Relevance of Clausewitz's theory of war on modern wars

[Petrucci]

As title says. I would like to hear your opinions on this topic.

[KEA]

Which theory in particular?

[Ecthelion]

I think he's referring to the over-arching theme on "total war".
That’s the one which has come to define both world wars.

And in response I would say: it still applies, but in a very different way.
The entire population will still participate in any major war. However, it will not be by being drafted or having car factories turn out tanks.

Modern wars are fought with highly specialized assets. A modern car factory cannot be converted to produce modern battle tanks. Modern battle tanks can’t be assembled an assembly line. The same is true for all key frontline fighting vehicles and aircraft.

A typical modern office clerk cannot feasibly be trained to operate modern military equipment, or participate in modern light infantry operations.

In the time that it takes to convert a car factory to a tank factory and an office clerk to a infantryman, the war would already be over.

Modern wars will be fought with only the assets the nations have on hand at the outbreak of the war. They won’t have time to replace their units before the conflict is already decided.

But…

That is not to say that civilians will not participate. They will participate, in fact, they already are participating.

The US and China are already at war. Russia is already at war with NATO. Wars are no longer just matters of exchanges of bullets and bombs. It’s defined by trade wars, cyber wars, soft power cultural wars.
And in these wars, we are all participants and victims.

[hellheaven1987]

A typical modern office clerk cannot feasibly be trained to operate modern military equipment, or participate in modern light infantry operations.

Only some areas would require years of training, otherwise nope, most can be trained in three months.

[Ecthelion]

Only some areas would require years of training, otherwise nope, most can be trained in three months.

To be what? Cannon fodder?
It will take 3 months just to get the average American office drone in shape to run with full kit.

Modern infantrymen all need to highly trained men, professionals. We're long passed the age of mass conscription into poorly marching infantry divisions to man some line in the steppe.

[hellheaven1987]

Modern infantrymen all need to highly trained men, professionals. We're long passed the age of mass conscription into poorly marching infantry divisions to man some line in the steppe.

Or so we believe, like our ancestors of different time period.

History has already proven again and again only a balance between quantity and quality works; professionals are needed for critical points, but to hold the line low quality troops are enough.

[Ecthelion]

Or so we believe, like our ancestors of different time period.

History has already proven again and again only a balance between quantity and quality works; professionals are needed for critical points, but to hold the line low quality troops are enough.

No, they're really not.

Cannon fodder take as much to supply as a SEAL. It's not as if cannon fodder eat less.

Every soldier on the ground is both an asset and a liability. These days, unless you're a professional, you're more a liability than an asset.

But that's not the point of the thread. So let's not derail it any further. The OP asked a rather good question.

[Condottiere 40K]

Depends on the game you're playing. The Daeshii certainly would like more cannon fodder to feed to the Americans, since it serves both as filler, friction and propaganda purposes.

[KEA]

It will take 3 months just to get the average American office drone in shape to run with full kit.

OK, "average Americans" of today are most likely completely unsuited for military service, after all we hear of the fitness level from there

The average German twen, for example, certainly is in a physical condition to start military training the next day. When I was 20 back in 1990, I didn't do any sports - and only knew a handful of people being active in sport more than say twice year at all. This didn't prevent the army from drafting the males of my generation for at least some basic infantry training.
Nowadays I hardly know anyone between 20 and 50 years of age, both male and female, who doesn't do at least some sports on a regular, minimum weekly, base. So I would guess that if someone came up with the idea of mass conscription in Germany tomorrow you would find more than 50% of all men and women between 20 and 30 years of age fit enough to start standard military training without the need of additional fitness training before. And I guess the same turns true for most European countries.

Modern infantrymen all need to highly trained men, professionals.

No. You don't need a commando training to drive a truck, guard a facility or repair stuff - and 90% of all soldiers in modern armies are no fighting personal. Even in combat units you don't desperately need to be able to run 20 kilometers uphill with 40 KGs of baggage. Specialists need to be able to because they are required to carry around every piece of possibly needed equipment because they neither have to access to regular supply nor vehicles. This doesn't apply to normal front line units of course.

[hellheaven1987]

Cannon fodder take as much to supply as a SEAL. It's not as if cannon fodder eat less.

Cannon fodder is much cheaper than SEAL however, and you don't need SEAL to hold the line.

Every soldier on the ground is both an asset and a liability. These days, unless you're a professional, you're more a liability than an asset.

Yes but there is a limit how much space a soldier can hold, and that does not change whether you are elite or not. There is, also, how much combat hours a soldier can be deployed effectively, and as John Keegan points out, the effective time would not change regardless how much training a person has.

But that's not the point of the thread. So let's not derail it any further. The OP asked a rather good question.

And you rather give a bad answer.

[Condottiere 40K]

There's the other argument about placing soldiers who have leadership ability into elite units, instead of furthering them into NCO ranks to act as leaders for regular units, thereby diluting their effectiveness.

[hellheaven1987]

There's the other argument about placing soldiers who have leadership ability into elite units

You cannot have an unit with all its members are leaders though.

[Cyclops]

Re: the time it takes to get a grunt in the line, I have heard an interview with an Australian Federal Police officer who stated young men in Australia have been "radicalised" (ie accessed an ISIS website for the first time, read the material and made the decision to participate in Syria) in under a week, travelled to the conflict area within another week, and been killing in under three months.

This sort of warfare is clearly not "total" in the classic Clausewitzian sense in that whoever funds ISIS is not making overt total commitment of assets, rather using cats-paws. However they are seeking another sort of "total war", with a total transformation of society from diverse identities to a culturally homogenous Caliphate. I wonder who the Caliph will be?

So Ecthelion makes fair points about asset development, deployment and the nature of war, total and otherwise.

The military state of play for the US is definitely similar to the Spanish in the pre-Thirty Years war phase, with a single superpower (US/Spain) facing intransigent local religious fanatics (Jihadists/Dutch) with frenemies and enemies circling (Russia, Iran/France, Sweden).

Clausewitz of course sought to explain the change from Cabinet warfare of the 18th cenury with civilised limited rational aims, vs the sweeping transformative tides of Revolutionary/Napoleonic war.

War never changes, but when the Taliban nation attacked, everything chaged.

[anant]

Clausewitz's theories have in the last century achieved a reputation essentially because of reccomendations (many of them germans) by 'great' soldiers...few people actually read the entire text of "on war". Those who do, and are clear-headed enough to set aside the hype and actually dwell into the text soon realize that the theories are extremely dated and drawn from a very narrow experience of war (estentially early 19th century European warfare). In that sense, Clausewitz's 'total war' theories are somewhat like Sun Tzu's sayings today...great for using as blurbs on Total War games, but not much use tactically in real life situations of battle. Some Chinese conferred a similar status to Mao's nonsensical little red book of meaningless nothings. A wider discussion of the invalidity of Clausewitz's theories in the age of thermo-nuclear weapons requires way too much space than would be welcome on a net-forum. I'd advise those interested to read the (quite excellent) 'History of warfare' by John Keegan for a wider and more up-to-date assessment of humanity and war.

[Turtler]

Personally, I think Clausewitz is still fairly relevant, at least when adapted. Problem is that some of the fissures that have been in his theories since the industrial revolution are starting to pop up. For instance, the decisive battle might well not be a single battle fought at one point in time in one or even a few days.

Though perhaps it might be, i wouldn't wager it.

What anant said is basically true about Clausewitz, albeit I think a bit too harsh. Several of his maxims- like War being politics by other means, and the main objective being to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war- are indeed immortal. A lot of other ones have really not aged as well. Likewise Sun Tzu and his seigeophobia (which was so bad and unhelpful his legendary heir Sun Bin had to clarify things because they realized sieges were important and there wasn't anything intrinsically wrong with them). Use With Caution very much applies.

But I still think it has some very choice and relevant words for the modern warscape and politics today., like Sun Tzu. In particular, this struck me as very worthwhile to keep in mind regarding the people I like to call the International Law fundamentalists, who rule out reciprocity in any way and treat it almost as holy writ.

As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act likewise. By such means the former dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed to extremities, to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of counteracting force on each side.

This is the way in which the matter must be viewed; and it is to no purpose, and even acting against one's own interest, to turn away from the consideration of the real nature of the affair, because the coarseness of its elements excites repugnance.

@Ecthelion

Your post strikes me as being mixed with some very old and very seductive illusions, mixed in with some incoherency.

In the time that it takes to convert a car factory to a tank factory and an office clerk to a infantryman, the war would already be over.

Modern wars will be fought with only the assets the nations have on hand at the outbreak of the war. They won’t have time to replace their units before the conflict is already decided.

But…

That is not to say that civilians will not participate. They will participate, in fact, they already are participating.

The US and China are already at war. Russia is already at war with NATO. Wars are no longer just matters of exchanges of bullets and bombs. It’s defined by trade wars, cyber wars, soft power cultural wars.
And in these wars, we are all participants and victims.

And you don't see any contradiction between the former and the latter parts of your statement?

While I agree the West is already at war with a few threats (the Islamists, Russia, and China), the problem with your argument is that it states we are already at war *in the breath after* it says that by the time that nations will be able to retrain and rehabilitate their forces, it will already be over.

Uhm?

If we want to expand the definition of war to include the conflict with Russia, China, etc, then we will have to acknowledge that we have seen the war go on for a long, long, long time. At least last decade and possibly more. The time WWII took was already passed between when Russia invaded Georgia and now. China has not done anything mind bogglingly new in the last several years.

And in that time, need I say that the US tooled up and has fought the generation of Iraq and Afghanistan? In the navy this isn't particularly true, if anything it is downsizing> But at least a generation of personnel- especially in the other services- have come and gone since then. And our technology/gear generations are often longer than-say- the service life of the Stuart on the front lines.

So you are at a fork. Either you admit that this allows more than enough time for the combatants to ready themselves, build up a war machine, and rebuild it if need be after losses, or you drop the definition that our present struggle with Russia/China/North Korea/etc is a war. For various reasons, I'd choose the former. But let me get into that.

I think he's referring to the over-arching theme on "total war".
That’s the one which has come to define both world wars.

And in response I would say: it still applies, but in a very different way.
The entire population will still participate in any major war. However, it will not be by being drafted or having car factories turn out tanks.

Modern wars are fought with highly specialized assets. A modern car factory cannot be converted to produce modern battle tanks. Modern battle tanks can’t be assembled an assembly line. The same is true for all key frontline fighting vehicles and aircraft.

A typical modern office clerk cannot feasibly be trained to operate modern military equipment, or participate in modern light infantry operations.

In the time that it takes to convert a car factory to a tank factory and an office clerk to a infantryman, the war would already be over.

Modern wars will be fought with only the assets the nations have on hand at the outbreak of the war. They won’t have time to replace their units before the conflict is already decided.

This strikes me as an amazingly overblown view of the obstacles making a modern or even semi-modern army has. At its' core, I think this view owes to reading way, way too much into the first Desert Storm or things like it, and a sort of view of the "Home For Christmas/short war" view.

No. As Hellorheaven stated, it takes a few months to train the average Western, highly trained and high tech soldier up. As the Reserves prove almost every time they are called up. If you're removing some of those, the time shoots way down. You don't need years to train the average grunt, and you never have. Just look at some of the figures for military training today (believe me, I have).

Likewise, while dedicated military producers are far more powerful, those tend to be linked to the average conglomerate owning a car factory, and bids still go to the lowest bidder. And *A Lot* of the components of the average tank or vehicle share a lot with the average car. Remember the Humvee and how many civilians use it?

The problem is that no first-rate, modern, Western nation has ever really gone on a total war footing recently, not even the Israelis or Indians. Certainly not since Reagan's armaments glut in the 80's. So we do not have a very clear idea idea of what that would look like. Though I do imagine that it would involve a combination of gearing up massively on one hand and loosening standards on the latter. Maybe not every Abrams/other tank in WWIII will have all of the finer-tuned circuitry like night fighting when they're shipped out, so long as some of them are. And so forth. But that doesn't mean there wouldn't be a military by any means. The Ukrainians have made sizable progress in arming up just from a year or so at it. It just might not be the sort of ultra-elite formation the Americans/British/French/Australians/etc. are now.

The truth is that the Iran-Iraq War, and standoffs between India/Pakistan and Israel/the anti-Israeli Muslim powers have gone on for years and years with all the demands and benefits of modern technology. In Subsaharan Africa the conflict over the Eastern Congo has been dragging on even in the modern world with plenty of different outside forces intervening (Multinational corporates, multinational peacekeepers, etc). So the idea that the modern world somehow makes us immune to protracted war is false.

That doesn't mean war can't be decided very quickly. Just ask the veterans of Desert Storm. But the point still remains. And assuming that it *will* and no longer making plans for it is suicide.

To be what? Cannon fodder?
It will take 3 months just to get the average American office drone in shape to run with full kit.

Please.

I'm probably the "average American" that you might speak of. In that I am significantly less healthy than the average, weigh a ton (less of an exaggeration than the norm), and am largely lardy. If I were subjected to the military screening we have today, I might well get drummed out for all kinds of health reasons. And even then I still walk or run several miles every day and can move well over a hundred pounds, and am not suffering form any immediately life threatening problems.

So if you put a gun or angry drill sergeant to my head, you could probably get me to hoof it with the average BDU and field kit in a week or so. It wouldn't take much more to do that for most, especially if they are like most Americans and are healthier than me. And so on.

Assuming things will be "Over by Christmas" and basing your actions around it is is generally a bad idea. Even if you legitimately think it is or it actually will be.

Certainly when it comes to assuming that you need fully trained professionals to drive a vehicle(like most of the West does nowerdays...) or hoof a pack. And it's not like we haven't had centuries of people and doctrines going into figuring out "how do we do this?"

The military state of play for the US is definitely similar to the Spanish in the pre-Thirty Years war phase, with a single superpower (US/Spain) facing intransigent local religious fanatics (Jihadists/Dutch) with frenemies and enemies circling (Russia, Iran/France, Sweden).

I keep hearing this comparison pop up form time to time, but I'm not really convinced, and not just because I find the comparisons unflattering to the US and the anti-Impreial side (that isn't important).

For one, painting the Spanish as the sole superpower is something I find dubious. Even at the height of their power the French and Turks were both able to contest with them plus their Germanic cousins (more on that later) on a more or less even field as Great Powers, even if not always even in results. If anything, the Spanish and especially Austrians only started making gains against the Turks that would last after they more or less lost the centuries of struggle with France in the West. This is in comparison to today, where Iran/Russia/North Korea/China have not actually risked taking on a US army in the last half century and would probably not survive the experience very well. (Especially the former three).

Secondly, besides being religious fanatics only dubiously (the Dutch were immensely secular for this era, and were concerned by hostile billeting and economic policies as well as religious policies), the Dutch were not like the Jihadists. They put conventional military forces into the field against the Habsburgs and held their own on land and actually dominated the naval war. In contrast to the Jihadists. If Bin Laden tried to build a star fort or its' modern equivalent in Tora Bora or Kabul, it would've been flattened very quickly while the Spanish couldn't even *approach* many of the Northern Dutch cities.

Their threat was very much a conventional, economic, and ideological one. The Jihadists have maybe the last one, and that doesn't really cut it well. If we wanted to talk about Vietnam that might be more applicable, but it's not.

Thirdly, funding. Especially military funding. France, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, England, etc. were all conventional military threats to Habsburg and especially Spanish dominance, in large part because they were capable of putting together armies that could rival or exceed at least the local Habsburg troops and be at least as well equipped and trained as them (within reason). That coupled with the fact that Spanish fiscal policy was like falling into a chasm because of runaway inflation and zero control, even in comparison to my view of present fiscal policy (which is not positive.) This was a major reason why the Habsburgs ultimately lost the Thirty Years (to the extent they did anyway) because Dutch, French, and British money managed to help keep them in the fight.

In comparison, the only nations that really approach the US's military budget in terms of quality and technology are those directly subsidized by it, and it still dwarfs pretty much all comers put together. Its' likely OPFOR (Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China, North Korea, Indonesia, etc) are pretty much all even worse economically than they are. Of those I'd probably say only China and Indonesia can approximate a France/Sweden/Netherlands level threat conventionally.

Fourthly, allies. "Spain" was only half of the Habsburg Empire, the other being the Holy Roman/German part of it, and for all of Spanish power it desperately relied on cooperation with its' cousins in order to maintain its' hold because it had essentially no real independent allies outside of a few German states and some Italian satellites dependent on it. In comparison, the US's coalition building is well known even when it's supposedly acting as the great hooligan. Even at the height of its' supposed unilaterism and aggression with the invasion of Iraq again, it went in with the support of forty nations and some degree of investment from them (even if it was often token).

I'd be hard pressed to name half that many independent realms on the Habsburg/Imperial side of the Thirty Years or the Italian Wars. And while a lot of them are marginal (like Tonga), a lot of others are not. And some of them are even ones nominally in Russia's sphere of influence (like Central Asia's nations).

Finally and perhaps most interestingly, neither Habsburg side gave much of a damn about humanitarian concerns or PR. They were perfectly happy outright erasing entire cities and districts if that was what they wanted to do to send a message, and the idea of restricted RoE was Not Natural to them (and I can say similar about most militaries of the period). Compare/contrast to the US. Which at the very least makes a far more elaborate show of trying and agonizing over it.

If anything, I would probably compare the US in today's world to France before the Thirty Years, for various reasons. But i've gone on too far.

I don't want to sound overly biased or apologist for the US. Even though I am an enthusiastic supporter, it is plenty capable of being imperious and ambitious as any. I just do not see it as a very good fit.

[Cyclops]

.... I just do not see it as a very good fit.

Yeah fair enough, it was off the cuff comparison to say the least. And thanks for correcting my use of ahistorical shorthand, you're right, I did mean "the Hapsburg polity united in the person of Charles V (who identified above all as Burgundian lol)" and not Spain.

But i've gone on too far.

Why? Are you Richelieu? You've let your cards show Monsieur le Cardinal, your plan to establish French US dominance is in the open now!

[Ecthelion]

World War II was the last and greatest expression of C-dawg's "total war" theory as he had imagined it. Literally every man, woman, and child in the USSR pulled their own weight and more to secure complete victory.

But the end of the war also marked the end of Clausewitz's relevance, at least in the original sense that he envisioned in his time. Nuclear weapons make conventional "total war" a non-option. If the US and USSR went all Napoleon and Alexander I on each other, none of us would be alive today.

The further specialization of war-making into something almost completely removed from the civilian world makes even a conventional major powers war a completely different proposition than in 1939.

But as I said in my original post, this does not mean there isn't a relevant modern interpretation of "total war". "War", despite what Solid Snake says, does change.

In the modern era, wars are fought over the spaces and battlefields that simply were inconceivable in Clausewitz's day. And in these wars of culture, economics, and cyberspace, we are all combatants.

So yes, Clausewitz is still with us. His core idea that all national citizens are ultimately contributors to the war effort rings true.

[Turtler]

World War II was the last and greatest expression of C-dawg's "total war" theory as he had imagined it.

Greatest I agree with. Last lesso, but close enough.

A lot of his cabinet wars and their politics have a number of parallels with more recent ones in a couple of dimensions. Comparing and contrasting some of the diplomacy, politics, logistics, and of course combat behind the Congo War or even the war in Korea with the wars he served in make sme skeptical.

Literally every man, woman, and child in the USSR pulled their own weight and more to secure complete victory.

Since I am a bit of a pendant...

A: It wasn't limited to the USSR.

B: Considering Krulik and Buddyony both count as "men in the USSR", I would not go that far.

But the end of the war also marked the end of Clausewitz's relevance, at least in the original sense that he envisioned in his time.

I'm more ambivalent about this.

Nuclear weapons make conventional "total war" a non-option.

In that case, it's time we phone Delhi and Islamabad, I'm pretty sure they'd appreciate the news considering some of what they've been doing since they both developed nukes.

While we're at it, we can ask what the heck happened to hundreds of thousands of people in Biafra, Khuzestan, and the Congo in between asking why our staff spend so much time and effort drawing up plans and talking about conventional non-nuclear war between nuclear armed states.

The truth is that nuclear weapons are a massive stake raiser, but they do not rule out conventional warfare altogether. Count the number of times India, Pakistan, and China have fought conventional military conflicts against each other in spite of all of them having nuclear weapons.

It is amazingly risky and invites escalation beyond what anybody save some of the apocalypse cults would want, but it is all too possible to pursue conventional military strategies in the mushroom's shadow. We know that because it's been done before.

If the US and USSR went all Napoleon and Alexander I on each other, none of us would be alive today.

Not necessarily. If they limited themselves to strict Napoleon and Alexander I (or even very, very limited use of nukes) it is quite possible that would be different. And there's a reason why it was one of the most studied topics in the Cold War even with ever more advanced technologies coming to the fore and strategies centered around nukes.

The key problem is that it puts a very dangerous temptation into those waging it. The temptation to use them ("In a limited fashion maybe, probably, I guess...") if you have them, especially if you're on the ropes; the temptation to retaliate if one side uses them at all. And the temptation to just click the buttons and throw the switches if defeat looms and you just will not accept it.

But that in no way means it is Impossible, though. Or that accounting for such things is not important. It has happened before, as shown by the fact that the Indian Subcontinent is not a smoking, radioactive wreck. And failure to account for it could well be fatal since someone's so worried about escalation they miss the conventional jab going straight for their chest.

The further specialization of war-making into something almost completely removed from the civilian world makes even a conventional major powers war a completely different proposition than in 1939.

I find this diagnosis very, very sketchy. It's probably far more removed than it has been on the norm throughout history by a very high degree, but you're assuming that A: it will stay that way even in the face of a grinding Great/Super power war, B: That this is unprecedented in history, and C: that it is common the world over.

None of which can be proven under strict scrutiny, and which A is maybe the most arguable.

For one, the entire reason the French Foreign Legion and the peacetime Victorian militaries in France and Britain were formed was with the idea of keeping the bloody foreign wars isolated from the civilian population at large. The French in particular formed the Legion of Lost Souls in an attempt to do "something useful" with foreigners in France so that good Frenchmen would not have a problem. This did not hold much water when the Prussians came calling in 1870, nevermind 1914.

Likewise, the Imperial Chinese (and to a lesser extent Tsarist Russians) tended to keep the military and war making dimensions of their policy almost completely separate from the civilian population. In China the learned bureaucracy and most of society scorned soldiers as being marginally better than merchants (for the Chinese) and militaristic rulers/administrations were very much the exception. In Russia the conscription was treated as an outright funeral by the average peasant because of the dismal chances they would ever come back into civilian life again.

But none of that changed the fact that the same governments, the same infrastructure on the home front, and the same people were ultimately managing and feeding between both the military front and the civilian front. And unsurprisingly when things became stressed, the partition tended to fall apart and bleed together.

In fact, Old Frederic of Prussia himself actually wanted a similar division. Between Prussian civilians and taxpayers on one side, and foreign/mercenary soldiers on the other. It's just that they eventually realized that

A: There weren't enough mercenaries alone, and

B: Those Saxon troops he conscripted after he invaded their country and forced their surrender turned out to be not so eager to fight for the guy who invaded their country and conscripted them.

For C, again, it's flat out disproven. India and Pakistan are just the two most obvious cases of nuclear powers fighting conventional war, but that doesn't include actions by other nuclear states against each other (Russia v. China, etc), against other non nuke states (Israel period, China in Vietnam, etc), or of non nuclear actors against each other (most conventional wars since 1945, period). In spite of the shadow of WMD far more numerous and devastating than anything before save maybe plagues and whole new battlescapes being opened up like the sky, space, and the web, apparently the good old fashioned infantry-n-funding dynamic is still being used.

And not just by poor nobodies, but by people who are rich, or otherwise have actions to nukes.

Just look at what happened when a few thousand Pakistani troops tried to breach the Line of Contact in the eighties; huge swaths of India mobilized to support the "war" effort, and it played a part over why Pakistan was defeated in that conflict..

So honestly, saying this sort of stuff strikes me very much like the same geniuses who argued after WWII that there would never be another amphibious landing again and therefore it was time to scrap all the Amphib Transports because Nukes would take care of everything.

This coming in just a few years before Inchon.

Or the people who argued that guns on jet fighters were obsolete because everything would be taken care of by missiles.

Changing with the times is essential, but we shouldn't be quick to assume that all the lessons and tools of a previous era are no longer relevant and should be discarded because they fell on the other side of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That runs the risk of getting so over complicated and self-deferential that it leaves you vulnerable to the cave man who just clubs you over the head with a stick of wood or a heavy rock. And considering we *still* use horse cavalry on some level (especially for very rugged terrain), I don't see how we should ignore lessons far closer to home.

But as I said in my original post, this does not mean there isn't a relevant modern interpretation of "total war". "War", despite what Solid Snake says, does change.

In the modern era, wars are fought over the spaces and battlefields that simply were inconceivable in Clausewitz's day.

Agreed.

The main problem I have is that you seem to assume it is changing into something that is so utterly alien from itself and its' origins that some tried and true methods from decades or centuries are no longer relevant. Which is a very damning claim, and requires very damning evidence.

Which is why I am still waiting for how you figure that the Military has its' own training timelines wrong, how they can't turn someone into an average soldier after three months, and how you have to be a highly trained professional to be a REMF driving a truck.

And in these wars of culture, economics, and cyberspace, we are all combatants.

So yes, Clausewitz is still with us. His core idea that all national citizens are ultimately contributors to the war effort rings true.

I agree. I just think that isn't only where he rings in, and that your claims that a war will be finished before the time anybody will be able to build up or train is not supportable.

In this CRITICAL three different operations of the mind may be observed.

First, the historical investigation and determining of doubtful facts. This is properly historical research, and has nothing in common with theory.

Secondly, the tracing of effects to causes. This is the REAL CRITICAL INQUIRY; it is indispensable to theory, for everything which in theory is to be established, supported, or even merely explained, by experience can only be settled in this way.
Thirdly, the testing of the means employed. This is criticism, properly speaking, in which praise and censure is contained. This is where theory helps history, or rather, the teaching to be derived from it.


In these two last strictly critical parts of historical study, all depends on tracing things to their primary elements, that is to say, up to undoubted truths, and not, as is so often done, resting half-way, that is, on some arbitrary assumption or supposition.

Yeah fair enough, it was off the cuff comparison to say the least. And thanks for correcting my use of ahistorical shorthand, you're right, I did mean "the Hapsburg polity united in the person of Charles V (who identified above all as Burgundian lol)" and not Spain.

Interesting, and understandable. Though that strikes me as significantly before "before the Thirty Years."

Why? Are you Richelieu? You've let your cards show Monsieur le Cardinal, your plan to establish French US dominance is in the open now!

Non, Monsiour Cyclops.

For starters, "Establish"? B)

[Ecthelion]

Nuclear weapons are the most paradoxical weapons ever made. The hydrogen bomb is perhaps the first weapon in history that was invented so it didn't have to be used. These are weapons made to ensure that wars between the great powers never go full "total war" in the World Wars sense of the term.

And that's precisely what made Clausewitz book so exceptional. He is the first person in Europe at least to propose in writing the idea that nations go to war, not just kings and armies. The ultimate distillation of his theory in the context of the rise of nationalism in his time is that "now that we have nations, we can and should go to war as nations".

Prior to this point, the average civilian took little part or even interest in the wars of states unless it had a direct impact on their lives (which it usually didn't). An English yeoman living through the Hundred Years War, farming peacefully in England, couldn't care less how the war went. But the same is not true for the average Londoner in 1941.

My point is that now civilians are even more involved in the struggle between nations due to new technology. When Russian and Ukrainian nationals attack and hack each other over the course of recent events, this is also a form of war between nations. Everyone is a potential fighter, and everyone is a potential victim. When Americans buy Chinese made products, especially ones made by Chinese firms using American technology, they are also participating in undermining their own nation.
So in that sense, "total war" has actually expanded into the lives of all of us. We are all at war. It's just that most of us don't realize it yet cause there's no bullets and bombs flying.

[Cyclops]

...
Non, Monsiour Cyclops.

For starters, "Establish"? B)

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/l...116-2xoa6.html

Check and mate.