Strategy and the Social Sciences - Issues in Defense Policy

8/8/2019 Strategy and the Social Sciences - Issues in Defense Policy

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STRATEGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES


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STRATEGY AND THESOCIAL

SCIENCES

Issues in Defence Policy

Edited by

Amos Perlmutterand

John Gooch

FRANK CASS


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First published 1981 in Great Britain by

FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITEDGainsborough House, 11 Gainsborough Road,

London E11 IRS, England

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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and in the United States of America byFRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED

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Copyright 1981 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataStrategy and the social sciences.

1. Military policyI. Perlmutter, Amos II. Gooch, John

355 .0335 UA 11

ISBN 0-203-98809-4 Master e-book IS

ISBN 0-7146-3157-4 (Print Edition)

BN

IS

is group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue onStrategy and the Social Sciences ofThe Journal of

Strategic Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3, published by Frank Cass& Co. Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro

duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form,or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

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Contents

Introduction 1

On the Peaceful Disposition of Military DictatorshipsStanislav Andreski

3

From Clausewitz to Delbrck and Hintze: Achievements and Failures of

Military HistoryFelix Gilbert

11

Clio and Mars: The Use and Abuse of HistoryJohn Gooch

21

A History of the U.S. Strategic Doctrine 1945 to 1980Aaron L.Friedberg

37

Games and SimulationMichael Nicholson

73

The Future of Strategic StudiesLaurie Martin

91

Notes on Contributors 101


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Introduction

Strategy, which is the conscious exploitation of military force to promote the aims ofpolicy, has passed through a number of phases of development which have related mostclosely to the degree to which force can be mobilized, and to its destructive capacity.With limited means at the generals disposal, and when the nature of those meansconferred no advantage to either combatant unless one side possessed superior weapons,strategy consisted in little more than the art of manoeuvring for an advantage on the fieldof battle. After the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century, which had as aconsequence produced a situation in which no major power could hope to gain aqualitative advantage over a like rival, strategy became focused on the discovery of themeans of effective application of force in a situation of balance. Two rival intellectualapproaches had by then opened up to attract the theorist. On the one hand, the study ofthe past might reveal the existence of rules or guidelines; on the other, the applicationof pure reason might, it was claimed, enable the practitioner to grasp a certain number offundamental truths, which could then be applied to particular cases. This latter was theposition adopted by Foch, who informed the readers ofThe Principles of Warthat Strategyis but a question ofwilland common sense.

The First World War demonstrated to strategic theorists the great destructive energiesof the modern state, the time it took to mobilize those energies, and the difficulty offocussing them on specific and decisive military objectives. The second industrialrevolutionthe advent of the aeroplane and the armoured vehicleseemed for a while

to offer the strategist a scalpel rather than a bludgeon, but appearances were delusory.The Second World War became a gigantic contest of resources rather than a duel ofrapier-like thrusts, and for the strategist the chief lesson was perhaps that, with the meansin his hands, the vital sectors of enemy resistance were extraordinarily difficult to paralyse

not least because they were diffuse and difficult to determine.The advent of nuclear fission altered the nature of strategy, and of strategic thought, in

a critical respect: it offered the possibility of mobilizingto all intents and purposes,immediatelyforce of hitherto unimagined magnitude. Clausewitzs denial that warcould be a single, instantaneous act had lost its validity. The availability of nuclear

weapons to both the United States and the USSR rendered full-fledged war a less usefulinstrument of policy, but the threat of war a central one. Strategy abandoned its historicalroots, and turned to the behavioural sciences in order to perform what now became its


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central function: estimating the wide range of moves and reactions which occupied thearea between peace and war.

Strategy has, however, widened in a second sense, and one less intimately connected withthe nature of the means to hand. It would now recognise that ideology determines theparameters within which central strategic calculations about the relationship betweennational goals and the types of force used to attain them are made. Britains attachment to

blockade, and Germanys to Blitzkrieg, are equally forceful examples of the way in whichsocietal parameters can shape strategic policies. So, in a second sense also, strategy has

become a social science.The impact of history upon strategy gives it a strong claim to consideration, though it

now seems to some the least relevant of the social sciences. The first three studies in thisvolume contribute to a recognition that it could be used most effectively, could as often

be mis-used, and that it must be understood if contemporary nostrums are not to passunquestioned into the canons of orthodoxy. As Aaron Friedberg points out: If an attemptto evaluate past strategies for nuclear war makes us more humble about our ability toeliminate uncertainty in present planning it will have served its purpose. Likewisesociology and game theory contribute to the study of strategy (the latter perhaps not quitethe novelty it might seem: du Picq remarked a century or so ago that Mathematics is thedominant science in war). They also help to point the direction which future studies maytake.

One of the objects of this volume is to throw a little light on to some of the corners ofthe composite activity which we label strategy. A second, no less important, object is toencourage in its practitioners a measure of introspection. Little enough attention has beenpaid to thinking about the processes which go into strategic thought, rather than toanalysing its products; so, at any rate, it would seem to judge by the difficulty ofpersuading economists, political scientists and the like to pause from their labours inorder to consider the process rather than the product. Greater understanding of thecomplex processes which go into the creation of strategic thought can only be of value.Perhaps this is where past, present and future truly meet, and where the contributions ofall the disciplines which were and are contributors to strategic thought can most profitably

be made.

2 STRATEGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES


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On the Peaceful Disposition of MilitaryDictatorships

Stanislav Andreski*

The contribution which sociology can make to strategic studies consists mainly of effortsto relate the military or strategic situation to other aspects of society. The idea thatstrategic intentions as well as military performance depend on the factors subsumed underthe headings of culture and society is not new. In the ancient Chinese political thinkers werepeatedly find the idea that great inequalities of wealth adversely affect the militarystrength. On this point Mao was a true heir of Lord Shang. Herodotus attributes theGreek military superiority over the Persians to the patriotism and solidarity bred by theintense civic life of the Greek city states. Polybius explains the victories of the Romans bythe advantages of their mixed constitution. Ibn Haldun attributes the nomads ability todefeat larger city-based armies to the civic and martial virtues bred by the austere way oflife in the desert, which (according to him) contrasts with the cowardice and factiousnessof the soldiers who live luxuriously in the cities. It is therefore, no discovery to say that toassess a strategic situation we must take into account not only the easily quantifiablefactorsthe number of soldiers, weapons and the economic potentialbut also moreintangible factors stemming from the internal dynamics of political systems. Here I shallattempt to show a special relationship between the internal dynamics of a particular typeof political system and its inclinations and capacity in external conflicts.

In contrast to what is suggested by the confused use of the term militarism, perhapsthe most striking peculiarity of the military dictatorships is that their emergence andexistence have little connection with the exercise of the specifically military function: the

waging, or preparation, for war. As a rule they emerge in countries at peace, Kemalsdictatorship in Turkey being the only exception, unless we also classify Napoleons rule asa military dictatorship. It is also a historical fact that the military dictators (at least inmodern times) have been notably pacific in external relations, while all the mostaggressive and successfully imperialist polities were ruled by civilians. This fact isconnected with the incompatibility between the internal and external uses of the armedforces, which makes them less apt for one if they are being employed for the other.

The thesis presented here is that there exists an intrinsic incompatibility between theinternal and the external uses of the armed forces. In other words: the more often the

armed forces are used internally, the less capable they become of waging a war; andsecondly (when the military participation ratio is high) the more intensively they areorhave recently beeninvolved in a war, the less amenable and dependable they become astools of internal repression.


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By an external use I mean war, the preparations for it and the activities involved inmaintaining a state of readiness; by an internal use I mean the fighting, threatening orcoercing of fellow citizens and training for this activity. The latter can occur in two ways;the armed forces may be employed internally to enforce the will of the legitimate rulersin which case they act on orders from outside and remain in a sense apoliticalor theymay seize or exercise power independently, in which case they become politicised and thearena for the struggles for power will be situated within them. Such a situation may giverise to a stable dictatorship or remain in the inconclusive state of praetorianism, in thesense in which this term is employed in my MilitaryOrganization and Society.1

The least interesting aspect of the said incompatibility resides in the obvious fact thatthe more time and energy is devoted to one pursuit, the less remains for other activities,and that the equipment and the organisation adapted to one use will seldom be the bestfor another. The second aspect of the incompatibility in question is connected with thefeelings of national solidarity: clearly, the more support an army enjoys from the mass ofthe citizens, the greater is the likelihood that it will fight well and be helped by them. Thearmed forces role as an engine of coercion has the opposite effect and tends to weakentheir strength for war. The importance of this factor co-varies with the militaryparticipation ratio because, although even hostile conscripts can be made to fight, they areunlikely to do so as well as when the discipline is backed by conviction. Even aprofessional army is likely to fight better when it is imbued with patriotic feelings andadmired by the majority of the citizens as their saviour, than when it is despised and hated

by them.The corrosive effects of the aforementioned factors upon the battleworthiness of an

army are relatively mild in comparison with the impact of struggles for power in itsmidst. Internal politickingusually accompanied by peculation, nepotism and avoidanceof harsher dutiesdestroy the respect of the soldiers for their commanders, impedeselection for posts on the basis of fitness and generally undermine the morale and the espritde corps. Trust, solidarity, dedication and the sense of honour, so indispensable on a

battlefield, cannot flourish in a body riven by factiousness and intrigue.The desire to use the army against the civilian population may impede a full utilisation

of the available manpower, even when this would maximise the forces power, because

short-term conscripts are less dependable as agents of internal coercion than long-termprofessionals.Patriotic propaganda, stressing the brotherhood within the nation, may enhance the

armys performance in a war but it tends to lessen its willingness and dependability as aninstrument against fellow citizens. In conjunction with the impact of the defeat, these twofactors seem to have played an important role in the disintegration of the German andRussian states at the end of the First World War.

The foregoing semi-deductive arguments are supported by comparative evidence suchas the usually poor military performance of military dictatorships. The factors indicated

above account to a large extent for the victories of the Israelis over the Arabs. Israel is a

*The University of Reading, England.



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highly militarised (and even militaristic) country, but not militocratic: it has a citizen armywhich strictly obeys the constitutional authorities. It is also significant that among thearmies which took part in the wars against Israel by far the best was the Jordanian whichremained strictly subordinated to the king. Another pertinent example is the war betweenIndia (like Israel, ruled by a woman prime minister) and Pakistan governed by a general.The Somali war against Ethiopia launched by a military dictator ended in a failure, whilethe only successful invasion of one state by another in post-colonial Africa was led by acivilian dictator of Tanzania, Nyere, and (symptomatically, perhaps) it overthrew amilitary dictator of Uganda, Amin.

A number of other examples support (though, of course, do not prove) my contention.The War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru. The poor showing of the militarydictators against the communists in South East Asia wherever the latter could put an armyinto the field, which was not the case in Indonesia. The ease with which the Chinese war-lords (in contrast to the communists) were subjugated by the Japanese. The ignominiouscollapse of the armies of Chiang-Kai-Tchek before the Maoist onslaught.

The latter instances bring us to an important distinction; it is not the authoritariancharacter of the political system but the factionalism and corruption which seem to inherein a purely military, unlegitimated rule, that undermines the armed forces

battleworthiness. When soldiers obey an absolute king or a totalitarian party they canfight very wellsometimes better than when they are under a democratic government. In

both cases, however, they remain outside the main political arena.The factors in question do not operate to the same extent when a military dictator has

ruled without opposition for so long that he comes to be regarded almost as a legitimatemonarch; or when he took power mainly to defend the country as a whole rather than tocoerce one part of the nation for the benefit of another. Mustafa Kemal illustrates thispoint.

Though not explicitly analysed, the incompatibility between the internal and theexternal uses of the armed forces has been intuitively recognised by a number ofstatesmen. La Garde Mobile (the ancestor of the CRS) seems to have been created by theleaders of the Third Republic to help the army to win the favour of the lower classes byenabling it to avoid the odium inevitably incurred through participating in internal

coercion. It appears, however, that the French statesmen had also two subsidiary aims inview: firstly, not to give the generals an opportunity to acquire a taste for pushingaround civilians; and secondly, of having at their disposal an independent force whichwould make a military coup more difficult and risky to effect. It seems that despite verydifferent circumstances, similar motives partly account for the prominent role of the SS inNazi Germany and of the NKVD troops (now KGB) in the USSR.

The long history of militocracy in Latin America, the Iberian peninsula and Greece(where we have recently seen once more a sudden collapse of a seemingly well-entrenched regime) suggest that military dictatorship is a type of government which

enjoys less stability than the traditional monarchy or the communist state. The fasciststates might, I suspect, have proved as equally stable as the latter, had they not beensmashed from outside.

ON THE PEACEFUL DISPOSITION OF MILITARY DICTATORSHIPS 5


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The vulnerability of the militocracies stems from the fundamental incompatibility wehave discussed. Being primarily organised for defending the country, the army is seldom agood tool for ruling it, let alone reforming it. Lacking a doctrine which would legitimateand guide their actions, officers seldom know what to do, while the absence of arecognised rule which would govern succession to supreme authority usually leads tostrife. Even in the most institutionalised of the purely military contemporary dictatorships

the Brazilianmany of the officers seem to have a sentiment of wrong-doing andwould like to liquidate (or at least modify) the system, whereas no such tendencies appearto be strong in one-party states, especially of the communist kind. Francos regimecollapsed with the death of the caudillo and its relative durability was due to its mixedcharacter. Rather than purely militocratic, it was at first clericalist and semi-fascist, andlater predominantly a clericalist and bureaucratic regime, with Catholicism constitutingits basic ideology. The military and the bureaucratic oligarchy justified their domination

by the need to defend the Church and leave it in control of mens souls. With theprogress of secularisation, the systems ideological foundations have been eroded and itspowers of resistance correspondingly diminished.

The British and the French colonial empires were built under parliamentarygovernments (and the same can be said of Belgium and Holland) while Spain, prone tomilitary rule lost its last few colonies to the democratic United States. It was the latter whichseized half the territory of its southern neighbour, ruled by military dictatorsnot theother way round. The only part of the world where military dictatorships were alreadycommon in the nineteenth century was the area of Iberian civilisation, which was also thearea of the least disturbed international peace, where only one serious war betweennations had occurred. This war occasioned the only impressive war effort by a nation of thiscultural area since the wars of independence in Spanish America and the Peninsula war inSpain at the time of Napoleon; the Paraguayan resistance to the joint attack by Brazil,Argentina and Uruguay. Significantly perhaps, Paraguay had a dictator but he was adoctor, not a general.

The Iberic military dictators, moreover, kept well out of the wars (except on a purelyformal level in some instances) fought by parliamentary and dynastic states, into which thedemocratic United States went with great energy. While the fascist dictator of Italy

eagerly entered the war started by his erstwhile disciple, the military dictator of Spainemployed all his guile to keep out of it.The military dictators in Eastern Europe during the inter-war period waged no wars on

one another. The Romanian Antonescu acquiesced to one third of his country being givento Hungary by Hitler, and took up arms against Russia only on the latters orders.Although Pilsudski justified his seizure of power in Poland in 1926 by the need forstrength through unity, he did little to bolster up either.

The most persistently expanding empire in modern historyMuscovy, then Russia,then the USSRhas never been ruled by a military usurper; and its army has a long

tradition of obedience to the constituted authority. On the other hand, the militarygovernment of Portugal ended the war (February 1976) and dismantled the empire.Indeed, the chief motivation of the Portuguese military rebels seems to have been thedesire to avoid the privations, dangers and frustration of the unending war. The African



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military dictators also remain at peace with their neighbours. True, the Arab militarydictators took part in the wars against Israel, but they simply continued the struggle which

began before they came to power. It does not seem that Nasser or Kassim were anykeener on fighting the Israelis than were King Faruk or Feisal or Nuri Pasha. Theopposition to zionism is a point of agreement among the Arabs, regardless of whether theyare hereditary emirs, electioneering politicians or military dictators, and the latter havenot shown themselves to be clearly more adamant.

One of the most common accusations levelled against the Latin American militarydictators is that they are unpatriotic: that they aid the exploitation of their countrymen byforeign capitalists. This may be the case where the military rulers accept bribes fromforeign companies; but there is also another explanation of their eagerness to welcomeforeign business: in view of the disorder and corruption in public administration and stateenterprises, inviting foreign business may be regarded as the best method of furtheringnational prosperity. Nevertheless, even if justified on such grounds, the willingness to giveso much scope to foreign business is incompatible with aggressive nationalism. Theunmilitaristic leaders of Japan are so jealous of national sovereignty that they do not allow

or at least severely restrictforeign investment in their country. It is germane to thepresent thesis that, instead of sabre-rattling, the Latin American military dictators offer helpto each other in dealing with the opposition.

Among possible counter examples, Tojos rule in Japan calls for an examination, asthere can be no doubt about Japans militarism and imperialism, despite the recentlyunearthed evidence that Roosevelt did everything he could to provoke Japan intoattacking the United States. Nevertheless, though undoubtedly authoritarian andmilitaristic, Japans regime was not a clear case of military dictatorship: it did not witnessa military seizure of power and much power was retained by the court politicians andcivilian officials. Above all the emperor, though not actually governing, had not lost hislarge residual powers: he agreed to appoint Tojo as prime minister but he could haverefused if he were determined enough, and he was able to dismiss him after Hiroshima.Far from resulting from sheer coercion (which was, of course, employed againstrecalcitrants) the devout obedience of the populace stemmed from the fanaticalnationalism, the worship of the emperor and the cult of military virtues. One of the

essential aspects of the Meiji reforms was the inculcation into the entire population of thevalues which thitherto were confined to the military nobility.Together with Germany (whether Hohenzollern or nazi) Japan provided the purest

modern example of militarism in the correct sense of this term; that is, the policy ofharnessing the energies of the entire nation for the purpose of waging war, which entailedthe inculcation of the martial virtues, warlike sentiments, admiration for military prowessand reverence for the military rank. Though to a much greater extent than Germany,

Japan was only partly an instance of militocracy in the sense of the possession of allpolitical authority by military officers, although the officers were far from being the

obedient executors of the civilian rulers will, in the way their counterparts were inBritain, the United States or the USSR.The political set up in Japan at that time has been described as government by

assassination. However, it would be more exact to speak of assassination as the means of



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pressure rather than governing, because, in contrast to what usually happens, it wasneither the rulers nor the aspirants to power who organised and carried out theassassinations but the officers of the middle and junior ranks, who made no attempt totake over the top positions but were content to remain in their posts. On a number ofoccasions the ultra-nationalist military conspirators killed senior politicians and generalswhom they regarded as lacking in determination or daring in promoting the expansion ofthe empire in China or the growth of Japans military strength. Accusing their victims oftreason, the conspirators on all occasions made appeals to the Emperor, oftensurrendering voluntarily and submitting to punishment. The moral pressure of their self-sacrifice, combined with the fear of their relentless wrath, silenced the more liberal andpacific politicians and hoisted into leadership the unwavering protagonists of militarismand imperialism. Unlike most Latin American and African dictators, neither theconspirators nor the imperialist leaders whom they had lifted to power could be accused ofvenality. To conclude: Japans political set up was rather far from pure militarydictatorshipin the sense of supremacy of military usurpersand cannot therefore beregarded as a clear counter example to the thesis that military dictators tend to be peacefulon the international scene.

Perhaps a stronger counter example is Kemals regime in Turkey because it was clearlya military dictatorship: Kemal was both the head of state and the chief of the army, themonarchy having been abolished. Kemal, however, can hardly be regarded asinternationally aggressive, as the wars he waged were defensive. He used his despotic powersnot for preparing for aggrandisement but to compel the Turks to reconcile themselves tothe loss of their imperial domains and to concentrate on converting themselves into amodern nation within the confines of their ethnic settlement.

Pilsudskis dictatorship in Poland came into existence through a classic militaryuprising, followed by a brief and limited civil war of the kind familiar in the countries ofIberic civilisation. Nonetheless, it exemplified militarism (in the sense defined above) as wellas militocracy. Pilsudskis standing was in the first place due to his role as the leader in thewars of independence, and he remained genuinely preoccupied with the problems ofdefence. It was the case, however, of confluence rather than interdependence betweenthe two phenomena: having just miraculously won their independence, and feeling

constantly threatened by bigger neighbours, the Poles naturally tended to be super-patriotic and revered the martial virtues and their military leaders. Pilsudski profited fromthese attitudes, but his coup and the subsequent rule detracted rather than added to theirstrength. Despite ultra-patriotic oratory, his heirs, known as the colonels, did little toprepare the country for war and it is arguable that they would have submitted to Hitlersdemandsbowing unwillingly to the superior force, as Antonescu and Horthy did laterwere they not afraid of an outburst of wrath among the junior officers and the civiliansintoxicated with the ultra-patriotic official propaganda. The colonels only imperialistaction was the ghoulish snatching at the time of Munich of a tiny bit of Czechoslovakia

which the Czechs had seized from the Poles eighteen years earlier in an equally cowardlymanner.To call the present non-communist dictatorships in Latin America fascist or

militarist is to sow confusion. In the first place fascism and militarism are not co-



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extensive: true, militarism was an essential part of fascism, but it did not depend on orrequire it; moreover, militarism had deeper roots in republican France and the Germanconstitutional monarchy before 1914 than in Mussolinis Italy. Strictly speaking, byarmy or military force we ought to mean an organised body of armed men adapted towaging warthat is, fighting other armieswhile by police we ought to meanorganised bodies of armed men adapted to coercing civilian populations. It follows thenthat the armed forces of the Latin American republics (with the exception of Cuba) are inreality misnamed police forces, and that the expression military dictatorship hardly fitsthese cases.

The present regimes in the Argentine, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil are almost perfectexamples of the pure police state: that is, a political system which rests almost entirely oncoercion by the police. This, however, does not mean that they are more cruel than thesystems which approximate less closely to the pure or ideal type of a police state, as infact their repressive activities do not attain either the magnitude or the intensity of therepression under the Nazis, in the USSR in the days of Stalin or Lenin, or in Cuba orCzechoslovakia today. But Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini had, and Castro and Hua have, anideology and ideologically-committed followers. Although he had no ideology of his owncreation, the ultra-montane clericalism provided the ideological cement in Francos regime.In contrast, Geisel, Pinochet and Videla operate without any ideological propulsionexcept the purely negative: the opposition to communism.

Systematic repression and the omnipotence of the police are immensely olderphenomena than fascism, which must be defined in terms of what was specific and new inMussolinis regime. Its most original feature was the organisation of a political party onpara-military lines but in total independence of the existing army. This feature wasaccompanied by the essentially novel cluster of intensive indoctrination and mobilisation ofthe masses, aggressive nationalism and militarism, and the institutionalisation of theundisputed supremacy of the party and its leader. None of these features can be found inthe Latin American dictatorships commonly labelled as fascist, whereas close parallels can

be observed in Cuba, notwithstanding the important differences in ideology and practicebetween Castro and Mussolini.

There seems to be little substance in the common accusation that the present non-

communist dictators in Latin America are stooges of Washington or Wall Street, or of thenative capitalists or the landed aristocracy. In Chile, incidentally, the junta constitute thefirst government in that countrys history consisting mainly of people of lower middle-class origin, whereas among Allendes ministers there were many patricians like himself.The most plausible explanation of the emergence of these dictatorships is that the generalsfelt that they had to choose between taking over the reins of power or allowing thecommunists to take over, as the constitutional government was sliding into completedisorder. For the purpose of the present argument it is unnecessary to pass a firm

judgment upon this issue; it is enough to observe that these regimes are neither nationalist

nor militarist, and that they fit the thesis that militocracies are seldom externally militant.



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NOTES

1. London: Routledge and Kegan, Paul and California: California University Press, 1968.



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From Clausewitz to Delbrck and Hintze:Achievements and Failures of Military

HistoryFelix Gilbert*

Whether MachiavellisArt of Waris the first modern book on military theory might be anopen question; it is certain, however, that for centuries, it was a famous and influentialwork. Its centerpiece is the account of a battle, and this description stands out from therest of the book by the different method of presentation. In the other parts of the book,Machiavelli presents in a cool, almost detached way, his thesis that the Romans weresuperior to the moderns in organizing their armed forces; their manner of conducting warought to be imitated by modern commanders in all its details. Machiavelli explains inlengthy detail how the Roman commanders drew up their troops for battle; however,when the preparations have ended and the fighting ought to begin, the tone of the booksuddenly changes. The carefully reasoning scholarly author turns into an excited observer:Do you not hear the artillery? You see the general who encourages his troops Doyou not see, as they fight, their array so crowded that they scarcely can use their swords? See them flee on the right flank; they flee also on the left; behold, the victory is ours1

What are the reasons for this change of style? Clearly Machiavelli wants to stress that abattle is crucially important; he regards it as the culmination of war: the highest triumph aman can obtain is victory in battle. This is good classical tradition; battles had this role inthe writings of ancient historians. They took it for granted that the foreign policy of a city-state aims at expansion and that this goal can be reached only by war, and that wars aredecided in battles.

Although these classical views might have influenced Machiavelli in giving the battle the

central place in his book, the change in tone suggests still another motif. Problemsconcerning arrangements to be made before a battle can be solved by prudencewewould say, by intelligence. But when the clash of armies has begun, other qualitiesqualities of a moral natureare needed. Such qualities show themselves in the effectswhich they have on others. What kind of qualities are required, what they achieve, cannot

be demonstrated by reasoning; it can best be demonstrated by example. A narration,preferably an artistically impressive narration, serves best to show what is demanded fromcommander and troops in a battle.

Machiavelli wrote most of his book on the Art of Waras military theoretician, but he

wrote the account of the battle as a historian. MachiavellisArt of Warshows the beginningof a division which continued throughout the following centuries. Histories were full ofdescriptions of battles, but the works of military writers left few traces in them. Militarywriters and political historians existed side by side without taking much notice of each


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other. Historical writers, while giving little attention to the details of military operations,present very full descriptions of battles because battles give an opportunity fordemonstrating literary gifts; sometimes accounts of battles are small literary masterpieceswhich can be detached from their context and read independently. They also invitegeneral reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the contestants and representturning points in the course of events; as such they separate one phase of the historicaldevelopment from the next and serve to structure the historical work. Guicciardinisaccount of the battle of Fornovo, stressing the difficulties in bringing the Italian forces to acombined action and Clarendons account of the second battle of Newbury, showing thelack of energy on the royal side, epitomize extended parts of their stories.2

Because battles were subjects which invited the exercise of literary art, descriptions ofbattles continued to be popular in the nineteenth century. They had perhaps even moreappeal to professional writers than to professional historians. The most unforgettable

battle scenes were composed by two of the greatest nineteenth-century novelists, byTolstoy in War and Peace, and Zola in DZbacle. But for historians too, composition of a

battle scene remained a test of their literary talent. Whatever you think aboutTreitschkes political philosophy, his description of the battle of Waterloo3 is a great workof literary art, and no reader will forget Churchills report about the battle of Omdurmanwith the swarms of men in ordered ranks bright with glittering weapons and about themdance a multitude of gorgeous flags.4 It is interesting that the great novelists see the

battles from the point of view of those who fought and suffered one might say frombelowwhereas historical writers want to view the whole and that means from distance,one is tempted to say from above.

Actually from the nineteenth century onwards, historians ought no longer to havetreated battles as a special event which could be isolated from its context; by thenClausewitz had developed his military theories and given a new evaluation of the role ofthe battle in military operations. It may seem astounding to ascribe to Clausewitz a part inreducing the role of the battle in war because Clausewitz, as no other military writer,stressed the importance of the battle as the centre of gravity of an entire campaign, asconcentrated war; in his view, only a great battle can produce a major decision.5

Clausewitz certainly had feeling for the dramatic elements, the literary quality of a battle.

Nevertheless he placed the outcome of the battle in relation to the war as a whole. What abattle really meant and implied, depended on whether the war was a war of defense orhad the aim of territorial expansion, whether the war was intended to end a particulardispute or to eliminate the enemy as a power factor. The battle is only part of a largercontext; the campaign which resulted in the battle must be judged in relation to the entirewar, and the war must be considered as an instrument that serves the general policy of astate. Battle and campaign are subordinated to the purposes of war, and war is onlycontinuation of policy by other means.

A consequence of Clausewitzs theories was to raise the importance of military history.

An account of what happened in a war, even descriptions of campaigns, were usually

*Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.



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included in historical narrations, but Clausewitz demonstrated that each war had its owncharacter, which was shaped both by its political purposes and by the particular meansavailable to achieve them. Military events reflect the outlook of a historical period quite asmuch as the character of a period or a nation give their distinctive mark to a war. Militaryhistory is an integral element of political history, or of history in general. It isunderstandable, however, that these theories did not immediately penetrate into thewriting of history.6 The process of their absorption was slow, gradual and partial.Clausewitzs writings were published only after his death, throughout the 1830s; somediscussion of his views began in the middle of the nineteenth century, but only thePrussian military triumphs directed greater attention to a writer who was regarded tohave been the teacher of the Prussian generals who had directed these victorious campaigns.Clausewitzs influence on German historical thinking becomes noticeable only at the endof the nineteenth century and even then remained limited. There were only twoimportant historians both somewhat academic outsiderswho realized that inconsequence of Clausewitzs thought, the place of military affairs in political history must

be reconsidered and military history must be recognized as an essential element in thestudy of general history: Hans Delbrck7 and Otto Hintze.8

Delbrck reports that when he was a young man the works of Clausewitz were given tohim by the Prussian Crown Prince, the later Emperor Frederick, and that the study ofClausewitz made him decide to concentrate on military history in his historical studies.Delbrck also quoted several times the story that when someone said that the battle ofKniggraetz was won by the Prussian schoolmaster an officer intervened and said: Thename of this schoolmaster was Clausewitz. Delbrcks views on Clausewitz aresomewhat startling;9 Delbrck found a fundamental difference between the work of themilitary writer and the work of the historian. The military writer has the right, even theobligation, to be a critic. He is able to say and ought to say what actions of thecommander were faulty and what he ought to have done. For instance, the military writermight discuss that the Prussians, after the battle of Waterloo, ought to have pursued thedefeated French with greater energy and for a longer stretch of time because the resultwould have been complete annihilation of the French forces. But in the work of a historiansuch statements would be inappropriate. He must be content to explain what has

happened. Description of the efforts which had been made would show why furtherefforts had been impossible; at the same time this would do justice to what had beenachieved.

The main significance of Delbrcks somewhat arbitrary distinction between themilitary theoretician who is a critic and the historian who elucidates what has happened,lies in what it reveals about the intentions behind Delbrcks life work: the four volumesof The History of the Art of War in the Framework of Political History.10 Delbrckshows himself as a disciple of Clausewitz by assuming that in order to explain the eventsof a war the historian must go beyond the description of military operations, must

consider the limitations which are imposed by external circumstances of a technical orgeographic nature, and must analyze the political intentions behind the enterprise of war.At first glance, Delbrcks work seems to indicate little of these intentions. It seemsalmost old-fashioned. A look at the table of contents gives the impression that the work is

ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES OF MILITARY HISTORY 13


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primarily an account of a large number of individual battles. Delbrck explains, however,that in selecting the battles which he analyzes he was not determined by the fame of a

battle or by its dramatic character. His criterion was the significance of a battle for thedevelopment of the art of warwhether it presented novel features in tactics or strategy.The work is divided into various sections, each of them treating a particular period ofEuropean history from the ancient world on to the modern age. The final chapter of thesesections usually analyzes the significant battles of the period. It is preceded, however, by adiscussion of the new features which in this period changed the character of the armedforces and the conduct of military operations: social composition of the army, equipmentand weapons, combat order, organization and size of units, means for supply andprovisioning, etc. Delbrcks investigation of the concrete circumstances under whichmilitary operations were conducted represents a significant step forward in theunderstanding of the art of war. He had a precursor in Wilhelm Rstow, whose Geschichteder Infanterie (history of infantry) Delbrck undoubtedly knew. Delbrcks history differsfrom previous works of the same genre by two outstanding features: he presents thehistory of war as an interconnected development and he demonstrates that the variousstages in this evolution are closely connected with developments in other fields during thesame period. Changes in the conduct of war can be seen as reflections of the differences

between the periods in which the war took place; this view determined Delbrcksfamous but also much-debated and contested distinction between a strategy of attrition,which was pursued by Frederick the Great, and Napoleons strategy of annihilation.

Clausewitzs famous dictum about war as a continuation of policy had been a spur toDelbrck in placing military history in a broader context. Clausewitzs statement alsoformed a starting point for Otto Hintzes thought. But Hintze goes beyond Delbrck withthe conclusion which he draws from this thesis. In his view, in order to achievecoordination of politics and war, military organization and political structure had tocorrespond to each other and to be closely integrated. For many years, one of Hintzeschief concerns was establishment of the relationship which existed in history betweenmilitary organization and political structure.

Hintze began his career as a student of Prussian history and Prussian history had a directbearing on this problem. The Prussian army of the eighteenth century, which had been

considered as invincible, suffered a humiliating defeat by Napoleon and then, afterinternal reforms, it triumphed in the wars of liberation. For Prussians this period ofPrussian reforms was the most splendid but also the most discussed event of recenthistory. It was the starting point for Clausewitzs thinking about the problems of war.Delbrcks first important publication was a biography of Gneisenau, one of the mostadmired military leaders of the period of the war of liberation, and Hintze began withresearch in Prussian eighteenth-century history and was soon recognized as an outstandingexpert in this field. For most historians the ideas which had been developed in Germanphilosophy and German classical literature, joined with the political and social changes in

France during the revolutionary period, had been the decisive force behind the Prussianreforms. Hintze had some doubts about this relationship and he expressed his views in oneof his earliest articles devoted to Prussian reform efforts before the defeat of 1806. 11 Thefault of the Prussian king and government was not a lack of insight into the necessity of



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reform. They knew about the weaknesses and deficiencies of the Prussian administration.But every change interfered with the privileges of the ruling class, the nobility; the kingwould not dareor was not ableto overcome their obstinate resistance. Hintzes mosttelling example comes from the military sphere: the payment of soldiers had not kept upwith the rising standard of living and consequently qualified men shied away from enteringthe army. The funds necessary to make army service attractive could be easily provided byabolishing the privilege of the nobility of exemption from the estate tax. But thedominating role of this class in Frederican Prussia made it impossible to overcome theirresistance to a measure of this kind. This argument implies that defeat had made the needfor a complete reorganization of the army evident and a paramount necessity and that onlynow the resistance of the nobility could be overcome; Hintze would not have denied theinfluence of the new ideas of the time, but they needed a basis or a support in theinstitutional sphere to become effective.

Hintze was concerned with the relationship between military organization and politicalstructure not only because, for many years, he had been a student of eighteenth-centuryPrussia and because the rise of Prussia to political power had been the work of its army.The issue was for him important also because, from his early years on, he had apronounced interest in questions of historical method. In contrast to the overwhelmingmajority of his historical colleagues who were bitterly opposed to the notions proposedchiefly in other countries by Comte or Marx, Spencer or Bucklethat historydeveloped according to laws, Hintze, although he did not believe in the existence of stricthistorical laws, was inclined to think that behind the variety of developments in Europeanhistory there was a general pattern and that its discovery was a legitimate function of thehistorian. Hintze had reservations about the tendency to see in history chiefly the workingof individualities and individual factors. It is an all-too-easy and superficial explanatorymethod to account for the diversity in the political and social life of various peoples byreferring to differences of their national character. In the years before the First WorldWar Hintze published a number of essays which all revolved around the relationship ofmilitary organization and political structure. By means of these investigations he exploredthe question of whether there was a general pattern in the European development whichwas varied through adjustment to particular individually distinctive needs and situations.

The first of his studies

12

devoted to this subject said that every society was foremost acommunity formed for the purpose of war and defense, and most institutions wereestablished in order to serve and promote this basic need. They differed because the mostappropriate form of defense and war depended on the nature of the country which it wasto protect, whether it was a town, an empire or a territorial state. The struggles whichunavoidably took place among these communities were the chief cause for thedevelopments in military organizations and political institutions. One country triumphedover others and expanded and this led to new military and political institutions. AlthoughHintzes main thesisthe dependence of the political structure on military needsis

clearly presented, and although he remained convinced of the correctness and fruitfulnessof this approach, his first attempt to demonstrate the importance of this relationship wassomewhat simple and bare. In following essays13 he substantiated, refined and alsomodified his thesis. Hintze made a sharp distinction between early periods in which



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people lived in clan and tribal communities and two later periods of European historyduring which, in Hintzes view, the political institutions were decisively patterned bymilitary institutions and their needsthe age of feudalism and the modern age. Withinthis framework two subjects stood out as deserving particular attention: the change fromthe feudal age to the modern age and the relationship between the system of popularrepresentation (the rise of democracy) and the institution of general conscription. Feudalarmies were armies of knights, that means of horsemen; their superiority ended whenfoot soldiers had learned to fight as tactical unitsthat was the secret of the success, firstof the Swiss and then of the German Landsknechte. This was the crucial step towards theemergence of standing armies, chiefly composed of mercenaries, although frequentlyintermixed with conscripts. The political complement to this development in the militarysphere was the rise of absolutism: the rulers alone possessed the financial resourcesneeded to maintain standing armies and their control over these armies made them astrongly disciplined, hierarchically structured body. According to Hintze the transitionfrom the ancien regime to the nineteenth century, the age of nationalism and liberalism,was rather analogous to what had happened in the period of the decline of feudalism: anarmy organized on an entirely different basis defeated the standing armies of the ancienregime, and in consequence all over Europe military organizations and political institutionswere changed. In Great Britain the development, impelled by social rather than politicalfactors, was slower and more gradual than on the Continent, but Britains wars againstNapoleon were fought on the fringes of Europe, she had not been completely defeated

by French military power as had the armies of the continental states. The victoriousFrench armies had been assembled on the basis of conscription. They were citizen armiesinspired by patriotism, feeling that the cause for which they fought was their own cause.With general conscription becoming the basis for the formation of armed forces, citizensneeded a guarantee that the sacrifices which they were asked to undertake were made intheir own interests and in their own cause. The people had to have a voice in theformation of their government. Thus, the necessary complement of a militaryorganization based on general conscription was a representative government.

But what was the extent of the influence which the people ought to have over theirgovernment? Was the necessary consequence of general conscription full democratization

of political life? Despite great openness of mind, Hintze was a Prussian and the Prussiantradition in which he had grown up and which had been centre of his historical studies wasfor him a value of supreme importance. He was unable to admit that his thesis about therelationship between military order and political structure implied a gradualdisappearance of the monarchical, authoritarian system in the Prussian-German Reich.Hintze had an explanation why various European countries must differ in theparticularities of their political structure. Although the organization of national armiessince the French Revolution made the introduction of a representative element in thepolitical constitution unavoidable, the degree of democratization depended on the outside

pressure to which a nation was exposed. In a country whose existence was threatened byother states, military needs must precede all others, and its constitution could not handover complete control to the people. It must continue to contain an authoritarianelement. Of course, this reasoning served to justify the maintenance of a monarchical



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authoritarian regime in Prussia-Germany. Germanys situation in the centre of Europeexposed her to pressure from all sides and made the maintenance of large, well-equippedand well-trained armed forces a necessity. Interference of an all-powerful Parliamentwhich might give preference to non-military interests would be dangerous, and themonarch, the commander-in-chief, must have an independent authority. Insofar asgeneral conscription demanded a closer connection between individual and state, equalcitizen rights and the existence of elected representative bodies fulfilled these needs.Actually Hintze went beyond justifying the maintenance of the German half-constitutional, half-authoritarian system in a world moving steadily towards greaterdemocratization. He suggested that this system kept liberal and authoritarian features in anideal balance and that it guaranteed that the German military organization was superior tothose of all other countries.

The outcome of the First World War represented a refutation of Hintzes views. Thepreservation of an authoritarian and monarchical element in constitutional life had notresulted in providing superior military leadership and fighting capacity. Hintze was awareof that. The end of the Prussian monarchy was to him a personal loss; he also recognized,however, that this event necessitated a revision of his historical theories. Actually in thelast twenty years of his life he made some of his most important contributions to the studyof history. His aim remained to reveal and to define a general pattern in the developmentof European history since the end of the Roman Empire and to explain the reasons for thevariations which this pattern took in the various European states. He continued to placeemphasis on the interaction of the military and political order but the military factor isnow regarded only as one of the factors which shaped the political order: socio-economicand ideological forces also have a decisive role. Hintze became much more pluralistic.

A change also took place in Delbrcks outlook. He had started out on his work inmilitary history by drawing a line between the military historian who described what hadhappened and the military writer who was a critic. He was a historian, and as such hedisdained the idea of teaching generals how to conduct military operations. It has to beadmitted that Delbrcks distinction was rather artificial and he did not remain within thelimits which he had set. Those who participated in the discussion about the distinction

between a strategy of attrition and a strategy of annihilationand among them were

members of the General staffwere aware that this dispute had practical implications andin this debate Delbrck frequently seems to be a military critic rather than a militaryhistorian. Certainly, after the War, he became one of the most bitter and most vocalcritics of the German High Command and its subordination of political to militaryconsiderations. Like Hintze, Delbrcks confidence in the excellence of Prussian militarythinking had been undermined.

The impact of the outcome of the First World War on Delbrck and Hintze would beof limited concern to us if it had remained in the personal sphere disappointment andregrets about the failure of cherished values and traditions. But, as we have shown, it

changed their attitude; it penetrated to the core of their historical notions, raisedquestions about their validity and made a rethinking of the problems of politics and warnecessary.



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The First World War placed political and military reasoning into new relationships.14

First of all, the First World War demonstrated that, in a democratic age, every waramong great powers becomes an extreme war. The sufferings, to which the entirepopulation is subjected, make it impossible to end a war before the enemy is completelyhelpless. The masses do not permit their governments open discussions about peace withthe government of the enemy on the basis of reciprocal concessions. Unconditionalsurrender is the necessary conclusion of a war among great modern nations; it is mereillusion to believe that at certain moments wars like the First or Second World War couldhave ended by a peace of compromise. Consequently, in wars of this kind militaryconsiderations and calculations prevail over political considerationsthe military becomethe decision-makers.

The tendency to carry through the war till the enemy is completely defeated andsurrenders has been immeasurably strengthened by the outlawry of war; in consequenceevery war becomes a fight of good against evil, and one cannot compromise with evil. Thepresence of moral considerations, however, also limits the freedom of action of agovernment. Before entering upon a war or continuing it, it must carefully considerwhether its people regard the war as morally justified or justifiable. One novel feature ofthe First World War was immediately regarded as most consequential: the participationof the United States and Japan. This was no longer a European war. Moreover, seapowerwas revealed as a determining factor whereas its role in previous wars had beencontributory to the outcome rather than decisive.

With the First World War it became evident that the wars of the twentieth centurywould be fundamentally different from those of preceding times. The conception ofmilitary history which underlay the writings of Delbrck and Hintze was derived from theEuropean situation of the nineteenth century: a limited number of great European powersof relatively equal strength, dominating the globe; bound together in a common historywhich, despite significant differences, had led to common institutional features and somecommonly held beliefs; competing against each other but also conscious of a commoninterest in maintaining the status quo; with military establishments that had theirtraditions, discipline and hierarchy so that they tended to form a state within the state.The military factor did no longer dominate, but also could not be disregarded; it did not

make policy, but policy could not be made without it. Military affairs had a certain amountof autonomy, but they unavoidably touched upon all aspects of political and social life. Itwas this situation which Delbrcks and Hintzes writings had explored.

The Second World War reinforced and accentuated the novel nature of twentieth-century war. It ended with a polarization of power which had far-reaching, partly stillunexplored consequences for the future organization of national armies; it provokedthinking about the possibility of the appearance of different kinds of war: limited politicalwars and world wars. This distinction, closely related to Clausewitzs ideas, suggests that,whatever the differences of military conduct in history, the possibility of a pure theory

of war remains alive.The most important, crucial factor which the Second World War brought into thediscussion of military affairs, however, was the invention and employment of newweapons: it brought us the notion of nuclear war. The result has been a strange change in



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the relationship between military and civilian life. Manpower has become less important,but having become more distant from the military establishment, people are no longerable to comprehend what the new weapons can do and what a future war will be.However, there are certain groups which, involved in the problems of the construction ofthe new weapons, have moved much closer to the military establishment; its connectionwith industrial life and with sections of the academic community has become very close.One might say that, on one hand, military affairs have become very remote to the greatmass of the people, but that military problems are now of urgent importance to certaingroups of society. The armed forces have become more isolated from the bulk of thepopulation, but are more intensely connected with particular groups and the interests ofcertain classes.

Their views and judgements, their evaluation of possibilities and of timetables enter themaking of decisions on all stages; the decision-making process is no longer centredexclusively at the topthe head of the government or the military commander; theirchoice is limited by previously made decisions and arrangements in the construction of theimplements of war.15 Clarification of the decision-making process has become one of themost urgent and most difficult tasks in military and political studies. The revolutionarychanges in military affairs have given rise to a great number of valuable technicalinvestigations about new weapons, about changes in tactics and strategy, about thepossibilities of limited war, but some of the most interesting and important ones arestudies concerned with the decision-making process. The problems of war and militaryorganization have been so fundamentally changed in the twentieth century that we havenot yet reached the stage where we can write the military history of our century; wecertainly cannot do it without greater insight into the decision-making process.

If we ever gain such insight, it seems unlikely that we shall any longer be able todifferentiate military historyif it wants to be more than an account of what hadhappened after a war had broken outfrom the history of political, intellectual and socialdevelopments. We cannot leave the route which Delbrck and Hintze have charted, onlygo forward on it.

NOTES

1. Machiavellis description of an ideal battle will be found in the third book of hisArt ofWar;

I have used the translation by Allan Gilbert, which is published in the second volume of

Machiavelli, The Chief Works, Durham, 1965.

2. In Francesco Guicciardini, Storia dItalia, book II, chapters 8 and 9, and Clarendon, History ofthe Rebellion, book VIII, chapters 154160.

3. In the second book of his Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert.

4. Now easily available in Winston S.Churchill, My Early Life, chapter 15.5. These quotations are from book IV, chapter 11 of Clausewitz, On War, ed. and transl. by

Peter Paret and Michael Howard, Princeton, 1976.

6. On Clausewitzs influence, see Michael Howards introductory essay to the translationmentioned in the previous note. On Clausewitz as historian, and his attempt to treat



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political, diplomatic and military events in analytic narratives, see Peter Paret, Clausewitzand the State, (New York, 1976) pp. 331355.

7. For Hans Delbrck, see the article Hans Delbrck by Andreas Hillgruber in Deutsche

Historiker, ed. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, vol. IV (Gttingen, 1972); also Annelise Thimme, HansDelbrck als Kritiker der Wilhelminischen Epoche (Dsseldorf, 1955); both with bibliographies.

8. For Hintze, see Juergen Kocka, Otto Hintze in Deutsche Historiker, ed.Wehler, vol. III, andalso my introduction to The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze (New York, 1975), which containsa bibliographical essay.

9. For Delbrcks view of Clausewitz as military critic, see Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the

State (New York, 1976) pp. 3524.10. The work was reedited in 1962 by Otto Haintz.

11. This article, first published in 1896, is printed in English translation in The Historical Essaysof

Otto Hintze, pp. 6487.12. Hintzes essay Staatenbildung und Verfassungsentwicklung, published 1902, will be found

in Otto Hintze, Gesammelte Abhandlungen: Staat und Verfassung, ed. Oestreich (Goettingen,

1962) pp. 3451.13. Published, under the title Military Organization and the Organization of the State in

English in The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze, pp. 180215.

14. Although, in my opinion, not always acceptable, the reflections in Raymond Aron, PenserLaGuerre, Clausewitz (Paris, 1976) are stimulating for considerations about changes in military

thinking, brought about by the two World Wars; see particularly vol. II: Lgeplantaire.

15. What I have in mind, can be seen from the books by Martin J.Sherwin,A World Destroyed

(New York, 1975) and Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace (Boston, 1977); both authors try to

explain how the decision to use the atomic bomb was taken.



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Clio and Mars: The Use and Abuse ofHistoryJohn Gooch*

It is an axiom among historians that a knowledge of history can serve as aguide to the present Armed forces have a particularly bad reputation fornot taking this axiom seriously.1

The strongest grounds for accepting Arthur Marders judgement on how effectively theServices have utilised the past in developing war theory must be that they were too busyassiduously applying the past as a key to unlock the future to bother too much about thepresent. This was certainly the case until after the Second World War, whenmathematicians and social scientists shouldered aside historians as the most valuedconsorts of the military. Prior to that war, past experiencethat is to say, historyhad

been used extensively: both practically applied in the training of officers, and usedtheoretically in developing the principles of war and in devising tactical doctrine andstrategic hypotheses with which to engage the next enemy. History has, until not longsince, been much used in developing war theory in its most general sense, nowhere moreso than in Great Britain. It seems possible to argue that it has been much mis-used; or, moreaccurately, its use has been misunderstood and its findings misapplied. Analysis of howthis has occurred helps explain why it is that, in the words of one historian, we havesteadily lost confidence in the continuing relevance of the recent past.2 It alsodemonstrates that history may still have its uses; and that an awareness of its past mis-use

may in fact make it a better help-meet to the war theorist than ever it was.The demand for norms and precepts which could serve to guide both the training ofsoldiers and the fighting of wars came as a consequence of two developments whichreached their climax in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The first was the growthof the idea that war was a profession whose practitioners were marked off from civilsociety by the need for specialised knowledgea consequence of the fact that war wasmaking increased technical demands upon those who fought it. Concurrently with thisdevelopment there occurred a resurgence of the military aristocracy, riding a wave ofreform which put much greater emphasis on intellectual capacity than had previously been

the case. The officer now had to be given a specialist education, rather than merely anapprenticeship in the craft of war. Hard evidence of this change in attitude could be foundin the new military academies which sprang into existence across Europe in order toeducate the aspiring officer in the basics of his profession: twelve new schools were


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created in France in 1776, and others followed at Wiener Neustadt, St. Petersburg,Munich, Naples and Sandhurst.3 The most obvious material to utilise in the newprocesses of education lay readily to hand in the form of immediate past experience.

The past is, of itself, a somewhat formless substance to which some sort of orderingprocess must be applied if it is to yield much. Here the Enlightenment came to theassistance of the educators and the educated, by contributing the notion that patternsexisted not simply in relation to scientific phenomena, but also in all human activity, andthat from those patterns valid generalisations could be made about human behaviour. Asearly as 1732, the marchal de Saxe had been prepared to admit that war was a sciencethereby tacitly acknowledging that, for it too, such laws existedthough he hastily addedthat, as yet, it was covered with shadows. Guided by Montesquieu, the intellectuals of theEnlightenment set to work to prove the truth of the proposition that laws existed in allfields of human endeavour, if only you could find out what they were. War they tended toexempt from their enquiries, for many of them regarded it as wasteful and not a few asconjectural. However, their general approach to the problem of knowledge was of nosmall use to a profession which required some acknowledged body of knowledge if it wasto provide generally accepted precepts on which to base future behaviour.

The professionalization of war thus led to the search for truths from immediate pastexperience, or what we might call contemporary history. However, the theory ofknowledge generally embodied in the ideas of the Enlightenment determined that historywould be used as a quarry; the ore extracted from the past would be smelted not byhistorical analysis as it later came to be understood, but by the addition of what were notfar removed from theories of behaviour, which acted as the catalyst to produce puremetal. This mode of attacking the past was first established in Britain by Edward Lloyd inwhat was nominally a work of history.

Lloyd brought formidable intellectual gifts, as well as large practical experience, to thestudy of war. His education had included a spell at the Jesuit college in Rome, where hehad trained for the priesthood, and practical experience of military engineering in Spain.Here he was much influenced by his patron, the marquis of Las Minas, who had fought inItaly in 17423 and again in 1746, and who knew and admired Chevalier Folard, one of asmall but significant group of French thinkers who were currently examining war in an

historical context. No doubt as a consequence of his travels, Lloyd spoke and wrote fluentFrench, Italian and Spanish, and had enough German to make himself understood.4

Lloyds A History of the Late War in Germany(1766) was his best known foray into themilitary field, and remains so; but his later work on other subjects shows how far hisapproach to each topic which he undertook to analyse was grounded less in the historicalchain of cause and effect than in the kind of approach which labelled Montesquieu thefather of the social sciences. It was Montesquieu, rather than Rousseau, who influencedLloyds intellect; in his Essais philosophiques sur les gouvernements, written about 1766, Lloyddealt with the same great themes as his master: what was mans will? how did it operate,

and what determined his relations with the physical world? In the course of his enquiries,

*Department of History, University of Lancaster.



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Lloyd developed a proto-sociological analysis of the different kinds of human societiesdeveloping from the hunting, by way of the pastoral to the commercialto explain therelationship between social grouping and the extent of individual liberty.5 In otherwritings, his eighteenth century formalism betrayed himself in a fondness for reducingproblems to equations or figures.

Lloyd did not approach the task of analysing the war of 175663 by way of straightforwardhistorical method; nor, knowing his background and his interests, would we expect himto have done so. Rather, he categorised and generalised with the aid of observations madeduring the war itself, and subsequently committed his views to print in what was historyonly in a special sense. It is clear, for example, from a letter written by an Italian friend ofLloyds, Pietro Verri, in April 1760 that Lloyd had already formed his beliefs about thecharacter and qualities of physical force, opinion, the role of courage, fear, and disciplinelong before the war was over and the book begun.6

The basis of Lloyds analysis was his definition of the philosophy of war, which he sawas being the art of persuasion by means of which a general mastered the inclinations of histroops. This he believed to be the most difficult branch of the profession: It supposes aperfect knowledge of the passions, because it is from that source, a general must draw hisarguments to persuade or dissuade, as circumstances may require.7 Lloyd was at once ledoff down a by-way far from an established path of history, as he examined in their turn thepassions, both sensual and socialespecially fear, honour and shameas well as riches,liberty, religion, music and other phenomena which together governed mens behaviour.That the vehicle for this analysis was ostensibly a history was essentially coincidental andnot purposive; Lloyd was merely using the past to provide material with which to supportgeneralizations derived as much from pure thought as from reflective historical analysis. Hewas certainly not regaling his readers with lessons from history.

Observation of the past had undoubtedly helped Lloyd to conclude that wars werenever terminated by complete victories, kingdoms were not overturned, and nations notenslaved.8 From this conclusion, he drew even farther away from mere analysis of thetechnical factors which operated on the battlefield, arguing that these did not explain howand why armies were put in motion, and suggesting that it was only by using the viewpointsof philosophy and policy that one could understand how the passions developed which

brought men to war. Here, as in his other analytical works, Lloyd was crossing the boundaries between history and the social sciences, and adopting a pluralist model toexplain human behaviour much along the lines of his mentor, Montesquieu. War was notto be explained by a narrative of discrete historical eventsthe gradual unfolding of a

battle, the development of a campaignbut in its essence required consideration ofpsychology, physiology, anthropology, geography, religion and economics, as well ashistory.

The sheer range of Lloyds interests, extending from obsessive criticisms about theimperfections of military dress to detailed appreciation of military geography, disguised

from many of his subsequent readers the true nature of his fundamental thoughtprocesses. The subtleties of his analysis, which strikes the modern reader as remarkablenot least for its width, were obscured by his more striking use of the past; or elsedisregarded as the product of a despised eighteenth century intuition and rationalism. In

CLIO AND MARS: THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY 23


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the confrontation between Lloyd and Clausewitz, the strength of the Enlightenmentindividualism, adventure, risk and discoverysupposedly went down before the rationaland impersonal force of the Hegelian dialectic.9 Stealing grave-goods from Clios tombwith which to embellish theories of war achieved much greater respectabilityandacceptabilityin the following century, and the two most influential theorists of the agewere to play their part in the process. What Lloyd had begun, Clausewitz and Jominiwere to continue.

Clausewitz was led to begin his search for a body of theory by the need to makepractical sense of the growing flood of literature on war, which was of uneven value and oftenconfusing in detail. As reflections on the nature of war in memoirs grew more numerousand history more sophisticated an urgent need arose for principles and rules whereby thecontroversies that are so normal in military historythe debate between conflictingopinionscould be brought to some sort of resolution.10 It was this which led him toattempt to equip war with a framework of theory which would serve others as a guide. Acritical use of history was only one facet of his approach to his task, and not the mostimportant one; he himself gave the impression that more was to be gained in knowledgeabout war from impression and intuition than from critical studies and learnedmonographs, including presumably, historical works.11 Unwittingly, Clausewitzcontinued the manipulation of the past.

In a note dated 10 July 1827, Clausewitz stated that he had tested each of hisconclusions against the actual history of war,12 and the proposition that history servedchiefly to confirm Clausewitzs conclusions, rather than causing him to arrive at them, isconfirmed by the fact that the starting point of On Waras it was printed is a series ofabstract definitions. Nor is there anything in the first chapter of Book One (the onlysegment of the work which represents anything like a finalized version of Clausewitzsideas) to suggest that historical experience could substantially limit the validity of theory.Paret has recently suggested that Clausewitzs approach to knowledge was akin to that ofHusserlian phenomenology, in that he believed it possible to make definitions about theessence of war which derived from pure analytical thought rather than from inductivegeneralisation.13 Aron has claimed that his method was closer to the eighteenth centurythan to the nineteenth, and more obviously inspired by Kants Table of Categories than

by Hegel.

14

Certainly, Clausewitz started from a concept of nature which allowed him totheorise on the intrinsic essence of things. The past was only a tributary to his channel ofthought.

However, Clausewitz was too much a man of experience to allow his theoreticaldefinitions to stand untested by reality; indeed, in the case of his theory of the dual natureof warabsolute in the abstract, limited in realityit has been claimed that it was hisreflection on historical evidence which prompted him to arrive at it in 1827.15 Certainly itcan only have been a consciousness of the gulf between theory and practice which allowedhim to arrive at his well-known aphorism Everything in war is very simple, but the

simplest thing is difficult. In the development of his theory, history existed to test, andperhaps modify, the prescriptions of analysis. Theory itself existed to serve as a guide foranyone wishing to learn about war from books; it will have been correlated with history.Reality obtruded in two guises. First, it served as proof of theory: Historical examples



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clarify everything and also provide the best kind of proof in the empirical sciences. This isparticularly true of the art of war. Secondly, the practitioner must have recourse to thereality of the past, for in the art of war experience counts more than any amount ofabstract truths.16

As historian, Clausewitz bequeathed to all his readers a confusing legacy, for he usedhistory in two distinct but inter-related ways. As an illustrative or heuristic device, itcould be deployed in order to provide an explanation of an idea, or of its application; onthe conceptual level, it played a role of some sort in the devising of his ideas and theories.The question of precisely what sort of role it played was the more difficult to determine

because history was always present in his work: des textes de jeunesse jusquau testamentintellectuel, le rapport entre theorie et histoire demeure au centre de la rflexion. 17

Clausewitzs use of history was further obscured because he concerned himself before allelse with the relationship between theory and practice, between ideal and actuality, andnever always made it clear which side of the balance he was working on. Raymond Aronhas succinctly summed up the problem: Clausewitz ne precise pas, chaque instant, silraisonne ou sil observe; il observe lhistoire a travers ses concepts.18

Clausewitz defined historical research as the discovery and interpretation of equivocalfacts, and remarkedconfusinglythat critical narrative must go hand in hand with thisprocess. When he came to deploy historical examples in his work, he made little use ofclassical times (unlike his eighteenth-century predecessors), being convinced that thefarther one was removed from events in time the less one could know about them, bothas a whole and in regard to their details. He was also careful to limit his use of history,preferring to use it sparingly rather than pepper his audience with numerous cases inpoint. Where a new or debatable point of view is concerned he wrote, a singlethoroughly detailed event is more instructive than ten that are only touched on.19

Perhaps the most striking example of Clausewitzs use of history comes in Book VII ofOnWar, where a brief analysis of the ways in which different European societies have wagedwar from ancient times leads to the conclusion that there is no single theory of war,applicable to any epoque, but rather a number of different theories. Every age, concludedClausewitz the historian, had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and itsown peculiar preconceptions.20

In laying out his ideas, as opposed to the process by which he generated them,Clausewitz used history to emphasize that only abstractions of the broadest generalizationcould remain immutable, and that those abstractions were essentially about the nature ofhuman behaviour. The concept of friction rescues the historian, who may lay out thestages of a battle and the movement of troops, but who cannot by that process explainwhy a particular movement was not carried out more effectively, or a decisive turn in the

battle not perceived sooner. History emphasises that human behaviour never followsdefined rules; as Clausewitz reminds his reader, The same political object can elicitdiffering reactions from different peoples, and even from the same people at different

times.

21

Friction negates the idea of a given body of rules which, when applied to adefined situation, can guarantee success.Clausewitz used history as an adjunct to theorya means by which to test

propositions, illustrate his argument or demonstrate a point. For him, history was the

CLIO AND MARS: THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY 25


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laboratory of theory,22 a chamber within which he tested the properties of concepts, andwith the aid of which he explained the differences between abstraction and reality. Henever claimed for it the status of the sole, or even the chief, source from which to deriveknowledge of war. But because his methodology was so far from clearor perhaps

because the shape in which his work was published over-emphasised his use of historyheleft a legacy of the prescriptive, normative use of history which was to prove unfortunatein the hands of his successors, who possessed minds infinitely less subtle and lesscapacious. To read his workand it was much read and much followed in Britain, aselsewhere, in the latter part of the nineteenth centurywas to allow oneself to fall victimto the delusion that Clausewitz had discovered the truth by bringing to bear on the pastthe attributes of a powerful analytical minda claim he himself would probably neverhave made.23 Unwittingly, then, Clausewitz played a part in the perversion of historicalmethod which dominated much British theorizing about war before 1914and indeedafterwards.

Antoine Jomini, Clausewitzs great rival and an equally profound influence on Britishstrategic thought in the nineteenth century, played his part in fixing in mens minds theidea that the past, if attacked with determination, could yield up secrets which could helpmaster the future. He believed that the only reasonable theory of war was one based notmerely on history, but on military history. To this he coupled an eighteenth centuryconviction that, in war, immutable principles existed which the study of history couldreveal: la stratgie surtout, he informed his readers in his Prcis de lArt de Guerre, fut lamme sous Csar comme sous Napoleon.24 The Prcis was written only after a lengthystudy of the history of the Revolutionary wars, and on the basis of a great deal of personalexperience of Napoleonic warfare, and represented Jominis last word on the greatcombinations of war. It is therefore important to emphasize what contemporariesoverlooked, that Jomini did not intend his work to be regarded in a normative light.25 Heoffered numerous qualifications designed to demonstrate to his readers that, while historymight offer the most secure path towards valid generalizations about war, they were onlygeneralizations and no more. Ici les prceptesne servent que de jalons approximatifs,he pointed out early on.26 Although he was prepared to allow that a few fundamentalprinciples of war did exist, Jomini also warned that genius could be stifled by false ideas

that war was a positive science where all operations could be reduced to infalliblecalculations.27

Jomini wrote qualifications into the substance of his work which further emphasised thelimited reliance to be placed upon history as a prescriptive discipline in the study of war.Although he did cull from the past four immutable precepts of strategy, he also pointedout that, when viewed as the consequence of policy, wars differed in their characteristicsaccording to the differences in their political dimension.28 This represents a widen

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Strategy and the Social Sciences - Issues in Defense Policy

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