‘collateral damage’ is all but eliminated. When war against irregulars is waged ‘amongst
the people’, as General Rupert Smith puts it, some of those people are certain to suffer
(Smith, 2005).
Conclusion
Despite the diversity of its events and the changes in its contexts, all of strategic history
is explained adequately by a common theory of war and strategy. Revolutions in warfare
come and go, new technologies rise, age and generally are replaced, and public attitudes
to war alter. But war remains war and the inevitable changes in its character matter not
at all for the authority of the general theory bequeathed by Carl von Clausewitz. When
augmented by Sun-tzu, Thucydides and even the much underrated contemporary of the
Prussian, Jomini, Clausewitz’s On Warserves as a tool kit good enough, perhaps more,
to prise open the doors that might hide understanding of strategic history. Clausewitz
wrote to educate, not to instruct directly with advice on behaviour. On Wareducates
understanding of what war is about, how it functions, and why it can, and frequently does,
go terribly wrong.
Strategic ideas are important: they move people and machines, and they have been
known to persuade, and mislead, policy-makers. However, strategic thought is not a
strictly intellectual, let alone philosophical, pursuit. It does not seek objective truth as
an endeavour that is self-validating. Instead, such thought is a pragmatic effort, even
though it is often deemed unhelpfully abstract by soldiers. Typically, it is spurred by the
excitement and anxiety caused by the need to understand new strategic conditions and to
develop recommendations for strategic action. Every topic in the mainstream of modern
strategic theory – deterrence, limited war, arms control, crisis management, counter-
insurgency, for some examples – has been pursued because of its importance to
contemporary security.
Inevitably and inescapably, this analysis has had to focus upon the unfinished writings
of Clausewitz. His ideas were explained as falling into two categories: those on the
relationship between politics and war; and those on the nature of war itself. After probing
and discussing his pre-eminent dictum that war must be an instrument of policy, this
chapter proceeded to outline and consider his view of war’s permanent nature, and pre-
sented his ideas of the trinity of, and unstable relations among, passion, chance and
reason; of war’s persistent climate of danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance; and of the
friction which is liable to thwart even the best laid of cunning plans. In addition, attention
was drawn to his important concept of the fog of war, his emphasis on such moral
qualities as courage and determination or will, and his essential idea of the centre of
gravity. Finally, the chapter commented upon Clausewitz’s vital insistence that both
policy-maker and warrior needed to respect the contemporary realities of each other’s
realms of behaviour and competence, notwithstanding the undoubted ultimate authority
of the political. It is necessary to understand what Clausewitz’s theory of war did not
cover explicitly, as well as what it did. In that regard, Box 2.2 identifies some of the more
notable absentees from On War.
Clausewitz and the theory of war 27