PREFACE
Carl von Clausewitz’s ideas are well known, if perhaps not well studied, in the military profession. His view of war as an expression of scholarship is essentially canon among military professionals, regardless of nation. Even al-Qaeda studies Clausewitz.1 For all his influence on modern ideas of war and strategy, however, his tactical concepts have been strangely ignored.
We know how Clausewitz viewed the relationship between tactics and strategy from On War. It is well attested at various points: tactics, or combat, are the means of strategy. Tactics achieve (or fail to achieve) victories on the battlefield and strategy is the use of those victories to impose a political end state on the defeated party. We also know his conception of war as a phenomenon: political discourse with the addition of violence. On War, his masterpiece, thus captures both war and strategy as phenomena, but does not capture tactics as a phenomenon. There is some belief that he intended to write such a work, but he was never able to do so.2
Because of his focus on war and strategy in On War, his thoughts on tactics as a phenomenon are best captured in this earlier work, Guide to Tactics. We cannot be certain exactly when he wrote it or why, or whether he would have expanded it later in life, but we do know what it is and what it is not.
First, what it is not: Guide to Tactics is not doctrine. Doctrine is the codified tactics, techniques, and procedures of a specific military force for specific situations, equipment, and unit organizations.3 This work was not produced as a piece of Prussian Army doctrine. Nor is it a simple tactical polemic, containing the author’s opinion on what tactics are good or bad or necessary.
1 Brett A. Friedman, “Mujahideen: The Strategic Tradition of Sunni Jihadism,” Small Wars Journal, 28 October 2015.
2 Raymond Aron, Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, tome 2, L’âge planétaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 339.
3 B. A. Friedman, On Tactics: A Theory of Victory in Battle (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017).
It is a guide to thinking about the nature of tactics; the difference is subtle but important. That is what makes it theory and not doctrine or a manual. Its purpose is to train the mind of the reader to think critically about what tactics are so that they can be better prepared to choose effective tactics in practice. Some of these tactical concepts reappear in On War, while others do not. But modern readers will perhaps recognize all of them.
The Purpose of Tactics: Victory
Clausewitz defined tactics and strategy in terms of logic: the logic of tactics is winning on the battlefield, and the logic of strategy is to use those victories as means to achieve the ends of the war. In other words, the means must always be used in service of the ends. This practice pertains to today in the form of the familiar ends, ways, and means depiction of strategy.4 The resources necessary to perform a mission and the ways in which they will be applied toward its completion are unified by the end goal or object. The insertion of ways is a later addition, but for both tactics and strategy the means and the ends play heavily in Clausewitz’s thinking.
In Guide to Tactics, the end or object of tactics is victory, defined as the withdrawal of the enemy force from the battle (see page 30). The means is combat, which, in Clausewitz’s vision, entails both organized violence and the threat thereof (see page 36). In On War, the means in general remain combat, although the word combat is sometimes used interchangeably with battle and engagement. 5 Tactics is defined as “the theory of the use of military forces in combat.”6 This still implies that the purpose is victory, which is spelled out in Guide to Tactics but left implied in On War. What differentiates tactics from strategy is the ends of both activities. The means for strategy are the same, but the ends are
4 This is the Lykke Model of Strategy (strategy = ends + ways + means), named for Arthur F. Lykke Jr. Also see The Marine Corps War College Strategy Primer (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2021).
5 See Gen Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Col J. J. Graham, vol. 1, book 1, chap. 2 (London: Kega Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1918).
6 Clausewitz, On War, vol. 1, book 2, chap. 1, 86.
different. The results of combat, the outcome of engagements, must contribute to the purpose of the war: the political aim. Clausewitz defines strategy as “the theory of the use of combats for the object of the War.” 7 In other words, while the means of tactics and strategy are the same, the aim of tactics is strictly to win on the battlefield, but the aim of strategy is to contribute to the political goal of the eventual peace.
Clausewitz thus sets up a dilemma: tactics and strategy have different and sometimes diametrically opposed ends. The means, however, are the same: combat. And combat is inherently destructive and violent. Achieving the aim of tactics is pretty straightforward given the means: the destruction, in whole or in part, of the opposing force yields victory in combat. In strategy, however, the aim is peace. It may be a peace imposed on the opponent, one that is advantageous to the victor, but it is peace nonetheless. The dilemma is how inherently destructive and violent means can lead, through tactics and strategy, to inherently peaceful ends. The solution to this paradoxical dilemma is deceptively simple in theory but difficult in practice. To make the violent means in war contribute to peaceful ends, those peaceful ends must be kept in mind and take priority in military decisions. In his words,
Strategy is the employment of the battle to gain the end of the War; it must therefore give an aim to the whole military action, which must be in accordance with the object of the War; in other words, Strategy forms the plan of the War, and to this end it links together the series of acts which are to lead to the final decision, that is to say it makes the plans for the separate campaigns and regulates the combat to be fought in each.8
This regulatory function of strategy over tactics is necessary to achieve the aim of the war.
7 Clausewitz, On War, vol. 1, book 2, chap. 1, 86.
8 Clausewitz, On War, vol. 1, book 3, chap. 1, 165, emphasis added.
The practical application of this theoretical concept is that a commander must always keep strategy in mind and make it the priority over tactical concerns. While it may make sense tactically, for example, to be totally ruthless with the enemy forces and pursue them vigorously until they are totally destroyed, even to the point of executing prisoners and wounded, it is strategically counterproductive (not to mention morally reprehensible). While tactics is only concerned with combat, strategy must also be concerned with the eventual peace. An opponent who has seen their soldiers and civilians massacred will be less inclined to negotiate and make peace and will instead refuse to submit to the will of the opponent. Resolving this paradox is the goal of strategists and policy makers, but their efforts cannot be undermined by tacticians and practitioners.
Close Combat and Fire Combat
The subordinate relationship of tactics to strategy is necessary context, but it is not directly addressed in Guide to Tactics as it is strictly focused on tactics. The centerpiece of Clausewitz’s thought on combat itself are two modes of combat: fire combat and close combat.
Close combat is a phrase with which every Marine is familiar through the mission of the Marine Corps rifle squad, which is: “To locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the enemy’s assault by fire and close combat.”9 That mission statement and Clausewitz’s term are, perhaps surprisingly, referring to exactly the same thing: the direct clash of opposing infantry units resolved through combat at bayonet range. For Clausewitz, close combat is defined by its certainty. The only way to be certain that an enemy force is defeated is to force it off its position and seize that position instead. It also creates an impression of certainty in the mind of the enemy combatants, generating more fear and a sense of danger than fire combat. Nothing accomplishes this feat like an infantry assault.
9 Marine Rifle Squad, Marine Corps Interim Publication 3-10A.4i w/change 1 (Washington, DC: Headquarters Marine Corps, 2019), 7.
Fire combat, however, is the use of supporting arms and, today, crew-served weapons. Clausewitz viewed fire combat as including the preparatory shelling of enemy positions by artillery and the massed fire of infantry units in formation (prior to a bayonet charge) as fire combat.
There are obviously a lot more options for supporting arms today than there were during Clausewitz’s time, but the nature of fire combat remains the same: it is probabilistic. Even precision-guided weapons only have a high probability of hitting the target, never a certainty. That lack of certainty means that fire combat can never be as decisive as close combat (which achieves certainty by physically replacing the enemy on a given piece of terrain). The enemy force being subjected to fire combat knows that there is a chance they will escape, hide, or otherwise avoid the effects of fire combat because there is only a probability, not a certainty, of their own death or wounding. The fear experienced by the enemy force subjected to fire combat is different, on a visceral level, from that experienced in close combat. It is not pleasant, as those experienced in it will attest, but it is different.
The practical value of these concepts lies in the realm of planning. Some Marines may be familiar with the planning construct of a shaping phase, a decisive phase, and a sustaining phase.10 While there is no sustaining phase in Guide to Tactics, fire combat is clearly the shaping phase and close combat is clearly the decisive phase of combat.
The coordination and combination of both fire combat and close combat is, of course, combined arms. Clausewitz viewed fire combat and close combat as two distinct phases. This reflects the tactics of the time before reliable, aimed rifle fire and indirect artillery. The need to fire artillery pieces directly and by sight and then move them out of the way or cease firing while the infantry forces conducted sometimes intricate and complex maneuvers in formation required a segmented plan to every battle. However, the interaction between the two—the modern concept of
10 See Tactics, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 1-3 (Washington, DC: Headquarters Marine Corps, 1997), especially chap. 2 and 7.
combined arms—is inherent in his theory even though he could have hardly conceived of modern combined arms warfare featuring indirect artillery fire, fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, other armored vehicles, and, now, autonomous systems.
The point of combined arms in Clausewitz’s view and in modern military doctrine is that both fire combat (supporting arms) and close combat (maneuver) are more powerful in combination—one supporting and facilitating the other in turn— than they are when used by themselves. Fire combat cannot bring about a decision on the battlefield. Close combat can but only in limited circumstances (usually when one side vastly outnumbers the other). Both in concert, however, can deliver a decision.
Attack and Defense
The concepts of fire combat and close combat pertain to both attack and defense, both of which will involve fire combat and close combat. The core of Clausewitz’s thoughts on attack and defense, later captured in On War, are already present in Guide to Tactics. Famously, Clausewitz stated that the defense is the stronger form of fighting. By stronger, he is not necessarily saying it is better, merely that because the defense can stay in place, rested and ready, and take advantage of force multipliers like fortifications and terrain, the offense needs a preponderance of combat power to overcome a defense. If both sides are equal, the defense will win. However, the defense can never gain anything. It can only keep possession of ground already controlled. Only the offense can gain anything. In Guide to Tactics, he states that the offense is the positive mode and defense is the negative mode for these reasons. He does not mean good or bad, just that the offense is necessary to gain ground against the enemy, and the defense is necessary to hold it. He goes on to say that the offense will contain a greater proportion of close combat than fire combat, and the defense will be reversed, containing more fire combat and less close combat.
Command and Control
The concept of Auftragstaktik, known today as mission command, is not normally associated with Clausewitz. It does not appear in On War, but the germ of the German tradition of decentralized command and control is evident in Guide to Tactics. Clausewitz first discusses planning for combat engagements. While he certainly believes in planning engagements beforehand, he does not believe that any plan can be perfect, given the unpredictable nature of combat and the human element. He states:
But belligerents do not cease to be men, and individuals can never be converted into machines having no will of their own; and the ground on which they fight will seldom or never be a complete and bare level, which can exercise no influence on the combat. It is, therefore, quite impossible to calculate beforehand all that is to take place. . . . As for the plan for a great battle, except as regards the preliminary part, it can only ever be a very general outline.11 (See p. 64)
This is an argument for the use of mission-type orders; assigning subordinate units a mission to accomplish without mandating how it must be accomplished.12 Mission-type orders are a vital component of mission command. The other main component—commander’s intent—is a later concept that does not appear in Clausewitz’s work.
Connections to Warfighting, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 1
Familiarity with Clausewitz’s views on war can help Marines better understand and implement Warfighting for the simple reason that Warfighting is fundamentally Clausewitzian. Various theorists influenced its contents, including Sir Basil Liddell Hart and especially Air Force pilot John R. Boyd. But it is rooted at a
11 Clausewitz, On War, vol. 3, appendix, propositions 103–4, 260.
12 Compare B. A. Friedman and Olivia A. Garard, “Clarifying Command: Keeping up with the (John Paul) Joneses,” War on the Rocks, 7 April 2020.
foundational level in Clausewitz; he is the first theorist cited by name in the document.
The purpose of On War was to define war as a phenomenon and the essential aspects of that definition are adopted in Warfighting. These include that war is an expression of politics with the addition of violent means; that war is a human phenomenon and the human element cannot be ignored in theory or in practice; that warfare is inherently competitive, complex, uncertain, and chaotic; and that war’s physical aspects exist alongside mental and moral aspects, all of which are powerful in different ways. In fact, Warfighting is divided into four chapters: “The Nature of War,” “The Theory of War,” “Preparing for War,” and “The Conduct of War.” These aspects of war all have their origin in Clausewitz’s ideas and the phrases themselves appear in his works.
These connections between On War and Warfighting are well known, but the resurfacing of Guide to Tactics has highlighted even more connections between Clausewitzian thinking and the Marine Corps’ warfighting philosophy. Two concepts that do not appear in On War but do appear, in nascent form, in Guide to Tactics are decentralized decision making and combined arms. Clausewitz’s heavy focus on the two forms of combat— fire and close combat—could have easily led to an attritionist mindset overly concerned with casualties, body counts, and loss of materiel. Clausewitz, however, never went down that road because of the conception of decision, formulated first at the beginning of this work when he defines victory as a decision in the mind of one of the belligerents, either the commander or the commanded. He does not shy away from saying that the destruction of the enemy force may indeed be the aim of combat. Sometimes it is. But he also does not say it is the only way. Indeed, he goes to great lengths to repeat that it is not always the case.
Clausewitz has been criticized as being focused on attrition and overly focused on direct approaches for nearly a century. This is a result of critics working with only a part of his work. Between Clausewitz’s heavy focus on mental and moral forces in
war, evident in On War, and now the roots of modern concepts found in Guide to Tactics, Clausewitz can be revealed as much more of a maneuverist than an attritionist.
Conclusion
In the twentieth century, strategy became of vital importance not just because of the two world wars but thereafter, as confrontation with the Soviet Union defined the rest of the century. In 1976, when Michael Howard and Peter Paret’s translation of Clausewitz’s On War was published, it hit at a time when American academics and military practitioners were vitally concerned with strategy after the defeat in Vietnam.
Since then, strategy in general and Clausewitz’s views on strategy in particular have received all the attention, at the expense of the theory of tactics. Tactical theory was relegated to doctrine instead of theory, usually appearing in the form of a list of the principles of war, of which there are many different versions. But theory fits poorly into doctrine for a simple reason: theory should inform doctrine, not the other way around. The poor state of tactical theory is a problem. Strategy can only be accomplished through tactics, and it will never be properly understood without an understanding of tactics.
That Guide to Tactics, and Warfighting for that matter, are works of theory and not doctrine explains their timeless nature. They are not tied to the ever-changing character of war in a certain time and place but rather to the unchanging nature of war. They do not seek to tell us what to do, but rather to teach us how to think about their subject. Military service is a thinking profession, so this restoration of Guide to Tactics as a stand-alone work of military theory is of value across the profession.
B. A. Friedman
An Annotated
UNLOCKING GUIDETOTACTICS
One of the unfortunate side effects of the deserved success of Carl von Clausewitz’s On War is that it has overshadowed the other works of this preeminent philosopher of war. But perhaps none of Clausewitz’s writings are as undercited and underread as his Guide to Tactics, republished here with critical annotations for the first time as a stand-alone English text.1 Likely written between 1808 and 1812, while Clausewitz was working for Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst at the Berlin War Academy (Kriegsschule), Guide to Tactics stands in stark contrast to his better-known but lesser text of that same time, Principles of War. 2 Unlike Principles of War, which was a summary of Clausewitz’s instructions to the Prussian crown prince (a teenage Friedrich Wilhelm IV), Guide to Tactics reads with an eye toward posterity, like On War. Both are deeply theoretical works, the former a theory of combat, the latter a theory of war. In a note written around 1818, Clausewitz hoped his “small volume in octavo,” which eventually became On War, “would not be forgotten after two or three years.”3 On War, published posthumously in 1832 by Marie von Clausewitz, his wife, has lived up to that aspiration. That Guide to Tactics has not is mostly due to accidents of literary history.
On War is Clausewitz’s most famous work, from which are derived key aphorisms like War is a Continuation of Politics
1 Guide to Tactics, or the Theory of the Combat in German is Leitfaden zur Bearbeitung der Taktik der Gefectslehre. Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, Hinterlassenes Werk des Generals Carl von Clausewitz, ed. Werner Hahlweg, 18th ed. (Bonn, Germany: Dümmler, 1973), 1103–80; and Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Col J. J. Graham (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004), appendix, 798–870. The text in this book is taken from Gen Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Col J. J. Graham (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1918), 243–337. This introduction builds on thoughts originally expressed in Olivia Garard, “Clausewitzian Deep Tracks: #Reviewing Guide to Tactics, or the Theory of the Combat,” Strategy Bridge, 23 March 2020.
2 Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography (New York: Grove Press, 2007), 118. The Kriegsschule is the forerunner to the Kriegsakademie at which Clausewitz taught in his later years. Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 49.
3 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 63.
with Other Means.4 This has been the text that has defined what war is for generations of military members and has illustrated strategy’s relationship to policy. Since Clausewitz died prior to a complete revision of the eight books of On War, scholars debate, among other nuanced issues, the extent to which his thought is logically consistent or continuous, which parts of the work represent his revised thought, the extent of his intellectual crisis of 1827, and the primary lessons to take away.5 On War is lengthy, long-winded, and philosophically sophisticated.6 For Clausewitz, it was through the interplay of historical analysis and lived experience that war’s essence emerged.7 Guide to Tactics is formally different. It is intellectually complex and abstract, without On War ’s historical grounding; though there are many threads linking Guide to Tactics to On War, the two texts are not interchangeable but, rather, complementary. Guide to Tactics serves both as a theoretical work on combat and the core substance from which we can develop a deeper understanding of On War. On War is not the apotheosis of Guide to Tactics. That appellation would suggest that all the critical concepts of On War find a kernel in Guide to Tactics, which is too strong a claim and
4 In Werner Hahlweg’s edition, Clausewitz writes, “der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel.” Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 990. In Col J. J. Graham’s translation, this reads as “War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse, with a mixture of other means.” Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, vol. 3, book 8, chap. 6, 121.
5 W. B. Gallie, “Clausewitz Today,” European Journal of Sociology 19, no. 1 (1978): 146, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975600005130. In one of the most damning of philosophical critiques, Gallie then levies: “Clausewitz begs the question.” Gallie, “Clausewitz Today,” 153. Compare Strachan, who makes explicit the intellectual departure occurring in Clausewitz’s works between 1812 and 1827. Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 74–75. Conversely, Paret sees continuity from 1804 to 1830. Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 8. See also Youri Cormier, War as Paradox: Clausewitz and Hegel on Fighting Doctrines and Ethics (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 11; Eugenio Diniz and Domício Proença Júnior, “A Criterion for Settling Inconsistencies in Clausewitz’s On War,” Journal of Strategic Studies 37, no. 6–7 (2014): 897, https://doi-org.lomc.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/014 02390.2011.621725; Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz (London: Random House, 2002), 32; Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 26; and Christopher Coker, Rebooting Clausewitz: On War in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 148.
6 Jon Tetsuro Sumida, Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 67.
7 C. B. A. Behrens, “Which Side Was Clausewitz On?,” New York Review of Books, 14 October 1976.
ignores the natural evolution of Clausewitz’s thought as well as the poetics of On War. 8 Raymond Aron considers Guide to Tactics methodologically, conceptually, and empirically consistent with On War. 9 Jan Willem Honig makes the point, however, that “if one views On War as the consistent, coherent, and essentially complete summation of Clausewitz’s thought, and regards his other works as preparing the way for his magnum opus, then there may not be much point in publishing more, other than to provide some additional illustrations for issues already familiar.”10 Instead, Guide to Tactics should be seen as a completion of the foundation on which rests many of the premises refined in On War. This difference is key. Guide to Tactics infuses On War with more meaning; it is an expansion from within the text itself.11 Concepts found within Guide to Tactics find their full maturation or transcendence in On War. On War is both consistent with and a step beyond and beside Guide to Tactics. Essentially, Guide to Tactics is the missing link to many completed concepts within On War—most notably, that of the combat.
What Is the Theory of the Combat?
In the foreword to the French translation of Leitfaden zur Bearbeitung der Taktik der Gefectslehre (Guide to Tactics, or the Theory of the Combat), Hervé Coutau-Bégarie, the president of L’Institut
8 See Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Empire of Chance: The Napoleonic Wars and the Disorder of Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Sumida goes further because “he examines On War as a theory of practice rather than as a theory of a phenomenon.” Sumida, Decoding Clausewitz, 2.
9 Raymond Aron, Penser la guerre, Clausewitz, tome 1, L’âge européen (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 30.
10 Jan Willem Honig, “Interpreting Clausewitz,” Security Studies 3, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 573, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636419409347562.
11 Further research is necessary to track the evolution of specific concepts. For instance, in the last proposition, Clausewitz sees a commander’s character—specifically, their resolution—as the only way to govern chance and prevent “half measures.” Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, vol. 3, appendix, prop. 604, 337. Here, Clausewitz is concerned with an individual commander’s trepidation in warfare. In On War, Clausewitz is concerned with (and intrigued by) “half-and-half” or “half-hearted” affairs of the state. See Honig’s full discussion on the various translations of this concept. Jan Willem Honig, “Clausewitz’s On War : Problems of Text and Translation,” Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 68nn35–36, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232024.003.0004.
de Stratégie Comparée, the French think tank that republished the text, begins from a fundamental question: How should one translate Gefecht?12 Its translation has been disputed.13 For instance, Paul Schuurman translates the title as “Outline to work on the tactics of the doctrine of combat.” 14 Conversely, although Hew Strachan only refers to Guide to Tactics by its German title, he has an extensive discussion on the differences between Kampf (combat), Gefecht (engagement), and Schlacht (battle).15 Strachan observes that Clausewitz avoided Kampf, but he used Gefecht to differentiate between “the fighting which is not in itself decisive” and a Schlacht, a battle that is.16 Moreover, he specifically references how Gefecht is the title of book 4, which is, as he translates, the book on “the engagement.” However, other translations render this as the book on “the combat.”17
Regardless of whether it should be translated as a theory of combat or a theory of engagement, the Guide to Tactics is a work on tactics. In On Tactics, B. A. Friedman writes that “a theory of tactics must be timeless and applicable to any battle, anywhere, anytime.”18 “Tactics,” Friedman further defines, “is the arrangement of military forces in such a manner to defeat the enemy.”19 This is consistent with, and derivative from, Clausewitz’s defini-
12 Hervé Coutau-Bégarie, “Avant-Propos,” in Carl von Clausewitz, Théorie du Combat, trans. Thomas Lindemann (Paris: Economica, 1998), 7. Lindemann comes down on Graham’s, Hans Gatzke’s, and Paul Schuurman’s sides: combat.
13 Book 4 of Vom Kriege is Das Gefecht. Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 417. Graham translates this as “the combat.” Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, vol. 1, book 4, 235. Howard and Paret and Jolles translate it as “the engagement.” Clausewitz, On War, trans. Howard and Paret, 223, and trans. Jolles, 451. In Principles of War, however, Gatzke translates chapter 2, Taktik oder Gefectslehre, as “Tactics or the Theory of the Combat.” Carl von Clausewitz, Principles of War, trans. Hans W. Gatzke (Harrisburg, PA: Military Service Publishing, 1942), 15.
14 Paul Schuurman, “War as a System: A Three-Stage Model for the Development of Clausewitz’s Thinking on Military Conflict and Its Constraints,” Journal of Strategic Studies 37, no. 6–7 (2014): 928n4, https://doi-org.lomc.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/01402390.2014 .933316. Considering this doctrine, as argued in B. A. Friedman’s preface, is problematic.
15 Leitfaden zur Bearbeitung der Taktik der Gefectslehre; and Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 140–41.
16 Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 140–41.
17 Compare to note 13.
18 B. A. Friedman, On Tactics: A Theory of Victory in Battle (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007), x.
19 Friedman, On Tactics, 16.
tion in On War, that “tactics is the theory of the use of military forces in combat.” 20 Whereas in other works (such as Principles of War, written around the same time as Guide to Tactics and discussed further below), Clausewitz is focused on specifics of fighting, in Guide to Tactics, Clausewitz explores these more abstract conceptions of his subject matter. Guide to Tactics qualifies as theory because it is—except for a few noted Napoleonic tactical holdovers—evergreen.
Clausewitz is not focused on lethality itself, but rather on the why of lethality.21 The why has not changed, even as the means have—the fight persists as the fighting changes. For example, a distinction Clausewitz makes in Guide to Tactics is between close combat and fire combat, loosely correlated to maneuver and firepower. Fire combat entails “weapons with which the enemy can be attacked while he is at a distance.” 22 These are, Clausewitz continues, “more instruments for the understanding; they allow the feelings, the ‘instinct for fighting’ properly called, to remain almost at rest, and this so much the more according as the range of their effects is greater.” 23 In other words, a weapon with great effective range, like artillery or aviation, allows a military force to affect another without subjecting their personnel to the fear and strain of close combat. Close combat, on the other hand, is that which is “nearest to the pugilistic encounter.” 24 Since it is akin to maneuver, close combat is fueled by passions, whereas fire combat, or fires, is distanced—intellectually, emotionally,
20 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, vol. 1, book 2, chap. 1, 86. There is a sense in which leveraging Clausewitz’s definition of tactics to judge the validity of the tactical theories in Principles of War or Guide to Tactics could be considered begging the question, but given that On War has been theoretically established as the paradigm from which we understand war and strategy, it seems valid that we use it to judge tactics too. Moreover, we are not leveraging this definition in order to see continuity between On War and either Principles of War or Guide to Tactics, but to judge each on their own merits with respect to their current applicability.
21 See Olivia Garard, “Lethality: An Inquiry,” Strategy Bridge, 1 November 2018. Lethality is defined as “an emergent, intentional relationship between an object and the surface on which it is used.” Furthermore, lethality is a “latent inexorable deadly relationship between a weapon and its effects.”
22 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, appendix, prop. 47, 250.
23 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, appendix, prop. 47, 250.
24 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, appendix, prop. 46, 250.
and literally. “Both,” importantly, “have for their object the destruction of the enemy.” 25 This Clausewitzian taxonomy is applicable to differentiating and understanding the ever-changing means of warfare, even as its goal remains the same. However, the “epistemology of lethality” varies.26 For close combat, this “effect [of destruction] is quite certain.” 27 What makes it lethal is its certainty: an assured expectation of a future deadly harm.28 Fire combat, conversely, “is only more or less probable.” 29 This remains true today, even as we seek to increase our tactical precision.30 This credence differential is critical to identifying the variance between the destructive act and the decisive act. The reason the enemy is driven from the battlefield, which is victory as a decisive act, is because of the certainty of destruction by close combat. Crucially, it is not the destruction itself. Fire combat, conversely, is only “the preparation” for a decisive act—even if, or because, it destroys the adversary’s force.31 These propositions found within Guide to Tactics can help to clarify the critical point Strachan highlights in the meaning of Gefecht : that it is not decisive in itself, but that it relies on the perception of probable destruction. Combat, as fighting, encompasses this sense more readily than engagement. Combat, as fighting, is also at the core of On War. 32 There is general scholarly agreement on this point. Emile Simpson sees combat as the “vernacular of battle,” which through “the language of war” unites “force to political meaning.”33 Sibylle Scheipers notes Clausewitz’s “unitary conception of war,” which
25 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, appendix, prop. 50, 250.
26 Matthew Ford, “The Epistemology of Lethality: Bullets, Knowledge Trajectories, Kinetic Effects,” European Journal of International Security 5, no. 1 (February 2020): 77, https:// doi.org/10.1017/eis.2019.12.
27 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, appendix, prop. 51, 250.
28 See Garard, “Lethality.”
29 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, appendix, prop. 51, 250.
30 Compare Olivia Garard, “Targeting Clausewitzian Judgments: Fusing Precision and Accuracy to Strategy and Tactics,” Strategy Bridge, 20 September 2016. Consider how the military uses the concepts of probability of incapacitation or the probability of hit.
31 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, appendix, prop. 60, 252.
32 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, vol. 1, book 4, chap. 3, 238–43.
33 Emile Simpson, War from the Ground Up: Twenty-First-Century Combat as Politics (London: Hurst, 2012), 15.
holds that “all wars are defined by one basic, unifying feature: combat or at least the possibility of combat.”34 Antulio J. Echevarria II, too, explicitly sees “On War [as] a combat-centric theory of war.”35 Clausewitz defines tactics as the conduct of individual combats, while strategy is their use.36 And yet, despite the primacy of combat in On War, Strachan remarks that “Clausewitz barely mentioned tactics in On War.”37 This omission is complicated by the fact that “strategic success [is] conditional on tactical success, [such] that tactics lead and even dominate strategy.”38 Extending this dyad to include policy, Anders Engberg-Pedersen and Martin Kornberger frame the relationship between tactics and policy as “how that which is possible shapes action and how action delimits what is imagined as possible.”39 The possibilities are delineated by tactics, while that which is desired is determined by policy.40 Without Guide to Tactics, a reading of On War has not been conditioned on what is possible. This error represents a fundamental misunderstanding between tactics and strategy. In many ways, those who enact strategy believe that they are abstracted away from the tactics, beyond the dirty work of warfare. But that is not true. Strategy resides in the interface between political desires and tactical attempts, uniting the two but bounded by their scope.41 In fact, the relationship between the texts Guide to Tactics and On War mimics the relationship between tactics and strategy. Guide to Tactics is a theory of the
34 Sibylle Scheipers, On Small War: Carl von Clausewitz and People’s War (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018), 1, https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198799047.001.0001.
35 Antulio J. Echevarria II, “Combat, War’s only Means,” in Clausewitz and Contemporary War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 141, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso /9780199231911.001.0001.
36 Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, vol. 1, book 2, chap. 1, 86.
37 Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 117.
38 Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 117.
39 Anders Engberg-Pedersen and Martin Kornberger, “Reading Clausewitz, Reimagining the Practice of Strategy,” Strategic Organization 1, no. 13 (June 2019): 8, https://doi.org /10.1177/1476127019854963. See also Simpson, War from the Ground Up, 116.
40 Engberg-Pedersen and Kornberger, “Reading Clausewitz, Reimagining the Practice of Strategy,” 8.
41 Engberg-Pedersen and Kornberger, “Reading Clausewitz, Reimagining the Practice of Strategy,” 7. See also Olivia Garard, “The Interface: Reestablishing the Relationship Between Tactics and Politics,” War Room, 20 August 2020.
combat; On War is a theory of its use. Both must be instigated and guided by policy.
The insights Clausewitz gleaned from his study of combat in Guide to Tactics he settled within the very fabric of On War and then extended as he widened his lens from combat to war, in which combat transpires.42 The “philosophical-dialectical method” with which Clausewitz constructed On War, and which is particularly acute in the relationship between war and policy, is at work, too, in his exploration of the nature of combat.43 For one, the relationship between tactics and strategy, as Strachan rightly notes, is the dialectic found in “the central books of On War.”44 Next, Clausewitz investigates the interaction between what is possible (tactics) and what is desired (policy), which “resolves itself in new and more complex questions and paradoxes.”45 These dialectical interactions both compose strategy and pose for strategy the question of what it seeks to sort out. How to balance the art of the possible at the behest of the desired is what On War sought to unravel, with Guide to Tactics, as an attempt to theoretically articulate that possible, embedded at its core. What therefore differentiates Guide to Tactics most among Clausewitz’s works is how it situates itself in relation to On War. In many ways, it serves as its inverse. Given that On War functions to describe the relationship of war to politics, Guide to Tactics describes the relationship of tactics to war. Strategy— the interface between policy and tactics—infuses Guide to Tactics with its purpose and initiative, limited, as we know from On War, by the extent of policy. To understand war requires analysis on both sides of the interface. That means a balanced understanding between On War and Guide to Tactics is necessary. On War expanded Guide to Tactics’s immediacy of combat to war as a whole. Yet, a reading of On War without the grounding in the logic and limits of combat offered by Guide to Tactics is incom-
42 Scheipers, On Small War, 37.
43 Scheipers, On Small War, 37.
44 Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 107.
45 Cormier, War as Paradox, 19–20.
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