Really interesting read, I think this is the current problem particularly in American Civil-Military relations is that military officers presume that if civilians simply adhere to their perspective or advice they’ll get the results civilians want but often don’t because that advice is never considered in conjunction with the politics (both domestic and international) that drives that decision making
A very good article. Particularly, discussing Alanbrooke whose deft management not only of Churchill but also of various allied Chiefs and politicians is often-overlooked. The statement that "the effectiveness of senior leadership is contingent on the ability to establish a positive working relationship" is absolutely true and Alanbrooke was very good at managing all relationships. The civil-military interface is a difficult and opaque relationship; and a natural human reaction too uncertainty is to try and enforce structure and clarity as you describe in Germany. The most interesting unanswered question for me relates to the relationship between service and political 'cultures.' Both Alanbrooke and Marshall (his US contemporary) were adept at managing internal service politics and their political relationships. Is there a 'key ingredient' that produces senior officers like this?
1. Historical inaccuracy as to reasons for the outbreak of WWI and Germany’s objectives.
2. The politician not versed in the use of the military tool to construct his objective misuses it and wrecks his own project. It is akin to building a crystal bowl with a hammer and chisel.
3. Politicians who task their military to craft an outcome “ so as to….” tend to be more successful in obtaining the desired political outcome provided the military can achieve the military objectives they are tasked to deliver.
4. Let us not forget the third part of the Trinity. The politicians, the military and the people. It is incumbent on the politician to be well educated in the art of war but not micromanage, the military to understand the politician’s intent and the people to understand political intent and military capability. Repeatedly the US has failed to align the three. One would wish that politicians were Renaissance Men versed in diplomacy, history, military art, cultural conditions, finance, industry, human nature and common sense. Usually they are more likely to be cunning opportunists.
1. Curious as to your understanding of German objectives in WWI. Re: outbreak, evidence in "Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War" by Annika Mombauer shows General Staff attachment to the "knockout blow" to have severely constrained civilian decision-making during the July Crisis through appeals to "military necessity."
2. Yes, which is the other side of the equation and rather harder to control for. Politicians are under no obligation to acknowledge the limitations of their own knowledge. There is no tool other than persuasion, and norms, if they can be maintained.
So does Clausewitz reject the notion of pure military advantage in war? Like: as an advantage which is coherent and agnostic to a political end.
Obviously, Clausewitz would understand that there are technical, non-political factors which improve the probability of success for your forces and degrade the enemy's. Would Carl refuse recognize these as advantages absent their application to a political objective?
Take the example of an army independently pursuing a strategy of total victory. Any returns from investing in that strategy are at the expense of opportunity cost for ignored political ends. The "advantages" marshalled can at best be potential in nature (should the state change its course to align with the military), and at worse objective disadvantages (if this is not possible or allowable politically). Let me know if I'm misunderstanding here.
If that is all correct, it then I think that Clausewitz totally deconstructs the concept of proportionality of civilian harm. Proportionality is itself a political end. But it claims to balance this against military necessity and military advantage. However, advantage can only be understood as subordinate to and derived from their political ends.
Then, proportional civilian harm must be a policy of attacking civilians for the advancement of a political end. The harm to civilians can only be weighed against the attainment of a political goal rather than a military one. The nature of that political goal is paramount to deciding whether the advantage gained was proportional!
How can we understand as proportional harm attained for advantages for political ends we don't view as legitimate, Such as the invasion an annexation of a peaceful country by an aggressor? The aggressor might indeed find it necessary to inflict civilian harm. But it seems illogical to find this proportional, because the aggressor had an aligning political intention; as if any at all would do. If the war aim is later found be illegal under a theory of aggression or other war crime, my understanding is that this finding doesn't retro onto claims of proportional civilian harm.
Worse: what about in the case of ill-conceived political ends. Can military advantages even be obtained when there is no coherent political goal expressed by a State?
Either because the goal is impossible to obtain with that state's political economy,
(example: the "total destruction" of an irregular force which can evade such an aim indefinitely),
or because the civilian leadership is unwilling/unable to state a convincing objective,
(thinking of the notorious ambiguity in the early years of the US's middle east adventures, which later admins devolved into maintenance of the created mess for its own sake).
Clausewitz leaves us with a paradox. He surely would've recognized the political value in acknowledging, even adhering to, norms and rules of war. There may be value at least in a diplomatic game of tit-for-tat restraint. But the procedures the rules don't have any logic to them according to Clausewitz, because they follow from the fiction of military necessity.
I often find diplomacy to be paradoxical and reliant on agreed fictions. So, I guess I'm not surprised to find Clausewitz unearthing another here. But it is concerning how in the case of deficient political ends, neither a rational military nor diplomatic fictions can help. There is basically nothing to be done, except for improving the political situation in order to change the aims of the state. (or coercing it to change).
This is a very good question! I think the simplest answer would be yes, Clausewitz rejects the idea of advantage that is agnostic to political ends. For example, Moltke strongly desired to pursue and destroy the Austrian army after Königgrätz, but Bismarck scuppered this. Undeniably destroying the Austrian army would place Prussia in a stronger military position, vis a vis Austria. But would such a "victory" deserve the name? Prussia could extract all the concessions it needed without risking anything further. Humiliating Austria might well have brought French intervention for no benefit. Thus, military logic exists exclusively in the context of a given objective. To follow-up Königgrätz with a Sedan-style annihilation would have been a great military-technical achievement but beyond all logic. Degrading the Austrian forces further would have been disadvantageous.
Re: proportionality and laws of war, the key is that politics is acting in multiple directions. On the one hand, it is constraining. On the other, the cause of war and violence needed to achieve the political objective in question increases the destructiveness. In other words, when discussing "military necessity," the complete phrase ought to be "military necessity to accomplish the objectives of the war." We can then view "proportionality" as reconciling the conflicting political interests of limiting civilian damage and accomplishing the objectives of the war.
Brilliant. Both Presidents Trump and Obama seem to have experienced episodes where their senior military leaders withheld M options during times when the executives needed to project national power. By omitting CoAs this creates an atmosphere of mistrust between the elected political leadership and their military. Not healthy. In the absence of an ability like Alanbrooke's to be convincing of a desired CoA versus omitting them from consideration, I suppose chicanery is the resort of hubristic and less facile military thinkers.
It is a challenge for all military leaders in the realms of core values, fundemental professional ethics, and the preservation of healthy civil-military discourse.
I have some sympathy for those leaders. It's easy to preach deference to civil authority, but much harder to quietly a carry-out a strategy chosen by amateurs that you believe will cost American lives. The kind of trust needed for effective coordination is hard to come by.
From a UK perspective a key phrase is 'politically-aware military advice'. In reality, this often means senior military people second-guessing what the market will bear, and offering COAs they think may be supported, rather than the full-fat version they would really prefer. An example would be PM Gordon Brown being castigated for the lack of helicopters in Afghanistan, and him contesting that he had given the military everything it had asked for. He had, but they had only asked for what they assumed they could get.
I should add that when Russian forces penetrated into East Prussia politicians overrode military advice and moved units east to blunt the Russian assault. Public opinion clamored for saving citizens in East Prussia.
There is considerable debate if the Schliefen Plan was therefore too weakened to reach Paris or if the full force was insufficient in the first place. We will never know. My own analysis, force ratio calculations, ammunition and horse fodder resupply conditions are inconclusive. Certainly removing forces does not help and there are many factors that are hard to quantify like morale, fatigue, fighting spirit, tenacity, luck and unexpected circumstances.
No one predicted that the war would last over four more years. Neither France or Great Britain thought Germany could last a year.
The implication was that WWI was desired by the military, the Government and the Kaiser years before it broke out. That is false.
The nation most interested in war was France as revenge for the loss of 1870-71, followed by Russia to hide internal problems and to become the leader of a Slavic Eastern Europe and Great Britain who viewed Germany’s economic growth and prosperity as a threat and preventing a balance of power on the Continent. Germany’s expansion of their Navy was seen as a threat as was its delayed entry into the colonial expansion. Bismarck had warned against both.
Military planners were well aware that Germany could not prevail in the event of a two front war or an extended war against the British Empire, the French Empire, Italy and Imperial Russia with a sick Austria Hungary as their only allie.
Therefore they planned for a quick response and knock out that their mobilization and rail service could support before large British ground forces arrived and the Royal Navy could impose an effective blockade. They then would redeploy to face Russia who would be the slowest to mobilize yet bring the most numerous forces to bear.
Military planning of this nature is not intended to start a war. It is rational planning. The outbreak of the war was directly related to Russian mobilization. At that point Germany could see the clock working against them and had to move.
To imply that Wilhelmine Germany wanted war and planed for it before WWI is false.
I'll likely address the war-guilt question more fully in the future, but there is strong evidence that the majority of the German military actively desired "preemptive" war. The Kaiser was generally opposed, but inconsistent, and the government was willing to risk war to leverage crises for diplomatic gains. Specifically, Moltke and Ludendorff express clear disappoint in 1913 and during the July Crisis when war is delayed or averted. It is clear that the General Staff believed the window in which the Schlieffen Plan could be successfully executed was rapidly closing and that war was necessary sooner-rather-than-later to break the encircling alliance.
Moltke and Ludendorff were probably right. The scales were tipping out of favor and France showed very little interest in the status quo. Elsass and Lorraine reminded an open wound and were a daily subject. War “guilt” is always an interesting subject. My conclusions long ago were imperial Russia. Others make a pretty good case that German unification in 1871 made war just a matter of time. Or, that the decline of Austria-Hungary was going to throw Europe into a war sooner or later. A friend opines that a planned and deliberate break up of the Hapsburg Empire might have reduced friction but I disagree. Hindsight is certainly not 20/20 but a Franco-Russian alliance was almost a guarantee of conflict. Finally, the end of one war often set the conditions for the next one.
Really interesting read, I think this is the current problem particularly in American Civil-Military relations is that military officers presume that if civilians simply adhere to their perspective or advice they’ll get the results civilians want but often don’t because that advice is never considered in conjunction with the politics (both domestic and international) that drives that decision making
A very good article. Particularly, discussing Alanbrooke whose deft management not only of Churchill but also of various allied Chiefs and politicians is often-overlooked. The statement that "the effectiveness of senior leadership is contingent on the ability to establish a positive working relationship" is absolutely true and Alanbrooke was very good at managing all relationships. The civil-military interface is a difficult and opaque relationship; and a natural human reaction too uncertainty is to try and enforce structure and clarity as you describe in Germany. The most interesting unanswered question for me relates to the relationship between service and political 'cultures.' Both Alanbrooke and Marshall (his US contemporary) were adept at managing internal service politics and their political relationships. Is there a 'key ingredient' that produces senior officers like this?
1. Historical inaccuracy as to reasons for the outbreak of WWI and Germany’s objectives.
2. The politician not versed in the use of the military tool to construct his objective misuses it and wrecks his own project. It is akin to building a crystal bowl with a hammer and chisel.
3. Politicians who task their military to craft an outcome “ so as to….” tend to be more successful in obtaining the desired political outcome provided the military can achieve the military objectives they are tasked to deliver.
4. Let us not forget the third part of the Trinity. The politicians, the military and the people. It is incumbent on the politician to be well educated in the art of war but not micromanage, the military to understand the politician’s intent and the people to understand political intent and military capability. Repeatedly the US has failed to align the three. One would wish that politicians were Renaissance Men versed in diplomacy, history, military art, cultural conditions, finance, industry, human nature and common sense. Usually they are more likely to be cunning opportunists.
1. Curious as to your understanding of German objectives in WWI. Re: outbreak, evidence in "Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War" by Annika Mombauer shows General Staff attachment to the "knockout blow" to have severely constrained civilian decision-making during the July Crisis through appeals to "military necessity."
2. Yes, which is the other side of the equation and rather harder to control for. Politicians are under no obligation to acknowledge the limitations of their own knowledge. There is no tool other than persuasion, and norms, if they can be maintained.
Agreed on your other points.
So does Clausewitz reject the notion of pure military advantage in war? Like: as an advantage which is coherent and agnostic to a political end.
Obviously, Clausewitz would understand that there are technical, non-political factors which improve the probability of success for your forces and degrade the enemy's. Would Carl refuse recognize these as advantages absent their application to a political objective?
Take the example of an army independently pursuing a strategy of total victory. Any returns from investing in that strategy are at the expense of opportunity cost for ignored political ends. The "advantages" marshalled can at best be potential in nature (should the state change its course to align with the military), and at worse objective disadvantages (if this is not possible or allowable politically). Let me know if I'm misunderstanding here.
If that is all correct, it then I think that Clausewitz totally deconstructs the concept of proportionality of civilian harm. Proportionality is itself a political end. But it claims to balance this against military necessity and military advantage. However, advantage can only be understood as subordinate to and derived from their political ends.
Then, proportional civilian harm must be a policy of attacking civilians for the advancement of a political end. The harm to civilians can only be weighed against the attainment of a political goal rather than a military one. The nature of that political goal is paramount to deciding whether the advantage gained was proportional!
How can we understand as proportional harm attained for advantages for political ends we don't view as legitimate, Such as the invasion an annexation of a peaceful country by an aggressor? The aggressor might indeed find it necessary to inflict civilian harm. But it seems illogical to find this proportional, because the aggressor had an aligning political intention; as if any at all would do. If the war aim is later found be illegal under a theory of aggression or other war crime, my understanding is that this finding doesn't retro onto claims of proportional civilian harm.
Worse: what about in the case of ill-conceived political ends. Can military advantages even be obtained when there is no coherent political goal expressed by a State?
Either because the goal is impossible to obtain with that state's political economy,
(example: the "total destruction" of an irregular force which can evade such an aim indefinitely),
or because the civilian leadership is unwilling/unable to state a convincing objective,
(thinking of the notorious ambiguity in the early years of the US's middle east adventures, which later admins devolved into maintenance of the created mess for its own sake).
Clausewitz leaves us with a paradox. He surely would've recognized the political value in acknowledging, even adhering to, norms and rules of war. There may be value at least in a diplomatic game of tit-for-tat restraint. But the procedures the rules don't have any logic to them according to Clausewitz, because they follow from the fiction of military necessity.
I often find diplomacy to be paradoxical and reliant on agreed fictions. So, I guess I'm not surprised to find Clausewitz unearthing another here. But it is concerning how in the case of deficient political ends, neither a rational military nor diplomatic fictions can help. There is basically nothing to be done, except for improving the political situation in order to change the aims of the state. (or coercing it to change).
This is a very good question! I think the simplest answer would be yes, Clausewitz rejects the idea of advantage that is agnostic to political ends. For example, Moltke strongly desired to pursue and destroy the Austrian army after Königgrätz, but Bismarck scuppered this. Undeniably destroying the Austrian army would place Prussia in a stronger military position, vis a vis Austria. But would such a "victory" deserve the name? Prussia could extract all the concessions it needed without risking anything further. Humiliating Austria might well have brought French intervention for no benefit. Thus, military logic exists exclusively in the context of a given objective. To follow-up Königgrätz with a Sedan-style annihilation would have been a great military-technical achievement but beyond all logic. Degrading the Austrian forces further would have been disadvantageous.
Re: proportionality and laws of war, the key is that politics is acting in multiple directions. On the one hand, it is constraining. On the other, the cause of war and violence needed to achieve the political objective in question increases the destructiveness. In other words, when discussing "military necessity," the complete phrase ought to be "military necessity to accomplish the objectives of the war." We can then view "proportionality" as reconciling the conflicting political interests of limiting civilian damage and accomplishing the objectives of the war.
Brilliant. Both Presidents Trump and Obama seem to have experienced episodes where their senior military leaders withheld M options during times when the executives needed to project national power. By omitting CoAs this creates an atmosphere of mistrust between the elected political leadership and their military. Not healthy. In the absence of an ability like Alanbrooke's to be convincing of a desired CoA versus omitting them from consideration, I suppose chicanery is the resort of hubristic and less facile military thinkers.
It is a challenge for all military leaders in the realms of core values, fundemental professional ethics, and the preservation of healthy civil-military discourse.
I have some sympathy for those leaders. It's easy to preach deference to civil authority, but much harder to quietly a carry-out a strategy chosen by amateurs that you believe will cost American lives. The kind of trust needed for effective coordination is hard to come by.
From a UK perspective a key phrase is 'politically-aware military advice'. In reality, this often means senior military people second-guessing what the market will bear, and offering COAs they think may be supported, rather than the full-fat version they would really prefer. An example would be PM Gordon Brown being castigated for the lack of helicopters in Afghanistan, and him contesting that he had given the military everything it had asked for. He had, but they had only asked for what they assumed they could get.
I should add that when Russian forces penetrated into East Prussia politicians overrode military advice and moved units east to blunt the Russian assault. Public opinion clamored for saving citizens in East Prussia.
There is considerable debate if the Schliefen Plan was therefore too weakened to reach Paris or if the full force was insufficient in the first place. We will never know. My own analysis, force ratio calculations, ammunition and horse fodder resupply conditions are inconclusive. Certainly removing forces does not help and there are many factors that are hard to quantify like morale, fatigue, fighting spirit, tenacity, luck and unexpected circumstances.
No one predicted that the war would last over four more years. Neither France or Great Britain thought Germany could last a year.
The implication was that WWI was desired by the military, the Government and the Kaiser years before it broke out. That is false.
The nation most interested in war was France as revenge for the loss of 1870-71, followed by Russia to hide internal problems and to become the leader of a Slavic Eastern Europe and Great Britain who viewed Germany’s economic growth and prosperity as a threat and preventing a balance of power on the Continent. Germany’s expansion of their Navy was seen as a threat as was its delayed entry into the colonial expansion. Bismarck had warned against both.
Military planners were well aware that Germany could not prevail in the event of a two front war or an extended war against the British Empire, the French Empire, Italy and Imperial Russia with a sick Austria Hungary as their only allie.
Therefore they planned for a quick response and knock out that their mobilization and rail service could support before large British ground forces arrived and the Royal Navy could impose an effective blockade. They then would redeploy to face Russia who would be the slowest to mobilize yet bring the most numerous forces to bear.
Military planning of this nature is not intended to start a war. It is rational planning. The outbreak of the war was directly related to Russian mobilization. At that point Germany could see the clock working against them and had to move.
To imply that Wilhelmine Germany wanted war and planed for it before WWI is false.
I'll likely address the war-guilt question more fully in the future, but there is strong evidence that the majority of the German military actively desired "preemptive" war. The Kaiser was generally opposed, but inconsistent, and the government was willing to risk war to leverage crises for diplomatic gains. Specifically, Moltke and Ludendorff express clear disappoint in 1913 and during the July Crisis when war is delayed or averted. It is clear that the General Staff believed the window in which the Schlieffen Plan could be successfully executed was rapidly closing and that war was necessary sooner-rather-than-later to break the encircling alliance.
Moltke and Ludendorff were probably right. The scales were tipping out of favor and France showed very little interest in the status quo. Elsass and Lorraine reminded an open wound and were a daily subject. War “guilt” is always an interesting subject. My conclusions long ago were imperial Russia. Others make a pretty good case that German unification in 1871 made war just a matter of time. Or, that the decline of Austria-Hungary was going to throw Europe into a war sooner or later. A friend opines that a planned and deliberate break up of the Hapsburg Empire might have reduced friction but I disagree. Hindsight is certainly not 20/20 but a Franco-Russian alliance was almost a guarantee of conflict. Finally, the end of one war often set the conditions for the next one.