The Essence of the Political
Never accidental, war stems from peace, just as peace originates from war. There is, incidentally, no a priori model or form of peace. And as long as it is founded upon political relations, even the latter implies some sort of struggle. Mr Freund points out that
the real reason behind the perpetuity of war lies in the very essence of the political. Since politics can only be practiced in the presence of enemies and the threat of enmity can never be overcome, it is likely that humanity will, historically speaking, continue to experience wars. (…) Anyone can dream of a perpetual peace. Such a dream resembles that of a perfect science or art. One thus submits, comparatively, to the assumption that science could, someday, establish itself as a definitive and absolute truth and cease to be a body of research, or that art shall somehow become the embodiment of fully fulfilled beauty and will no longer incarnate an effort towards accomplishing a certain work. In other words, such a dream presupposes omnipotence, omniscience and the abilities of a universal architect akin to God. And yet, if science is meaningful from our perspective as men, it is precisely because it represents an open-ended quest; and if art has any meaning at all, it is because it epitomises an effort to capture beauty that is always expressed in other works as well. Politics is, likewise, a will to peace, but could never be absolute or perpetually instituted peace.
According to Clausewitz, the ‘essence’ of war is characterised by a logical sequence — that of ‘going to extreme lengths’, an attitude that reached its paroxysm with Napoleonian blitzkrieg. Clausewitz writes that ‘with Napoleon, war was waged without wasting a single moment, until the enemy was crushed. The repercussions were thus also felt one by one, almost unremittingly’.
Under the apparent chaos of hostilities, therefore, it is rigorous order that one encounters, an order that accounts for their source, progress and outcome. ‘Clausewitz teaches us to perceive war in terms of warfare’, highlights Mr André Glucksman, a thirty-nine-year-old research officer at the CNRS180 and the author of Discours de la guerre181 (L’Herne, 1969).
All wars become clearer once one examines their threefold aspect: the political one (Why do we fight?), the strategic one (How do we fight?), and the social one (Who fights against whom?). However, this reflection on war is not solely moral, political or technical in essence. It is also an autonomous and global contemplation, one where events only enjoy a relative significance in relation to one another. What Clausewitz proposes, in fact, is that we only refer to this global understanding of things as a ‘strategy’.
‘Strategy is the art of mobilising one’s forces, of organising and arranging one’s battles in a manner that leads to military victory. A tactic is the art of organising and positioning one’s forces in a manner that allows one to win a battle’ (Glucksman).
In strategic practice, there is always a duel at first, as adversaries simultaneously face and assess one another. Each of them seeks to predict the other’s predictions. Their basic behaviour is thus the same, and they strive to accomplish the same purpose. As emphasised by Clausewitz, however, their common aim (Ziel) is of an exclusively military nature and must not be confused with their respective political goal or end (Zweck).
In any war, the military aim is identical for all involved parties, whereas the political goal varies from one to the other. And it is due to this identical aspect that an ‘escalation’ is almost inevitable.
Ideal Type and Practice
The fact of ‘resorting to extreme measures’ relates to a ‘dissymmetry between attack and defence’. What accounts for the latter is, in turn, the fact that one can never anticipatedly assess an adversary’s power in a rigorously accurate manner. Otherwise, everyone would immediately go to extreme lengths in the hope of being the first to benefit. This is, of course, not the case: ‘escalation’ takes place one tier at a time. ‘Each adversary longs to rule the roost, which triggers a reciprocal action that, conceptually speaking, is bound to be taken to the extreme’.
As always, one must distinguish the ideal type from practice: from a certain point onwards, a compromise may seem more beneficial than the pursuit of war, but this compromise will be assessed in accordance with a certain scheme.
One thus quickly faces a conundrum: ‘“Self-defense” is ambiguous when one is only trying to preclude being shot in self-defense’, T. C. Schelling182 wrote in 1968.
From this perspective, it is all too evident that there are no ‘limits’ to war (except time itself). The very notion of ‘war crimes’ thus becomes untenable. Either everything is a crime, beginning with the fact of indulging in battle, or there are only sheer conventions. The art of war rejects all philanthropy. ‘Belligerent folly’ is not in question here. It is simply a matter of calculation, efficacy, and perhaps even prudence. ‘Anyone who does not shrink from bloodshed will gain the upper hand over his adversary, unless the latter does the same’, Clausewitz writes. ‘In as dangerous an endeavour as war, the mistakes that stem from one’s kind-heartedness are the worst of all things… As long as I have not slaughtered my adversary, I have every reason to live in dread of him slaughtering me’.
On this level, Clausewitz’s reasoning abides by a cold frankness worthy of Machiavelli (whose books he, incidentally, read very attentively). This does not mean that he was enchanted with such realities; he merely believed that it was preferable to familiarise oneself with them instead of disguising them.
Mr Raymond Aron reveals a character trait that speaks volumes about what Clausewitz was actually like: ‘Clausewitz had hated the French during all those years when Prussia had been debased. Upon his return to France as a victor and no longer a prisoner, he proceeded to judge his compatriots’ behaviour in a most uncompromising manner. He stood up to Blücher,183 who wanted to blow up the Jena bridge, and quarrelled with Gneisenau184 , who desired Napoleon’s execution. He derived no joy from watching a people being trampled underfoot by its occupier’.
Unlike what is all too often believed, the rapport between politics and war does not, therefore, reflect the mere relationship between the end and the means.
When Clausewitz speaks of the ‘continuation of politics through war’, he does not mean that the army is a mere ‘tool’ in the hands of politicians (On the contrary, he demonstrates that military strategy enjoys a dynamic of its own), but rather that there is a certain subordination from the perspective of ‘global strategy’, one where the military aim (Ziel) is subordinate to the political end (Zweck).
Prussian Style
Just like Machiavelli, Maurras185 (‘Politics first’), de Gaulle186 (‘The sword is the world’s axis’) and Russian and Chinese leaders, Clausewitz thus rightfully proclaims the primacy of the political over the military, as well as that of all heads of state over commanders in chief. He then draws the necessary conclusions.
In order to be fully comprehended, this conception must nonetheless be considered within the context of the times, and particularly within the living conditions of ‘Prussian militarism’.
It was Julius Evola187 who once wrote: ‘In our contemporary Western democracies, even if one acknowledges the military sphere to have an ethics of its own, applying the latter to the nation’s normal life is not deemed desirable. This conception is closely related to the conviction that genuine civilisation has no bearing upon the sad necessity and “useless butchery” embodied by war, and that far from being founded upon the virtues of war, it is, instead, rooted in “civil” and social virtues that relate to immortal principles…’ (in Men Among the Ruins, published by Sept Couleurs, France, 1972).
Ancient Prussia’s notion of the world was, by contrast, an entirely different matter. Just like in the Ancients’ understanding of things, it was life itself that was considered a struggle from its perspective. War only served to show a nation what peace truly meant to it. With its asceticism, ethics and laws, the ‘military’ aspect thus took on the shape of a model; and in no way was this model restricted to the army.
Julius Evola adds: ‘Not only did the very style of Prussianism model one of the most severe and most aristocratic European military traditions, but it also expanded its influence to all that is defined as government service, loyalism and anti-individualism. Furthermore, this style has often impacted the economic domain itself, thus guaranteeing, during the industrial era, the intimate cohesion of the great production ensembles run by virtual dynasties of entrepreneurs that enjoyed the respect and obedience of their own workers, whose sentiments were akin to military loyalty and solidarity’ (op. cit.).
In the narrative that he dedicated to Clausewitz (Gallimard, 1972), Mr Jean Grosjean states that ‘Prussia is not a nation but represents the true and solemn face of life. (…) Never has Prussia been a communion, nor the incarnation of solitude: what it embodies instead is the dialogue of the gods’.
Clausewitz retained yet another particular aspect of his age, whose future developments he sensed: the democratisation of war, which would subsequently lead to the ‘total war’ analysed by Ludendorff from an anti-Clausewitzian perspective (in Der totale Krieg,188 Munich, 1935) and then to ‘popular’ and ‘revolutionary’ war, meaning global warfare.
Clausewitz emphasises that the spreading of the ravages of warfare cannot be accounted for solely through the modernisation of our destruction means. ‘The recent developments that have manifested themselves in the military domain are not so much due to new inventions and ideas as to the changes that have impacted both the social state and social relations’.
On several occasions, he repeatedly returns to the following essential notion: ‘War is a struggle through which one probes moral and physical strength by means of the latter’.
Until 1789, only professional warriors, all of whom were of the same social standing, ever took part in battle, in addition to ‘soldiers’, meaning mercenaries that practiced soldiery so as to earn a wage. In contrast to the ‘soldier’ stood the warrior, ‘a member of the feudal aristocracy that constituted the central core of a corresponding social organisation and did not serve any bourgeoisie whatsoever. It was on the contrary the bourgeois that was subservient to him, since the protection he enjoyed implied dependency on those that had the right to bear arms, and not supremacy over them’ (Julius Evola, op. cit.).
By placing it into an egalitarian context, one that is characterised by compulsory conscription, the French Revolution has democratised war and simultaneously transformed the military man (who thus simply became a ‘soldier’) not into an example for civilians to follow, but into their very ‘tool’.
Incapacitating Myths
‘A force that none had ever thought of surfaced in 1792. War had suddenly become the people’s concern, that of a people comprising 30 million inhabitants who all considered themselves to be citizens of the state. Henceforth, the available means and the efforts that could implement them no longer had clearly defined limits. The energy with which war itself could be waged no longer had any counterweight’ (On War).
Slowly but surely, the notion of an ‘armed people’ spread throughout Europe. Attacked and vanquished by Napoleon, the Prussian king officialised it, as advised by the ‘reformers’.
The result, remarks Clausewitz, is that, for the very first time, the defensive phase could also be seen as the decisive one. All that the defence has to do is exploit its natural advantages, including favourable spatial conditions and terrain mastery, which reinforce aggressiveness (For one always struggles more effectively in defence of one’s fatherland than when invading others) and facilitate ‘awareness’, meaning the politicisation of the population.
Defensive efforts must respond to the power and speed of attacks through mobility, gradual destruction and harassment.
As the distinction between the military and civil aspects wanes away, so does the line that separates war from peace. To be more specific, war thus settles into the very state of peace. Presupposing an incompatible consensus with the modern form of war, any and every truce is excluded, and armistices are less likely to resolve the entirety of the issues than ever before. ‘The distinction between peace and war has been abolished, not because everything, including war itself, has become a question of peace in some respects, but because everything is war is some regards — even peace itself’ (As written by Mr Jean Guitton189 in La pensée et la guerre,190 Desclée de Brouwer).
Civil war? It is more than just that, for the forces that one encounters overstep the borders of nations, and greatly so. Indeed, in the face of a standard army (which is no longer professional in essence, but clearly a ‘people’s army’), partisans must play a double game. While fighting against an adversary, they must infiltrate the latter, both physically and mentally; demoralise him; lead him to doubt the rightness of his own cause; and inject him with a bad conscience by means of incapacitating myths. In short, they must act in a manner that allows ‘mass uprising’ (general mobilisation) to act as an equal source of peril for the very state that decrees it. War thus becomes inseparable from the subversion (i.e. the propaganda and intoxication) that paves the way for it, accompanies it and ‘justifies’ it.
The lesson is quickly learnt. At the start of the 19th century, the maxim according to which troops are the ones that fight against an enemy and the police proceed to eliminate all ‘marauders’ is already obsolete. On 12th September, 1813, Napoleon commands General Lefèvre to ‘act as a partisan wherever partisans are to be found’.
There are none that can cast doubt upon the efficacy of this novel tactic. ‘According to the estimates of certain experts’, says Carl Schmitt, ‘the Russian partisans of the Second World War managed to divert about 20 German divisions towards themselves and thus largely contributed to deciding the war’s outcome’ (in The Theory of the Partisan).
Having studied the Chouan-like Vendean insurrection,191 as well as the Spanish uprising and the Russian war, Clausewitz states: ‘Similarly to vaporous and fluid bodies, popular warfare must never be made to concentrate anywhere in solid form; the enemy shall, otherwise, send an adequate force to target this very core and break it’.
These theories would then be adopted, word for word, by modern theoreticians and guerrilla partisans.
What is noteworthy, however, is that in Clausewitz’s eyes, it is not only in a purely defensive context that one should consider resorting to the people. ‘For a period of two years, he delivered lectures on “small-scale warfare” at the military Academy in Berlin. And yet, in his system, popular warfare represents, technically speaking, a mere modality of small-scale warfare, the kind that is waged by military detachments comprising 200 to 300 men at most’ (Raymond Aron).
Mao Zedong’s ‘Invincible Army’
Since its publication, the On War treatise has never ceased to exert an influence that verges on fascination.
In France, Jean Jaurès192 was among the first to realise its importance. On the other side of the Rhine, the military staff of Prussia, the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht tried, in turn, to extract ‘strategic recipes’ and lessons from it. It has also enabled various revolutionary leaders to learn their own lessons. In a letter addressed to Karl Marx and dated 7th January, 1855, Engels described the treatise as being ‘substantially very good’; to which Marx responded, referring to Clausewitz: ‘The lad is endowed with a good common sense that borders on mental prowess’.
In his work entitled La guerre en question193 (Gallimard, 1951), Jules Monnerot194 would state: ‘At his strongest, Marx is a theoretician of psychological warfare’.
On his part, Lenin, who had strongly highlighted its essential formulas and quoted extensive passages between 1917 and 1921, made the following declaration: ‘With regard to the philosophy and history of warfare, no author exceeds Clausewitz in terms of importance’. As for Mr André Glucksman, here is what he wrote: ‘At the most decisive moments, Lenin availed himself of this authority, particularly when justifying his own break with the Third International, establishing his own insurrectional strategy, and or
ganising the military and diplomatic activity of the new Soviet state’.
In the end, however, the onus was on Mao Zedong to synthesise Clausewitz’s ‘popular’ theories, thus laying the foundation for psychological and revolutionary warfare.
In his military writings, especially On Protracted War (written in 1938 and published in Oeuvres Choisies, vol.2), Mao Zedong repeatedly quotes the 26th Chapter (Book VI) of Clausewitz’s On War treatise, a chapter that is entitled ‘Arming the Nation’. Striving to integrate Clausewitz’s doctrine into an egalitarian and ‘mass-focused’ system, he proceeds to simply equate the ‘popular’ to the ‘political’. He then goes on to define the conditions under which ‘popular warfare’ may become belligerent. He stresses the fact that ‘the army must be one with the people, so that the latter may perceive it as its own’, before adding that ‘such an army would be invincible’.
In 1957, he would offer the following explanation: ‘Factories can only be built one by one, and each peasant can only plough one land parcel at a time. The same is true of meals. Strategically, we do not fear having a meal, for we shall manage to gulp it all down. Practically speaking, we only eat one mouthful at a time, and would not be able to swallow an entire meal at once. This is what we term a “one-by-one” solution. In military language, it all comes down to crushing the enemy unit by unit’ (as stated during the Conference of Communist Parties in Moscow).
Following in Clausewitz’s footsteps, Mao Zedong considers war to be a ‘continuation’ of politics, although it does have an essence of its own: the people must identify with ‘rifles’, but it is the Party that commands the army.
This is what he wrote: ‘War is politics, for it is a political act in and of itself. Ever since the most ancient times, there has not been a single war that did not have a political aspect. (…) This is why it would be accurate to say that politics is war without bloodshed, and war a political undertaking involving bloodshed’.
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