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We recently watched a good movie called Law Abiding Citizen
and in it the protagonist references Von Clausewitz in a threat:

Paraphrasing from memory:

you have no idea of what you are in store for
this thing is going to get biblical, I am talking
about some mean Von Clausewitz shit

I am just curious if any of you military guys or deep thinkers
have read this man's work & would like to share any insights.

The maximum use of force is in no way incompatible
with the simultaneous use of the intellect.

Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted.

War is an extension of politics by other means.

That was a great movie, I highly enjoyed it.

one of clausewitz' key concepts was the role played by friction in war.

In a nutshell, he said armies don't win because of superior strategy, tactics and logistics; they LOSE because their internal friction becomes so great that they collapse.

That is one purpose of strategic bombing: mess up the enemy's factories so that they can't make the weapons and other supplies of war; wreck the transport system so whatever goods and weapons that do get made cannot make it to the front; and basically just wear everybody out.

Another strategic friction generator is small-caliber individual arms because they create more non-fatal wounds per hit than do bigger bore weapons.

Example: In WWI and WWII, US forces used .30-06 rifles, which were designed to kill large game animals in a single shot. Tag a human with one of those and, often, the hydrostatic shock alone was enough to kill you no matter where you got hit (because our bodies are 70 percent water, a bullet going through causes the same kind of "ripples" in tissue that are caused in water by a rock).

Bottom line: you take a piece off the board, but do not create a lot of friction in the enemy.

Let's say 100 guys are coming up the hill at you. You kill two. Now there are 98 guys still coming.

If you WOUND two of them, however, then several other guys have to stop what they're doing and deal with the wounded guys. these wounded guys also impact the whole logistics train farther and farther from the battlefield because they need care.

Also, dead guys don't scream and flop around and cry for their mamas - all of which has a psychological effect on the guys who are still coming up the hill at you.

AND, the army MUST take care of the wounded because if they don't, the guys who are still standing are gonna lose their enthusiasm for going up the hill.

(NOTE: This is what is so hilarious about the morons who say "assault weapons are designed to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible." That is exactly back-asswards: they are designed to WOUND as many peeps as possible...)

Clausewitz was also the primary proponent of total war (which is probably what the Law Abiding Citizen guy was referencing) and most students of military philosophy and history think that had the West paid more attention to Sun-Tzu and less to Clausewitz, we wouldn't have had such amazingly destructive wars.

Sun-Tzu said more and better stuff in thirteen chapters of verse (about 100 pages) than did Clausewitz in his 800+ page tome or whatever it was - although, to be fair to Carl, the problem was that Western military strategists tended only to read the first paragraphs of his chapters, which are generally absolute and narrowly focused, instead of reading the whole chapter, wherein Carl got into nuance and exceptions to the absolutes he stated in his first paragraphs.

In so doing, they justified things such as the firebombing of Tokyo, Hamburg and Dresden (well, the former anyway - the latter was mostly to kill as many refugees as possible so the Allies wouldn't have to feed and house them), and dozens of other engagements large and small where scorched earth practices echoed Carl's absolutels rather than his nuances.

A more recent example is the difference in Afghanistan between Staney McChrystal and David McKiernan. McKiernan was an armored division commander, so he had the total war mindset, which meant he totally supported airstrikes and other massive responses to any assault on any American units, even if was just a few Taliban popping a few caps and there was no significant tactical benefit to be achieved (but a huge strategic risk because killing civilians and blowing down their houses is not good - and engenders disrepect for the Americans because they're claling in jets and 500-pound bombs instead of fighting like men [a big deal to Afghans]).

McChrystal, who replaced him, comes from the spec ops world, which is much more Sun-Tzu focused - and he has prohibited calling in airstrikes except where guys are about to be overrun. Otherwise, they back off and try again another day.



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I agree, Sun-Tzu's work is clear & concise.
I have not read Von Clausewitz's work yet.

I have heard the strategy of injuring instead
of killing your enemy and definitely understand
the valuable psychological edge by inspiring fear.

In Vietnam our group toured a war memorial a
few hours from Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City called
the Cu Chi Tunnels.

They had exhibits showing various booby traps
used as well as descriptions about practices to
scare the enemy such as putting snakes in all
the different pits, trenches, etc.

The snakes need not be venomous to work...
simply falling into a hole, breaking your ankle,
and seeing a strange snake in there with you
was enough to make many scream with fear.


Your comment:

to be fair to Carl, the problem was that Western military strategists
tended only to read the first paragraphs of his chapters, which are
generally absolute and narrowly focused, instead of reading the whole
chapter, wherein Carl got into nuance and exceptions to the absolute
she stated in his first paragraphs.

Jives with the author of the page I cited:


Clausewitz has been called both "the apostle of total war" and "The
preeminent military and political strategist of limited war in modern
times". Both statements are true in a sense, since Clausewitz argued
that war could take on many forms and objectives, depending on the
political and historical context.


....confusion between Clausewitz's "absolute war" and "real war,"
equating the latter very narrowly with "limited war". We're always
puzzled by this very common mix-up. We accept that "absolute war"
has proven to be a difficult concept for many readers to grasp.

....many writers get this philosophical abstraction confused with
"total war" of the 1914-45 variety and think wrongly that this is
Clausewitz's practical prescription for the waging of war.

"Real War," on the other hand, is not an abstraction at all—it is
actually among the simplest concepts in Clausewitz's work. It
means, simply and perhaps too obviously, war as it really occurs
and as we actually experience it—in all its variety. Thus it describes
both wars of very limited political and/or military objectives and wars
of unlimited objectives, even utter annihilation—any form or intensity
of war, in fact, of which we can find a real-world example.

FYI, here's something I found right after my first post, wherein McChrystal elaborates on the notion of standing down instead of blowing things up:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7505770/Interview-General-Stanley-McChrystal.html

<snip>

He spoke to The Daily Telegraph about his plan for revolutionising ways of fighting by focusing on the Afghan people rather than on the Taliban.

"Your security comes from the people," he said. "You don't need to be secured away from the people. You need to be secured by the people. So as you win their support, it's in their interests to secure you, to report IEDs."

This can mean patrolling without armoured vehicles or even flak jackets. It means accepting greater short-term risk – and higher casualties – in the hope of winning a "battle of perceptions and perspectives" that will result in longer-term security.

"If we respond with overwhelming fire to limited small arms fire from a compound we do protect ourselves but we destroy their livelihood and potentially the people," he said.

"Even when we run around in armoured vehicles or personal armour we often send an unintended message that we're more important than they are. If we've got more armour but in reality the people are at more risk they have to question the degree to which we really are protecting them."

<snip>

Do read the whole interview. Very good stuff, and for all of the other clusterfinks DumBHO is imposin on the American people, at least he got it right when he replaced McKiernan with McChrystal.



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