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Is Clausewitz still relevant to todays security environment?

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, the German army general at the
beginning of the nineteenth century is widely renowned for his political
philosophy on war. In his book, On War, he defines war as a duel on larger
scale constituted of opposing forces, an act of force to compel our enemy to
do our will (Clausewitz, 1976, p.75). His work, is specifically orientated
towards strategies of war and is rich with examples related to the close
analysis of the battles of his time and those before. Given the apparent
prevailing forms of armed conflicts in Clausewitzs times, it can be assumed
the text and Clausewitz philosophy were highly relevant to his period.
Clausewitz died before getting a chance to fully revise his book as he wished,
explaining possible weaknesses due to the evolution of his views. Accounting
for these weaknesses, this essay will assess his relevance in todays security
environment: essentially, anything related to the alleviation of threats. Indeed,
extrapolating from his work would not guarantee an accurate reflection his
thoughts.

The security environment has undergone important changes since the


beginning of the nineteenth century, the appearance of new security threats
and the development of pre-existing ones have led to an expansion of security
environment fields. Clausewitz solely focuses on war (which only represents a
niche in the security environments domain), therefore his relevance when
framed in the whole security environment has decreased drastically. Hence,
his contemporary relevance will be assessed focusing on warfare exclusively,
albeit considering wars contemporary characteristics. In this context,
particular attention will be given to intrastate conflicts because of their current
prevalence.
It will be argued that some of Clausewitzs ideas on general aims of war
and actors characteristics are still up to date, but overall he is not relevant to
todays security environment. Firstly, the changes in the security environment
and warfare will be exposed, focusing on the characteristics of intrastate
conflicts, demonstrating that Clausewitz is not in line with the new warfare
environment. Secondly, his fundamental idea of war being a continuation of
politics will be critically analysed to expose a rupture with this correlation.
Thirdly, his second main concept, namely the Trinity of War, will prove to be
mostly unfitted to contemporary armed conflicts, even though parts of its
composition can still be singled out.

Firstly, the security environment has undergone significant changes


since Clausewitz time. The scope of this transformation is heavily contested
between those holding that the expansion of the security environment has to
be taken into account, versus a traditionalist vision negating such change and
implying that war is still the major central feature of said environment.
Stephen Walt supports the latter, interpreting security studies as being about
managing military forces and hazards. He considers the widening of the
security agenda as incoherent from an intellectual perspective and the
increase sectors of security environments as diminishing the omni-important
focus granted to war (Buzan et al., 1998, p.5). Contrarily, authors like Barry
Buzan and Ole Wver divide the security environment in to five areas:
economic, environmental, political, societal and military fields (Buzan et al.,
1998, p. vii). Developments in all these areas, are the fruit of globalization,
according to Mary Kaldor (Kaldor, 1998) and they cannot be ignored. By
increasing interconnectedness, globalisation tore communication barriers, of
which terrorists have benefited from too. Borders are not impervious barriers
that can be closely controlled like they used to: economics and the
environment are transnational and refugee crises have become interstate
problems. All these changes represent threats to civilians but also to the
States integrity and even existence (i.e. the rise of waters leading to the
disappearance of certain inhabited islands) therefore these new categories
are legitimate parts of the environment. Accounting for these factors, it can be
argued that security context has changed since Clausewitzs times and
cannot be disregarded, making war a niche sector in the wider security
environment.

Furthermore, statistics from the Center for Systemic Peace show that from
1997 to 2012, levels of societal warfare have always exceeded those of
interstate warfare, with a global decline in the total of armed conflicts (Center
for Systemic Peace, 2013a). Figure 5 reveals that overall, the same pattern
can be noticed regarding the nature of newly onsets wars (Center for
Systemic Peace, 2013b). Therefore, focusing on interstate rather than
intrastate wars is equivalent to focusing on, numerically at least, a less
common type of warfare. It might be argued that the decline of interstate wars
does not mean that insecurity between states disappeared. Indeed, countries
still prepare for such a potential threat. Recently, NATO set as a future focus
the protection of European countries from ballistic missiles attacks from
countries such as Iran. In practice this has resulted in the translocation of a
US ballistic missile defence destroyer to Rota, Spain (BBC World Service,
2014), showing that Clausewitzs ideas are still relevant to some extent.
Nevertheless, set in the wider context this only represents the minor fraction
of the contemporary war environment and an even smaller one in the global
security environment. Thus, this essay will mainly focus on Clausewitzs
relevance in intrastate wars.

Interstate and intrastate wars have very different features. From a


geographical perspective the latter particularly take place in urban areas
(Williams, 2008). Thus, the concept of battlefield becomes maladjusted and
the idea of geographic spread switches from the pursuit of increasing
territorial expansion to controlling strategic areas. Additionally, the actors of
war are not clearly demarcated, as they commonly were in Clausewitz period.
This is highlighted in New Wars, that are a combination of political conflicts
and criminal acts opposing a government and its citizens or two fractions of a
society. The scenes of such conflicts are usually authoritarian states
weakened or brought to failure by globalization. Their novelty resides in their
financing (mostly through predatory private finance and not state revenues),
their methods (politics, not battles, are used to gain territories by controlling
the population), their goals (they are driven by identity issues), and the actors
(a mix of state groups and non-state actors) (Kaldor, 2013). These changes
blur the distinction between combatants and civilians. In the light of the
dynamics between people constituting active and passive elements of
intrastate wars, Clausewitz will be assessed on the basis of two of his
strategies. First, he argues that strongly attacking one point of the enemy, can
cause enough doubts for the adversary to question his involvement in the war
(Heuser, 2007). Consequently undermining the enemys will, that constitutes
half of what he calls the power of resistance (the other one being the total
means at his disposal) and is what needs to be crushed to be victorious
(Clausewitz, 1976, p. 77). It might have been efficient in circumstances of
interstate wars where the enemy was clearly defined but now adversaries do
not always represent homogenous actors. For instance, in contemporary

Syria the anti-Assad fighters cannot be identified as one united group.


Therefore targeting one fraction will less likely weaken the oppositions will,
undermining the relevance of the strategy. Secondly, according to Clausewitz,
when faced with unconventional wars the state will increase atrocities as a
means of dissuasion (Daase, 2007). Daase (2007) claims for a change of
patterns: the intensification of brutality now originates from the insurgents
while states are the first to decrease it. This can be explained by the
increasing international pressure on states and heads of states (who are
potentially exposed to trial in the International Criminal Court (ICC)) to refrain
from leading such acts. The highly publicised story of the Syrian rebel ripping
a soldiers heart (Marcus, 2013) out and biting it exemplifies Daases
assertion, while the difficulty to determine whether Bashar Al Assad
commanded the use of chemical weapons against his population or if it was
an insurgents initiative creates confusion on who increased the intensity of
war. Either way, the escalation of atrocities is not exclusively reserved to
States as a dissuasion method anymore. Overall, it demonstrates that
Clausewitz strategies are not adapted to intrastate wars due to the change in
the nature of the actors and the impossibility for States to lead ample attacks
on insurgents without causing extensive civilian casualties as the nature of
battlefields has changed. Many strategists share this opinion according to
Daase (2007), and this led Keans argument that the means of war have
changed from politics to economics, leading to the assessment of war being
the continuation of politics.

One of Clausewitzs fundamental ideas is that War is merely the


continuation of policy by other means (Clausewitz, 1976, p.87). He considers
war a tool to reach political aims, sustaining that warfare can only modify but
not profoundly change political goals because policies are rational goals of
which war is merely an irrational mean. Furthermore, Clausewitz noted that
wars resulted from respecting bounding treaties. As World War I exemplifies:
alliances led the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria to
become a major interstate war. Antonio Echevarrias (2007a) article makes us
question the contemporary nature of treaties. Even though military alliances
are still very much relevant, it seems that war as a policy is being replaced by
the promotion of non-violent solutions. Such trend can be noticed through the
development of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA),
recent negotiations between Iran and the US, attempts to prevent impunities
of perpetrators of war crimes with the ICC, the limitation of potential conflicts
impacts with the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)
(UNODA, 2013). Conclusively, nowadays politics are not about war as they
used to be, therefore war cannot be its continuation. Politics point towards
cooperation and interconnectedness brought by globalisation and economic
agreements, whose interests they serve would be threatened by armed
conflicts. This leads us to seek the origins of intrastate wars.

It could be rightfully argued that economic interests are also at the origins
of war and so they are not protections for peaceful relations based on mutual
gains. The 2001 Iraq war, though officially aimed at removing Weapons of
Mass Destruction (WMDs), has been analysed as a war motivated by
economic profits instead (Hassan and Ralph, 2011). Nevertheless, this does
not discredit the fact that war is not the continuation of a policy but rather the
pursuit of non-political goals. Presently, ethnic and religious features are at
the origin of intrastate wars. It sets the basis for M. V. Crevelds argument that
Clausewitz is out-dated because war is the product of different elements
(Williams, 2008). War is now mostly the degeneration of cultural tensions, as
the current situation in the Central African Republic between Muslims and
Christians exemplifies. Furthermore, the Arab Spring shows another pattern:
intrastate wars find origins in the popular will to break up with their current
politics. The aim in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria was to achieve a regime
change. Confrontations which are the result of clashes between civilian
demands and governmental positions. War is not exclusively a tool in the
hands of politicians nor the extension of politics. Hence, even though it is
widely accepted by all scholars, regardless their belief in Clausewitzs
contemporary relevance war cannot be considered a continuation of politics
anymore due to the nature of the origins of todays intrastate conflicts.

Delbrck argues that Clausewitz sets two objectives of war that need to be
clearly separated. The first is to achieve a position in allowing peace
negotiations; the second is to implement a new order by eradicating the
enemy (Strachan, 2007). Looking at these two aims while considering the
emergence of nuclear weapons and more widely WMDs, results in a biased
conclusion. Considering Bernard Brodies position that nuclear weapons are
coherent only as a deterrence tool implies that WMDs could limit escalations
of violence. Indeed, as Clausewitz advocates, decision makers have to be
rational individuals therefore a nuclear attack leading to Mutual Assured
Destruction (MAD) is unlikely. A situation where peace talks could be carried
out would be created, as conflicts could not rationally further escalate. Hence,
Clausewitz can be considered relevant when arguing regarding decision
makers rationality (Brodie, 1976). Yet, it is not his objective of achieving a
situation allowing peace negotiations that is relevant to todays security
environment but WMDs that contribute to his objective. Consequently the
primary relevance goes to WMDs and military developments, not Clausewitzs
idea which is a consequence of the previous. Ultimately, the progresses in
military equipment have developed to such point that eradicating the enemy
became a fairly easy goal to achieve (from a logistic perspective). It is the
extent of social, political, economic and potentially environmental damages
that renders said goal too costly from all perspectives and so decreasingly
relevant.

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Clausewitz second fundamental idea was the Trinity of War: he


considered war the harmonious relation of three fractions. Two trinities can be
distinguished: the minor constituted of the actors of war namely the state (or
government), the people and the military, and the major comprising
attributes, each corresponding to the respective actors: reason, passion and
genius (Echevarria II, 2007a). The minor trinity has undergone important
changes influencing the repartition of the major. For Clausewitz war was an
act of governments exclusively, not started by armies or people. He presumed
that violence could be defined as war only if it was undertaken by the state for
its own purpose and against another state (Van Creveld, 1991, p. 36). His
view applies to interstate war dynamics because they are constituted of
states, usually engaging in conflicts with the support of their population (as
World War II exemplifies), employing the army. Nevertheless, intrastate war
actors do not follow minor trinity Clausewitzian repartition of roles. Because
borders and political entities are now generally speaking (as the case of Israel
shows contestation and, vagueness in territorial definition for instance), set
and accepted, reasons to engage interstate conflicts have decreased.
Insurgencies are bottom-up: the people protest against governments that
engage in repressive actions to attempt to maintain their position.
Consequently, the people do engage in wars independently from and against
governmental directives. Accordingly, insurgents represent the people and a
part of the army, as they are strategically self-organised, while governments
do the same using the army, which generally pre-dates the conflict. The
Clausewitzian minor trinity is no longer up to date because intrastate wars do
not fit into its fractions and therefore they are not part of the same side of the

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conflict leading to a re-ordering of the actors. Additionally, because


revolutionary groups originating amongst the population do not necessarily
represent a united front, governments are often confronted with a multitude of
different enemy parties where the distinction from civilians is blurred,
undermining states possibilities to engage in large-scale attacks to debilitate
enemies.
According to Clausewitzs relation between both trinities, rulers need to
be rational decision makers. As previously shown he is relevant on this point,
nevertheless intrastate conflicts do not always follow the harmony between
the three attributes. For instance, terrorism is held to be driven by passion and
strong ideological beliefs that volatile groups attempt to implement.
Disregarding the morality of the actions, Antulio Echevarria (2007a) identifies
that `genius` is also widely relevant to terrorism, as the 9/11 attacks exemplify.
The concept of reason is open to contestation because what seems
reasonable to some is an absurdity to others: the 2001 intervention of Iraq
seemed justified to the administration in office at the time, while realist
scholars claimed the US had no reason to intervene because it was not in
Americas interest to do so. It has been argued that the intervention had the
overall popular support originating in peoples passions post-9/11, and without
that passion the intervention would have been blocked, as the absence of a
Libyan intervention to a certain degree, shows. Consequently, while
Clausewitzs major trinity elements are still identifiable, their equal repartition
is not. In the case of intrastate conflicts and terrorism, passion seems to be
the main trigger and not reason (represented by governments), while in
democracies reason is pending on the peoples approval, namely passion.

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Furthermore, Echevarria (2007b) also indicates that since Clausewitzs


times there has been a diversification in the actors of wars, whom are not
limited to the trinity anymore. In addition to those already cited, international
entities such as Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), International
Organisations (IOs) like the United Nations (UN) and states that are not
directly involved in the conflict are increasingly taking part in intrastate wars.
NGOs often provide humanitarian support aimed at rescuing civilians, like the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The UN, through
peacekeeping operations, works on the protection of civilians through the
maintenance and rehabilitation of stability in conflict zones. One of the current
debates involving States evolves around the Responsibility to Protect (R2P),
putting human security above state sovereignty when the governments fails to
provide its citizens with their basic needs or acts against its own people. All
these new actors support Paul Williams (2008) argument that the importance
of the state decreases while non-state actors are increasingly present and the
focus shifts on civilians. Even though it can be argued that not all non-state
actors interventions (and by non-state is meant states that are not directly
part of the war) are not always motivated by the genuine will to assist victims,
there is a general sense of moral duty that seems to appear. It goes beyond
the duty to respect treaties, like in Clausewitzs times, leading to the
conclusion that, as Martin Van Creveld (1991) sustains, the trinity is not
relevant today: transformations of war have brought in new actors with a focus
on individuals and new attributes that would render the analysis of
contemporary wars unjust if they werent considered.

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To conclude: firstly, Clausewitzs contemporary relevance is highly


limited as he only focuses on a niche in the present security environment (i.e.
war), and mainly in interstate conflicts, which are no longer representative of
contemporary armed conflict. Secondly, the changes in the war environment
have led concepts such as battlefield and geographic threat to be re-defined
or out-dated. They represented the time frame of Clausewitzs theory in which
his strategies were designed. Consequently, the appropriateness of his
methods to win war and defeat the enemy do not adapt to modern day
changes, mainly because of the difficulty to identify and differentiate enemies
and civilians in intrastate conflicts. The evolution of the military equipment,
particularly the appearance of WMDs, which destructive potential is beyond
what Clausewitz could have imagined, empowered the concept of deterrence.
While this idea limits the potential for escalation of conflicts and therefore
breaks with his idea that war can be won by escalating power until the
breaking of an adversary (Clausewitz, 1976, p.77), it complies with his aim of
creating a situation for peace talks. Nevertheless, the majority of
contemporary wars are intrastate, hence the argument on nuclear weapons
supporting Clausewitz is undermined: that using such means would be selfdestructive. It is the proper nature of conflicts that limits the trinity of war to a
potentially elementary tool to classify origins of violence and consider different
actors perspectives (Daase, 2007). Indeed, intrastate wars opposing
governments and the people or groups within a society dispute the idea that
war is the continuation of politics because they are triggered by a will to
change or break with politics in place. Therefore, the trinity frames actors of
war in categories too limited and unsuited to their expansion. Furthermore, the

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trinity cannot accommodate new actors and their attributes. To conclude, the
security environment has changed too much for Clausewitz to be as relevant
as he once was thought to be. The development of his field of expertise, the
overall settling of territorial and political aspects of interstate wars, the
evolution of the origins and goals of war have rendered his strategies and two
main concepts ill adapted to dominant contemporary intrastate wars.

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