Logic and Grammar: Clausewitz and the Language of War

Christopher Saunders

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“The main lines along which military events progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that continue throughout the war into the subsequent peace. How could it be otherwise?...Is war not just another expression of their thoughts, another form of speech or writing? Its grammar, indeed, may be its own, but not its logic."[1] 

INTRODUCTION

In Book One of On War, Clausewitz introduces the concept of war as “merely the continuation of policy by other means.”[2] This most famous of Clausewitz’s dictums introduces a critical perspective of war as both a tool of grand strategy that is dominated by politics, but also as something that is inherently temporal.[3] War cannot readily be decoupled or isolated from the higher policy context that triggers it, runs through it, and continues after the guns fall silent. This perspective is developed in Book Eight under the assertion that “war is an instrument of policy,” and this provides the opening quote and focus of this article.[4] Book Eight explores the concept of war plans; here Clausewitz draws together the threads of war and policy to weave his observations on the relationship between policy (the logic) and the conduct (or grammar) of war.[5]

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Carl von Clausewitz (Karl Wilhelm Wach/Wikimedia)

Clausewitz’s concepts of grammar and logic have stood the test of time. His dictum that war is indeed “the continuation of policy by other means” holds true today, and while the character of war has evolved, the higher logic and the influence of policy has remained a constant. This article will first address some key definitions, before exploring the concept of logic and grammar as introduced in On War and as they relate to his own experiences. These concepts will then be explored through the prisms of two contrasting case studies: industrialised warfare on the Western Front during the First World War, and the new logic of war in the face of the unprecedented existential threat of the Nuclear Age.

A short note on translations. In the 1976 Howard and Paret translation of On War, the German politik could be translated as both politics and policy.[6] In their translation however, Howard and Paret chose to use policy, while retaining the dual-meaning from the original German and reinforcing that “war is an instrument of policy.”[7] Strachan offers a concise explanation of the term’s dual-meaning in German:

The first is in the sense of ‘policy,’ that is, a specific course of action pursued by an authority that represents a political body, like a government. The second is in the broader sense of ‘politics,’ that is, as the medium, the milieu, or the system or body (as in ‘body politic’), which gives meaning to political activity and from which particular policies emerge.[8]

By extension therefore, discussion of policy in the Howard and Paret translation infers both meanings and accepts the entwined nature of policy and politics as described by Strachan, and as Clausewitz would have understood it in his native tongue. For the purpose of this essay, policy will be used in line with Howard and Paret’s translation, though politics is still frequently used by authors in analysing Clausewitz and is also reflected in quotations used herein. Where used, unless otherwise noted, the intent here is that the two terms are interchangeable.

GRAMMAR AND LOGIC 

In Book One, Clausewitz states that “war is an instrument of policy,” and observes: 

Were it a complete, untrammeled, absolute manifestation of violence (as the pure concept would require), war would of its own independent will usurp the place of policy the moment policy had brought it into being...This, in fact, is the view that has been taken of the matter whenever some discord between policy and the conduct of war has stimulated theoretical distinctions of this kind. But in reality, things are different, and this view is thoroughly mistaken.[9]

Clausewitz outlined the basic tenet of employment of war as he saw it, that it has “its [own] particular rules and its basic principles, the violation of which should not be taken lightly.”[10] War is “governed by reason and controlled by the dictates of policy,” without which its inherent, unrestrained, and escalating violence risks becoming something else entirely.[11] In Book Eight, Strachan and Herberg-Rothe note that Clausewitz continues this concept, identifying “policy as shaping the plan but not the tactics used to implement it: war, as Clausewitz puts it…has its own grammar, if not its own logic.”[12] Importantly, Clausewitz was clear that policy was “not the same as strategy, even if the two were interwoven.”[13] While noting that Clausewitz’s definition of strategy was narrow when compared to modern use (sitting below the level of policy, alongside tactics), Strachan observes that when Clausewitz “concluded that war had its own grammar but not its own logic, he implied that strategy was part of grammar. By contrast policy provided the logic of war, and therefore enjoyed an overarching and determining position which strategy did not.”[14]

Clausewitz’s use of the metaphor of grammar to describe how war is conducted is linked to his understanding of linguistics, where “every language expresses its own unique view of the world.”[15] Herberg-Rothe provides a useful deconstruction of the origins of this metaphor, observing that if one were to look at a particular article in the ‘Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften,’ a well-known work of the period covering Arts and Science, and substitute war for language, much of the content of Clausewitz’s conceptualization of war can be found.[16] In this metaphor of language, Clausewitz questions whether war is not “just…another form of speech or writing,” arguing that political intercourse continues through war and does not end or change its nature when war commences.[17] Clausewitz’s concept of logic as a metaphor for policy is also developed from his understanding of linguistics. In the Clausewitzian concept, language is to thought as war is to policy.[18] Just as grammar may reflect different ways or methods of war based on a unique view of the world, logic’s relationship to grammar reflects language’s relationship to thought: “Thought is more comprehensive than language [and] thought cannot be separated from language…[f]or Clausewitz, politics too is more comprehensive than war.”[19]

In practice, Clausewitz suggested that an effective solution to achieving grammar that reflected logic was for the commander-in-chief to sit as part of the cabinet (that is, to sit within government) so that “the logic of policy could be shaped in conformity with the grammar of war—with war’s true nature.”[20] In this sense, Clausewitz was heavily influenced by his own experience of the French Revolution and pre-industrialised warfare in the Napoleonic era and the logic that drove Napoleon in the wars of 1812 and 1815.[21] As noted by Scheipers:

Napoleon had to advance militarily in order to secure continued political support in Paris; however, to the extent that he became increasingly a slave to this logic, political success could be denied to him by the simple refusal of Alexander I to sue for peace. The same logic applied to the 1815 campaign: once again Napoleon was forced to bet all on one card in Waterloo. Victory in battle was his only possibility to secure his political future. Once again, he lost, and his downfall was final.[22]

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“The Kremlin is on fire!” Napoleon watching the fire of Moscow from the walls of the Kremlin. (Vasily Vereshchagin/Wikimedia)

The conduct of both wars held its own grammar in the execution of the war and the application of tactics in battle. However, in a somewhat unique position as both military commander and as Sovereign, and therefore decider of policy, it was policy that arguably played the key hand in restricting Napoleon’s military options. Herberg-Rothe contends it was the defeats suffered by Napoleon in 1812 in Russia, and 1815 at Waterloo, that provided Clausewitz with the opportunity and context within which to derive his “political theory of war.”[23] This opportunity to develop a political theory of war influenced his perceptions of the role of policy and its relationship with warfare—from which derived his metaphor of grammar and logic. 

Echevarria notes that in the original German, Clausewitz did not use the plural form of grammar, rather using the singular. This led, he contends to “[t]he prevailing assumption… that there is only one grammar worth worrying about because there is only one kind of war that matters.” However, he continues, Clausewitz “clearly recognized, albeit somewhat later in life, that there was more than one kind of war, and that all of them mattered in some way.”[24] Indeed, Clausewitz readily identifies in his “Note” of 1827 that there are two general types of war—that with the “objective to overthrow the enemy—to render him politically helpless or militarily impotent” or “merely to occupy some of his frontier districts so that we can annex them or use them for bargaining at peace negotiations,” where he also subsequently goes on to reinforce, in another construction of a familiar refrain, “War is nothing but a continuation of policy with other means.”[25]

A conflict between policy and the conduct of war, whether internally or externally derived, challenges Clausewitz’s metaphor which assumes that there is no “disagreement between war and politics.”[26] Inherent in his assumption is that war is guided by policy and that there is a rational end state sought in engaging in war as an instrument of statecraft. The assumption requires that the conduct of the war will be restrained by policy at least to the extent that war will ordinarily self-limit to ensure that its conduct does not itself defeat its purpose. 

This centrality of purpose, provided by policy, has come under challenge on a number of occasions in modern history. Strachan observes the debate surrounding the so-called War on Terrorism, which has raised its head in practice, and in political rhetoric, in campaigns against supporters or instigators of terrorism in Afghanistan in 2002, as well as Iraq in 2003 and more recently in 2014. With the possible exception of the last iteration of war in Iraq, which has yet to result in an lasting outcome, the absence of clear political objectives is a consistent factor in the prosecution of these inter-linked campaigns.[27] As noted by Strachan, if the war on terror is indeed a “struggle against an adversary without purpose,” it is arguably one Clausewitz did not envisage and that did not fall within the paradigm of war he considered in On War.[28]

However, one could note that as a modern extension of conflict, if one were to conclude that the war is indeed one without purpose, this would challenge a belief in the consistent role of high logic in war. In Clausewitzian conception, Strachan notes, such a struggle would be considered “war only metaphorically,” where “the logic of politics is no longer able to employ the grammar of war to express itself, because the mutual interaction of ends and means, and of adversaries with each other, is absent.”[29] The modern manifestation of conflict is not the first example of academic challenge to Clausewitz’s concept of logic. This will be explored further in the next section.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND INDUSTRIALISED WARFARE

Logic, in Clausewitz’s conception, arguably provides the purpose and direction for war as a tool of grand strategy. As previously noted, the purpose or utility of a war is inherently part of this concept. Keegan, observing the role of Clausewitz’s writings in influencing strategy in the First World War, saw the rise of annihilation through a strategy of attrition driving loss of life with little apparent purpose.[30] As Strachan also comments, this was the most recent in a “long term accusation” regarding the influence of Clauswitz’s pupils on strategy in the First World War.[31] In the infamous words of Sir Basil Liddel Hart, Clausewitz was “the Mahdi of the masses and mutual massacres,” a reference to the perception that he was the proponent of absolute war.[32] Craig also observes a lack of overriding influence of policy in the way decisions were made, noting that “decisions that would affect the nature, locus, length, and financial and human cost of the conflict…would not be made logically and responsibly.”[33] If taken as a valid position on the First World War, this observation offers a counter-perspective to the concept of a consistent higher logic dictating the progress of a war “without political utility.”[34]

Herberg-Rothe however, notes a delineation between war that “leads to the extreme because of its own internal logic” and limited war, citing the French author Aron, who notes that policy can be a restriction on war, a moderating influence, as well as the factor that “determines the tendency towards total war.”[35] Clausewitz goes on to note in Book One of On War that policy “will permeate all military operations, and, in so far as their violent nature will admit, it will have a continuous influence on them.”[36] In contradiction to Clausewitz’s view of policy as having an overarching role even during war, significant discussion surrounding the role of policy in war arose earlier during the 19th century. Of note, Moltke retained the view, as described by Bernhardi, that “policy…must, on the other hand, never interfere in the conduct of the war itself, and try to prescribe the way in which the military object shall actually be attained.”[37] He goes on to note, “Policy and conduct of war are certainly in many respects subject to the same laws, but their procedure is totally different.”[38]

Clausewitz famously did not shirk from the bloody character of all war, warning that “the fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously and not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity.”[39] The character of the First World War, had he been born a century later, would have seen him having to support this view with a new level of understanding of the horrifying spectacle that war could produce. The employment of industrial capacity and technology transformed both small arms and artillery, and provided mechanisation to the battlefield. As Strachan observes, the inherent advantages of defence (discussed by Clausewitz in Book Six to On War) became readily apparent in the age of machine guns and trench systems:

Trenches had a clear tactical purpose—essentially to save lives. They may have been smelly, wet, and muddy, but they provided protection. In 1914, however, they also acquired an operational or strategic significance. Men in field fortifications could hold ground with fewer men; commanders could therefore create a mass for manoeuvre elsewhere.[40]

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A British soldier inside a trench on the Western Front during World War I, 1914–18. (Hulton Archive/Getty)

This new evolving grammar directly impacted what Van Evera, amongst others, described as the cult of the offensive that had arisen in the 19th century and was still at the forefront at the commencement of the First World War.[41] The expectations of war had altered abruptly with the failure of the Schlieffen plan, the so-called race to the sea, and the ensuing stalemate that by 1915 saw opposing armies facing each other, separated by a zone of death along a 700 kilometre front stretching from the Swiss Alps, west through northern France, culminating at the English channel.[42] As noted by Howard, “The range, accuracy, and rate of fire of modern firearms—rifles lethal at 2000 meters, artillery at 6000—made the decisive battles that had hitherto determined the outcome of wars now impossible,” and left few “blind to the defensive powers of twentieth century weapons.”[43] The rapid advance of technology, in particular the perceived advanced nature of the German army left many European powers uncertain as to shifting balances of power. Of note for the French, despite the application of the cult of the offensive, this uncertainty created a culture of institutional defence that was driven as much by political and geo-strategic concerns as by military ones.[44]

Despite Keegan’s observations, among others, as to the utility of the war itself, the causes of the war demonstrate the application of a higher logic to the conduct of war. Clausewitz does not ascribe policy to government alone, and therefore logic itself is not beyond the influence of the military. This can be demonstrated in the road to war for Germany in 1914. Snyder puts Germany’s commitment to a wildly over-ambitious offensive into France in 1914 down to a pathology in its political direction.[45] He notes:

The root of this pathology was the complete absence of civilian control over plans and doctrine, which provided no check on the natural tendency of mature military organizations to institutionalize and dogmatize doctrines that support the organizational goals of prestige, autonomy, and the elimination of novelty and uncertainty. Often, as in this case, it is offense that serves these interests best.[46]

While reflecting the policy aims of the military, the decision to go to war further demonstrates that policy can be heavily influenced by military leaders that are fused into the aristocracy and political class—or in more modern times by military leaders who may wield economic power and political influence.

The logic overlaying the First World War is also apparent throughout its conduct. Even with the stalemate and horrific loss of life, as noted by De Groot, the “more important industrialization, organization, social stability and political leadership became.”[47] While, as Foley notes in relation to the focus of Schlieffen and his higher command, “[t]he day-to-day thinking of the bulk of the army on the basic grammar of warfare lay outside the competence of the chief of the general staff,” the loss of life and destruction at the front was not driven by the inherent violence of war but rather by a unrelenting pursuit of political outcomes and a shifting concept of victory, governing the logic driving the war on both sides. The measures of success for the war were affected by an overarching play of policy, with “[t]he command structure…[finding] itself obligated to accept results essentially determined in the field as adequate, and to construe continued stalemate as victory.”[48]

As noted by Foley, even as early as 1915 it was apparent that “victory in the field along the lines of pre-war thinking would be difficult if not impossible to achieve.”[49] This was not a military decision governed exclusively by the character of the war that confronted them, but rather changes to military strategy dictated by shifting policy considerations as the war progressed. Philpott observes that unconditional support for the war was relatively short-lived; it ceased around the time the trench lines that came to signify a long, brutal and uncertain conflict appeared.[50] However, he continues, the “disenchantment with the nature of the war did not mean disillusionment as to its purpose. The peoples of Europe had turned on Germany by 1915, although for now at least her own people seemed firmly behind the war effort.”[51] This intercourse between politics and war continued through 1918 and into the ensuing peace. 

A NEW LOGIC: SUBSEQUENT PEACE IN THE AGE OF NUCLEAR WAR?

Snyder notes that today’s military environment is not that distinct from 1914, providing the example that “today's military technologies favour the defender of the status quo,” and the strategic interests of the great powers continue to motivate offensive and defensive measures to mitigate threats and neutralise an adversary’s offensive advantage.[52] In 1945, with the dropping of the atomic bombs by the United States on Japan, the paradigm shifted—bringing with it a new strategic tension in what became known as the Cold War, as nuclear weapons became a new and increasingly catastrophic escalation of warfare—arguably changing the policy that influences war as a result. Much of the discussion on Clausewitz’s meanings and assumptions with regard to war not having a logic of its own relates to the idea that a strategic end in itself is meaningless without the context of the follow-on period of peace and a continuation of politics in a post-war period. The inexorable escalation of war—through to absolute war in Clausewitz’s concept—poses a unique challenge in the post-atomic age of potential nuclear holocaust.[53]

The Cold War saw the coining of the phrase mutually assured destruction (MAD)—a doctrine that espoused the mutual annihilation of the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States in the event of a strategic nuclear exchange.[54] Such an unsurvivable nuclear exchange was mooted to see not only the existence of both superpowers extinguished, but also a likely extinction of human life in any form that we would currently recognise.[55] Escalation resulting in a nuclear exchange could therefore arguably only result through the absence of logic, given the absence in that scenario of any time of subsequent peace. Where escalation results in an end-state that defies policy, it could be argued to undermine Clausewitz’s earlier proposition that war in practice is not a “complete, untrammeled, absolute manifestation of violence.”[56]

On face value, it can be argued that the advent of strategic nuclear weapons and the spectre of mutual destruction act as an apparent exception to the dictum that war is always progressed by a higher logic. However, in practical experience, Clausewitz’s own concept of a limited war became the new paradigm and arguably the refocussed logic to restricting warfare in the nuclear age. Indeed, in contrast to early predictions, the evolution of policy with the knowledge of the potential of nuclear warfare has had a restraining effect on war overall. As Snyder observes regarding the “restraining effect that the irrevocable power to punish has had on international politics”:

Like machine guns and railroads, survivable nuclear weapons render trivial the marginal advantages to be gained by striking first... this stabilizing effect even neutralizes whatever first-strike advantages may exist at the conventional level, since the fear of uncontrollable escalation will restrain even the first steps in that direction.[57] 

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An illustration of a nuclear bomb exploding in a city. (Shutterstock)

The threat of nuclear escalation quickly took centre-stage in the calculus of both the Soviets and the United States during the Cold War period, often projected through proxies. This new paradigm was first tested in Korea, where the outbreak of war saw tensions rise both on and off the peninsula as expectations of a potential war in Western Europe were heightened, and then in Vietnam, with the United States confronting “communist-inspired challenges below the nuclear threshold.”[58] Nuclear strategy itself adapted to the policy requirements that arise from the threat of nuclear annihilation, although not necessarily increasing security with it. The mutually assured destruction of a broad nuclear exchange of the 1950s was adjusted in the 1960s with the advances in delivery technology, permitting a “flexible response...showing how Politik affects war even in the nuclear age.”[59] This in turn drove the acquisition of survivable second-strike capabilities in order to gain an offensive advantage or at least provide parity and simultaneous security.[60]

While the strategic considerations of nuclear age should, rationally, act as a continuing policy restraint to the escalation and conduct of war, the degree of control could potentially be eroded. Cimbala has observed that the potential for the elimination of the Clausewitzian concept of friction through the reduction or streamlining of the sequence of events between “a decision to launch and the actual launch of a strike”—a concept he calls superconductivity—would concurrently decrease or remove the influence of policy that is ordinarily exercised by heads of government on the launch decision.[61] Moreover, Snyder warns, just as “in 1914, the danger today is that war will occur because of an erroneous belief that a disarming, offensive blow is feasible and necessary to ensure the attacker's security.”[62] However, the decision to launch an offensive, just as it was in 1914, will result from the intercourse between policy and war as its instrument.

CONCLUSION

Clausewitz’s concepts of grammar and logic have stood the test of time; both supporting his dictum that war is indeed “the continuation of policy by other means,” and further advancing that while the character of war has evolved, and along with it the grammar of war, the higher logic and the influence of policy is a constant. The role of policy as a governing factor in war is laid out by Clausewitz through Book One and then explored again in the context of war planning in Book Eight. War being “merely the continuation of policy by other means” establishes war as an instrument of policy, both a tool of grand strategy dominated by politics but also something inherently temporal; war cannot be readily decoupled or isolated from the policy that drives it.[63]

The evolution in the grammar of war, from the industrial age and the First World War through to the new paradigm of nuclear warfare is arguably the expected adaptation to the changing character of war. What can be observed however, is also the continuing intercourse between policy and war through both of the case studies explored. While the strategy of attrition may have called into question whether the First World War was indeed governed by policy as observed from the front, political imperatives both triggered the war, and determined its direction and ultimately what was an acceptable end to it. Equally, while nuclear war challenges the assumption that all war is governed by rational policy, the length and adoption of policy to restrict nuclear war from escalating beyond the possibility of control also demonstrate the overarching logic that continues to exist. Together, the case studies have illustrated the continuing relevance of Clausewitz’s analogy of grammar and logic to war both in the period On War was written, and in the modern experience of war centuries later.