What is War? II
What is war?
My definition is an expansion of one of Buonaparte’s military maxims:
Maxim XVI: It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.
War is a strategy that seeks to make the enemy conform to our political desires when it is contrary to what they would do if they had the political freedom to choose and sufficient knowledge about our true motives.
This definition is broader than Carl von Clausewitz’s definition of war in Book I Chapter I of On War:
War is nothing but a duel on a large scale. Countless duels go to make up war, but a picture of the whole can be formed by imagining a pair of wrestlers. Each tries through physical force to compel the other to do his will; his immediate aim is to throw his opponent in order to make him incapable of further resistance.
War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.
Force, to counter opposing force, equips itself with the inventions of art and science…Force – that is physical force, for moral force has no existence save as expressed in the state and the law-is thus the means of war; to impose our will on the enemy is its object. To secure that object we must render the enemy powerless; and that, in theory, is the true aim of warfare.
The means of war in Clausewitz’s definition is physical violence – the use of physical force and the threat thereof to deny freedom. Clausewitz repeatedly reinforces his point that “[t]here is only one means in war: combat”:
Essentially war is fighting, for fighting is the only effective principle in the manifold activities generally designated as war. Fighting, in turn, is a trial of moral and physical forces through the medium of the latter. Naturally moral strength must not be excluded, for psychological forces exert a decisive influence on the elements involved in war.
The means must be physical violence for the “activities generally designated as war” to be war but that violence must be subject to the dictates of politics:
War…is an act of policy. Were it a complete, untrammeled, absolute manifestation of violence…war would of its own independent will usurp the place of policy the moment policy had brought it into being; it would then drive policy out of office and rule by the laws of its own nature, very much like a mine that can explode only in the manner or direction predetermined by the setting…War is a pulsation of violence, variable in strength and therefore variable in the speed with which it explodes and discharges its energy. War moves on its goal with varying speeds; but it always lasts long enough for influence to be exerted on the goal and for its own course to be changed in one way or another—long enough…to remain subject to the action of a superior intelligence.
Kautilya accepts Clausewitz’s subordination of war to a political object but broadens his definition of the means of war beyond physical violence. If Clausewitz’s spectrum of war can have “all degrees of importance and intensity, ranging from a war of extermination down to simple armed observation”, Kautilya’s spectrum of war is much broader:
- war by counsel: waging war through diplomatic means
- open war: waging war through conventional military means
- secret war: waging war through irregular military means
- silent war: waging a war through covert military means
Roger Boesche, author of The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and his Arthashastra, describes the more “peaceful” war by counsel:
Kautilya assumed that he lived in a world of foreign relations in which one either conquered or suffered conquest…Diplomacy was just another weapon used in the prolonged warfare that was always either occurring or being planned for…Kautilya argued that diplomacy is really a subtle act of war, a series of actions taken to weaken an enemy and gain advantages for oneself, all with an eye toward eventual conquest. A nation’s foreign policy should always consist of preliminary movements toward war…In Kautilya’s foreign policy, even during a time of diplomacy and negotiated peace, a king should still be “striking again and again” in secrecy.
Open war is the form of war Clausewitz described, though he also described elements of secret war, one of two forms of war (the other being silent war) that Kautilya describes that involve little or none of the physical violence Clausewitz argued was indispensable. Boesch sums up these three, emphasizing silent war:
[S]ilent war is a kind of fighting that no other thinker I know of has discussed. Silent war is a kind of warfare with another kingdom in which the king and his ministers—and unknowingly, the people—all act publicly as if they were at peace with the opposing kingdom, but all the while secret agents and spies are assassinating important leaders in the other kingdom, creating divisions among key ministers and classes, and spreading propaganda and disinformation. According to Kautilya, “Open war is fighting at the place and time indicated; creating fright, sudden assault, striking when there is error or a calamity, giving way and striking in one place, are types of concealed warfare; that which concerns secret practices and instigations through secret agents is the mark of silent war.” In silent warfare, secrecy is paramount, and, from a passage quoted earlier, the king can prevail only by “maintaining secrecy when striking again and again.” This entire concept of [silent] war was apparently original with Kautilya.
The fundamental problem with using a narrower definition of the means of war like that used by Clausewitz is that the enemy who you want to “do your will” may attack you with means of war that you not only can’t see but, even worse, don’t believe in. This makes war an arms race in definitions.
(Read part I here.)
