War From the Ground Up (22 page)

War can also unhinge the policy of the victor in other ways than the ‘Pyrrhic Victory'. A victor can find himself so powerful that the outcome of the war forces new pressures on policy which can take it in new directions. The US emerged from the Second World War the pre-eminent Western superpower. The war's outcome did not unhinge policy in
the sense of US failure—quite the opposite; but it did unhinge US policy in the broader sense of the marginalisation of the isolationist position which had acted as a balance in pre-war policy debates.

Clausewitz's argument about the need for policy to adapt to war's evolution is problematic for liberal powers today, given their configuration of civil-military relations.
³⁹
The political debate concerning whether to go to war in liberal democracies takes place (in theory) before the war has started. Logically, the ‘war' formally debated in public is war in the abstract because it has not yet started. If politicians adjust war aims during the actual rather than the abstract war they tend to lose credibility, and are considered flip-floppers. Yet the charge of flip-flopping is dangerous because it inhibits the need to tailor policy in light of the reality that war is inherently unstable and will evolve. For liberal powers to insist on political accountability for a war's original intention is often illogical.

The frequent result, to use a metaphor, can be likened to driving a car through the rear-view mirror rather than looking at the road ahead: it swerves all over the place and may crash. War in reality has so many variables that for policy to insist on the maintenance of aims that were established in the abstract before the main fighting started is to deny the possibility that the original aims are not in fact attainable in reality and should be adjusted. This gives politicians little room for manoeuvre, which does not encourage an agile strategic dialogue. What we are often left with is a public increasingly confused by war aims which correspond to a version of the war which is not the war actually being fought. Moreover the war actually being fought may not correspond to the war policy claims it is conducting. This frustrates the adjustment of policy in the light of how a war evolves. The consequence is that policy usually waits until it is being overtaken by events on the ground before adjusting: only when it is abundantly obvious that current policy is heading for failure is it changed.

The counter-argument would be that states invest huge credibility in conflict, and thus perceive that decisively to adjust their aim is to compromise that credibility. In some circumstances that may be right, although to pursue an unachievable aim is by logic just delaying rather than solving the eventual loss of credibility; and during that delay, soldiers die. The key point here is that big alterations in policy aims are indeed to be avoided if possible on grounds of credibility, but that it is precisely by retaining flexibility, and constantly making small adjustments
(which cumulatively, and imperceptibly over time, may add up to a big adjustment), that desire and possibility are kept close. Dogmatically to retain a political aim in conflicts which are of lower stakes than national survival is potentially to push military activity further than its political utility.

For liberal powers continually to adjust policy so that the gap between desire and possibility is as small as possible would be more sensible. This in turn means recognising that the convergence of policy and action in contemporary conflict goes down to the tactical level. Thus political (not just military) analysis at the tactical level must feed into strategic dialogue.
Chapter 4
and this chapter have examined the interaction of strategy with its political context in contemporary conflict; the next chapter looks at the interaction of strategy and the operational actions which it orchestrates.

Counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is frequently described as a strategy. It isn't. Counter-insurgency is an operational approach: a method which organises actions in service of a strategy, but not a strategy in itself. The countering of an insurgency is a means to an end. A strategy connects an operational approach to its ends, the objectives of policy, and adjusts both in so doing. While counter-insurgency is a legitimate and necessary operational approach in the context of Afghanistan, to talk about a ‘counter-insurgency strategy' is potentially confusing shorthand: it can erroneously suggest that counter-insurgency doctrine can be applied regardless of political context as a strategy in itself, as opposed to being the operational component of a strategy.

This chapter argues that although contemporary conflict tends to be different from war in its Clausewitzian paradigm, the basic conception of strategy that one finds in Clausewitz's writings still makes sense: the military domain is an extension of policy, not a conceptually sealed-off environment. Strategy's role is to situate an operational approach within a particular political problem, which requires pragmatic interpretation of military doctrine. If an operational approach is cut off from its political context, it may well become self-referencing, looking inwardly to satisfy abstract military principles rather than connecting outwardly towards its political goals. When an operational approach is thought of
as a strategy, or even a policy, what can result are campaigns primarily driven by internal military logic, rather than political objectives.

Clausewitz's strategic theory was premised on his conception of war as a political instrument. The strategist in war was required to orchestrate military actions so that they translated into a political meaning, and therefore had to look outwards to policy, not just inwards to battle; hence Clausewitz's defined strategy as ‘the use of the engagement for the purposes of war'.
¹
This was to be achieved by the identification of, and decisive strike at, the enemy's
schwerpunkt
, which can be translated as ‘centre of gravity' (or ‘focal/decisive point').
²
The centre of gravity was a physical representation of the centre of the enemy's ‘will': ‘by constantly seeking out the centre of power … one will really defeat an enemy'. This is a far more sophisticated idea than defeat corresponding to an arbitrary level of destruction. The centre of gravity would usually be the enemy army, but only in so far as it represented the core of the enemy's will. In certain circumstances, the destruction of his army would not stop an enemy from fighting on. The centre of gravity could therefore be different. It could be the enemy capital, especially in ‘countries subject to domestic strife'; it could lie in communal ‘interests' in the case of an alliance; and it could lie in public opinion, especially in cases of uprisings.
³

The centre of gravity was simply what mattered to an opponent, or more specifically what could be made to matter. Admiral J. C. Wylie in
Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control
(1967) explains this through the example of Scipio the Elder and Hannibal in the Second Punic War: Scipio ignored the fact that Hannibal's army was in Italy threatening Rome and deployed his Roman army to Africa, threatening Carthage. Hannibal chased him, and was drawn away from Rome. Scipio was then able to defeat Hannibal on ground of his own choosing at the Battle of Zama in 202 BCE. However, Hannibal did not have to chase Scipio any more than Hannibal's threat to Rome had to keep Scipio in Italy; Scipio effectively imposed his will over Hannibal. The point Wylie makes is that the strategist needs to use physical force, or its threat, to manipulate the will of his opponent, not just focus on destruction as an end in itself.

The originality of Clausewitz's centre of gravity lay in its association of military action with a particular psychological, essentially political, result in the minds of an audience. Although Clausewitz did not use the term audience, the key audience was implicitly the enemy in the context of
On War
. That the centre of gravity connected operational action to a political outcome underscores how Clausewitz did not advocate strategic theory which exclusively looked inwards to a sealed-off military domain.

However, general military principles could be developed once they were situated within a generic scenario, which assumed as a starting point, for example, that the enemy army was the centre of gravity. To avoid confusion, what Clausewitz described as ‘strategy' and its associated strategic theory is today generally equated with the ‘operational' level of war: a domain which lies within war, but outside battle. The strategic theory (‘operational principles' in today's parlance) that Clausewitz advocates in
On War
is primarily concerned with how to deal with war in its near absolute state.
⁴

Thus having situated the centre of gravity within this generic context, he defines general principles that would serve to defeat an enemy: to seek out the enemy main force, converge on it with all available force, and destroy it in a major, decisive battle, the
hauptschlacht
.
⁵
In the context of near-absolute war, which Clausewitz strongly associated with Napoleonic warfare, a major battle ‘provided a provisional centre of gravity for the entire campaign'.
⁶
Andreas Herberg-Rothe has argued that this deduction was particularly associated with Clausewitz's analysis of the Battle of Waterloo in his study of the 1815 campaign: ‘Clausewitz stresses that no victory has ever had greater moral force than that of Waterloo, which led directly to Napoleon's abdication'.
⁷
The
hauptschlacht
was not an inwardly looking military concept, but a means to strike decisively at a political target.

Clausewitz's operational principles, as they would be described today, were designed to function in a particular context, not in the abstract in any military situation. When the political context changed, these operational principles would have to be adapted. Clausewitz recognised that there were two forms of war: absolute and limited. They were not neatly categorisable, and were defined by degree by distance from the pole of absolute war. Absolute war aimed at the total overthrow of the enemy. Yet the majority of wars, he acknowledged, aimed at more limited political outcomes. Military principles thus had to be attuned to any ‘modification … in the absolute form of war'.
⁸

The central difference is that in absolute war, war only provides a single decision (a single outcome); a more limited political outcome is by logic excluded: ‘within the concept of absolute war, war is indivisible, and its component parts (the individual victories) are of value only in their relation to the whole'.
⁹
In wars which are moderations of the absolute form, individual components can be objectives in their own right, because armed force can be used for direct political advantage. The capture of a fortress, for example, may be of no military significance in absolute war, but may be significant as a prize in wars fought for more limited political advantage. Clausewitz makes clear that the operational approach he advocates applies to wars which approach an absolute state; the more war is ‘tame and half hearted, the less solid are the bases available to theory [theory which deals with war in its ‘ideal' or ‘absolute' state]'.
¹⁰
The more war is a moderation of its absolute form, the less stable a body of operational principles becomes, as progressively greater intrusion of political considerations within the military domain takes place.
¹¹

The distinction between absolute war and limited war is necessary to understand Clausewitz's strategic ideas. When Clausewitz is prescriptive about focusing on the destruction of the enemy army in a decisive battle, he writes about absolute war. However, the centre of gravity concept works just as well in any conflict environment, although it must be differentiated from the operational principles that typically accompany the concept in absolute war. Contemporary conflict is characterised by the fragmentation of strategic audiences beyond the enemy, and thus a corresponding fragmentation of centres of gravity develops. This scenario was not the norm in Clausewitz's time, but neither was it inconceivable (in coalition warfare, for example) or inconsistent with Clausewitz's ideas: ‘where it would not be realistic to reduce several centres of gravity to one … There is realistically no alternative but to act as if there were two wars or even more, each with its own object'.
¹²

The identification of a centre of gravity is essentially a political appreciation of a conflict situation. It situates the subsequent application of armed force against that centre of gravity within a political intent. To converge on all axes to strike at the enemy main force in a decisive battle
makes sense if the enemy has a main force which has been identified as the centre of gravity. Problems occur when ‘principles of war' are applied without a prior political appreciation having taken place. In many cases, especially in contemporary conflict, a focus on the destruction of the enemy is encouraged by such an application of military principles in the abstract. Principles are not wrong in themselves; they are a vital handrail for planners. However, military principles need to be applied pragmatically to suit specific political conditions, not generically in any circumstance of armed conflict.

In 1827 Clausewitz was asked by Major von Roeder of the Prussian staff to solve a military problem in the abstract. The problem was described in exclusively military terms: if Austria attacked in such a way with so many men, how should Prussia respond given its military dispositions. In his reply Clausewitz argued that one could not draw up a strategic answer without knowing the political context.
¹³
For the mature Clausewitz, policy came first; principles should be adapted to form an operational plan tailored to a particular problem, understood on its own terms.
¹⁴
This informed Clausewitz's view that it was not possible to formulate ‘a set of all-encompassing principles, rules, and methods':