War From the Ground Up (6 page)

The second concept available in the ‘means' of Clausewitz's dictum expanded the concept of war beyond the clash of organised violence to encompass its role as an analytical framework: ‘war' itself was understood
to be an instrument of policy distinct from the use of force within it. Clausewitz emphasised how war was a particular framework to resolve some kind of contested decision. For Clausewitz, war in this capacity was a type of trial.
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Like a legal trial, war was a structure with a recognised form that provided a decision between opponents: ‘by committing to this gigantic duel…both sides initiate a major decision'.
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To understand war as a means (an instrument) of policy in the context of Clausewitz's dictum therefore has two designations. The use of force is an instrument, but war itself is equally an instrument in terms of the analytical framework it provides for armed force to reach a decision—the war's outcome.

What reconciles these two ‘instruments' within a single conception of war as an instrument of policy is the idea that force is simply another way to communicate meaning, another language. If force is a ‘language', war is the interpreter who acts as a medium between the speaker and the listener. Clausewitz himself argued that force was simply another means to communicate a political intention; this supported his argument that war is a continuation of political intercourse by other means, not something entirely different. Thus political relations are not suspended when ‘diplomatic notes are no longer exchanged', as war is ‘just another expression of their [a people's] thoughts, another form of speech or writing'. Therefore ‘the main lines along which military events progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that continue throughout the war into the subsequent peace'.
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Once seen as a form of language, force assumes the same properties as language in terms of the capacity to transmit meaning. The critical convergence of language and the use of force is that the ‘meaning' of an action, including violent actions—like the meaning of the spoken or written word—is not self-contained. Meaning has to be interpreted by a human agent. The meaning of an action in war (the outcome of a battle, for example) may be mutually recognised, just as two people may well agree on the meaning of a text or a speech. Equally, two people may interpret differently the meaning of the same text, speech or action in accordance with their own prejudices. The same applies to the use of force.

The entire practice of deception, which is as old as war itself, is premised on the idea that force can be interpreted differently. William the Conqueror feigned a retreat at the Battle of Hastings which successfully
lured King Harold's Anglo-Saxon army out of formation in pursuit of what they thought was a fleeing rabble, only to be defeated by a Norman counter-attack. In Afghanistan today there is huge competition between the insurgency and the Afghan government/coalition to present the meaning of actions in different ways. The ‘outcomes' of skirmishes and battles in Afghanistan are rarely agreed upon.

As an infantry platoon commander in 2007, my first operation was the clearance of the Upper Gereshk Valley, Helmand, in a brigade-level operation. The insurgents were engaged, cleared out, and the mission was achieved. Yet the insurgents would also have claimed it as a victory because they had inflicted some casualties on us, and we did not stay to hold the ground we had cleared. The outcome of the operation in the longer term is debatable since several similar operations in the same area have been mounted since then.
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Moreover, the ‘meaning' of the battle for local people was most likely nothing to do with who ‘won'. They would be far more concerned with the battle in terms of their own safety and property.

The importance of the visual deed and the instability of its interpretation in contemporary conflict extend to non-military actions too. For example, the video deliberately released online in April 2009 by a militant group linked to the Pakistani Taliban of a man whipping a young girl thirty-four times for being publicly seen with a married man was intended to gain approval for the implementation of Sharia law in the Swat Valley. The video actually provoked widespread criticism from the Pakistani public and increased support for their army's actions against militants.
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Once actions in war (both violent and non-violent) are seen as a form of language used to communicate meaning in the context of an argument, there is a possibility of being misunderstood. In order to use war successfully as an instrument of policy, one's actions in war ultimately need to be interpreted in accordance with the intent of one's policy. Thus strategy in relation to war seeks to link the meaning of tactical actions with the intent of policy to deliver the desired policy end-state. To do this, strategy seeks to invest actions in war with their desired meaning. Hence strategy has to harmonise both of the ‘instruments' that are contained in the idea of war as an extension of policy by other means. Strategy does not merely need to orchestrate tactical actions (the
use of force), but also construct the interpretive structure which gives them meaning and links them to the end of policy.

The imperative to have a stable interpretive structure in order to convert actions into a desired meaning can be illustrated through a theological analogy.
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In this analogy the interpretation of the Biblical text (as a form of language) is taken to be analogous to the interpretation of tactical actions (as another form of language), typically the use of force, in armed conflict. The Catholic tradition has a certain view of the Bible's meaning. However, it does not place sole authority for the interpretation of the Bible in the Bible itself. That would open up the interpretation of the Bible to individual interpretation, which could be different from that of the Church. Therefore the Catholic Church requires Catholics to observe the authority of the Church in the interpretation of the Bible and in the determination of which texts make up the Biblical canon. The doctrine of the Catholic Church therefore serves as a structure to interpret the Bible.

The necessity of this interpretive structure for the Catholic tradition to preserve coherence of meaning has been exemplified in theological debates when Church authority has been ignored and scripture interpreted in an alternative way. The theological clashes and religious wars between Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation are just one prominent example of how politically significant interpretive differences can be.

In some branches of the Protestant tradition, which typically recognises only the authority of the Biblical text, the interpretive structure provided by the Church is removed. This opens up the possibility for widespread differences in interpretation, as individuals interpret meaning in accordance with their own beliefs and prejudices. The manifold theological differences between the Catholic and Protestant traditions exemplify this. One assumption that has justified the investiture of sole authority in the Biblical text itself is that the Bible has a ‘literal' meaning which is self-contained. The multitude of branches within the Protestant tradition which claim a unique theological position based on a particular Biblical interpretation bears witness to the fact that there is no such thing as the literal interpretation of a text: a text interpreted literally is in fact a text read according to a personal interpretive structure.
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Where people make up their own minds about the meaning of a text, rather
than subscribe to a stable interpretive structure, the result is a fragmentation of meaning.

The meaning of any action, speech or text is not therefore self-contained; meaning is what is interpreted, and can vary in accordance with the pre-existing prejudices of the interpreter. This applies universally, not just in war. War as an abstract concept performs a similar function to Catholic Church doctrine in our theological analogy: it offers the strategist a template for the language of force to be interpreted in a way which invests it with military, and ultimately political, meaning.

War provides an interpretive hierarchy to give meaning to events within itself, typically a sequence of violent actions. A group of people killing each other in an apparently chaotic fight can provide all sorts of meanings for the participants and the onlookers. Yet war calls this event a battle. Battles are mechanisms which produce a meaning (an outcome) within the context of the wider war: a defeat, a victory, a stalemate. In accordance with the interpretive hierarchy of war, the significance of the outcome is relative to its impact on the wider war. In many cases the meaning of a battle is uncertain precisely because its effect on the outcome of the war as a whole is hard to gauge.

War, like a legal trial, or a boxing match, invests its internal actions with a particular meaning: actions in war, like the barrister's words in court, or punches in a boxing match, have a particular significance within that context. Clausewitz stressed that an action in war (such as the capture of a fortress, for example) has no value in itself. He used a metaphor from business: a single transaction only makes sense in terms of a businessman's overall balance; the advantages and disadvantages of a single action in war also only make sense in terms of the final balance.
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The final balance is the outcome of the war, its verdict; this has a political meaning. War thus provides an interpretive mechanism that gives force political utility. This is political utility in the broad sense. Fear and the desire for self-preservation, for example, may not qualify as political motivations in a narrow sense, but are political in the broad sense of articulating the communities' intentions.

To summarise thus far, there are two symbiotic possibilities inherent in the proposition that war is an extension of policy by other means. The first is the use of organised violence to achieve an objective of policy. The second, often ignored, is the notion that war itself is an instrument in
the sense that it provides an interpretive template which strategy uses to give a particular meaning to that organised violence. For strategy to be able to utilise war as an instrument of policy, it must be cognisant of both of these possibilities and harmonise them in accordance with the intention of policy.

We must make an important distinction between war in the abstract and war in reality. The instrument, or interpretive template, provided by war is different in theory and in practice. War in reality offers a fixed, universally recognised, interpretive template only in a narrow sense: ultimately, complete physical destruction of the enemy permanently remains a possibility in war. The physical imprint of force, namely its capacity to kill and destroy and literally force a behavioural change in the enemy, has always been a regular feature of human behaviour. This represents in a narrow sense a distinct and universally recognised military sphere: the historically enduring idea that if two sides fight, the winner and loser are distinguished in terms of who comes off best in physical terms.

However, in a broader sense, beyond physical destruction, war in practice does not provide a stable interpretive construct. While the physical imprint of violence may be permanent, the way in which that physical component of war is perceived in political terms is what gives force political utility. This is true in any conflict which ends with anything less than the total destruction of the enemy, as the ‘defeat' of those who remain alive is by logic defined in terms that go beyond physical destruction: the meaning of defeat for the remaining enemy is a perceived state. For war's outcome to have purchase on people, they need to accept its meaning; if they do not, they may well see things differently. Beyond physical destruction, war does not therefore provide the strategist with an apolitical military domain whose rules are fixed, within which the use of force relative to the enemy is the only variable which influences the outcome of war.

A war's military outcome is not a stable concept beyond the narrow physical sense, as it requires the people upon whom that outcome is supposed to have meaning to interpret events in the same way as the strategist who seeks that outcome. Thus if one uses war as an instrument
to achieve a political outcome, one must align actions with an understanding of how the recipient will interpret them. Put more formally, that understanding can be described as an interpretive framework that invests the actions that it bounds with a meaning that people accept. Thus strategy cannot think about the use of force as an instrument of policy which operates exclusively in a fixed military interpretive environment provided by war should people not see events through this lens (a circumstance frequent in contemporary conflict). Strategy must in reality configure the abstract template of war to provide an interpretive structure that has purchase on its audiences. In short, war is a malleable interpretive concept which needs be adjusted to invest force with the meaning desired by policy.

Strategy's ability to adjust war's interpretive concept, and mould it to its advantage, is premised on the assumption that war is a flexible, rather than a fixed, interpretive structure. That assumption is in turn premised on the fact that war is not a single, objectively definable, event.

War in practice is not a single phenomenon. A war's boundaries tend to be defined by fighting. The idea that there is, or was, ‘a war' relates only to the idea that both sides acknowledge to be in the same fight in a geographical and chronological sense. Yet if war is a continuation of policy, the limits of ‘a' war even in time and space can be contested. For some of the insurgents in the current conflict in Afghanistan, their war is part of a wider war against the West. For others, it is a war limited to Afghanistan. For the majority, it is about local issues.

The coalition shows the same lack of definition: some of the junior partners see their primary interests in terms of the diplomatic benefits of supporting the coalition; for others it is a wider regional conflict; for various constituencies of coalition domestic populations, the conflict is part of a thematic struggle in relation to fundamentalism, drugs, women's rights, or other factors and combinations; for others still, the conflict now has no clear aim other than to get out with some credibility. Some coalition partners are on a ‘reconstruction mission' and resist the notion, for perfectly legitimate reasons, that they are involved in a war. The first reference by the German Chancellor to German forces being in a war was made only in September 2009, despite involvement in the same coalition command structure since 2001.
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In reality, among insurgents and the coalition alike, the boundaries between these definitions, like ‘the' war's own boundaries, are confused and evolve.