Even if you’ve never read On War, you probably know Carl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” His point was that war should always have a clear political objective, which must guide the choice of strategy and the manner in which military power is used. Brilliant battlefield achievements are meaningless if they fail to produce the desired political results.
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot lately, and I’m beginning to wonder if war in today’s world is increasingly pointless. I say that with considerable trepidation, because past predictions that war was increasingly costly and likely to become less frequent have not fared well. In 1849, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “War is on its last legs, and universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism.” Before World War I, a Polish banker named Jean de Bloch argued that military technology had made war too dangerous, and that it was becoming impossible “except at the price of suicide.”
Even if you’ve never read On War, you probably know Carl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” His point was that war should always have a clear political objective, which must guide the choice of strategy and the manner in which military power is used. Brilliant battlefield achievements are meaningless if they fail to produce the desired political results.
