Tag Archives: Clausewitz

Friction

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Imagine a number of families—say, ten of them. Some with children and the elderly, some without. Living in the same town, they decide to spend a day together. Fun for the kids, relief for the adults who will not have to ensure that their offspring get bored. Meeting point is at 1100 hours, at place X where there is good parking. From there they plan to drive fifty miles to the beach, arriving at 1200. What could be simpler? But no. Family A finds that the GPS of their car (old and somewhat battered) refuses to work and so informs the rest (some get the message, some don’t). Family B cannot leave their home before grandfather, who is a widower and had lost his false teeth, finds the other set he owns.

Everyone does/do their best to be on time, but not all succeed. All around, children quarrel or must faire pipi, causing a delay. Either they are looked after, or there is going to be an even longer one. Messages—this, after all, is the age of WhatsApp—are passed from one group member to another, causing confusion all around. Exactly where is that left turn you have been talking about? Some arrive, but some do not. Some messages are correctly understood, some not. Assuming every family contacts every other just once, there are going to be 90 of them in all. In practice the number is likely to be considerably larger.

This is friction. Few of us have not experienced it more or less often; the larger the number of those involved, the worse thing are likely to be. Friction in ordinary life can be bad enough, causing the best-laid plans to go awry. Friction in war is two, ten or twenty times worse, at times to the point where it decides the fate (as Napoleon said) of crowns dynasties, and empires. In mid-June 1815 his communications with Field Marshal Grouchy failed. As a result, Grouchy’s corps spent the 18th marching to and fro and, doing so, missed the battle of Waterloo much in the same way as General Stuart’s cavalry did at Gettysburg forty-eight years later. In both cases, and in spite of historians’ attempts to unravel it, the exact chain of cause and effect remains obscure. But certainly friction had everything to do with it.

Two main reasons explain why friction is so much greater in war than in peace. The first is the extraordinary demands war makes both on the spirit and, often enough, the physique of those who engage on it. In these respects, the only equivalent is some natural disaster such as an earthquake or a flood. But even such events tend to be over in minutes or hours. Either you die at once, as the citizens of Pompeii did, or the danger recedes. Seldom does it last for weeks or months, let alone, years; people either adjust or move.

To repeat, war decides the fate of crowns, dynasties and empires. The burden of responsibility is crushing and can easily cause those who bear it to go off the rails. As happened, for example, during the last days of World War I when the de facto chief of the German general staff, General Erich Ludendorff, told the Kaiser that defeat was staring the country in the face and that the army could not wait “even 48 hours” for a ceasefire to be arranged. Yet Ludendorff at the time was comfortably ensconced in his headquarters way out of reach form the front. Those further down the hierarchy were often not so lucky.

The second reason why friction tends to be so much greater in war than in peace is that we are fighting an enemy who is deliberately doing whatever he can to increase it. Too often, with success.  The first step is to try to divine what the enemy is expecting and then do the opposite. When you are strong, confuse the enemy by pretending to be weak. When you are weak, confuse him by pretending to be strong. But take care; such measures always come at a price. Troops sent on a diversion will not be available for your main thrust. The least- defended approach is often the most difficult one to take, and vice versa. Worse still, he who tries to confuse the opponent may very well end up by becoming confused himself. As, it is said, not seldom happens in espionage etc.

The measures needed to guard against friction are often well understood. Good intelligence, especially of the kind that succeeds in putting you in the enemy’s shoes and, by doing so, anticipate his moves. Good organization, good discipline, good training, good security. Good communications, including redundant ones in case some are lost. Superior communications-technology with an emphasis on reliability, ease of use, and secrecy. Such measures can and often do mitigate friction. They cannot, however, eliminate it. Nor is there any reason to think that there was less of it in the highly disciplined Roman legions than in today’s most advanced armies.

So it has been in the past. And so, regardless of the tsunami of wonderful new weapons about which are told almost day by day, it will remain in the future too.

Back to Basics

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Note: This litte essay was first posted on this blog on 22 December 2022, i.e ten months after Putin started the Russo-Ukrainian War. Since then another nine months have passed. Curious to know how well my original remarks have held up, I re-read and reposted it here. Word by word.

*

The war between Russia and Ukraine has now been going on for ten months. With neither side close to victory or defeat, there is a good chance—mark my words—that it will go on for another ten, perhaps even more. Even if serious negotiations get under way, they will not necessarily end the shooting all at once. Such being the case, instead of adopting the usual method of listing all the changes that the war has brought, I want to try and put together a list of the things that it did not and almost certainly will not change.

Suggestions, welcome.

General

Contrary to the expectations of some, notably the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his 1989 essay, “The End of History,” war remains, and will remain, as important a part of global history as it has ever been.

There is no sign that the causes of war, be they divine anger with one or more of the belligerents (Isaiah), or the nature of man (Genesis) , or economic (envy and greed), or the absence of a legal system that can rule over sovereign entities, or simply the personal ambitions of certain rulers, have changed one iota.

War is a social phenomenon rooted in the societies that wage it. As a result, each society wages it in its own way. As society changes, so does war. To win a war, the first thing you need is to gain an understanding of what kind of war it is and what is all about (Prussian general and military critic Carl von Clausewitz).

The nature of war, namely a violent duel between two or more belligerents in which each side is largely free to do as he pleases to the other, has not changed one bit.

War remains what it has always been, the province of deprivation, suffering, pain and death. Also, and perhaps worst of all, bereavement; also of friction, confusion, and uncertainty. Often the more robust side, the one psychologically and physiologically better able to engage with these factors and keep going, will win.

In war everything is simple, but the simplest things are complex (Clausewitz).

Victory means breaking the enemy’s will (Clausewitz); defeat, to have one’s will broken.

All war is based on deception (the ancient, perhaps legendary, Chinese commander and sage Sun Tzu). The first casualty is always the truth.

“It is good war is so terrible, or else we would like it too much” (Confederate general Robert E. Lee; seconded, in 1914, by then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill). War is the greatest fun a man can have with his pants on (anonymous).

“War is sweet for those who are not familiar with it” (Erasmus of Rotterdam).

“No one has ever benefitted from a long war” (Sun Tzu).

Preparation and Training

The best school of war is war.

“By learning to obey, he learnt to command” (Plutarch on Roman military commander Titus Quintus Flaminius).

 “Their maneuvers are bloodless battles, their battles bloody maneuvers” (Jewish historian Josephus Flavius on the Roman legions).

“I notice that the enemy always has three courses open to him, and that he usually chooses the fourth” (Helmut Moltke to his staff).

Strategic-Operational

As the belligerents exchange blow for blow in an attempt to knock out the enemy, war has an inherent tendency to escalate and run out of control.

God tends to be on the side of the larger battalions (Napoleon, who for German readers does not need an introduction). But not always.

“The best way to run a conflict is by negotiation. If you are too dumb to negotiate, use dirty tricks. If you cannot use dirty tricks, resort to maneuver; if you cannot maneuver, fight a battle; if you cannot fight a battle, lay siege” (Sun Tzu).

An army marches on its stomach (Napoleon).

The greater the distance between front and rear, the harder and more expensive it is to keep the army supplied (Sun Tzu).

War is an imitative activity that makes the belligerents resemble each other. The longer the war, the more alike they become.

Everything else equal, the defense is superior to the offense. First, because it does not face constantly extending lines of communication; second, because anything that does not happen favors it. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it is that the attack will turn into a defense.

Morale and Organization

“War is a physical and mental contest by means of the former” (Clausewitz).

In war the moral is to the physical as three to one (Napoleon).

It is with colored ribbons that men are led (Napoleon).

On organization: One Mameluke was a match for three Frenchmen. A hundred Frenchmen were a match for three hundred Mamelukes (Napoleon).

“Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four men who are less brave but trust each other will attack resolutely“ (19-century French military writer Ardant du Picq),

One bad commander is better than two good ones.

Technology and War

Depending on the way they are used, most distinctions between “offensive” and “defensive” weapons are meaningless.

Starting with the club and ending with the Internet, technology has done many things to war. However, it has done almost nothing to reduce, let alone eliminate, the distinctions between land, sea and air (and space) warfare. Nor between theory and practice, offense and defense, concentration and dispersal, a knock-out blow and attrition. And so on.

“Weapons, if only the right ones can be found, make up 90 percent of victory” (British General and military author J. F. C Fuller). Not true. Weapons can make a huge contribution to victory. However, their effects can be offset by superior doctrine, superior organization, superior command, superior training, and, above all, superior morale.

The longer a war lasts, the less important technological superiority tends to be.

Information and data are useful, in fact absolutely essential. But they are not enough. What is needed is lead and explosives. As well as, from time to time, cold steel to terrify the enemy.

On Nukes

War, even large scale war, between belligerents one of which is armed with nukes, remains quite possible. Whether the same applies to a situation when both sides has them remains to be seen. My guess? Probably not.

In so far as there is no defense, nuclear war is not war. It is mass murder.

“No one will ever dare use the damn things” (Field Marshal Bernhard Montgomery of Alamein on nukes).

The nice thing about nukes: If they are not used, no reason to worry. If they are used, no need to worry either.

Guerrilla and Terrorism

“The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we harass” (Mao Zedong).

The “forces of order,” as long as they do not win, lose; the guerrillas, as long as they do not lose, win.

Gender and War

“But for war, the world would sink into a swamp of feminism” Georg W. F. Hegel).

In war, women act mainly in two roles. First, as assistants and cheerleaders. Second, as targets and victims. Everything else is secondary. It would hardly be wrong to say that, without women in these roles, there would have been no war.

Finally –

No principles or doctrines, however good in themselves, well understood, and well applied, can win a war on their own. However, by freeing warriors from the need to think out everything afresh each time, they can provide a lot of help on the way to doing so.

Back to Basics

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The war between Russia and Ukraine has now been going on for ten months. With neither side close to victory or defeat, there is a good chance—mark my words—that it will go on for another ten, perhaps even more. Even if serious negotiations get under way, they will not necessarily end the shooting all at once. Such being the case, instead of adopting the usual method of listing all the changes that the war has brought, I want to try and put together a list of the things that it did not and almost certainly will not change.

Suggestions, welcome.

General

Contrary to the expectations of some, notably the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his 1989 essay, “The End of History,” war remains, and will remain, as important a part of global history as it has ever been.

There is no sign that the causes of war, be they divine anger with one or more of the belligerents (Isaiah), or the nature of man (Genesis) , or economic (envy and greed), or the absence of a legal system that can rule over sovereign entities, or simply the personal ambitions of certain rulers, have changed one iota.

War is a social phenomenon rooted in the societies that wage it. As a result, each society wages it in its own way. As society changes, so does war. To win a war, the first thing you need is to gain an understanding of what kind of war it is and what is all about (Prussian general and military critic Carl von Clausewitz).

The nature of war, namely a violent duel between two or more belligerents in which each side is largely free to do as he pleases to the other, has not changed one bit.

War remains what it has always been, the province of deprivation, suffering, pain and death. Also, and perhaps worst of all, bereavement; also of friction, confusion, and uncertainty. Often the more robust side, the one psychologically and physiologically better able to engage with these factors and keep going, will win.

In war everything is simple, but the simplest things are complex (Clausewitz).

Victory means breaking the enemy’s will (Clausewitz); defeat, to have one’s will broken.

All war is based on deception (the ancient, perhaps legendary, Chinese commander and sage Sun Tzu). The first casualty is always the truth.

“It is good war is so terrible, or else we would like it too much” (Confederate general Robert E. Lee; seconded, in 1914, by then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill). War is the greatest fun a man can have with his pants on (anonymous).

“War is sweet for those who are not familiar with it” (Erasmus of Rotterdam).

“No one has ever benefitted from a long war” (Sun Tzu).

Preparation and Training

The best school of war is war.

“By learning to obey, he learnt to command” (Plutarch on Roman military commander Titus Quintus Flaminius).

 “Their maneuvers are bloodless battles, their battles bloody maneuvers” (Jewish historian Josephus Flavius on the Roman legions).

“I notice that the enemy always has three courses open to him, and that he usually chooses the fourth” (Helmut Moltke to his staff).

Strategic-Operational

As the belligerents exchange blow for blow in an attempt to knock out the enemy, war has an inherent tendency to escalate and run out of control.

God tends to be on the side of the larger battalions (Napoleon, who for German readers does not need an introduction). But not always.

“The best way to run a conflict is by negotiation. If you are too dumb to negotiate, use dirty tricks. If you cannot use dirty tricks, resort to maneuver; if you cannot maneuver, fight a battle; if you cannot fight a battle, lay siege” (Sun Tzu).

An army marches on its stomach (Napoleon).

The greater the distance between front and rear, the harder and more expensive it is to keep the army supplied (Sun Tzu).

War is an imitative activity that makes the belligerents resemble each other. The longer the war, the more alike they become.

Everything else equal, the defense is superior to the offense. First, because it does not face constantly extending lines of communication; second, because anything that does not happen favors it. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it is that the attack will turn into a defense.

Morale and Organization

“War is a physical and mental contest by means of the former” (Clausewitz).

In war the moral is to the physical as three to one (Napoleon).

It is with colored ribbons that men are led (Napoleon).

On organization: One Mameluke was a match for three Frenchmen. A hundred Frenchmen were a match for three hundred Mamelukes (Napoleon).

“Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four men who are less brave but trust each other will attack resolutely“ (19-century French military writer Ardant du Picq),

One bad commander is better than two good ones.

Technology and War

Depending on the way they are used, most distinctions between “offensive” and “defensive” weapons are meaningless.

Starting with the club and ending with the Internet, technology has done many things to war. However, it has done almost nothing to reduce, let alone eliminate, the distinctions between land, sea and air (and space) warfare. Nor between theory and practice, offense and defense, concentration and dispersal, a knock-out blow and attrition. And so on.

“Weapons, if only the right ones can be found, make up 90 percent of victory” (British General and military author J. F. C Fuller). Not true. Weapons can make a huge contribution to victory. However, their effects can be offset by superior doctrine, superior organization, superior command, superior training, and, above all, superior morale.

The longer a war lasts, the less important technological superiority tends to be.

Information and data are useful, in fact absolutely essential. But they are not enough. What is needed is lead and explosives. As well as, from time to time, cold steel to terrify the enemy.

On Nukes

War, even large scale war, between belligerents one of which is armed with nukes, remains quite possible. Whether the same applies to a situation when both sides has them remains to be seen. My guess? Probably not.

In so far as there is no defense, nuclear war is not war. It is mass murder.

“No one will ever dare use the damn things” (Field Marshal Bernhard Montgomery of Alamein on nukes).

The nice thing about nukes: If they are not used, no reason to worry. If they are used, no need to worry either.

Guerrilla and Terrorism

“The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we harass” (Mao Zedong).

The “forces of order,” as long as they do not win, lose; the guerrillas, as long as they do not lose, win.

Gender and War

“But for war, the world would sink into a swamp of feminism” Georg W. F. Hegel).

In war, women act mainly in two roles. First, as assistants and cheerleaders. Second, as targets and victims. Everything else is secondary. It would hardly be wrong to say that, without women in these roles, there would have been no war.

Finally –

No principles or doctrines, however good in themselves, well understood, and well applied, can win a war on their own. However, by freeing warriors from the need to think out everything afresh each time, they can provide a lot of help on the way to doing so.

Nuclear Games

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Fission and fusion. Warheads and delivery vehicles. First strikes and second strikes. Counterforce and countervalue. Shots across the blow and mutually assured destruction. For decades on end these and any number of similarly mysterious terms have been circling the planet, reflecting the efforts of statesmen, politicians, defense officials, soldiers, academics and journalists to understand what nuclear weapons are all about, by whom and how they might be used, and what the consequences of their use might be. Some of the discussions are public, a great many others classified. Some are committed to paper, but a great many others take the form of wargames in which teams of highly qualified analysts, supported by as much computing power as it takes, try to answer these and similar question for their superiors’ benefit—superiors who, judging by the little that has been published on their reactions, may not even be aware that the wargames are taking place, let alone taken an interest in them.

Still at bottom the issues are very simple. Seven months after their failure to subdue Ukraine by means of a short and decisive coup de main, Putin and his staff seem to be running out of options. They can try and occupy the enemy’s most important cities, i.e Kiev, Kharkov, and perhaps Odessa. However, judging by what happened in the Donbas such an attempt will almost certainly involve them in prolonged, brutal and very bloody urban warfare for which their troops seem to be unprepared and in which victory is by no means assured. They can subject these and other cities to an even more intensive bombardment than has been the case so far, but such a move is unlikely to bring about a quick surrender on the enemy’s part. They can take the offensive in other parts of Ukraine, but given that country’s size and the sparsity of its population many if not most of those efforts are likely to hit little but empty air. Finally, following a strategic switch that has been under way since May, they can renounce the offense in favor of the defense and, by so doing, give up any thought of victory at all.

Even assuming Russia can successfully overcome its current shortage of military manpower, none of the options appear very attractive.  This is a fact of which Putin must be aware and which, at some point, may drive him to despair. Enter nuclear weapons. Here the all-important, indeed decisive, factor is that Ukraine does not have them. Perhaps the more the pity; judging by everything that has happened and not happened since 1945, in that case there is an excellent possibility that the war would never have broken out in the first place.

Next, suppose Putin wants to use his nuclear weapons. However, in that case it is not at all clear what he would do with them. The Ukrainian armed forces, made wise by the invasion, are fighting in too dispersed and mobile a manner to present attractive targets. For the Russians to ignore that fact will only lead to the Ukrainians switching to guerrilla and terrorism, a process that is already well under way. Destroying Ukraine’s vital infrastructure—dams, power plants, airports, and the like—will only make the burden of one day occupying and administering the country all the greater; besides, as evens in the Donbas show, such destruction can be achieved almost equally well by conventional means. Admittedly bombing cities out of existence, as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, is an option. However, exercising it will end up by creating similar and even greater problems for the Russians to deal with. The more so because of the radioactivity that will surely result. So I consider Putin’s words on the topic idle threats. They are relevant only in case Zelensky and NATO mount a large-scale military offensive, complete with intensive air bombardment, into Russian territory—something that is unlikely to happen.

On the other hand, now that the US and NATO seems to be winning the war, they have no interest in nuclear weapons either. The noises they are making, some overt, others covert, are meant primarily if not exclusively to remind Putin of the terrible consequences that will follow if he goes too far. What “too far” might mean, and what the response might be, is deliberately being left obscure. Precisely how NATOs warnings link up with the factors mentioned in the previous paragraph is also not clear.

The conclusion from this is that no one wants, or should want, to see nuclear weapons used in action. That does not, repeat not, mean that the world is safe and that the weapons in question, complete with their PALs (positive action links, mechanisms explicitly designed to prevent any but authorized personnel, normally heads of state), will always remain in the places they are stored. The situation in Ukraine is unstable and constantly changing. Most of us cannot even imagine the stress to which the most important actors are subject. Under such circumstances words, especially words deliberately used to conceal the exact circumstances under which the weapons may be used, are easily misunderstood. War being a tit-for-tat business, the greatest danger is that of escalation. Meaning the likelihood that, once a single weapon is set off, all will be.

As Clausewtiz says, most barriers only exist in men’s minds. That is why, once they are breached, rebuilding them may be difficult if not impossible.

On Stalin (again)

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Readers, please note: The following is the text of an interview about the book I did on 8 May with Mr. Pierre Heumann of the German-Swiss weekly Weltwoche. The translation from German is my own.

Heumann: Martin van Creveld, are you a Stalin Versteher (understander/sympathizer)?

Van Creveld: Writing a good biography of someone one hates is practically impossible. That is one reason why there are so many bad books about people like Hitler. And Stalin, of course. What Stalin was aiming at was a Soviet Union which would be shaped according to his ideas and would rule, as its acknowledged master: he himself. Considering his humble origins, I find the way he achieved those aims very impressive.

Heumann: What, in your view, was the heritage he left?

Van Creveld: It depends on whom one asks. In the West he is perceived as a monster. His regime is portrayed as extremely brutal, authoritarian and corrupt. All of which is quite true. However, in Russia the situation is different. Many people respect Stalin as a ruler who played a critical role in establishing the state, then went on to industrialize it on a vast scale, and finally saved it from collapse during the so-called Great Patriotic War.

Studying the material as I did, one thing that struck me was how little charisma Stalin had. His speeches were boring—not because he did not have anything intelligent to say, but because he spoke in a monotone and, unlike Hitler, never raised his voice. Nor did he have to. As his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, once said, “when Stalin says ‘dance,’ a wise man dances.” Everyone understood that Stalin brooked no opposition.

Heumann: Wat similarities do you see between Stalin and Putin?

Van Creveld: Both used the secret services as their primary instrument of government. And both saw themselves as men who had been called upon, whether by fate or by history. Stalin wanted to prepare the world for Communism. Putin wants to prevent or at least delay the collapse of Russia. And there is something else they have in common. To both of them, Russian history is a long story in which the Russians were always the victims. Why? Because Russia has always been backward. One outcome was, and still is, the West’s tendency to look down on Russia as a backward country. Putin personally has repeatedly referred this kind of inferiority complex his countrymen labor under.

Heumann: How do you see the war in Ukraine?

Van Creveld: Stalin, having come under attack by the German Reich, Stalin had no option but to defend himself.  Unlike him, Putin had the choice: to attack or not to attack. He decided to attack. Now Clausewitz’s words have come to haunt him: any attack that does not quickly attain its ends fairly quickly will turn into a defense.

The Guessing Game

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There are two cardinal reasons why President Putin has almost certainly lost the war he launched over a month ago. Both are as old as history, and both were set forth by Clausewitz around 1830. First, a military operation, large or small, is much like pouring water from a bucket (the metaphor is mine, not Clausewitz’s); the further away from its point of origin it flows, the more momentum it loses and the more vulnerable it becomes to counterattacks directed both against the spearheads and against the attacker’s lines of communication. Just think of Napoleon in 1812. Having invaded Russia with 600,000 men, by the time he reached Moscow he only had 100,000 left; all the rest had either perished by battle, disease and fatigue or been left in the rear to garrison key positions there. 100,000 troops were not nearly enough to force a decision, let alone hold the country down. And so all it remained for him was to retreat.

The second and even more fundamental reason is that time works against the attacker. Why? Because, under most circumstances, conquering and appropriating is harder, and requires greater force, than holding and preserving. An offense that does not attain its objective—from the attacker’s point of view, that would mean a better peace—within a reasonable amount of time is certain to turn into a defense. Think of Hannibal in 218-17 BCE, think of Hitler in 1941-42. Again this applies to any military operation, large or small, old or new.

So far, Putin’s war has proceeded in four stages. First, a combination of geography and numerical superiority enabled his forces to operate on external lines and invade Ukraine from four different directions (northwest, north, east and south) at once. Second, enjoying both numerical and technological superiority, and some logistic problems notwithstanding, those troops pushed the Ukrainians aside and reached the outskirts of the most important Ukrainian cities such as Kharkov, Kiev, Kherson, and Mariupol (important because of its command of the Sea of Azov as well as the road from the Donbas to the Crimea) and put them under siege. Third, especially at Kherson and Mariupol, they tried their hand at urban warfare. Only to find, as countless others before them have also done, that such warfare tends to be very bloody and very destructive. The difficulty of obtaining intelligence, the excellent shelter cities provide to those who defend them, and the way rubbish-filled streets canalize and hamper the attacker’s movements all contribute to this result; between them they cause cites to swallow up armies the way sponges take up water.

Fourth, and rather predictably, the Russians switched from attempts to capture Ukrainian cities to subjecting them to artillery bombardment. Just as, some twenty years ago, they did in Grozny. In Kherson and Mariupol the tactic worked, at any rate up to a point. However, Kiev and Kharkov are much larger than either of those. Besides, Ukraine itself is a large country with many urban areas, large and small. Not even the Russian army, famed for its reliance on artillery, has enough guns to take them on all at once; whereas doing so one by one will require enormous amounts of time which, for the abovementioned reasons, Putin simply does not have.

Fifth, the offensive having exhausted itself, stalemate will set in if, indeed, it had not done so already. Stalemate having set in politics, which right from the beginning played a very important role, will start playing an even more important one. All sides will have a strong interest in ending the war. Hence attempts will be made to do so on terms all of them —Russia, Ukraine, NATO—will find more or less acceptable or at least capable of being presented as such.

Just what the final settlement will look like is impossible to say; most probably, though, it will include the following elements. First, there can be no question of doing away with Ukraine as an independent country and nation. Second, there will be no subservient government in Kiev as there is in Minsk. Third, Russia will make no important territorial gains beyond those made in 2014 and even its ability to hold on to those is in some doubt. Fourth, Ukraine will not officially join NATO, let alone have NATO forces stationed on its territory; but other, more limited, forms of cooperation between the two entities will certainly be established and maintained. Fifth, Putin may, but not necessarily will, lose his post.

Finally, never forget that war, though it makes use of all kinds of physical assets such as numbers of troops, weapons, equipment, roads, communications, topographical and geographical obstacles, and so on, is a human drama above all. As such it is critically affected by every kind of human, often incalculable, drives and emotions; which, collectively, shape the fighting power of both sides. Taking all this into account, it becomes only too clear that anything that can be said about the way future campaigns will develop is no more than what Clausewitz calls a calculus of probabilities.

So it has been, and so it will remain

Chaos

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As far as anyone can make out, the situation in Ukraine is nothing if not chaotic. Russian forces are said to be advancing on all fronts. Ukrainian forces claim success after success in slowing down the aggressors or even halting them. Now cities are said to have been cut off, now it appears that, in reality, they are not. Cities are occupied, or else they are not and the two sides keep fighting over them. Convoys seem to be get stuck for days on end, but no one knows why. The Russians are running out of supplies. The Russians so far have only committed about three quarters of their forces. The Russian air force is said to be either held back or ineffective, yet President Zelensky keeps begging the West to impose a no fly zone.

Both sides accuse the other of committing war crimes and provide casualty figures; but neither is at all complete or reliable and there is good reason to believe that many are neither. A maternity hospital is said to have been hit, but whether it was done deliberately or as part of what is euphemistically known as “collateral damage” is obscure. The Western sanctions on Russia are working, or else they are little more than a nuisance that can be taken care of with Chinese help. The Russians are running out of young soldiers (hard to believe, since Russia’s birthrate, while below the replacement figure, is actually higher than that of Ukraine). Putin is winning on all fronts. Putin knows he has bitten off more than he can swallow and is desperately looking for a way out. Putin is ill. Putin is mad. Putin is about to be deposed, though no one knows by whom.

Millions of messages are being sent, intercepted, recorded, decrypted, stored, and analyzed by every possible means from artificial intelligence down. Some are even being falsified. To make things worse still, joining the Niagara of words is a tsunami of images. Attempting to prove their claims, both sides are publishing countless photographs, clips, videos, or whatever they are called. And that does not even include the millions of images sent out by the media on their own initiative. However, most of the time it is impossible to say who took them, when, where, in what context, and for what purpose. To say nothing of the fact that, since the uniforms worn by both sides and much of the materiel they use are broadly similar, it is often impossible to say what is what. One gets to see a shot up vehicle; but who destroyed it impossible to say. One sees wrecked building; but who wrecked it and why is impossible to say. A corpse is shown lying on the pavement; but whose corpse it is, and who killed him, is anything but clear. Briefly, it is not true, as Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels used to say, that bilder luegen nicht. Indeed that itself is perhaps the greatest lie of all.

Except for the sheer amount of information being passed around, there is nothing new or exceptional about all this. Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese soldier-scholar who probably wrote his Art of War around 500 BCE, says that all warfare is based on deceit and that, of all the ways to defeat an enemy, tricking him is the swiftest and the best (also in the sense of being the least bloody). Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general and military theorist who wrote vom Kriege during the 1830s, says that, in war, almost all information (Nachrichten) is contradictory, false, or both. Napoleon, who though neither a theoretician nor a writer was one of the greatest commanders who ever lived, adds that making sense of the confusion is a task not unworthy of geniuses such as Isaac Newton and Leonhard Euler. He himself, incidentally, was a master of deceit—a talent he displayed not just on campaign, as by “stealing a march” on his enemies, but while playing cards as well.

For all the vast technological apparatus it uses, modern war has not been exempt from these problems. To the contrary, in some ways it has made them worse than ever. One factor responsible for this is the sheer amount of information in the hands of, or being generated by, decision makers, soldiers, intelligence services, the media, and individuals on all sides. Let me provide just one example of what this may mean. Back in 1991 headquarters US Marine Corps, preparing to invade Kuwait, received a million and a half satellite-images of the terrain in front of it. This, on top of other kinds of information too numerous to detail here. So enormous was the flood that the images were almost entirely useless—the manpower, the expertise and the time needed to make them useful where simply not available. Since more was being added every hour, processing all of them would have lasted literally forever. The development of artificial intelligence may have alleviated some of these problems. But certainly not all.

A second problem originates in the illusion that we are in full command of our faculties, meaning that our senses provide us with a realistic idea of the world around us. In fact, however, this is by no means always the case. Our minds are colored by fear, elation, hope, despair, disappointment, and a thousand other emotions. Coming on top of this, often what we see depends, not on incoming information but on what we are; as shaped by education, training, prejudice, and so on. No two people, no two organizations, are the same or see the world in the same way. Which means that, even if all the relevant information is available, the task of entering into the enemy’s mind and guessing his intentions is very difficult, not seldom impossible.

Third, in war all these problems are exacerbated by what Clausewitz calls its Strapazen. War is the most strenuous activity any human can engage in by far. To those who have not gone through it the mental and physical stress are simply unimaginable. Partly because of the ever present danger to limb and life, one’s own and those of others; and partly, at the upper levels, because the fate of countries and populations may very well depend on it. Such is the strain that it often causes even the very bravest and most stable to behave somewhat strangely. If not all the time, then certainly some of it. Under such conditions no wonder (as Napoleon said) that false reports proliferate. Some people see entire armies where, in fact, there are none; others don’t see armies even when those armies are right in front of their noses. 

A final point that, as far as I am aware, analysts have raised rarely if at all. It goes without saying that, ceteris paribus, the chaos of war affects both the conqueror and the conquered. However, as a rule creating order out of chaos—the conqueror’s task—is a lot harder than doing the opposite; think, for example, of building a new wall brick by brick as opposed to taking up a sledge hammer and bringing it down. Without imposing order on a recalcitrant country, the Russians cannot win. As a result, this factor will probably work in favor of the defender. The Israelis in Lebanon, the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Americans in both Afghanistan and Iraq all tried their hand at this game. Ultimately, to no avail.

Ukraine is a large country with long, hard to seal, borders as well as tens of millions of able and highly motivated inhabitants. Chances are that the same will happen in this case.

On War

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Clauzewitz in cyber

Some time ago, a Polish TV station asked me for an interview. I found the questions they asked to be quite interesting; so much so that I decided to put them to my readers and answer them in a slightly more organized way.

Here they are.

  1. Modern public opinion is convinced that globalization rules out wars. What can wars look like in times when everyone knows everything about each other and often everyone cooperates?

 

  1. I am not so sure about global public opinion. I am, however, convinced that, if that is indeed what people believe, they could not be more wrong. Just look at the history of the twentieth century. From 1900 to the present there has been hardly a single day in which peace reigned all over the world; including not one but two of the largest and most deadly armed conflicts ever fought. The number of wars that took place since 1945 alone has been estimated at 200 or so. Of those 200, a few are ongoing even now. Perhaps more seriously still, not one of the causes of war been eliminated. Not one! Not human nature. Not fear of an increasing powerful enemy, as Thucydides and Thomas Hobbes thought. Not economic competition, as Marx and Lenin believed. Not religion. Not nationalism. Not the sheer ruthless ambition of certain leaders who, like Louis XIV, believed that going to war was the suitable thing for a prince to do. And not the absence of a powerful and widely recognized judiciary capable of deciding conflicts and have its decisions implemented.

As to knowing everything—that is simply not true. Surprise attacks have always been possible and remain so today. Why? Because, while many of the facts concerning each country’s intentions and capabilities are often known, interpreting them—deciding how they are linked, what they mean, and where they are leading–is often very difficult. Example: they say that, in 1973, Israeli intelligence knew that a quarter of a million Egyptian soldiers were massed on the Suez Canal. Rumor has it that they even knew the name of every Egyptian pilot’s girlfriend. The only thing they did not know was that those 250,000 were going to attack within 24 hours.

Concerning interstate cooperation, do you really believe it is greater (or smaller) today than it was, say, back in 1795 when Prussia, Russia and Austria divided Poland among themselves?

  1. Do the thoughts of old theorists of war like Clausewitz remain valid for the 21st century?

Get more information generico cialis on line about this treatment by their healthcare providers. Most of these products that you see out on the basis of freedom of speech. cialis wholesale prices This medicine is used when needed and not more than viagra no prescription online once in a day or two. He continued by saying, “All sections of society must make a conscious effort to raise the human experience. cialis 5 mg devensec.com  

  1. Many years ago I wrote an article about exactly this question. I called it, “The Eternal Clausewitz,” and you can still find it on the Internet. The argument was that plenty of military theorists, seeking to be of practical use to commanders, have focused on the question, how to successfully wage war. Now this is a question the answer to which depends on circumstances, specifically including rapidly changing technology. As a result, in the great majority of cases hardly had their work been published than it became out of date.

Clausewtiz, ”the philosopher in uniform” [philosoph im Waffenrock] as he has been called, took a different approach. He did not try to teach commanders how to wage war. Instead he focused on the following two questions: what war is, and what it is waged for. The first question enabled him to identify the most important characteristics of war: such as its strategic nature—the fact that it is a duel between two sides, each of whom is free to do as he pleases—its tendency towards escalation, the role of emotional factors as opposed to merely intellectual ones, the fact that the defense and not the offense is the stronger form of war, the role played by uncertainty and chance, and so on. The second pushed him towards the most famous sentence he ever wrote, namely that war is the continuation of politics (here understood in the broadest sense possible) with an admixture of other means.

So, yes. Much of Clausewitz’s famous book, On War, still retains much of its relevance right down to the present day.

  1. How have the Internet and digitization changed war? Isn’t it true that on-line operations, being as difficult to detect as they are, hold the advantage over physical ones?

 

  1. The Net and digitization have changed war in the following ways. First, they enable war to be waged from any telephone link to any other. In other words, from any point against any point on earth; and this, regardless of distance, intervening geographical features (mountains, deserts, oceans) or movement. Second, not being waged with the aid of physical movement but at the speed of light, they can make their effects felt instantaneously. Third, as you say, it is often very difficult to determine who is responsible for what move.

Whether, in the conduct of cyberwar, the defense still retains is advantage over the offense is uncertain. But cyberwar does share many other characteristics of war on Clausewitz’s list. Including its strategic nature—move, countermove, counter-counter move, and so on—its tendency to escalate, the role played by uncertainty—one never knows what the enemy is going to do next–its role as a servant of politics, and so on.

All in all, I’d argue that it leaves Clausewitz as relevant as he had ever been.

Give Me Machiavelli Any Time

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To anyone at all familiar with Indian history and philosophy, the Arthashatra needs no introduction. I myself was introduced to it over a decade ago by a German-American friend, Dr. Michael Liebig, who now teaches Indian cultural history at the University of Heidelberg. He told me that the author was widely considered the Indian Machiavelli, only much more cynical and much more callous. Later I discovered that one of his admirers is former U.S Secretary of State and Chief of the National Security Council Henry Kissinger, himself no small follower of the famous Florentine. It was, however, only during these corona-infested days that I finally got around to actually reading him. And writing down some comments on him, for my own benefit and, hopefully, my readers too.

First, the author. He has been the subject, not just of a single tradition but of at least half a dozen. Each associated with one of India’s subcultures, religions, and regions. As a result, there is very little about him that can be firmly established. Apparently his period of activity started about 330 and ended around 280 BCE. For part of that period he served as chief minister to at least two Mauri Emperors. As such he was involved in every aspect of contemporary statecraft—royal succession, intrigue (including the kind of intrigue that originates in harems), politics, economics, war (both internal, to put down insurrections, and external, against every kind of king, big and small), and what not. Many of the details appear fantastic. For example, that he once took a royal baby from his dying mother’s womb and placed it inside a goat, keeping it alive. And that, at one point in his career when he was living as an ascetic in a forest, he used a secret formula to manufacture no fewer than 800 million gold coins.

Next, the text. Long considered lost, it was known only from references in other works. Including a Greek-language one, Megasthenes’ Indika, which dates to the years around Kautilya’s death. In 1905 a copy, written on palm leaves, was discovered by a librarian in the Oriental Research Institute at Mysore. Internal evidence suggests that it was not, in fact, composed by a single person. Rather, in the form we have it, it is a compilation written, expanded and explained by various people at various times. The title, Arthashastra, is often translated as Politics. In fact, however, it refers to the acquisition and maintenance of material, or perhaps one should say worldly, gain—mainly wealth on the one hand and power on the other. As such it is on a par with two other traditions: Dharma (ethics, religious duty) on one hand and Kama (pleasure, desire) on the other. Joined together, these three are seen as the sum of human life. If not in all incarnations, at any rate in the kind in which not just Indians but all of us live to the present day.

To me the most intriguing aspect of the work, rarely noted by other commentators I have looked at, is the profound contradiction it seems to contain. At peak, the Mauri Empire comprised some two million square miles. More than the present-day state of India and including, in addition to today’s Central and Northern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Its population, which modern scholars have estimated at 50-60 million, was comparable to that of Rome at its height. To administer such a vast realm a sophisticated bureaucracy was needed; such as is, in fact, described by Kautilya. The top layer of the bureaucracy in question was formed by a royal council which was supported by a secretariat or chancellery. There were specialist departments responsible for, among other things, defense, intelligence (including espionage, a field that seems to have fascinated the author and on which he has much advice to offer), the treasury, commerce, auditing, weights and measures, the measurement of space and time, agriculture, mining, forestry (specifically including elephant-forestry), fisheries, and public works, weaving, liquor, and the supervision of prostitutes. Much business was transacted in writing, including secret writing. Rulers were surrounded by elaborate ritual and kept, or were supposed to keep, regular hours devoted to work, worship and leisure. Order and regularity seem to have been the watchwords; albeit that unexpected events on one hand and the peculiarities of individual rulers on the other might cause them to be disrupted.

There is, however, another side to this coin. From beginning to end, the emperor about and for whom Kautilya is writing is referred to as a “king.” That is OK—I do not claim to be a Sanskrit linguist. What I find surprising is that the king’s realm, a huge one by any standard, is said to be surrounded by those of other “kings.” So much so that they form first, second, and even third, four, fifth and sixth degree neighbors. Though not of equal strength, all are addressed by the same title. All are independent of each other, constantly negotiating with each other, stabbing each other in the back, and often fighting each other tooth and nail. Not to mention any number of “wild” peoples who keep rising against the kings and must be kept in check. In other words, what the text really describes is not an empire at all. It is, rather, an international system—a quilt made up of separate realms, many of them as small as they are diverse.

Those who are taking this are more likely to cialis generic tabs have a hemorrhagic stroke. This leads to a widening of blood vessels which supports in adequate blood supply to the sexual organs of the body. cialis 5mg price Complication of dysfunction problem There are a lot of complications of diabetes, which include impotence, neuropathy (loss of sensation or abnormal sensation). viagra brand No doubt, it sildenafil generic viagra is one of the known troubles and is faced by men at one pointof time or the other. However that may be, the text is meandering and, in its attempts to take the reader by the hand and lead him, often truly picayune. In this respect it is as unlike Machiavelli, who was a brilliant writer and stylist, as unlike can be. The following passage is typical:

When a friend does not come to terms, intrigue should be frequently resorted to. Through the agency of spies, the friend should be won over after separating him from the enemy. Or attempts may be made to win him over who is the last among combined friends; for when he who is the last among combined friends is secured, those who occupy the middle rank will be separated from each other; or attempts may be made to win over a friend who occupies middle rank; for when a friend occupying middle rank among combined kings is secured, friends, occupying the extreme ranks cannot keep the union.

This kind of text is about as exciting and as transparent as mud. Personally I find it hard to believe that even a Dr. Kissinger, however brainy he may be, can make himself read it without falling asleep. Consider the following:

A virtuous king may be conciliated by praising his birth, family, learning and character, and by pointing out the relationship which his ancestors had (with the proposer of peace), or by describing the benefits and absence of enmity shown to him. Or a king who is of good intentions, or who has lost his enthusiastic spirits, or whose strategic mean are all exhausted and thwarted in a number of wars, or who has lost his men and wealth, or who has suffered from sojourning abroad, or who is desirous of gaining a friend in good faith, or who is apprehensive of danger from another, or who cares more for friendship than anything else, many be won over by conciliation. Or a king who is greedy, or who has lost his men may be won over by giving gifts through the medium of ascetics and chiefs who have been previously kept with him for the purpose.

Or, or, or, or. The number of possibilities is endless. Each one is divided into branches, and each branch, having been further subdivided, must be explored in some depth. Here as in a great many other traditional Indian philosophical texts, the Kama Sutra specifically included, what we see is the author’s wish to be as systematic and as comprehensive as possible. No set of circumstances, no combination, and no eventuality must be left out. Even at the expense of clarity and readability.

I am reminded of what Clausewitz, in his introduction to On War, has to say about this kind of writing:

It is, perhaps, not impossible to write a systematic theory of war full of spirit and substance, but ours, hitherto, have been very much the reverse. To say nothing of their unscientific spirit, in their striving after coherence and completeness of system, they overflow with commonplaces, truisms, and twaddle of every kind. If we want a striking picture of them we have only to read Lichtenberg’s extract from a code of regulations in case of fire. “If a house takes fire,” he writes, “we must seek, above all things, to protect the right side of the house standing on the left, and, on the other hand, the left side of the house on the right; for if we, for example, should protect the left side of the house on the left, then the right side of the house lies to the right of the left, and consequently as the fire lies to the right of this side, and of the right side (for we have assumed that the house is situated to the left of the fire), therefore the right side is situated nearer to the fire than the left, and the right side of the house might catch fire if it was not protected before it came to the left, which is protected. Consequently, something might be burnt that is not protected, and that sooner than something else would be burnt, even if it was not protected; consequently we must let alone the latter and protect the former. In order to impress the thing on one’s mind, we have only to note if the house is situated to the right of the fire, then it is the left side, and if the house is to the left it is the right side.”

To return to the Arthashastra, give me Machiavelli any time.

Just Published!

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Martin van Creveld, More on War, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017

When the chips are down, the survival of every country, government and individual is ultimately dependent on war. That is why, though war may come but once in a hundred years, it must be prepared for every day. When it is too late—when the bodies lay stiff and people weep over them—those in charge have failed in their duty.

In almost every field of human thought and action, good philosophers abound. They have examined their subjects, be they aesthetics or ethics or logic or the existence of God, and dissected them into their component parts. Next they re-assembled them, often in new and surprising ways that helped students to expand their knowledge and gain understanding. Some even helped improve the ability of the rest of us to cope with real-world problems. Yet in two and-a half millennia there have only been two really important military theoreticians: Sun Tzu (544-496 BCE) and Carl von Clausewitz (1779-1831). All the rest, including quite a few who were famous in their own times, have been more or less forgotten. Today they are of interest, if at all, almost exclusively to the military historian.

Both Sun Tzu’s the Art of War and Clausewitz’s On War have had praise heaped on them by generations of soldiers and scholars. With very good reason, needless to say. Nevertheless, both are marked by serious problems. In part, that is because there are entire fields which they address hardly if at all. Including the causes of war, the relationship between economics and war, the technology of war, and the law of war. This even applies to naval warfare, an age-old but critically important topic that neither of them mentions in a single word. In part, it is simply because they are old. Being old, they have nothing to say about the many forms of war that have emerged since they were written and whose role in contemporary conflict is often decisive. Such as nuclear war, air- and space war, cyberwar, and asymmetric war.

As far as the dielectric prism coatings are concerned, they do their job by bringing on deck bright, clear, color accurate cialis 5 mg images that the shooter would be proud of. Home remedies for Leucorrhea: Take the root of the amaranth and chafed it in cialis professional cipla a cup of water. Eat viagra in stores 30 grams of pumpkin seeds everyday or taking pumpkin capsules is very effective. Men suffering from erectile dysfunction lack in self-confidence and are cheap sildenafil uk http://amerikabulteni.com/2011/11/17/u-s-can-strike-anywhere-on-earth-in-hour/ unhappy with everything that they do. What is needed, in other words, is a new theory of war. One that is succinct, comprehensive, and easy to read and understand. And one that, by taking a contemporary approach, filling the gaps, and expanding into new fields can take the place of the above texts both in military and civilian life, both in- and out of the classroom.

The purpose of More on War is to provide just such a theory.

 

“Van Creveld is incapable of writing an uninteresting book.”

Prof. Lawrence Friedman, Foreign Affairs.