Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Yes, knowing Bill Lind, I can attest he has read Clausewitz, yet he and I have very different understandings of what CvC wrote. 4GW flows from Van Creveld's "non-trinitarian War" thinking - so I find it hard to see how a 4GW thinker would regard Clausewitz in a good light.
Why, if you had deep understanding, or think highly of CvC would you construct 4GW? CvC deals with almost every aspect of the relevant arguments. If someone wants to tell me, that 4GW is "CvC for dummies" I'll think again.
CvC is a pool for interpretations, almost as inexhaustible as Master Tzu.
That adds considerably to a problem: The translation.


I am a German and still not sure that I can understand Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz's language because words and phrases can change their meaning and emphasis over the course of almost two centuries.

It's even worse; a German text is normally expected to be usually 25% longer than an English text of the same content. My translations of German to English are the opposite; about 25% longer English than German because it's very difficult to meet the meaning exactly and to eliminate the potential for misunderstandings. This can go up to +40% for short texts. (And even then I do only THINK, not KNOW that I wrote a good translation.)

Conclusion:
Everyone who reads "Vom Kriege" in English, French or whatever-is-not-German should not assume that he could potentially understand him through that translation by more than about 90%.

It's probably more close to 30-40% for Master Tzu's treatise on military affairs.