To what extent is the clausewitzian account of war a political instrument relevant in the twenty-first century ?
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published 28/01/2005
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Summary Clausewitz's description of war as a means to an end or, to use his own formulation, “the continuation of politics by other means”, must be interpreted against the contemporary intellectual background: the majority of enlightenment writers had regarded war as an aberration, an interruption of political intercourse, the point where human reason came to an end . This view can be said to have influenced the actual conduct of war in as much as most eighteenth-century commanders tried to make war in a cautious, “civilised” manner while minimising the damage to the environment . Thus, when Clausewitz insisted that war was simply one of the forms taken on by political intercourse, that it was a language of politics that should be formulated on the basis of carefully assessed cost-benefit analysis, he was making a new and important point.
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Table of Contents
- War can to a lesser and lesser degree be waged on behalf of a strictly trinitarian state structure
- Twenty-first century war will be more impulsive, blind, habitual, and desperate than purposive, intelligent, and rational. That mades Clausewits's rational theory of war irrelevant.
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