have hoped. He concluded the passage with this sentence: ‘The political object is the
goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from
their purpose’. At least, that is how strategic history ought to work. In his theory, ‘The
political object – the original motive for the war – will determine both the military
objective to be reached and the amount of effort it requires’ (p. 8 1). Being a sophisticated
theorist, as well as a person deeply experienced in the historical realities of war and its
contexts, Clausewitz goes on to warn that although the scale of the political objective
should determine the scope of the military aim, in practice the pursuit even of a modest
military aim may trigger a disproportionate enemy response.
Integral to his essentially political theory of war is the insistence, on the first page of
On War, that ‘War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale’. Furthermore, for a truly vital
and ill-understood point, he maintains that its purpose has to be ‘to impose our will on
the enemy’. In a war for an unlimited political objective – the unconditional surrender of
Nazi Germany, for example – ‘we must render the enemy powerless’ (p. 75). But in a war
for far more limited political goals, the military objective is not to effect the military ruin
of the foe, but rather to coerce him, to affect his will decisively.
The historical domain of this text provides ample negative illustration of the wisdom
in the Clausewitzian explanation of the proper connection between politics and war. For
example, in great war after great war Germany effectively lost the political plot. It waged
warfare more as an end in itself than for reasonable and plausibly attainable political
objectives. In the great Pacific War of 1941–5, Imperial Japan provided a masterclass for
all time in how not to wage war for limited, albeit ambitious, political goals. The attack
upon American forces in Hawaii and the Philippines proved to be errors of stunning
magnitude. Those preventive actions intended to facilitate the violent seizure of the
resource-rich British and Dutch colonies of South East Asia had the unexpected conse-
quence of condemning Japan to the waging of an unlimited and therefore unwinnable
war. Recall Clausewitz’s claim that war is a duel, and his subsequent comment that the
strength of the enemy’s will is far more difficult to gauge than is the strength of his
military forces (p. 77). Strategic history is abundantly studded with cases of belligerents
underestimating the strength of their intended opponent, most especially of his will to
resist. Clausewitzian theory maintains sensibly, though perhaps as a forlorn hope, that ‘a
certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy’ (p. 60 8 ).
Very few policy-makers today, world-wide, could meet that Clausewitzian standard.
The nature of war is the second compound category for the appreciation of Clause-
witzian theory. This is a rare instance where it is useful to be more definite and clearer
in argument than was the theorist himself. It so happened that Clausewitz suffered an
acute intellectual crisis when the manuscript for On Warwas already well advanced
towards completion. On 10 July 1 8 27, to be precise, he penned a note which stated
a sudden new intention to revise the whole of the work to reflect two critically important
organizing ideas. The ideas were, first, that war comes in two variants – all-out and
limited – and, second, that war is a continuation of policy by other means (Gat, 19 8 9:
199). In the few years of life left to him, around his military duties Clausewitz achieved
only a partial revision of his text. This fact helps account for some of the inconsistencies,
real and apparent, and the incomplete analysis of elements vital to the political dimension
of warfare. The resulting manuscript, with different books in On Warrevised in varying
degrees, leaves ample scope for scholars to debate what the author ‘really meant’.
Clausewitz and the theory of war 23