Hew Strachan - Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century

CLAUSEWITZ IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

The Changing Character of War Programme is an inter-disciplinary research group located at the University of Oxford, and funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Clausewitz in the

Twenty-First Century

Edited by

H EW S T R AC H A N A N D A N D R E A S H E R B E RG - ROT H E

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp

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Clausewitz in the twenty-first century / edited by Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe.

p. cm.

ISBN 9780199232024 (alk. paper)

1. Clausewitz, Carl von, 17801831. Vom Kriege. 2. Military art and science. 3. War. I. Strachan, Hew. II. Herberg-Rothe, Andreas. III. Title: Clausewitz in the 21st century.

U102.C6643C545 2007

355.02dc22

2007014610

Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

Printed in Great Britain

on acid-free paper by

Biddles Ltd, Kings Lynn, Norfolk

ISBN 9780199232024

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Foreword

Clausewitz On War : A History of the

HowardParet Translation

The idea of a new translation of On War originated in the late 1950s when Peter Paret and I were working together at Kings College London. Peter was studying the connection between military and political ideas in eighteenth-century Prussia for his thesis on Yorck von Wartenburg; I was devising my first courses for the new Department of War Studies. Peter was particularly concerned with the inaccuracies and misinterpretations in the existing English translations of On War. I was more interested in the continuing value of the text as a didactic tool for both civilian and professional students of war

particularly its insight into the concept of friction and the central importance of moral forces, of which, during my own military service, I had become very aware.

On returning to Princeton in 1961, Peter took up the matter with the historian Gordon Craig and the political scientist Klaus Knorr. Between them they persuaded the Princeton University Press to sponsor an ambitious project for a translation of all Clausewitzs military and political writings in six volumes, each with a separate editor and translator. A meeting of those interested took place in Berlin in June 1962, attended by Werner Hahlweg, whose edition of On War would provide the basis for the English translation; the American historian John Shy; Knorr, Craig, and, in addition to Peter and myself, the strategic thinker Bernard Brodie. Brodie had just published his work Strategy in the Nuclear Age and was particularly interested in Clausewitzs thinking about limited war. Klaus Knorr and the Press were very anxious to enlist his cooperation, since they considered, quite rightly, that his name would give the project credibility with a far wider audience. A certain tension developed between the historians on the panel, who saw me as the appropriate editor for On War, and the political scientists and representatives of the Press, who preferred Brodie. The problem was resolved by appointing both of us. Since neither had sufficient command of German to undertake the translation, I undertook to find a professional translator, while Peter, who was virtually bilingual, would exercise a droit de regard over all six volumes.

vi

Foreword

I was fortunate in finding an excellent translator in Angus Malcolm. Angus was a former member of the British Foreign Office who, having recently completed a translation of Karl Demeters The German Officer Corps, was broadly familiar with the subject matter. He had the further advantage of living within easy walking distance from me in London. But the work made slow progress. Malcolm and I, working in London, produced drafts that we tried to make as close to contemporary English usage as possible. We then checked these, first with Peter, who by now was teaching at the University of California; then with Brodie in Los Angeles; and finally with the Princeton University Press in New Jersey whose translators found much of the MalcolmHoward version too colloquial for their liking: all this in an era before either fax machines or email had been invented. By 1970, the task was still not complete, and poor Malcolm died while still at work on the project.

Yet even less progress had been made on the other volumes in the projected series. In fact, none of them got off the ground at all. Understandably, Princeton University Press cancelled the original project. That On War survived owed much to the continuing enthusiasm and influence of Bernard Brodie

whose enthusiasm, indeed, was so great that his introductory essay swelled to such a length that much of it had to be detached and printed as a separate afterword. In 1974, Brodie persuaded the Press to sign a new contract. Peter and I then undertook a revision of the entire text, and the volume finally appeared in 1976.

Its publication was timely. The experience of the Vietnam War had interested both military leaders and political scientists in the relations between political and military leadership. The continuing menace of nuclear weapons made the distinction between absolute and limited war alarmingly relevant; while Clausewitzs emphasis on friction, moral forces, and leadership qualities gave him credibility with professional soldiers who might otherwise have found much of his writing either excessively abstract or out of date. It was our good fortune to be able to present his work in a text that was accessible both to military colleges and to university students.

There still remained problems of translation that we had failed to iron out.

Politik, for example: should it be policy or politics? Neither carry the full grandeur of the original: both imply that soldiers were being instructed to subordinate themselves to the intrigues of mere politicians and still remain a sticking point for such distinguished commentators as Sir John Keegan.