It will seem strange, even implausible, to some people that an incomplete book written
in the 1 8 20s can be as relevant to the twenty-first century as it was to the nineteenth and
the twentieth. Surely, one could ask, the price paid for such enduring validity must be a
level of generality that robs the theory of much of its utility? The high esteem in which
Clausewitz is widely held is by no means a universal opinion today (Van Creveld, 1997;
Keegan, 199 8 b: 41–3). The batting order now opens with a discussion of the importance
of strategic ideas and their connection to strategic behaviour. Next, a relatively kind
opinion is offered on the work of Clausewitz’s contemporary and rival, Baron Antoine
Henri de Jomini. Then the theory of war and strategy to be found in On Waris outlined
and analysed.
Strategic ideas and strategic behaviour
Political scientist Richard Betts has asserted boldly that Clausewitz ‘is worth a busload
of most other theorists’, but that judgement has not always seemed persuasive to people
who had strategic dilemmas to resolve (Betts, 1997: 29). Clausewitz sought to educate
the mind of the soldier so that he would be adequately equipped intellectually to solve
his problems. Unsurprisingly, soldiers in all periods, while sometimes valuing a deep
understanding of the nature of war and strategy, have been rather more interested in
finding answers to the strategic difficulties of the moment. Clausewitz, it must be said,
provided brilliant answers to questions that few, if any, people even ask. Soldiers and their
political masters need to know how to win, or at least how to avoid losing too badly. Their
active interest in the nature of war typically is not high. This is the principal reason why
Clausewitz’s contemporary, and much longer-lived, more prolific rival, the Baron Antoine
Henri de Jomini (1779–1 8 69), was so popular in the nineteenth century, and why his
influence persists to this day (Jomini, 1992). He provided soldiers with the conceptual
tools for victory, or so he claimed. By the 1 8 70s, however, Jomini’s reputation came to
be eclipsed by that of Clausewitz. In part that was because Field Marshal Helmuth Graf
von Moltke, the military victor in the latter two of the three wars of German unification
(1 8 64, 1 8 66 and 1 8 70–1), paid tribute to Clausewitz as a vital contributor to his success.
In fact, Moltke either disagreed with or misunderstood the most important arguments in
On War, but no matter. As the most successful and therefore most respected soldier of
the age, Moltke’s blessing was authoritative (Hughes, 1993). Deliberately, Clausewitz did
not seek to write a strategy ‘cookbook’, a step-by-step, how-to manual for victory. The
strategist, hopefully armed with the logic and the insights he should have gleaned from
On War, is quintessentially a man of action, not a scholar. A powerful intellect is usually
an advantage for a general, though not if it harbours an overactive imagination, but the
qualities he needs are by no means restricted to those of an intellectual kind (Clausewitz,
1976: 100–12). A fine intellect may be governed by an irresolute will. A general theory
of war and strategy, no matter how brilliant, does not, indeed cannot, cut to the chase for
the world of applied violence.
Strategic ideas really matter. Frequently, though not invariably, they are not mere
intellectual decoration on behaviour already conducted, and neither are they simply
fashionable notions that are bandied about in more or less lively debate. People invent,
rediscover and refine strategic ideas because there is a demand for them from the realm
of strategic behaviour. No one has stated this condition more clearly than the French
16 War, peace and international relations