# On War  ## Metadata - Author: Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Eliot Howard (Translator), Peter Paret (Translator) - Full Title: On War - Category: #books ## Highlights - Military institutions and the manner in which they employed violence depended on the economic, social, and political conditions of their respective states. Furthermore, political structures, like wars, could not be measured by a single standard. States were shaped by their particular past and present circumstances; very different forms had validity, and all were subject to continuing change. ([Location 260](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=260)) - “War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main lines of every major strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political character increases the more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war plan results directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well as from their relations to third powers. ([Location 283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=283)) - Statesman and soldier must shed tradition, convenience, any influence that interferes with their achieving the major objective. Similarly, the theorist, wishing to understand the nature of the state and the nature of war, must never allow his thoughts to diverge far from the element central to each—power in politics, violence in war. ([Location 327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=327)) - Caesar or Eugene of Savoy, responding to the social, technological, and political realities of their times, were not inferior to Napoleon because they did not fight in a manner that the French Revolution had made possible. And just as the past could be understood only in its own terms, men, too, must be interpreted as individuals, not as abstractions. ([Location 353](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=353)) - The theory of any activity, even if it aimed at effective performance rather than comprehensive understanding, must discover the essential, timeless elements of this activity, and distinguish them from its temporary features. Violence and political impact were two of the permanent characteristics of war. Another was the free play of human intelligence, will, and emotions. ([Location 359](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=359)) - In his essay on Bülow he wrote that there must be no conflict between common sense and sound theory since sound theory rested on common sense and genius, or gave them expression. ([Location 372](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=372)) - Theory and its resultant doctrines are thus subordinate to the great creative talent, and to the universals of reason and feeling that it expresses. ([Location 379](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=379)) - To combine purpose and means is to create. Art is the capacity to create; the theory of art teaches this combination [of purpose and means] to the extent that concepts can do so. Thus, we may say: theory is the representation of art by way of concepts. ([Location 423](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=423)) - It was in accord with this larger cultural outlook as well as with his personal tendencies that Clausewitz eschewed generalization and simultaneously rejected the anarchy of pure pragmatism. His aim was to achieve a logical structuring of reality. ([Location 457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=457)) - Friction, he continued, even if it is created by physical forces—bad weather, for instance, or hunger—always has a psychologically inhibiting effect; psychic energy must therefore take a part in overcoming it: “In action our physical images and perceptions are more vivid than the impressions we gained beforehand by mature reflection. ([Location 477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=477)) - Friction, he was to conclude in On War, is the only notion that more or less comprises those matters that distinguish the real war from war on paper. ([Location 482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=482)) - By creating the concept of friction he rendered one of the most important elements in his image of war—chance—subject to theoretical analysis. Insofar as friction interfered with one's own actions, it stood only for the negative aspects of chance. ([Location 483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=483)) - Napoleon expressed this idea perfectly in his operational dictum: Engage the enemy, and see what happens. ([Location 492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=492)) - The commander put himself in the way of chance; the power at his disposal and his will to use it enabled him to turn chance into a new reality. The force that could most effectively create and exploit this reality was genius. ([Location 493](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=493)) - The concepts of genius, friction, chance, in their manifold interaction, now made it possible for the theorist to subject vast areas of military reality to logical, systematic analysis. ([Location 497](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=497)) - Readers of this work and of the studies leading up to it may ask why Clausewitz felt it necessary to assert repeatedly that violence is the essence of war, and dismiss his reiteration as a pedantic insistence on the obvious. But Clausewitz stressed the point not only because experience and the study of the past had convinced him of its truth; he was also responding to the surprisingly numerous theorists who continued to claim that wars could be won by maneuver rather than bloodshed. ([Location 532](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=532)) - War waged with the aim of completely defeating the enemy, in order (1) to destroy him as a political organism, or (2) to force him to accept any terms whatever; and wars waged to acquire territory, in order (1) to retain the conquest, or (2) to bargain with the occupied land in the peace negotiations. ([Location 569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=569)) - War is influenced by objective and by subjective political factors. The objective factors comprise the specific characteristics and strengths of the state in question, and the general characteristics of the age—political, economic, technological, intellectual, and social. The subjective factors consist in the free will of the leadership, which should conform to the objective realities, but often does not. ([Location 575](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=575)) - When war broke out, he considered, “at the moment of mobilization the political adviser should fall silent, and should take the lead again only when the Strategist has informed the King, after the complete defeat of the enemy, that his task has been fulfilled.” ([Location 756](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=756)) - A government, he suggested, may desire to wait, or even to limit its military effort permanently, while economic or naval action decides the issue. It may calculate that the overthrow of the enemy's military power is a task definitely beyond its capacity, or not worth the effort—and that the object of its war policy can be assured by seizing territory which it can either retain or use as bargaining counters when peace is negotiated…. There is ground for inquiry whether this “conservative” military policy does not deserve to be accorded a place in the theory of the conduct of war. ([Location 931](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=931)) - If he had encountered strange new ideas requiring some effort to comprehend them—like some recent strategic essays that use mathematics, game theory, and the like—he might well have made that effort and perhaps carried away a feeling of being suitably rewarded. Instead he encountered wisdom, and thought it was nothing new. Perhaps ([Location 1081](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1081)) - War can be of two kinds, in the sense that either the objective is to overthrow the enemy—to render him politically helpless or militarily impotent, thus forcing him to sign whatever peace we please; or merely to occupy some of his frontier-districts so that we can annex them or use them for bargaining at the peace negotiations. ([Location 1446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1446)) - war is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means. ([Location 1451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1451)) - War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale. Countless duels go to make up war, but a picture of it as a whole can be formed by imagining a pair of wrestlers. Each tries through physical force to compel the other to do his will; his immediate aim is to throw his opponent in order to make him incapable of further resistance. ([Location 1508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1508)) - War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will. ([Location 1510](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1510)) - Force—that is, physical force, for moral force has no existence save as expressed in the state and the law—is thus the means of war; to impose our will on the enemy is its object. ([Location 1512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1512)) - war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst. ([Location 1518](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1518)) - Two different motives make men fight one another: hostile feelings and hostile intentions. ([Location 1526](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1526)) - If the enemy is to be coerced you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. ([Location 1546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1546)) - the total means at his disposal and the strength of his will. ([Location 1557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=1557)) - Essentially war is fighting, for fighting is the only effective principle in the manifold activities generally designated as war. Fighting, in turn, is a trial of moral and physical forces through the medium of the latter. Naturally moral strength must not be excluded, for psychological forces exert a decisive influence on the elements involved in war. ([Location 2479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2479)) - The need to fight quickly led man to invent appropriate devices to gain advantages in combat, and these brought about great changes in the forms of fighting. ([Location 2481](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2481)) - Fighting has determined the nature of the weapons employed. These in turn influence the combat; thus an interaction exists between the two. ([Location 2486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2486)) - Essentially, then, the art of war is the art of using the given means in combat; there is no better term for it than the conduct of war. To be sure in its wider sense the art of war includes all activities that exist for the sake of war, such as the creation of the fighting forces, their raising, armament, equipment, and training. ([Location 2492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2492)) - It is easy to see that if the art of war were always to start with raising armed forces and adapting them to the requirements of the particular case, it would be applicable only to those few instances where the forces available exactly matched the need. If, on the other hand, one wants a theory that is valid for the great majority of cases and not completely unsuitable for any, it must be based on the most prevalent means and their most significant effects. ([Location 2495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2495)) - The conduct of war, then, consists in the planning and conduct of fighting. ([Location 2498](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2498)) - This gives rise to the completely different activity of planning and executing these engagements themselves, and of coordinating each of them with the others in order to further the object of the war. One has been called tactics, and the other strategy. ([Location 2501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2501)) - According to our classification, then, tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war. ([Location 2507](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2507)) - Our classification applies to and exhausts only the utilization of the fighting forces. But war is served by many activities that are quite different from it; some closely related, others far removed. All these activities concern the maintenance of the fighting forces. ([Location 2515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2515)) - So one is justified in excluding these as well as all other preparatory activities from the narrower meaning of the art of war—the actual conduct of war. ([Location 2519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2519)) - Marching in the course of an engagement (usually known as “deployment”) ([Location 2532](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2532)) - A march that is not undertaken in the course of an engagement is simply the execution of a strategic plan. The latter determines when, where and with what forces an engagement is to be fought. The march is only the means of carrying out this plan. ([Location 2534](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2534)) - tactical measures: they concern the manner in which the forces are to be used in the event of an engagement. ([Location 2541](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=2541)) - The object of war, Clausewitz says in a three-tiered statement, is (a) to impose our will on the enemy, to do which (b) we use the means of maximum available force, with (c) the aim of rendering him powerless. We thus note at the outset the distinction between military aim and political object. ([Location 12069](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=12069)) - Distress at the brutality of war must not be allowed to inhibit the use of means for “war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.” Civilized nations may practice inhibitions, but this is due to social forces which “are not part of war.” And then: “To introduce the principle of moderation into the theory of war itself would always lead to logical absurdity” (italics added). ([Location 12071](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=12071)) - To understand war properly, one must first see it in its “absolute” or “ideal” form, which Clausewitz calls the “pure concept of war.” ([Location 12078](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=12078)) - A sensitive man unquestionably, Clausewitz had long since come to terms, at least intellectually, with the harsh demands of his profession. He was quite conscious that he had to steel himself emotionally to meet these demands, not once and for all but repeatedly, and he loses no time in imposing upon the reader a comparable obligation. It is noteworthy that he feels the need to mention these unpleasant and disturbing things, which other writers on strategy have not. ([Location 12086](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=12086)) - “war is never an isolated act.” He notices also that “even the ultimate outcome of a war is not to be regarded always as the final one” ([Location 12096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=12096)) - Many war situations, he points out, do not fall into this pattern; the loss of one is not always the gain of the other. ([Location 12106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=12106)) - war is always an instrument of policy ([Location 12133](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005R9EB68&location=12133))