![]() ![]() The fate of Spain, Clausewitz believed, was determined primarily by the armies of England and France.Īt the same time Clausewitz understood the importance of governments mobilising popular support and participation in war. He did not anticipate that such groups might drive out an occupying power or defeat regular forces by relying on nationalism and/or ideology simply by sustained use of irregular methods of war. While posted to the War College in Berlin in 1810-11 he gave a series of lectures on what he termed ‘little war’ ( Kleinkrieg).īut what he did not contemplate was that war could be conducted by insurgents or non-state groups alone, with partisans and irregular forces employing ‘small war’ tactics. Today these might be termed ‘special operations’ but were then known as guerrilla or ‘small war’. Like others before him, Clausewitz recognised that standing armies could also employ some of these tactics. Such tactics were often favoured by insurgents unable to recruit large, regular armies or mount major attacks. What interested Clausewitz most about these wars were the tactics employed, notably the use of mobile forces, often lightly-armed, to harass enemy soldiers, attack weak points or gather intelligence. Clearly, war could embrace combatants other than uniformed regulars. And he was very familiar with the war in Spain where Napoleon’s army had struggled against a combination of partisans, irregular troops and the armies of England, Portugal and Spain itself. He knew more of the Vendée uprising in which lightly-armed peasants fought against France’s revolutionary regime from 1793-96. He knew of the American War of Independence when irregular forces played a significant role in defeating the British (though he does not mention the conflict in On War). Most of the references to fighting in On War are to clashes between national armies under the command of a state.īut Clausewitz recognised that war could be more complex. Combat, Clausewitz says, ‘is not a contest between individuals’ but between soldiers who are ‘recruited, clothed, armed and trained’ to be able to ‘fight at the right place and the right time’. Second, ‘serious means’ refers to fighting by soldiers as part of a state’s military organisation. Individuals and groups other than states do not normally wage war. There are two requirements.įirst, war entails ‘a clash between major interests.’ For Clausewitz it is the interests of states that constitute the ‘serious end’. War, Clausewitz insists, must be ‘a serious means to a serious end’. Human beings fight and kill one another in many ways and for many reasons without this necessarily constituting ‘war’. Nor does he include murders, gang-fights, riots, massacres and the like in his definition. Wrestling may be ‘fighting of a kind’ but it is not war. Obviously, Clausewitz does not equate all fighting with war. No armchair theorist, Clausewitz was actively engaged in combat on at least 20 occasions between 17, and received a bayonet wound to the head in May 1813. On War has over 600 references to battle ( Schlacht – which also means slaughter in German). It is the spilling of blood that makes war ‘a special activity, different and separate from any other pursued by man’. ‘There is only one means in war: combat’ ( das Gefecht). ‘War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale’ – a physical contest between people, each using force ‘to compel our enemy to do our will’. One is bottom-up, focusing on the very practical business of war, namely fighting and killing the other is top-down and begins by imagining war in its most abstract form.Ĭlausewitz goes ‘straight to the heart of the matter’. In Book I of On War Clausewitz tackles the problem of definition in two distinct ways. So how does Clausewitz define war? What are the boundaries of that definition? What are its limitations, if any, in the contemporary world? ![]() Any book on the nature of war needs to identify its subject. ![]()
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