Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
I regard the first six books, which are already in a clean copy, merely as a rather formless mass that must be throughly reworked once more. The revision will bring out the two types of war with greater clarity at every point.
Which is why the idea, rather then the expression of it, needs to be examined. The "purity of text" approach to Clausewitz can be counter productive.
These two types of war, enemy focused vs. terrain focused, should not be confused with ideas of absolute war (war in its pure, unbounded form) vs. real war (in the real world, war is always restrained in some form).
thus, for example we can see here he is talking about the conditions/Ends/Policy that armed force seeks to achieve. Of note, he does not stray off into any garbage about the "population."
The nature of war, on the other hand, is clearly defined as "an act of force to compel the enemy to do our will." Whether to surrender, retreat, let us have their land, or whatever, the nature of war does not change, while the character of war does change.
Again, common sense that drives a bull-dozer through a lot of modern doctrine.
CvC is tough...I'm sure I'm not making it easier...hope this helps though.
I find CvC very tough to read, but actually pretty easy to understand. What made that easy, was ditching most of what I have ever been taught by popular military history, which remains the major block to understanding.