Clausewitz and the Fading Dialectic of War

Abstract

American strategic theorists used to urge that the United States adopt a Clausewitzian point of view on international conflict, that we treat war as something undertaken to serve the larger aims of policy, with the conduct of war subordinated to the larger considerations of policy. Under contemporary conditions, however, this notion of warfare is not appropriate. The experience of warfare since the time of Clausewitz shows that his distinction between war in the abstract and war in the concrete is not any kind of dialectical unity; rather, political war and total war (the concrete manifestation of Clausewitz's war in the abstract) are two distinct phenomena, and our technological and ideological positions discourage political war. War is no longer an instrument of state policy, a means whereby those who rule the state attain their values; instead, it is increasingly the fact or possibility of war which determines the values of the state.