Carl Von Clausewitz (1790 – 1831) he was a Prussian military specialist in battle strategy and author of the most famous treatise on the subject of war in the West: “On War”, or “On War” (from the German vom kriege), published in 1832. Clausewitz became known for a definition of war which was widespread but poorly understood. It is the phrase: “War is the continuation of politics by other means”.
To better understand Clausewitz's definition, it is necessary to understand the context in which he developed it (taking into consideration the fact that he was an experienced military and, in addition, a strategist) and the other definitions that are distributed to the throughout the first chapter of the aforementioned work, like this: “War is therefore an act of violence intended to force the adversary to submit to the our will”.
One of the most impressive events in the history of modern warfare was the Battle of Valmy, which took place in 1792, in which, for the first time, the French revolutionary army managed to win in an extraordinary way. This fact impressed great personalities of the time, such as the German writer Johann Goethe.
The very advent of a revolutionary army made up of citizens rather than mercenaries and warrior aristocrats was all too impressive. This model army was the war machine of Napoleon Bonaparte's empire for the next two decades. It was in this context that Clausewitz was found, who became part of the Prussian army at the time when it was fighting Napoleon's expansion. The sheer violence and strategic proportions that the Napoleonic wars required produced a veritable obsession in Clausewitz. The integration between politics and war, as he expressed it in his famous definition, whose only difference for him was only in the means used, came from the understanding he had of the transformation of the concept of war from the formation of the national army French.
To the full extent that later wars took, like the Warfranc-Prussian, of the 1870s, and the FirstWarWorld, started in 1914, the so-called nationalist wars, whose scope and potential for destruction were enormous, were somehow intuited by Clausewitz in his work. His understanding of the violent essence of war, of the fallacy of aristocratic honor that permeated the concept of war until then, is fundamental to understanding his own definition. Below, in the words of the Prussian strategist himself, is a paragraph where his definition of war was refined:
"War, then, is just a true chameleon, which modifies its nature a little in each concrete case, but it is also, as a whole phenomenon and relatively to the tendencies that predominate in it, a surprising trinity in which is found, above all, the original violence of its element, hatred and animosity, which must be considered as a blind natural impulse, then the game of probabilities and chance, which make it a free activity of the soul, and, finally, its subordinate nature as an instrument of politics through which it belongs to pure reason.” (CLAUSEWITZ, Carl Von. Of war. São Paulo: Editora WMF Martins Fontes, 2010, p.30).
This trinity, "violence, hatred and animosity", pointed out by the author, which extends from pure war to other means, such as politics, and vice versa, is the most complex and most realistic in terms of understanding what war is among Western authors and is among the great war treaties of history, such as Chinese stratagems and Sun's "Art of War" Tzu.
*Image credits: Shutterstock and Galyamin Sergej
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/guerras/o-conceito-guerra-clausewitz.htm
