Clausewitz rules, OK? The future is the past with GPS

Review of International Studies

Volumn 25, Issue 5, 1999, Pages 161-182

  Gray, Colin ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85013298629     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210599001618     Document Type: Article

References (124)

1. Hedley Bull, ‘The Theory of International Politics, 1919-1969,’ in Brian Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics, 1919-1969 (London, 1972), p. 39.
2. The scholarly literature on ‘realism’, now generally termed ‘classical realism’—with its modern devotees, such as this author, called neoclassical realists—‘neorealism,’ ‘structural realism’ (and one day soon, perhaps, neoclassical poststructural realism), is as large as it is largely aridly academic in a pejorative sense. For those inclined to intellectual masochism, I can recommend Kenneth W Thompson, Masters of International Thought: Major Twentieth-Century Theorists and the World Crisis (Baton Rouge, LA, 1980);
3. Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York, 1986);
4. Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York, 1993);
5. Benjamin Frankel (ed.), ‘Roots of Realism’, Security Studies, 5, special issue (1995);
6. idem (ed.), ‘Realism: Restatements and Renewal’, Security Studies, 5, special issue (1996);
7. Scott Burchill, ‘Realism and Neo-Realism’, in Burchill and Andrew Linklater (eds.), Theories of International Relations (London, 1996), pp. 67-92; and.
8. Stefano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy (London, 1998). These few References are merely the tip of a mighty iceberg of professional activity. For an ‘approach’ to international relations long condemned by the cognoscenti as simplistic and theoretically severely challenged, ‘realism’ seems able to attract an endless succession of firing squads. Contemporary theorists of international relations are still looking for that stake to the heart that definitively would dispatch ‘realism’.
9. Such scholars might just notice that some of the more informative critiques of classical realist theory have been written by classical realists themselves. For example, it would be difficult to improve on Ernst Haas, ‘The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept or Propaganda?,’ World Politics, 5 (1953), pp. 442-477.
10. or Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore, 1962), ch. 10, ‘National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol’.
11. Robert B. Strassler (ed.), The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to ‘The Peloponnesian War’, rev. edn. of Richard Crawley (trans.) (New York, 1996);
12. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Ralph D. Sawyer (Boulder, CO, 1994);
13. Kautilya, The Arthashastra, trans. L. N. Rangarajan (New Delhi, 1992);
14. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art of War, rev. edn. of Ellis Farneworth (trans.) (Indianapolis, 1965);
15. Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford, 1997);
16. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa (Oxford, 1998);
17. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ, 1976);
18. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1914-1939 (New York, 1964);
19. E. H. Carr, International Relations Between the Two World Wars, 1919-1939 (New York, 1966);
20. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York, 1932);
21. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (New York, 1944);
22. Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest (New York, 1951);
23. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th edn. revised by Kenneth W. Thompson (New York, 1985);
24. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (Garden City, NY, 1966);
25. Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1818-22 (Boston, 1957);
26. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994).
27. See Peter R. Pouncey, The Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides’ Pessimism (New York, 1980).
28. ch. 4, and especially Simon Hornblower, Thucydides (Baltimore, 1987).
29. ch. 3. Richard Ned Lebow and Barry S. Strauss (eds.), Hegemonic Rivalry: From Thucydides to the Nuclear Age (Boulder, CO: 1991), is bold and interesting.
30. Strassler, Landmark Thucydides, p. 43.
31. Emanuel Adler, ‘Condition(s) of Peace,’ Review of International Studies, 24 (1998), pp. 165-191.
32. Jeremy Black, Why Wars Happen (London, 1998).
33. I explain the reasons for the persisting clear superiority of Clausewitz in my Modern Strategy (Oxford, 1999), chs. 3-4.
34. Clausewitz is roughly handled in John Keegan, ‘Peace by Other Means?’, Times Literary Supplement, 11 December 1992, pp. 3-4;
35. Clausewitz is roughly handled in John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London, 1998);
36. Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, 1991);
37. Martin van Creveld, ‘What is Wrong with Clausewitz?’, in Gert de Nooy (ed.), The Clausewitzian Dictum and the Future of Western Military Strategy (The Hague, 1997), pp. 7-23.
38. Christopher Bassford has performed nobly as the most recent counsel for the defence. See his articles, ‘John Keegan and the Grand Tradition of Trashing Clausewitz: a Polemic,’ War in History, 1 (1996), pp. 319-336.
39. and ‘Landmarks in Defense Literature: “On War”, by Carl von Clausewitz’, Defense Analysis, 12 (1996), pp. 267-271.
40. Ken Booth, ‘Dare not to Know: International Relations Theory versus the Future’, in Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge, 1995), p. 329.
41. Ralph Peters, Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? (Mechanicsburg, PA: 1999), p. 171.
42. Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?, p. 189.
43. Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (London, 1999), p. 375. Original emphasis.
44. An argument that I develop at length and probably in unduly excruciating detail in my Modern Strategy, ch. 1.
45. Booth, ‘Dare not to Know,’ p. 350.
46. ‘Dare not to Know,’, p. 343.
47. The bible for which view remains, of course, Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: 1979), a book which demonstrates that being elegantly parsimonious in theory building offers insufficient compensation for being wrong.
48. Charles E. Callwell, Small Wars: A Tactical Textbook for Imperial Soldiers (London, 1990), p. 270.
49. Chris Brown, Understanding International Relations (London, 1997), p. 121.
50. Understanding International Relations, p. 119.
51. Bruce G. Blair offers a persuasive reason why such scepticism is desirable. Writing about my field of strategic analysis, Blair argues plausibly that ‘[a]s in any field that straddles science, policy, and politics, the temptation to overreach is unusually strong. High demand for unwaffled answers creates a market for study products that package immature theories as final, easily digestible truth’. The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Washington, DC: 1993), p. 288.
52. Clausewitz, On War, pp. 81.
53. Colin S. Gray, Villains, Victims and Sheriffs: Strategic Studies and Security for an Inter-War Period (Hull, 1996), esp. pp. 16-17.
54. For example, see Andrew Butfoy, Common Security and Strategic Reform: A Critical Analysis (London, 1997). This book is as well intentioned, as appealing, and as moderate and reasonable, as it is hopelessly ‘off piste’ for the rougher realities of strategic history.
55. Donald Kagan, ‘History is Full of Surprises’, Survival, 41 (1999), p. 142. Emphasis added.
56. Eliot A. Cohen, ‘The “Major” Consequences of War’, Survival, 41 (1999), p. 145.
57. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury (London, 1909), 1, p. 84.
58. On the past and future of nuclear history, see Colin S. Gray, The Second Nuclear Age (Boulder, CO: 1999).
59. Robert D. Kaplan, ‘The Coming Anarchy,’ Atlantic Monthly, February 1994, pp. 44-76, and Peters, Fighting for the Future.
60. Aron advises that ‘prudence is the statesman's supreme virtue.’ Peace and War, p. 585. This is not to suggest that the content of prudent behaviour is self-evident.
61. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1993).
62. John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York, 1989);
63. Michael Mandelbaum, ‘Is Major War Obsolete?,’ Survival, 40 (1998-1999), pp. 20-38.
64. ‘I propose to call the set of articulated norms, customs, professional codes, legal precepts, religious and philosophical principles, and reciprocal arrangements that shape our judgments of military conduct, the war convention.’ Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York, 1977), p. 44. Original emphasis.
65. Clausewitz, On War, p. 89.
66. I prefer to thicken Hedley Bull's workmanlike definition of war as ‘organised violence carried on by political units against each other’ with the addition of ‘for political motives’. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York, 1977), p. 184.
67. For a very different, culturalist, view of war, see Keegan, History of Warfare.
68. A recent variant on this intriguing theme is presented in Peter Padfield, Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Compaigns that Shaped the Modern World, 1588-1782 (London, 1999).
69. If Padfield overreaches on the evidence available concerning possible links between liberal values at home and maritime success, so does Spencer R. Weart in his study, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven, CT: 1998). Especially useful on the theory of the democratic peace are Peter T. Manicas, War and Democracy (Oxford, 1989);
70. Michael Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steve E. Miller (eds.), Debating the Democratic Peace: An ‘International Security’ Reader (Cambridge, MA: 1996); and.
71. Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism (New York, 1997). This important debate cries out for empirical assistance. The literature on the causes of war probably would be improved if it contained fewer entries by philosophers of international relations (e.g., Doyle, just cited, or Hidemi Suganami, On the Causes of War [Oxford, 1996]), who tend to add elegantly to opacity, and more by first-rate historians.
72. (e.g., John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 [New York, 1989].
73. and Charles E. Esdaile, The Wars of Napoleon [London, 1995]).
74. Scholars differ on the feasibility of swift radical change in political (or strategic) culture, in part because they differ on what they mean by culture. My current view may be found in my article, ‘Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory Strikes Back,’ Review of International Studies, 25:1 (1999), pp. 49-69.
75. Richard Overy has attempted a brave, and unusual, treatment of the moral dimension of the Second World War, as ch. 9 in his Why the Allies Won (London, 1995). He argues that ‘[w]hatever the rights and wrongs of the Allied cause, the belief that they fought on the side of righteousness equipped them with powerful moral argument (p. 312)’. In conclusion, Overy asks rhetorically, ‘[b]ut can there be any doubt that populations will fight with less effect in the service of an evil cause? (p. 313).’ Overy is surely right to flag the importance of the connection between the will to fight and a confidence that justice is on our side. The problem is that in practice belief in the justness of one's cause has proven to be entirely unrelated to the character of that cause.
76. Edward N. Luttwak is probably right with his characteristically robust claims that ‘[t]here is simply no connection between the form of domestic politics and the propensity to wage war by choice. As the historical record shows, dictatorships can be impeccably peaceful and democracies can be fiercely aggressive.’ Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge, MA: 1987), p. 188.
77. See Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987), and.
78. John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (New York, 1998), ch. 7.
79. The best, and most even-handed, terse review of the relevant theories known to this author is provided by the editors in John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford, 1997), pp. 1-11 (ch. 1 by Jan Aart Scholte also is useful). ‘Globalization,’ meaning many things to many people, has been a buzz-word of the 1990s.
80. Nearly every contemporary textbook on international relations makes extensive use of the word, generally reverentially. Readers interested in illustration of my point could do worse than refer to Janne E. Nolan (ed.), Global Engagement: Cooperation and Security in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: 1994), for a glimpse at the sources of what has passed for a vision of foreign policy in the Clinton years;
81. James H. Mittelman (ed.), Globalization: Critical Reflections (Boulder, CO: 1996);
82. Brown, Understanding International Relations; and.
83. Lynn H. Miller, Global Order, 4th edn. (Boulder, CO: 1998).
84. Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York, 1962).
85. See also Geoffrey Sloan, ‘Sir Halford Mackinder: The Heartland Theory Then and Now’, in Colin S. Gray and Sloan (eds.), Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy (London, 1999), and.
86. Geoffrey Parker, Geopolitics: Past, Present and Future (London, 1998).
87. Reprinted in Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, pp. 265-278.
88. Martin Libicki, ‘The Emerging Primacy of Information’, Orbis, 40 (1996), pp. 261-274.
89. Edwin A. Pratt, The Rise of Rail-Power in War and Conquest, 1833-1914 (London, 1916);
90. Paul M. Kennedy, ‘Imperial Cable Communications and Strategy, 1870-1914’, in Kennedy (ed.), The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880-1914 (London, 1979), pp. 75-98;
91. and Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge, MA: 1985), ch. 4. Writing in 1905, a Lt. General on Germany's Great General Staff explained what the electric telegraph meant for operational command. ‘The former and actually existing danger of failure in the preconcerted action of widely separated portions of the Army is now almost completely removed by the electric telegraph. However much the enemy may have succeeded in placing himself between our Armies, or portions of our Armies, in such a manner that no troops can get from one to the other, we can still amply communicate with each other on an arc of a hundred or two hundred or four hundred miles.
92. The field telegraph can be laid as rapidly as the troops are marching and headquarters will hear every evening how matters stand with the various Armies, and issue its orders to them accordingly.’ Rudolf von Caemmerer, The Development of Strategical Science during the 19th Century, trans. Karl von Donat (London, 1905), pp. 171-172. The events of the first week of September 1914 were to demonstrate the vanity in this confident expectation that modern technology would eleminate much of the friction that impedes efficient communication in time of war.
93. On the thesis of an information-led RMA, see Stuart E. Johnson and Martin C. Libicki (eds.), Dominant Battlespace Knowledge (Washington, DC: 1996), and.
94. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (eds.), In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age (Santa Monica, CA: 1997).
95. Williamson Murray, ‘Thinking About Revolutions in Military Affairs,’ Joint Force Quarterly, 16 (1997), pp. 69-76, and.
96. Colin S. Gray, ‘RMAs and the Dimensions of Strategy’, Joint Force Quarterly, 17 (1997-1998), pp. 50-54, are much more sceptical.
97. The Bush Administration was much embarassed by the revelation in Patrick E. Tyler, ‘US Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop’, New York Times, 8 March 1992, pp. A1, 14. The authority of the Pentagon's hegemony plan was denied promptly.
98. See Patrick E. Tyler, ‘Senior US Officials Assail Lone-Superpower Policy’, New York Times, 11 March 1992, p. A6. This was a truly brief bid for glory! Words, of course, are one thing, the reality of American hegemony is something else.
99. Brian Bond, The Pursuit of Victory: From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein (Oxford, 1996).
100. The problem with the Versailles ‘order’ of 1919 was that in deadly fashion it combined the elements of humiliation of the vanquished—who were not convinced that they had been properly vanquished—with an unrealistic requirement for protractedly robust postwar ‘ordering’ on the part of the victors. It might be said that there was nothing much wrong with Versailles; the difficulty lay not with the treaty, but rather with the lack of will for enforcement by the international community. This excuse, though strictly true, is not persuasive. Prudent peacemakers do not design a post-war ‘order’ that leaves most political parties among the vanquished committed to its overthrow. Such an absence of political stake in the new order all but guarantees that ‘bad times’ will return sooner rather than later. James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform (Lawrence, KS: 1992), is instructive. Scholars of international relations have devoted too much attention to the causes of war, a subject that does not lend itself to useful assault, and far too little to the making of more lasting periods of (postwar) ‘order’. The latter is a vital topic on which a great deal of useful work could be done. For a praiseworthy venture into the realm of ‘orders’, see Torbjorn L. Knutsen, The Rise and Fall of World Orders (Manchester, 1999).
101. Adler believes that learning is key to the arrival of peace. ‘[L]ike all practices it [peace] can be arrived at through learning … In other words, peace is socially constructed.’ ‘Condition(s) of Peace,’ p. 168. Original emphasis. Would that Adler were correct.
102. It may no longer be fashionable to say this, but in the words of B. H. Liddell Hart, ‘[t]he function of war is to settle disputes’. The Revolution in Warfare (London, 1946), p. 42.
103. G. W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford, 1984).
104. US Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Natural Resources, Agricultural Research and Environment, and Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Nuclear Winter, Joint Hearing, 99th Cong., 1st session (Washington, DC: 14 March 1985).
105. Daniel Johnson, ‘Liberalism's Tragic Lack’, Times Literary Supplement, 9 April 1999, p. 30.
106. Cohen, ‘“Major” Consequences of War’.
107. In which respect see Fred Charles Iklé, ‘The Second Coming of the Nuclear Age,’ Foreign Affairs, 75 (1996), pp. 119-128, and.
108. Keith B. Payne, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age (Lexington, KY: 1997).
109. For example, see Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, 2nd edn. (Boulder, CO: 1991);
110. Ole Weaver, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London, 1993);
111. Barry Buzan, Ole Weaver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: 1998);
112. David A. Baldwin, ‘Security Studies and the End of the Cold War’, World Politics, 48 (1995), pp. 117-141;
113. and idem, ‘The Concept of Security’, Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 5-26.
114. Quoted in Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 240.
115. Bassford, ‘Landmarks in Defense Literature’, is an outstanding defence.
116. Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 548.
117. ‘One Clausewitz is still worth a busload of most other theorists’. Richard K. Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, World Politics, 50 (1997), p. 29.
118. T. V. Paul, ‘Nuclear Taboo and War Initiation in Regional Conflicts’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, (1965), pp. 696-717;
119. Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald, ‘Norms and Deterrence: The Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Taboos’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York, 1996), pp. 114-152;
120. and Richard M. Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca, NY: 1997).
121. In ‘Norms and Deterrence,’ p. 140, Price and Tannenwald assert confidently that ‘[t]the strength of the nuclear taboo and the odium attached to nuclear weapons as weapons of mass destruction render unusable all nuclear weapons.’ Certainty, probability, and value, are thus confused.
122. I tackle this issue directly in my ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Revolution in Military Affairs’, in T. V. Paul, Richard J. Harknett, and James J. Wirtz (eds.), The Absolute Weapon Revisited: Nuclear Arms and the Emerging International Order (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998), pp. 99-134.
123. I thank Richard P. Hallion for this example. See his ‘Air Power Past, Present, and Future,’ in Hallion (ed.), Air Power Confronts an Unstable World (London, 1997), p. 7.
124. On Navstar GPS, see Lynn Dutton, David de Garis, Richard Winterton, and Richard Harding, Military Space (London, 1990), pp. 75-81.