed historical situation. The similarities between the two are more fundamental. One might say that the Neo-Clausewitzians have adapted the basic ideas of Clausewitz to our age. The acceptance of the Clausewitzian philosophy of war and the rejection of its twentieth-century consequences requires a revision of Clausewitz's logic. We shall see in a moment how the Neo-Clausewitzians have undertaken this task.

To recapitulate the basic tenets of Clausewitz's philosophy of international relations,

1. The State is conceived as a living entity, having well defined strivings and endowed with intelligence to seek and examine means to realize these strivings.

2. The State is sovereign, i.e. recognizes no authority above itself.

3. Since among the goals of all states is that of increasing their own power at the expense of that of other states, the interests of states, regardless of incidental and ephemeral coincidence, are always in conflict.

4. Clashes of interests between two states are typically resolved by the imposition of the will of one state upon that of another. Therefore war is a normal phase in the relations among states.

The personification of the State as an entity with a single will was a natural conception in the era of absolute monarchy, when the interests of political units were identified with the appetites of their princes. To be sure, in Clausewitz's time absolute monarchy had already dissolved in England and in France, and democratic ideas were becoming prominent in European thought. But to Clausewitz the demise of the despotic state by no means spelled the demise of the personified State. On the contrary, having identified the will of the nation with the will of the State, Clausewitz freed the State from whatever responsibility might be ascribed to rulers. A prince, being a person, could still be described as kind or cruel, honest or dishonest, etc. These qualities do not apply to the State, through which, in the estimation of the Prussian, Providence manifested its cosmic purpose.

In view of its subsequent culmination in the totalitarian regimes of our century, the monolithic State can no longer be glorified as the manifestation of the will of God. Nevertheless the idea of absolute sovereignty is still intact in the writings of the Neo-Clausewitzians. The idea is expressed mainly in the ubiquitous assumption that states have national interests which will be served, regardless of arrangements (e.g. supra-natural bodies which challenge absolute sovereignty).

The other essential ingredient of Clausewitzian thought which is preserved and nurtured by the Neo-Clausewitzians is the idea that war is, perhaps regrettably, a normal phase in the relations among states. This notion is much more difficult to defend than the notion of absolute sovereignty, even though it appears to be a logical consequence of the latter. This is because war has become an abomination to most of the inhabitants of this planet, and protestations of devotion to peace are on the lips of almost everyone who speaks publicly of international relations in a political context. Even in the United States, where less than io per cent of the population have ever had first-hand experience with war (and none on their own soil), the idea is still widespread that war is stupid and nasty, and that it is justifiable to fight wars only in order to prevent them.

It is primarily this affect-determined repugnance against war which is the main target of attack in the persuasive efforts of the Neo-Clausewitzians. The main thrust of their arguments is directed towards restoring the legitimacy of war. In the United States this implies the demolition of the eschatological idea of `the war to end war' which dominated American public opinion from 1917 to ¹945.

The arguments of the Neo-Clausewitzians proceed along three lines: (1) against the idea that the attempts to outlaw war and to establish a machinery of international law (e.g. the United Nations, the World Court, disarmament agreements) can be significantly effective in the present or in the foreseeable future; (a) the identification of anti-Communism (i.e. the official United States ideology) with the `defence of Western civilization', hence eventually of the interests of humanity; (3) the insistence that the magnitude and the intensity of war can be controlled, i.e. the refutation of the idea that in our day, war, even between the two super powers, must necessarily lead to the total holocaust.

Among the numerous tracts of the Neo-Clausewitzian the most ambitious, to my knowledge, is Peace and War by Raymond Aron. Aron presents himself as a Westerner concerned with the precious heritage of Western civilization, which unfortunately, in a world devoid of law, can be defended only by overwhelming military might. Now, defence in the age of global politics cannot be confined to a deterrence of overt attack and to the ability to repel it or to retaliate against the attacker. An essential component of the defence of the `Free World' is resistance to `subversion'. Since the United States is the only power which is willing and able to sustain such resistance, the global policy of the United States must, in Aron's view, have the support of those who cherish the values of Western civilization. Accordingly Aron equates the goals of United States foreign policy with the defence of Western values. Since he is French this posture absolves him from the charge of chauvinism, the component of the political philosophy of war which has fallen into disrepute.

In no other work, to my knowledge, is Clausewitzian philosophy in modern dress presented so clearly and ably as in Aron's Peace and War. It is a work of immense erudition; its tone is cool and reserved. Beginning, fittingly, with Clausewitz's definition of war ('War is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will'), it encompasses not merely the political philosophy of war but also brings to bear upon it the history subsequent to the crystallization of the Clausewitzian system (including the demise of the social order of which the political philosophy of war was a natural expression) and all the modern ideas of social science. In this context the classical simplicity of Clausewitz's thesis disappears; but this is the price we moderns must pay for our sophistication. Everything now must be qualified. Concepts must be refined, broken up into subtly differentiated sub-concepts. Above all, the heterogeneity, the fluidity, and the asymmetry of the contemporary world must be constantly kept in mind. It is no longer possible to maintain, as Clausewitz did, that in war everything is simple and that only the execution of the simple principles is difficult. On the contrary, everything in Aron's description of modern international politics appears enormously complex, in peace even more than in war .³⁹ Nevertheless this `world sociology' (for that is what the work purports to be) rests on the same Clausewitzian foundations: nations were born in violence, they relate to each other through violence, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. The counsel of those who will not accept this basic truth is useless or dangerous.

Aron's book provides a sophisticated, sociologically, psychologically, and historically oriented rationale for the revival of the political philosophy of war. Books of this style and scope serve to re-establish the respectability of this philosophy in academic circles. American strategists, on the other hand, by and large appeal more directly to the general public.

Herman Kahn's contribution, for example, was by way of diluting the dread of war nurtured by the image of the nuclear holocaust. His arguments are presented as an appeal to reason, and to the courage required to face calmly and realistically the dangers precipitated by the nuclear age. In spite of everyone's desire to avoid a nuclear exchange, Kahn argues, such events may nevertheless happen. To deny the possibility because it is too horrible to contemplate is to refuse to face reality. According to Kahn it behooves us as rational beings to combat this natural but crippling repugnance. Once we overcome it, and so acquire the freedom `to think about the unthinkable', we shall be better equipped to deal with the dangers.

This stance seems to reflect the ethnocentric-cataclysmic philosophy rather than the political philosophy of war. As such it may serve the purpose of `getting the foot in the door' in the task of breaking down the resistance to the very idea of nuclear

war. The basic argument here is that refusing to think about evil does not help to eradicate evil, just as the refusal to think about syphilis or cancer can only hinder the struggle against these plagues. Man deals effectively with the formidable problems of life by applying his intellect; and the effective application of intellect requires the disengagement from sentiment, passion, and fear.⁴0

Having thus presumably gained the right to be heard, Kahn proceeds to develop an essentially taxonomic description of the wars of the future. His primary interest is in nuclear war (the hitherto uncharted realm of military science). His orientation (aside from the opening ploy, in which war is pictured as a catastrophe to be guarded against) is more frankly Clausewitzian than that of most other strategists. In fact, the title of his magnum opus, Thermonuclear War, is an obvious bid for the mantle of Clausewitz. In a later book, On Escalation, Kahn extends the taxonomy of inter-nation conflict to a vast range, from 'Pre-crisis Maneuvering to the war of total nuclear destruction. Of the forty-four rungs of his `escalation ladder', twenty-nine involve the use of nuclear weapons.

The main point of Kahn's analysis is that the dichotomies between war and peace and between conventional and nuclear war are a vast over-simplification, a result of primitive either-or thinking, which inhibits rational analysis, narrows the range of options, and so puts people who succumb to it at a disadvantage in the diplo-military game. And it is the ability to play this `game' which separates the men from the boys in the international arena.⁴¹

The Neo-Clausewitzians have carried the political philosophy of war farther than Clausewitz; and Kahn has carried it farther than anyone. In Clausewitz's view, even though the inter-nation struggle for power forms a continuum with war as merely one of its phases, still a threshold between war and peace is recognized. Once war begins, military objectives become paramount. Moreover, in Clausewitz's view, the prime military objective is clear, simple, and compelling: to destroy the enemy's ability and will to resist. Thus, in spite of Clausewitz's insistence that political objectives are the primary goals and the military ones only means to achieve these goals, the gross principles of military strategy and tactics remain constant, however the specific military problems had been determined by the political objectives of the war. In Kahn's treatment of strategy, especially of nuclear strategy, this is no longer the case. The ideal of a quick, decisive war, the sort envisaged by Clausewitz, Moltke, and Schlieffen, and Hitler, and actually realized in 1864, 1866, 1870, and _1939-40, remains with Kahn only an ideal. Kahn's prescription for a `realistic' appraisal of the potentialities of military strategy no longer permits a division of labour between the diplomat and the general. The political phase must now pervade the entire range of inter-nation conflict, including the war phase, even all the twenty-eight levels of nuclear war - all but the very last, the `spasm war', i.e. total mutual annihilation. This `political phase' is essentially a kind of bargaining which, in Kahn's estimation, can and ought to go on as the war is being waged. He notes that Americans are becoming used to the idea. To illustrate, he cites a question he sometimes asks of audiences who attend his public lectures (which he describes as `college students, businessmen, members of the League of Women Voters, etc.') namely, `what they think would happen if President Johnson were suddenly notified that a large [nuclear] bomb had just exploded over New York City.' Kahn goes on:

Almost nobody in the audience now (as opposed to five years ago) will reply that Johnson would go ahead and launch a large all-out attack on the Soviet Union. The overwhelming majority always suggests only one bomb. Where are the others? ... If the Soviet wanted to launch an exemplary attack, why had they not made some preliminary demands or sent us a message so that we could understand what was going on? ...

In order to pursue the example even further, I have suggested an elaborate scenario outlining why the Soviet had in fact launched the attack deliberately and so informed the U.S.... A large percentage of the audience now are very interested in the degree of vulnerability of the Soviet forces.... When I suggest that just for the sake of example, we assume that the Soviet forces are invulnerable and could destroy the United States totally ...almost all agree that there should be retaliation but that it should be limited. Most suggest that Moscow be destroyed, but many object to this on the grounds that this city is much more important to the Soviet Union than New York is to the United States. These usually suggest that the destruction of some smaller city, such as Leningrad or Kiev would be appropriate counter-escalation ...

In the past five years, almost everyone in the U.S. who has any interest in these problems or is even modestly well informed has ... learned that there are possibilities of control in such bizarre situations .⁴z

Since the publication in ₁₉₄₇ of John von Neumann's and Oskar Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior the notion has become widespread, especially in the United States, that this theory could (perhaps in the future) serve as the foundation of scientific diplo-military strategy. A formal definition of the theory of games supports this notion. Game theory can be justifiably defined as a theory of rational decision in situations involving conflicts of interest among two or more independent actors. The notion finds further support in the circumstance that a well-developed theory of rational decision in situations involving one actor in an uncertain environment does exist. In situations involving risk, it is possible to calculate the `expected gain' (or loss) associated with each of several alternative courses of action, so that the rational decision can be reasonably defined as one which maximizes this expected gain (or minimizes the expected loss). Insurance companies and gambling houses actually base their decisions on calculations of this sort. The principle applies to the management of any enterprise which must cope with statistically fluctuating environmental factors, e.g. the stock market, prices, supply, demand, weather.

In this theory (which could be called the theory of one-person games, or games against Nature) it is explicitly assumed that the fluctuations in the environment are affected by chance, i.e. an agency indifferent to the actors' preference for the outcomes. Game theory extends this method to situations where the environment is at least partially controlled by other actors who do have their own interests, i.e. conflicting preferences. Moreover, if `our' actor is rational (i.e. if he calculates the possible outcomes of his various choices) so are the other actors. That is, in making their decisions they are able to take into account the possible courses of action of `our' actor.

Game theory, then, treats specifically of strategic decisions, i.e. decisions contingent on the possible decisions of others, which, in turn, are assumed to be contingent on our possible decisions. The notion of strategy is, of course, not new. Strategic calculations constitute (or are thought to constitute) an integral part of military science. However, the development of an abstract mathematical theory of such calculations can be readily assumed to lay the foundations for a much farther-reaching development of strategic science than has been possible in context-bound situations. Abstract mathematical thinking `emancipates' theory, as it were, and thereby gives it a powerful impetus for development. This has happened, before, when geometry was severed from its applications to land measurement and architecture, when the theory of probability was developed apart from specific gambling context, etc.

Consequently the development of the abstract mathematical theory of games was seen in some quarters as the groundwork of a fruitful theory of rational decisions in conflict situations, i.e. of scientific strategic decision making.

So the outlook appears, on the basis of a formal definition of game theory and in the perspective of historical analogy. However, when we examine the actual contexts in which game theory could actually apply to decision making, we find that the application can be meaningful only if the following conditions are satisfied.

1. The relevant actors are named.

2. The strategies (options) available to each actor are precisely specified.

3. The outcomes, or at least the probabilities of the outcomes (if Chance also `makes decisions'), are listed.

4. At least the preference order of all possible outcomes is given for each actor. In most situations, however, the specification of preference orders is not sufficient; a stronger `utility scale' must be given on which it is possible to determine also the relative magnitudes of the difference between the utilities of pairs of outcomes.

5. Possible coalitions are specified; whether, for example, the situation allows two or more actors to undertake joint decisions so as to ensure outcomes preferred by both (or all) to outcomes which would obtain if they acted independently. 6. A criterion of rationality is defined.

Those who deprecate the importance, the usefulness or the relevance of formal game theory to the conduct of international politics fall mostly into two categories. Some oppose the `mechanization' of policy on moral grounds. The conceptualization of international politics as a game seems to imply that human beings are reduced to the status of pawns. Others dismiss game theory on the grounds that the conditions listed above are not realizable: the situations are too fluid and vague to yield to formal descriptions and calculations.

Both objections may be valid; but as they stand they are not decisive. Arguments based on moral repugnance elicit the pragmatic refutations cited above: not how we feel about the situation (so the refutations go) but what we do about it ought to be the proper object of ethical judgement. Besides, so the pragmatic argument goes, calculation of strategies is always relevant to a set of given preferences. Even if the objectives of nations were entirely humanitarian, it would still behove the leaders to make realistic appraisals of different courses of action with regard to their relative effectiveness, and these calculations would also necessitate the treatment of human beings as `statistics'. Strategic thinking, it is argued, is morally neutral; it can be fitted to the implementation of any given goals, including ethically irreproachable ones.

Objections to game theory on the grounds of its inefficacy can also be partially answered. For one thing, the idealization and simplification of situations is a standard device in all scientific analysis. Therefore to reject a theory on the grounds that it fails to capture all the intricacies of the phenomena studied is to reject scientific analysis in toto. In view of the enormous successes of scientific analysis, precisely via the formulation of idealized and simplified models of physical systems, we cannot summarily reject the extension of this method to the analysis of behaving systems. True, the plasticity and complexity of human perceptions, motives, and reactions put obstacles in the way of developing a rational decision theory, but they do not render it impossible.

Actually a defence of game theory as a method relevant to the `science' of international relations is not often resorted to by the diplo-military strategists of Neo-Clausewitzian persuasion. Those with sufficient mathematical background (a small minority) to understand formal game theory, realize that whatever heuristic value the theory may have, its practical value is extremely limited, being confined to the analysis of situations which satisfy the above-mentioned conditions. Those without specialized mathematical knowledge (e.g. political scientists, administrators, military men) tend to conceive of their expertise as that of the artist rather than of a scientist. Knowledge of the specifics of situations, conjectures based on long experience, political intuition, the awareness of details - in short, the power to discriminate rather than the readiness to generalize - is what men of affairs call expertise. Generally speaking, they have little patience with the abstract and often abstruse formulations of the mathematician. In this respect the Neo-Clausewitzians recapitulate Clausewitz: he also stressed the intuitive, `artistic' aspects of strategic decisions, emphasized the crucial role of `human factors' (including genius), and dismissed as sterile all pedantry and formalism in military science.

In my own polemic against the Neo-Clausewitzians⁴³ I discussed at great length the limitations of game theory as a theory of rational decision. This discussion was repeatedly interpreted as an implication that what I considered to be the errors of the American diplo-military strategists derived from hasty or illegitimate applications of game theory to the formulation of policy. To this presumed implication some replied that the accusation was irrelevant inasmuch as there were very few game theoreticians among the strategists. D. G. Brennan, for example, pointed out, referring to the output of the professional staff of the Hudson Institute, ⁴⁴ that the'. .. number of individual pages on which there is any discussion of concepts from game theory could be counted on one hand .

It is true that some critics of present United States foreign policy⁴⁶ have pictured the diplo-military strategic community as being dominated by `game theoreticians', an impression easily refuted by an examination of the backgrounds of the personnel comprising this community and of their methods of analysis. However, my discussion of game theory in the context of the polemic did not have the aim attributed to it. Rather it was aimed at pointing out the inadequacy of the political philosophy of war. This philosophy is embodied in the statement of the central problem of United States foreign policy by Robert Osgood: `... the problem is this: How can the United States utilize its military power as a rational and effective instrument of national policy?'⁴⁷ The key words are `rational' and 'instrument'. They imply that the goals of `national policy' are given, and are realizable by the use of military power. This puts the whole situation in the context of a game of strategy. Whatever be the inadequacies of game theory as a practical method, the framework of thought which underlies the method of game theory is taken by the Neo-Clausewitzians as the proper one for the conduct of national policy. It is against this framework of thought that I directed my polemic, not against the use of game theory as a practical method in arriving at rational decisions. Far from inveighing against game theory on that account I pointed out the insights to be gained from it. These insights in no way depend on the usefulness of game theory as a practical tool. They depend on the laying bare of the intricacies of certain kinds of conflict. One of the results of this analysis is the discovery of contexts in which the very notion of `rational decision' dissolves into ambiguities and so loses the meaning ascribed to it in other contexts.

This `dissolution of rationality' can be illustrated by exceedingly simple situations. Consider two opponents locked in combat, the outcome of which each knows can be only mutual annihilation. If only both could disengage simultaneously, both could avoid annihilation. But each knows that if he tries to disengage (e.g. turns his back on the enemy), then he alone will be annihilated. Assuming that mutual annihilation is preferred by each to only his own annihilation, what is the `rational thing' for each combatant to do? `Rationality' dictates against disengagement whether the other disengages or not, since, if the other tries to disengage, one can save oneself by annihilating the other with impunity; if one does not try to disengage, it is suicide for the other to do so. If, however, mutual disengagement is preferred by both combatants to the continuation of the combat, then the `rational' choice by both actors prevents the outcome preferred by both. What, then, does `rationality' mean in this context?⁴⁸

Examples of this sort, formulated as games, fall into the category of so-called two-person non-zero-sum games, i.e. conflicts in which some outcomes are preferred to others by both players (although the actors still have conflicting interests). These games differ from the so-called zero-sum games, in which one player's gains are always equal to the other player's losses. In the case of zero-sum games (provided only the utilities of the outcomes can be specified), it is always possible (in principle) to find an optimal strategy (or strategy `mixture') in the sense of getting the largest pay-off (or expected pay-off) which the conditions of the game allow (assuming that the opponent has chosen his optimal strategy or strategy mixture). Therefore the definition of rationality offers no difficulty in this case. The rational strategy of each player is the one which assures the greatest possible loss (or smallest possible gain) to the opponent. However, as we have seen, there exist `games' (i.e. conflict situations) of the non-zero-sum type to which this definition of rationality does not apply. In such situations, if each actor tries to minimize his losses (or maximize his gains), the two may not get as much as they could get otherwise.

Clausewitz seems to have had no awareness of the non-zerosum game situation. Stated in the terminology of game theory, his opening chapter defines war exclusively as a zero-sum game. `Whatever is to the advantage of one side is to the disadvantage of the other' is assumed by Clausewitz to be a self-evident proposition.

The Neo-Clausewitzians, especially those with some knowledge of game theory, have transcended this view in their analyses of the logic of conflict. Especially T. E. Schelling⁹⁹ has gone to great lengths to explain the limitations of the zero-sum game as a paradigm of conflict, and to point out that even enemies have some common interests. Schelling advances the idea of `cooperating with the enemy', a concept that Clausewitz would have declared to be a contradiction in terms. The claims sometimes made by strategic analysts, that their work serves the cause of peace (as well as that of `rational' war) is based on the fact that the `common interests' of the super-powers (e.g. the avoidance of accidentally triggered nuclear war) are sometimes taken into account in the design of weapons systems.

Nevertheless the core of Clausewitzian philosophy has remained imbedded in the Neo-Clausewitzian conception of international politics as a continuum of power struggle, and of `rational policy' as a choice of a point on that continuum (determined by specific circumstances) which seems to confer the greatest strategic advantage to the chooser. Thus, while recognizing the troublesome paradoxes revealed by the paradigms of some non-zero-sum games; the Neo-Clausewitzians have never seriously questioned the meaning of rationality in the context of international conflict. This is all the more true because purely theoretical analysis is not really taken seriously by the wielders of power, in whose service the strategists work. Consequently the closer strategic analysis comes to actual strategic decisions, and the more concrete it becomes, the more it is forced into channels determined by the pressures of the moment. The strategic recommendations which are used are those dealing with the allocation of funds, personnel, and equipment; with weapons systems design, and with logistics. In these areas there are few, if any, opportunities `to cooperate with the enemy'.

The pressure on decision-makers is to choose courses of action. To the extent that the concept of `rational decision' enjoys prestige with the wielders of power, it must apply in the context of `problem solving'. To solve a problem from the point of view of the power wielder is to answer the traditional question: `How can I get the most for the least?' This is the fundamental question of technology, of competitive business, and of war. The very posing of the problem turns attention to those aspects of conflict which make concrete formulations possible. Efficacy of actions can be measured if it is expressed in dollars, fire power, investment rates, kill ratios, etc. That is, logistic calculations seem to shed the most light on the problem, as it is posed by the power wielders, because such calculations clarify and operationalize the meaning of 'efficacy'. Consequently, in a culture where science is practically identified with technology, success with virtue, and security with power, there is unrelenting pressure to translate vaguely stated political problems into clearly stated military ones.

To the extent that rational methods are employed to solve the problems so translated, they are developed in the framework of operations research (where the decisions are not contingent on those of a rational opponent) or, on the next level of sophistication, in the framework' of a zero-sum game (where the interests of the opponent are always taken to be diametrically opposed to one's own). This is not surprising, since only in those contexts can 'rational decision' be unambiguously defined. Beyond these contexts is an intellectual barrier which cannot be breached without abandoning the notion that every decision problem has a rational solution in the sense of an optimal course of action chosen by an individual actor. This is what I have called elsewhere the zero-sum trap; the search for rational individually chosen strategies forces the perception of conflict into zero-sum paradigms.⁵¹

Once the zero-sum paradigm prevails, the 'logic of conflict' becomes simple. It reduces to the logic which underlies Clausewitz's philosophy of war. It makes shambles of the theory of 'limited war' as a form of 'cooperating with the enemy' which is one of the keystones of Neo-Clausewitzian diplo-military philosophy, and so introduces an inherent contradiction into it. American intervention in South-east Asia is publicized as a 'limited war'. It must be kept in mind that what appears to Americans as 'limited war' appears as total war to the people against whom it is waged. What appears as 'control' of the amount of pressure exerted on, say, the Vietnamese is only a delusion if, for reasons of prestige, the United States has no choice but to escalate the war if the 'pressure' fails to bring the Vietnamese to their knees. The Clausewitzian principle implies logically that military policy ought to be geared to political objectives. But psychologically the implication is read the other way: political objectives are determined by military capacity. This is what happened to Germany. This is what happened to every state which, encouraged by repeated military successes, has wedded policy to 'the rational use of force' in the pursuit of national interests.

Towards the close of Book Four of On War, Clausewitz utters what amounts to a prayer:

May we succeed in lending a hand to those who in our dear native land are called upon to speak with authority on these matters, that we may be their guide into this field of inquiry, and excite them to make a candid examination of the subject.

Colonel F. N. Maude, editor of the 19o8 English edition, remarks in a footnote 'This prayer was abundantly granted - vide the German victories of 1870.'

Here we may apply a principle, recognized by Clausewitz: the wisdom of a decision is relative to outcomes, immediate or remote. Writing here some sixty years after Col. Maude, we might add, '- vide also the fruits of 1914 and those of ¹939'. As Kenneth Boulding once put it, nothing fails like success.

It is idle to speculate about what Clausewitz would have sûid had he been able to foresee the results of his teachings in Europe. Clausewitz was a man of his age; he stood on the threshcld of an era when the nation state seemed to embody the answer to man's quest for immortality. Unlike the great mystical or cosmic religions (Christianity, Buddhism), which demand a dissolution of the self into a Godhead or the cosmos, state worship allows the assertion of the self; to be sure, also dissolved into the state, but nevertheless still differentiated from other selves (the enemy) and magnified in power many million fold. Thus state worship offers an outlet for boundless love and for boundless hate, both passions elevated to sacred duties.

Especially, for the Germans, state worship came easily in the nineteenth century, because until 1871 nationhood was for them not something to be taken for granted but something to be achieved on the basis of common language and a cultural heritage. In one of his poems, Clausewitz wrote:

The full heart of the German

Pours out in German tongue.

In quips is French well spoken, And musical is the Italian's speech.

But when the glance is turned heavenward,

As when the three Swiss swore their Holy Pact,

The German word sounds like the metal of their swords

With which they smote the stranger's yoke.⁵²

Indeed, language is the most concrete criterion of national identification. At the same time, love of one's native tongue is a mark of noble sensitivity, a passion entirely acceptable to the literate, the high-minded, and the gentle-mannered.

Thus in Clausewitz patriotism, liberty, and identification with the power of the State were all parts of a harmonious self. Clausewitz had no need to resort to sophistry or self-deception, nor to erect a barrier between his intellect and his humanity. Clausewitz was a whole man. He may have worshipped an evil deity, but he revered it with his whole being. In short, in retrospect we can see him as a sinister but noble figure in the unfolding of a tragedy.

It is difficult to forecast such a role for the contemporary disciples of Clausewitz. Much is known to them which could not be known to their master, including the fruits of European militarism, the illusory nature of security through power, and the obscene absurdities of total war. The underpinnings of military patriotism have been eroded away in our urbane, commercial-industrial age. Western nations no longer go to war to the sound of bugles. Gone are the regimental traditions, the Commander on his horse, the impeccably executed campaigns culminating in decisive battles. Gone are the virtually inviolate strategic and tactical principles to be taken seriously, like the classical chess openings. In fact there is almost nothing in the contemporary paroxysms of destruction which resembles in the least what Clausewitz pictured as war, whose `true nature' he supposedly discovered. No head of state dares nowadays to justify starting a war `in order to impose our will on our opponent'. All wars must pose as defensive wars (an absurdity according to Clausewitz, cf. p. 396); and at the highest pinnacles of state and military power war is solemnly declared to, be a scourge of humanity.

Still, the Neo-Clausewitzians continue to assume the maxims of Clausewitz : the world is a collection of states, each a law unto itself. The object of international politics is power. Power is gained and maintained by violence.

To keep these assumptions intact, I suspect much must be suppressed, in particular some important questions. If the warwaging state has retained the appetites and the moral precepts of eighteenth-century princes, why should an enlightened twentieth-century man identify with such a state and serve it - in particular, advise it in the conduct of its predatory adventures? On the other hand, if the object of power is something besides power - for example, the defence of precious values, as some strategists maintain - then why do their descriptions of these values often reduce to banalities, which on both sides of the Cold War are mirror images of each other?⁵³

It is difficult to believe that the dedication of the NeoClausewitzians to their professed ideologies is as genuine as was Clausewitz's dedication to the Prussian ideal of the State. The overriding dedication of the Neo-Clausewitzians resembles rather that of the eighteenth-century military men. It is dedication to their profession, the most strongly felt loyalty in our professionalized culture. The strategists must do what they do because they love it and take pride in it.⁵⁴ Clausewitz was, of course, also enormously proud of his work. There is, however, a vital difference. When Clausewitz glorified War, he knew what he was talking about. He sensed all the levels of war, from the plottings in the chancelleries to the screams of the dying. War was to Clausewitz an intense human experience; and when he wrote about the glorious future in store for the flowering Art of War (liberated from the shackles imposed on it by human frailty), he envisaged an intensification of that experience. He may appear to us to have been obsessed by a cruel passion, but he did not appear absurd.

Today speculations about `progress in the art of war' are carried on in a surrealistic mode, as witnessed by the situation described by Herman Kahn as `bizarre' (cf. p. 69). In fact, not only is the depicted situation bizarre but also the setting in which the discussion of it takes place: a group of `college students, business men, members of the League of Woman Voters, etc.', arguing whether the `elimination' of Moscow or of Leningrad plus Kiev is the more `appropriate' response to the `elimination' of New York. I suspect that these discussions are possible only if one seals off from one's consciousness every shred of identification with the human race. This is not hard to do, if one is spared, as are the strategists and their receptive audiences, direct contact with the realities behind the fantasies.

This is why the Neo-Clausewitzians cannot be seen as sinister figures but only as bizarre ones. In the name of realism they perpetuate an obsolete collective state of mind which has brought humanity to the brink of disaster. What is unfolding is not a tragedy but a ghastly farce.