The Clausewitz Collection (merged thread)

[Ken White]

One of my CGSC instructors (retired officer)...He advocates a US way of war based on the style most articulated by Sherman, The instructor told me point blank he didn't like being lectured at by a student, so I have shut up on it. (emphasis added /kw)

The part in bold, that is. Sounds like an ignorant and unduly arrogant twit I once knew. He's best ignored to the extent possible with an attitude like that. Why on earth would Leavenworth hire people like that to 'instruct' field grades?

As for his premise. There's a time and a place for Sherman rules -- there's also a time an place for a Mosby or a Morgan and several levels in between. Clausewitz did not have all the answers. Neither did John Boyd or Sun Tzu. Subadai for his time may have but he didn't write books about it -- he did it. My suspicion is that S.L. Melton will not have as many answers as the others who did write.

[MikeF]

Provocative, to say the least. I got into quite a debate with him in class over some of it, and the moral implications therof. The instructor told me point blank he didn't like being lectured at by a student, so I have shut up on it.

That was one of the good things about the Defense Analysis department at NPS. We weren't considered students more like co-equals with different lessons to both teach and learn. The academics taught us the theories, and we confirmed/denied based off our practice. Much better learning environment.

As we studied Rick's Fiasco and other big strategic events going back to the Cuban Missle Crisis, I was struck that President Bush did not have a guy to point to hold responsible for Iraq or the overall GWOT. In our current structure, you have the National Security Council, Joint Chiefs of Staff, State, DoD, Centcom, CPA, CJSOTF-AP, JSOC, and the MNF-I Commander. Everyone is in charge, but no one is in charge. This structure almost forecast us to muddle through big foreign policy decisions. By 2006, Bush finally had Patraeus to hold responsible for success or failure.

Before we bash Clausewitz, I think we should look at fixing Unity of Command.

v/r

Mike

[M-A Lagrange]

And why not even more... lets kill every body. Then we are sure their is no one to interfere.

[William F. Owen]

I have paraphrased (perhaps inaccurately) some of the arguments made. Will have to wait for the book to appropriately and fairly respond to the arguments. Recommend Wilf review it for SWJ though.

Thanks Neil. I'd also suggest some of the bigger dogs in the SWC Pack give it a once over, and Taiko as well. IRRC he is doing his PhD on Clausewitz and is a fellow Clausewitian.
My immeadiate and unfounded reaction is that he has not actually read of understood Clausewitz, but I shall await evidence before passing judgement!

I am actually dealing with a very similar situation here at home, where a respected author has assigned to CvC a whole lot of things he never said or even meant to say. The real issue is usually a poor understanding of CvC rather then CvC being wrong.

Does anyone have a .pdf review copy?

[Cavguy]

I probably shouldn't have included the bit about the personal spat. Direct any inquiries on that to PM or my email. I was in a snarky mood that day, so perhaps being sniped at by the know-it-all young guy didn't sit right to a retired (O-5/O-6?). So blame can rest here as well, but my other instructors seem to handle being challenged on facts a little bit better.

That said, I am not well read (above the surface) on CvC, so I posted it here to see what the reactions were.

A friend on facebook asked the relevant question - "crap, if we kill this guy, we will go over 15 percent..."

I've been mulling over my thoughts on the subject, I haven't really ever denied that under the right conditions the "kill em all" method of COIN is effective, but I also maintain it's irrelevant to the task because we simply won't do it because of the evolution of values related to human rights. It's related to my Lyall/Wilson critique of comparing COIN 1800-1945 to later, because international norms as to what is acceptable (for a liberal democracy) have changed so drastically when compared to the challenges of COIN in the post-cold war world.

[Fuchs]

Did it ever come to mind that killing foreign civilians might be a direct cost (disadvantage) to the own country?

That's a price for victory that many (most?) citizens won't be willing to pay, and that counts a lot in a democracy.

Rampage and mass killing sounds a lot like a self-defeating strategy to me.
Who's going to call a genocidal war a victory nowadays?


I can imagine other ways of winning a war than disarming the enemy, but an extremely victim-intensive approach doesn't convince me unless it's about really crazy scenarios like actual invasion/bombing of a nuclear power's homeland.

[Bob's World]

Wow.

While I believe, based on what Cavguy laid out, what points of logic this guy has lashed his theory to, I would offer (gently, so that he does not assume that I am lecturing him), that he is making several very dangerous assumptions by misidentifying the material facts of the historical cases he draws his conclusions from. Easy to do, I see it a lot, and probably do it myself more than I know.

We see the same thing in Afghanistan today. People see ineffective governance and an insurgency, and, by deducing "effectiveness" of government to be the material factor set out to cure it to end the insurgency.

This guy sees a similar correlation, apparently in civilian casualties and wins and losses.

There are lessons to be drawn from his work if all one walks away with is a realization that first and second theories, much like first and second reports, are typically wrong. His next book should be better.

[slapout9]

One of my CGSC instructors (retired officer) has this book coming out next month. He argues our fixation with Clausewitz is responsible for us becoming strategically muddled.

He's let some of it fly in my classes so far, my opinion is he has created a strawman of Clausewitz and the whole center of gravity concept. He believes the trinity only applied in his era, and is irrelevant.

He advocates a US way of war based on the style most articulated by Sherman, total war and mass destruction to crush the willingness of the targeted society to resist. He figures this historically as 5-18% of the relevant population as KIA. The reason populations should suffer is to humiliate the warrior class and show that they are impotent to protect their society.

Provocative, to say the least. I got into quite a debate with him in class over some of it, and the moral implications therof. The instructor told me point blank he didn't like being lectured at by a student, so I have shut up on it.

I have paraphrased (perhaps inaccurately) some of the arguments made. Will have to wait for the book to appropriately and fairly respond to the arguments. Recommend Wilf review it for SWJ though.

Man I can hardly wait for the book!!! Sherman waged war against rich people, the secret to all victory. Judging from the table of contents it is going to be some book. Just like the original American system of Economics(it was actually called that) is superior to Keynes, Sherman is superior to St. Carl. When America starts to think for itself instead of trying to apply dead peoples theories to todays problems we will start winning again and making money to boot. Somebody invite the author to the SWC council. Get me his contact info and I'll do it.

[Cavguy]

Here's some more details from his lecture that were missing from the OP:

1) Theory that a certain percentage has to die. Rationale is that the "warrior" caste has to be humbled in the eyes of its people as being unable to protect them. If the people don't perceive military capitulation insurgency will continue.

2) Ease of entry=harder insurgency. War weariness is a big factor.

3) Centers of Gravity don't exist. Only CoG that matters is perception of the populace that submits. External actors rarely can change internal cultures much, only pacify (see US South for 120 or so years after Civil War, etc.)

4) Clausewitzian trinity only works in monarchy-dictatorial systems, falls apart in anything less than total conflict. Even the Prussians and Napoleon never got the "single, decisive battle" they wanted.

Best as I can recall on the arguments half. Will have to wait for the book. A number of counter-arguments were brought up in class, along the lines of the above, both historical challenges (cases it didn't work), and moral challenges (who's signing up to mass murder civilians?), as well as a sense the version of Clausewitz he challenges is a strawman constructed for that purpose. I have the feeling that CvC is like the Bible, you can interpret what you want out of him, which is kind of a supporting argument for Mr. Melton's thesis in a roundabout way. However, he sees a lot of sympathy for the Jominian formula of war.

[Ken White]

that Clausewitz has had undue affect on US thinking -- more correctly, the Germans have had undue effect on US military thinking and practice. The Germans and Clausewitz got a lot of stuff right and they do things that work for them. Unfortunately, we adopted some of their practices that do not work well for us. One prime example is our generalist approach to officer education and management. It works for the Germans because they have a great General Staff corps. We do not have that so it doesn't work nearly as well for us.

I agree with Melton that the center of gravity thing is vastly overused -- I do not agree with him that Jomini had much to offer and I suspect Billy Sherman had no use for Jomini either. The formulaic approach has not worked for the US Army in the many variations I've seen tried over the last 60 plus years. We're stil trying to do that to convince Congress we use objective measures to promote people...

Slap, I hear you on making war on the rich -- problem is that the poor get caught up in that and suffer even more while the rich tend to float out and survive. Sherman and Carl both were superior in their wars and their times. We just live in a different time.

I do agree that we are capable of doing our own thing and that we do better when we stop trying to copy others. Winston Churchill said "You can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing -- after they have tried all other options." What Winston missed is that we try the methods of others, find out they don't work for us and then finally cobble together an American way of doing it. We need to stop trying to imitate others. We are not they. They are not we. They are wee, we are not...

[Steve the Planner]

March to the Sea

I'm taken with Slap's comments on making war on the rich.

One day, as I walked through Al Rasheed hotel, a deputy governor from northern Iraq insisted I meet with a Shiek and have my picture taken. It would assure my safety throughout the north.

Met this resplendently dressed Omar Sharif-turned-Saudi Multi-millionaire. Very nice chap. Plenty of US credentials, and free as bird to travel wherever he liked. Afterwards, I scurried off to find out who he was. Not on anybody's charts, but I figured it out easily enough. He was the head of oil smuggling operations around Bayji, probably in for a visit from Jordan/Syria or wherever.

We never touched the moneyed class in Iraq, cause they operate from across the borders. Open borders were not a part of Clauswitz's milieu, but there is the long story of the House of Rothschild. Napolean, to fund his Russian escapade, needed to sieze the treasury of the richest man in Europe, the Elector of Hesse (A fortune made from mercenary work just like Prince). The Elector wisely moved the money to the Rothschild's basement in Frankfurt, and they made so much for him while holding it that he could clip coupons. Napolean didn't fair so well...

My take on the Clauswitz assault follows Mike F: Unity of Command.

I think the fighting part went fine. Where we blinked, and blew it was all on the civil side. I suspect that the political imperative to turn it over too quick (pass the political hot potato of "occupier") kept us from actually occupying decisively, and, for both countries, that's where we went wrong.

Do we act decisively to re-occupy the central government as one option not on the table in current discussions. And what would come next????

[slapout9]

Slap, I hear you on making war on the rich -- problem is that the poor get caught up in that and suffer even more while the rich tend to float out and survive. Sherman and Carl both were superior in their wars and their times. We just live in a different time.

I do agree that we are capable of doing our own thing and that we do better when we stop trying to copy others. Winston Churchill said "You can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing -- after they have tried all other options." What Winston missed is that we try the methods of others, find out they don't work for us and then finally cobble together an American way of doing it. We need to stop trying to imitate others. We are not they. They are not we. They are wee, we are not...

Ken, it is true that the poor suffer but they are going to suffer anyway.....but when the rich start to suffer all the sudden peace starts breaking out all over the place.

[William F. Owen]

1) Theory that a certain percentage has to die. Rationale is that the "warrior" caste has to be humbled in the eyes of its people as being unable to protect them. If the people don't perceive military capitulation insurgency will continue.

Clausewitz would agree. Speaks to the setting forth of policy, and trinity of people, leaders and military.

2) Ease of entry=harder insurgency. War weariness is a big factor

.
Again Clausewitz would agree. War is Politics.

3) Centers of Gravity don't exist. Only CoG that matters is perception of the populace that submits. External actors rarely can change internal cultures much, only pacify (see US South for 120 or so years after Civil War, etc.)

So CoG do exist. A CoG is that from which the enemy draws all his strength. Can a CoG be targeted? Different thing entirely. CoG do exist. You sometimes cannot find them or use them, but CvCs identification or conceptualisation is extremely useful.

4) Clausewitzian trinity only works in monarchy-dictatorial systems, falls apart in anything less than total conflict. Even the Prussians and Napoleon never got the "single, decisive battle" they wanted.

Absolute Rubbish! If anyone really believes that, then they never read CvC. He would also seem to have fallen foul of not realising that CvC never talked about how. He talked about "why" in the broadest sense.
Hannibal never got his decisive battle either - but Wellington did! Read CvC. He explains it!

Will have to wait for the book. A number of counter-arguments were brought up in class, along the lines of the above, both historical challenges (cases it didn't work), and moral challenges (who's signing up to mass murder civilians?), as well as a sense the version of Clausewitz he challenges is a strawman constructed for that purpose.

I am waiting, but it seems to me that he is setting up CvC on a the basis of what people think he said, versus what he actually said and meant. If he is, then it's intellectually lazy, and misleading.
Moreover war is not about killing. I assuredly involves killing, indeed it is defined by it, but killing is merely one instrument, and war itself is entirely instrumental.

I have the feeling that CvC is like the Bible, you can interpret what you want out of him, which is kind of a supporting argument for Mr. Melton's thesis in a roundabout way. However, he sees a lot of sympathy for the Jominian formula of war.

Well where I am, we have entire groups of learned men, who just study the Torah and many other sacred texts - and argue all day and for many years.

I do not cling to CvC as a sacred text, but until I read and studied "On War" I really had very little idea as to what the aims and purpose of Warfare were.
CvC does need to be held to rigour and holding CvC to rigour is the best way to learn about what he wrote.

[Bob's World]

Grant will likely always be my favorite US General. One of his greatest accomplishments that he receives little credit for is the strategy to target the will of the Southern populace as his main effort (to which he tasked Sherman in Georgia and the Carolinas; and ultimately Sheridan in the Shenandoah to execute), while he supervised Meade in the supporting, but critical effort of defeating Lee's Army and taking Richmond (in that order).

He, IMO, was the first leader to not only understand that merely killing soldiers or capturing capitals was enough in wars between nations, as it had been in the West for generations in wars between Kingdoms.

However, and this is a big however, not all wars are the same, I would be careful to extrapolate the success of this model developed by Americans during the era of America's rise, as the either "the American way of war" or as a model for all future war. Very dangerous, both counts. It works for what it was, and should continue to be applied to. It would be absolutely counter-productive to apply such an approach to resolving a conflict within a nation.

Because all wars are unique based upon the totality of the circumstances; and wars between states are a very different category than wars within states. The American Civil War was not an insurgency; it was a clear break along geographic, cultural, and political lines. It truly was a "War between the states" not a "war within the states." I add this, because many like to hold up our civil war as an example of the invalidation of the American principle of of the right to insurgency codified in our Declaration of Independence.

[Pete]

Well where I am, we have entire groups of learned men, who just study the Torah and many other sacred texts - and argue all day and for many years.

Were Wilf one of those scholars of arcane texts he'd probably have his very own thread in the Trigger Puller forum on the efficacy of the Jawbone of an Ass as a weapon of war. His thread would include discusssion on the proposed basis of issue of the Jawbone, Ass within the standard infantry company, as well as the recommended MOS to repair the Jawbone, Ass at the direct and general support levels of maintenance.

[OfTheTroops]

Just a fledgling but did he not just id the COG as attrition of x percent of the population. Upon attaining said attrition the will of the enemy will be broken.

And Punitive campaigns are not Sherman's (American) strategy its Rome's strategery.

As for external actors modifying a people. Isnt that what conquerors do. I am pretty sure as you all have said post mcarthur japan, post Iskander iraq hell Istanbul now Constantinople Constantinople is now Istanbul

May the right ways find the right ends(ours). And politically total war is a high state of war That table sets itself. If the cold war went hot we woulda seen total war. It has to be costly for the people to find it necessary.

[Elric]

Here's some more details from his lecture that were missing from the OP:

1) Rationale is that the "warrior" caste has to be humbled in the eyes of its people as being unable to protect them. If the people don't perceive military capitulation insurgency will continue.

What of the mass bombings of English and German cities in WWII?

3) Centers of Gravity don't exist. Only CoG that matters is perception of the populace that submits. External actors rarely can change internal cultures much, only pacify (see US South for 120 or so years after Civil War, etc.)

CoGs do not exist, yet the perception is a CoG... Been laying off the coffee again? Perception is reality, no matter the ground truth. Where the US falls down is monitoring and responding to the word on the street. Search for "Baghdad Mosquito" for an interesting approach to it. Dedicated HUMIT would be preferred, but who has enough teams in sector to do it

[Elric]

1) Rationale is that the "warrior" caste has to be humbled in the eyes of its people as being unable to protect them. If the people don't perceive military capitulation insurgency will continue.

What of the mass bombings of English and German cities in WWII?


Is it so much military capitulation as the ability of the population to decide that the cause is not worth the effort? Its a mix of the "warrior caste" with the security apparatus. Think of the STASI and the East German Army. Without the threat of bayonets, the STASI didn't have anywhere the menace that they used to.

[Schmedlap]

He advocates a US way of war based on the style most articulated by Sherman, total war and mass destruction to crush the willingness of the targeted society to resist. He figures this historically as 5-18% of the relevant population as KIA. The reason populations should suffer is to humiliate the warrior class and show that they are impotent to protect their society.

When I read that, I didn't interpret that as, "let's all sign up to slaughter civilians," nor did I read it as him advocating "kill x% in order to achieve Y effect." I assumed that he was looking at examples in which total war concluded with a definitive surrender. For example, total war with Japan resulted in lots of dead civilians, but resulted in a comparatively orderly transition from a country mobilized for war to a country demobilizing for peace. I think a good case can be made that this was partly due to the people having their will crushed (although having the emperor tell them to put the kibosh on the kamikazes probably didn't hurt, either).

I think the hole in his theory - from what little I have gleaned from it without reading the book - is how you make it work in practice. Are we supposed to goad adversaries into total war, so that we can fight on our terms?

[sullygoarmy]

From the NY Times picking on poor Uncle Carl:

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...man-fetish/?hp