On War: AthenianArts.Com By Clausewitz

Vom Kriege (On War) is a long and intricate investigation of Clausewitz’s observations based on his own experience in the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and on considerable historical research into those wars and others. It is shaped not only by purely military and political considerations but by Clausewitz’s strong interests in art, science, and education.

Some of the key ideas discussed in On War include:

• the dialectical approach to military analysis
• the methods of “critical analysis”
• the nature of the balance-of-power mechanism
• the relationship between political objectives and military objectives in war
• the asymmetrical relationship between attack and defense
• the nature of “military genius” (involving matters of personality and character, beyond intellect)
• the “fascinating trinity” (wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit) of war
• philosophical distinctions between “absolute” or “ideal war,” and “real war”
• in “real war,” the distinctive poles of a) limited war and b) war to “render the enemy helpless”
• “war” belongs fundamentally to the social realm—rather than to the realms of art or science
• “strategy” belongs primarily to the realm of art
• “tactics” belongs primarily to the realm of science
• the importance of “moral forces” (more than simply “morale”) as opposed to quantifiable physical elements
• the “military virtues” of professional armies (which do not necessarily trump the rather different virtues of other kinds of fighting forces)
• conversely, the very real effects of a superiority in numbers and “mass”
• the essential unpredictability of war
• the ”fog” of war
• “friction”
• strategic and operational “centers of gravity”
• the “culminating point of the offensive”
• the “culminating point of victory”