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Volume 5, Issue 2, Spring 2016
Infinity Journal
Page 11
Too often when writers use the word ‘strategy’ they do not
make it particularly clear what they mean by the term. Many
use it with abandon, making no effort to define it. Moreover,
there is stunning variety in the way the term is utilized,
something Lawrence Freedman’s
Strategy
makes clear.
[i] Colin Gray defines strategy as “the use that is made of
force for the ends of policy.”[ii] Edward N. Luttwak gives us an
appendix of definitions in his
Strategy: The Logic of War and
Peace
that includes this one from General André Beaufre:
“The art of the dialectics of wills that use force to resolve their
conflict.”[iii] An issue for every serious writer on the subject
is this: How does one define strategy in a meaningful, useful
way? Carl von Clausewitz spent much of his life tackling this
dilemma, whether he did it successfully is another matter.
Born in 1780 in Burg, Prussia, by the time he was in his early
twenties Clausewitz had already taken up his pen and
embarked upon the intellectual journey that eventually
produced
On War
. In 1804, having graduated first in his class
just the year before from the Berlin School for Young Officers,
Clausewitz was serving as the adjutant to Prince August
von Preussen, a cousin of Prussia’s king. Clausewitz had
been reading widely and his study of the military theory of
his day produced in him a strong conviction of its collective
weakness. He decided to fix this by writing his own book on
the art of war. His effort was largely a response to reading
works onmilitary theory such as fellow PrussianAdamHeinrich
Dietrich von Bülow’s (1757-1807)
The Spirit of the Modern
System of War
(1799), as well as his conclusion that many of
the authors were “sophists,” or, as in the case of Machiavelli,
too stuck in the ancient world.The never completed surviving
text is published as
Strategie aus dem Jahr 1804
, but the work
(in 30 numbered sections) deals with a variety of military
issues stretching from tactics, to the defense of mountains, to
operations, to strategy, to command.[iv] He will tread much
of this same ground in
On War
.
Strategie
provides our earliest known effort, by Clausewitz,
to try and get at what ‘strategy’ actually means. When
examining Clausewitz’s quest we are regularly forced to
consider his exploration of the terms ‘tactics’ and ‘strategy’
together because he often defines them in comparison to
one another. In section 20 of
Strategie
he writes: “Tactics is
the science of securing a victory through the employment of
military forces in battle; strategy is the science of achieving
the aim of the war through the linkage of individual battles,
or to express it in more elegant terms: tactics is the science
of employing military forces in battle; strategy the science
of employing the individual battles to further the aim of
the war. … In general, one can say that the idea of battle
underpins everything in which military forces are employed,
since otherwise one would have no need to employ military
forces.”[v]
Moreover, in
Strategie
Clausewitz breaks with the thought
and practices of Eighteenth Century warfare, a conclusion
bolstered by his view on the utility of combat engagements
in warfare. Eighteenth Century generals often preferred
maneuver, sometimes believing this by itself could win a
campaign. The French Revolutionaries increased warfare’s
pace
and
intensity. Clausewitz understood this evolution: “In
war everything turns on the engagement, which has either
actually occurred or is merely intended by one side or even
feigned. Engagement is therefore to strategy what hard
money is to currency exchange.”[vi]
Critically, his discussions of strategy often encompass
what today we would call strategy as well as operations,
operational art, or campaigns. For example, in section 18,
“The Operational Plan,” the first sentence reads: “Strategic
plans are a thing unique unto themselves.”[vii] This is a strand
Donald Stoker
U.S. Naval War College
Dr. Donald Stoker is Professor of Strategy and Policy for the
U.S. Naval War College’s Monterey Program at the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The author
or editor of seven books, his most recent work,
Carl von
Clausewitz: His Life and Work
(Oxford University Press,
2014),was recently placed on the BritishArmy professional
reading list. His
The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S.
Civil War, 1861-1865
(Oxford University Press, 2010), won
the prestigious Fletcher Pratt award for best non-fiction
Civil War book of 2010, and was a Main Selection of the
History Book Club. He is currently writing a book on limited
war and co-editing volumes on naval, air force, and
police advising.
To cite this Article:
Stoker, Donald,“What’s in a Name? Clausewitz’s Search to Define ‘Strategy’”,
Infinity
Journal,Volume 5, Issue 2,
spring 2016, pages 11-15.
What’s in a Name? Clausewitz’s Search to Define
“Strategy”
This image is “displayed on the Clausewitz Homepage by courtesy of the
Headquarters of the German Army Forces Command, Koblenz (HQ GARFCOM).”