OneIntroductionWhen you pick up one piece of this plan.docx

One
Introduction
When you pick up one piece of this planet, you
find that, one way or another, it’s attached to
everything else—if you jiggle over here,
something is going to wiggle over there. . . .
We need this sense of the continuing
interconnectedness of the system as part of the
common knowledge, so that politicians feel it
and believe it, and so that voters feel it and
believe it, and so that kids feel it and believe it,
so that they’ll grow up with an ethic.
[To minimize oil spills] we should . . . mandate
double-hulled vessels and compartments in
tankers.
—Wallace White, “Profiles (Sylvia Earle)” in
The New Yorker
On the centennial of the publication of The Origin of Species,
H. J. Muller
wrote an article entitled “One Hundred Years Without
Darwinism Are
Enough.”1 His point was that although the basic ideas of
evolution were well
known, people often thought in nonevolutionary terms, a defect
he hoped to
correct. My aim is parallel. Although we all know that social
life and politics

constitute systems and that many outcomes are the unintended
conse-
quence of complex interactions, the basic ideas of systems do
not come
readily to mind and so often are ignored.2 Because I know
international
1 H. J. Muller, “One Hundred Years Without Darwinism Are
Enough,” School Science and
Mathematics 59 (April 1959), pp. 304–16; the famous
paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson
thought so well of this title that he used it, with
acknowledgment, for one of his essays in This
View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1964). For
the argument that many aspects of Darwinism have yet to be
incorporated into philosophy, see
Ernst Mayr, “How Biology Differs from the Physical Sciences,”
in David Depew and Bruce
Weber, eds., Evolution at a Crossroads: The New Biology and
the New Philosophy of Science
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), pp. 43–63.
2 This may stem from deeply ingrained patterns of thought:
Jerome Bruner, Jacqueline
Goodnow, and George Austin, A Study of Thinking (New York:
Wiley, 1956); also see Nancy
Henley, Robert Horsfall, and Clinton De Soto, “Goodness of
Figure and Social Structure,”Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
1

99
7.
P
ri
nc
et
on
U
ni
ve
rs
it
y
Pr
es
s.
A
ll
r
ig
ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
Ma
y
no
t
be
r
ep
ro

du
ce
d
in
a
ny
f
or
m
wi
th
ou
t
pe
rm
is
si
on
f
ro
m
th
e
pu
bl
is
he
r,
e
xc
ep
t
fa
ir
u
se

s
pe
rm
it
te
d
un
de
r
U.
S.
o
r
ap
pl
ic
ab
le
c
op
yr
ig
ht
l
aw
.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed
on 7/8/2017 4:04 PM via ARIZONA
STATE UNIV
AN: 75111 ; Jervis, Robert.; System Effects : Complexity in
Political and Social Life
Account: eastmain

4 C H A P T E R 1
politics best, I will often focus on it. But the arguments of the
book are more
general and I will take examples from many fields. This is not
difficult: Sys-
tems have been analyzed by almost every academic discipline
because they
appear throughout our physical, biological, and social worlds.3
The fact that
congruent patterns can be found across such different domains
testifies to
the prevalence and power of the dynamics that systems display.
Much of this
constitutes variations on a few themes, in parallel with
Darwin’s summary
remark about the structures of living creatures: “Nature is
prodigal in vari-
ety, but niggard in innovation.”4
This is not to promise a systems theory of politics, although
some work in
this vein has been extremely fruitful. Kenneth Waltz’s Theory
of Interna-
tional Politics is the most important book in the field in the past
decade, and
I will devote much of chapter 3 to it.5 My objectives are more
modest,
however, in part because I have doubts as to whether more
ambitious goals
can be reached.6 Few if any realms of human conduct are
completely deter-
mined at the systems level. Actors’ choices are crucial and, as I
will discuss

later, are influenced by beliefs about how the system operates.
We should
not expect too much of theorizing here—actors may be able to
take advan-
tage of discernable patterns in ways that would destroy at least
some of
them. But human guile and idiosyncracies are not the only
factors that limit
our ability to make determinant predictions: Many systems,
including inani-
mate ones, are highly complex and contingent.7
Psychological Review 76 (March 1969), pp. 194–204, and Roger
Shepard, “Evolution of a
Mesh between Principles of the Mind and Regularities of the
World,” in John Dupré, ed., The
Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987),
pp. 251–75.
3 The list of works on systems and systems theories is very
long. In this book I will cite only
those I have found most useful, which I realize excludes many
that others consider classics.
These, of course, often have influenced other works on which I
do draw.
4 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Modern
Library, 1936), p. 143.
5 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading,
Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
6 For discussions of what we can—and cannot—expect from
theorizing about complex
systems see, for example, David Ehrenfeld, “The Management
of Diversity: A Conservation

Paradox,” in F. Herbert Bormann and Stephen Kellert, eds.,
Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The
Broken Circle (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1991), pp. 26–39; Stuart Kauffman,
“Whispers from Carnot: The Origins of Order and Principles of
Adaptation in Complex Non-
equilibrium Systems,” in George Cowan, David Pines, and
David Meltzer, eds., Complexity:
Mataphors, Models, and Reality (Reading, Mass.: Addison-
Wesley, 1994), pp. 85–87; David
Depew and Bruce Weber, Darwinism Evolving: Systems
Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natu-
ral Selection (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 490–91.
7 Related arguments stem from chaos theory. The standard
source for nonexperts—which I
assuredly am—is James Gleick, Chaos Theory (New York:
Penguin, 1988). Also see Roger
Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (New York:
Macmillan, 1992); M. Mitchell
Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of
Order and Chaos (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1992); Stephen Kellert, In the Wake of
Chaos: Unpredictable Order in
Dynamical Systems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993); and David Ruelle, ChanceCo
py
ri
gh
t
©
1
99
7.
P

ri
nc
et
on
U
ni
ve
rs
it
y
Pr
es
s.
A
ll
r
ig
ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
Ma
y
no
t
be
r
ep
ro
du
ce
d

in
a
ny
f
or
m
wi
th
ou
t
pe
rm
is
si
on
f
ro
m
th
e
pu
bl
is
he
r,
e
xc
ep
t
fa
ir
u
se
s
pe
rm

it
te
d
un
de
r
U.
S.
o
r
ap
pl
ic
ab
le
c
op
yr
ig
ht
l
aw
.
STATE UNIV
Account: eastmain
I N T R O D U C T I O N 5

This does not mean an absence of regularities. Indeed, crucial to
a sys-
tems approach is the belief that structures are powerful and that
the internal
characteristics of the elements matter less than their place in the
system.
That is why different kinds of countries often behave similarly,
as Waltz has
stressed; why the Cold War resembled the rivalry between
Athens and
Sparta; why the behavior of Frederick the Great in 1756 was not
unlike that
of Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914; why I can locate parallel processes
in realms as
diverse as international politics and ecology. As a leading
biologist put it:
“Whenever I come across a system which is oscillating, whether
it be the
menstrual cycle or the numbers of hares and lynxes in Canada, I
look for
delayed feedback. In doing so, I am assuming that . . . the
behaviour is
determined by the structure, and not by whether the components
are elec-
trical circuits, hormones, or animals.”8 In most cases, our first
instinct is to
explain behavior in terms of the actors’ preferences and power.
Instead, we
should start with how the actors are positioned. For example,
the argument
that poverty will increase when welfare policy is devolved to
individual
American states is often rebutted by pointing out that state
political leaders
are no more heartless than national ones. But a systemic

perspective indi-
cates that the focus should be on the fact that because the states
compete
with one another for national prominence and mobile
businesses, their
leaders will feel greater pressures to cut welfare benefits, and
thereby cut
taxes, than will national figures. Furthermore, much about the
actor is sys-
temically determined: Many of an individual’s preferences stem
from her
position in the social system, and her power is influenced by its
configura-
tion (e.g., a swing voter gains power because the others are
evenly divided).
Definitions and Illustrations
Definitions are rarely exciting but rarely can be completely
ignored. Perhaps
we should simply say about systems what Justice Potter Stewart
said about
obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” Indeed, Garrett Hardin
says, “One of
the most important ideas in modern science is the idea of a
system; and it is
almost impossible to define.”9 Hardin continues his excellent
essay by defin-
ing by examples, which I will do as well. But a little more
precision may be
and Chaos (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).
For the importance of contin-
gency in evolution, see Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life
(New York: Norton, 1989) and
Depew and Weber, Darwinism Evolving. For a critique of the

more extreme claims of some
theorists, see John Horgan, “From Complexity to Perplexity,”
Scientific American, June 1995,
pp. 104–9.
8 John Maynard Smith, Did Darwin Get It Right? Essays on
Games, Sex, and Evolution
(New York: Chapman & Hall, 1989), p. 226.
9 Garrett Hardin, “The Cybernetics of Competition,”
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
7 (Autumn 1963), p. 77.Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
1
99
7.
P
ri
nc
et
on
U
ni
ve
rs
it
y
Pr
es
s.

A
ll
r
ig
ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
Ma
y
no
t
be
r
ep
ro
du
ce
d
in
a
ny
f
or
m
wi
th
ou
t
pe
rm
is
si

on
f
ro
m
th
e
pu
bl
is
he
r,
e
xc
ep
t
fa
ir
u
se
s
pe
rm
it
te
d
un
de
r
U.
S.
o
r
ap
pl
ic

ab
le
c
op
yr
ig
ht
l
aw
.
STATE UNIV
Account: eastmain
6 C H A P T E R 1
helpful. We are dealing with a system when (a) a set of units or
elements is
interconnected so that changes in some elements or their
relations produce
changes in other parts of the system, and (b) the entire system
exhibits
properties and behaviors that are different from those of the
parts.10
As this chapter and the next will show, the result is that systems
often
display nonlinear relationships, outcomes cannot be understood
by adding

together the units or their relations, and many of the results of
actions are
unintended. Complexities can appear even in what would seem
to be simple
and deterministic situations. Thus over one hundred years ago
the mathe-
matician Henri Poincaré showed that the motion of as few as
three bodies
(such as the sun, the moon, and the earth), although governed
by strict
scientific laws, defies exact solution: While eclipses of the
moon can be
predicted thousands of years in advance, they cannot be
predicted millions
10 For similar and overlapping definitions, see Herbert Simon,
The Sciences of the Artificial,
2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 195, 209–10;
Anatol Rapoport, “Systems
Analysis: General Systems Theory,” International
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 15
(New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 453; Ludwig von Bertalanffy,
General Systems Theory: Foun-
dations, Development, Applications (New York: Braziller,
1986), p. 55; George Klir, “The Poly-
phonic General Systems Theory,” in Klir, ed., Trends in General
Systems Theory (New York:
Wiley, 1972), p. 1; Howard Odum and Elisabeth Odum, Energy
Basis for Man and Nature, 2d
ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 5; Warren Weaver,
“Science and Complexity,” American
Scientist 36 (October 1948), pp. 538–39; Kenneth Boulding,
The World as a Total System
(Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1985), p. 9; W. Ross Ashby,
Design for a Brain, 2d ed. (New York:
Wiley, 1960), p. 16; Thomas Hughes, Networks of Power:

Electrification in Western Society,
1880–1930 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1983), pp. 5–6, 20–22; James
Miller, Living Systems (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), pp.
16–19. Also see Ludwig von
Bertalanffy and Anatol Rapoport, eds., Yearbook of the Society
for the Advancement of General
Systems Theory, vol. 1 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Mental Health Research Institute,
1956), and Robert Flood, Liberating Systems Theory (New
York: Plenum, 1990), chapter 5.
For somewhat different definitions from scholars of
international politics, see Inis Claude,
Power and International Relations (New York: Random House,
1962), p. 42; Stanley
Hoffmann, “International Systems and International Law,” in
Klaus Knorr and Sidney Verba,
eds., The International System (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1961), pp. 207–8;
Morton Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics
(New York: Wiley, 1957), pp. 4–6;
Kaplan, Towards Professionalism in International Theory (New
York: Free Press, 1979), p. 96;
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1977), pp. 8–16;
Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 79; Robert Gilpin,
War and Change in World Politics
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 25–29.
Feedbacks play a vital role in most
systems and will be the subject of a later chapter, but one can
have a system without them.
For some purposes, it is important to distinguish among systems
on such dimensions as
organized or disorganized, open or closed, simple or complex,
hierarchical or anarchic, or

oligopolistic or freely competitive: see, for example, Harlan
Wilson, “Complexity as a Theoreti-
cal Problem: Wider Perspectives in Political Theory,” in Todd
La Porte, ed., Organized Com-
plexity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp.
281–88, and Jack Snyder, “In-
troduction,” in Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, eds., Coping with
Complexity in the
International System (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993),
pp. 6–13. But for much of my
analysis, these distinctions are not crucial.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
1
99
7.
P
ri
nc
et
on
U
ni
ve
rs
it
y
Pr
es
s.

ab
le
c
op
yr
ig
ht
l
aw
.
STATE UNIV
Account: eastmain
of years ahead, which is a very short period by astronomical
standards.11 As
a student of mathematical approaches to ecology explains, “It
doesn’t need
any complicating factors to cause complicated behaviour. The
very simplest
type of self-regulation can . . . account for it.”12 A systems
approach shows
how individual actors following simple and uncoordinated
strategies can
produce aggregate behavior that is complex and ordered,
although not nec-
essarily predictable and stable.13 Similarly, biologists stress

that highly com-
plex life-forms are composed of elements that, taken
individually, are quite
simple.
The counterintuitive way systems operate—and the habit of
even accom-
plished systems theorists of lapsing into simpler ways of
thinking—can be
shown by the quotation that opens this chapter. It seems obvious
that if
tankers had double hulls, there would be fewer oil spills. But
interconnec-
tions mean that the obvious and immediate effect might not be
the domi-
nant one. The straightforward argument compares two worlds,
one with
single-hulled tankers and one with double-hulled ones, holding
everything
else constant. But in a system, everything else will not remain
constant. The
shipping companies, forced to purchase more expensive tankers,
might cut
expenditures on other safety measures, in part because of the
greater pro-
tection supplied by the double hulls. The relative cost of
alternative means
of transporting oil would decrease, perhaps moving spills from
the seas to
the areas traversed by new pipelines. But even tanker spills
might not de-
crease. The current trade-off between costs and spills may
reflect the prefer-
ences of shippers and captains, who might take advantage of the
greater
safety by going faster and taking more chances.14 If double

hulls led to even
11 For a recent discussion, see Robert Pool, “Chaos Theory:
How Big an Advance?” Science
245 ( July 9, 1989), p. 26.
12 Karl Sigmund, Games of Life: Explorations in Ecology,
Evolution, and Behaviour (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 52.
13 This is brought out clearly by the studies of “complex
adaptive systems”: see, for example,
Joshua Epstein and Robert Axtell, Growing Artificial Societies:
Social Science from the Bottom
Up (Washington, D.C.: the Brookings Institution, 1996); John
Holland, Adaptation in Natural
and Artificial Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992);
Holland, Hidden Order: How
Adaption Builds Complexity (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley,
1995); Nigel Gilbert and Ro-
saria Conte, eds., Artificial Societies: The Computer Simulation
of Social Life (London: Univer-
sity College London Press, 1995); David Lane, “Artificial
Worlds and Economics” (un-
published, Santa Fe Institute paper No. 92–09–048). This
perspective can be found in Darwin,
Origin of Species, especially pp. 196–202, 374; also see Thomas
Schelling, Micromotives and
Macrobehavior (New York: Norton, 1978), passim, and
especially pp. 147–55.
14 For a related set of concerns, see Edward Tenner, Why
Things Bite Back: Technology and
the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Knopf,
1996), p. 89. For a discussion of
marine safety in terms of systems effects, see Charles Perrow,

Normal Accidents (New York:
Basic Books, 1984), chapter 6. My thinking has been strongly
influenced by this book. For
evidence of this effect with automobile safety devices, see
below, chapter 2, pp. 68–70.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
1
99
7.
P
ri
nc
et
on
U
ni
ve
rs
it
y
Pr
es
s.
A
ll
r
ig
ht
s

re
se
rv
ed
.
Ma
y
no
t
be
r
ep
ro
du
ce
d
in
a
ny
f
or
m
wi
th
ou
t
pe
rm
is
si
on
f
ro
m
th
e

pu
bl
is
he
r,
e
xc
ep
t
fa
ir
u
se
s
pe
rm
it
te
d
un
de
r
U.
S.
o
r
ap
pl
ic
ab
le
c
op
yr

ig
ht
l
aw
.
STATE UNIV
Account: eastmain
8 C H A P T E R 1
a slight increase in the price of oil, many other consequences
could follow,
from greater conservation, to increased uses of alternative fuels,
to hardship
for the poor.
International history is full of interconnections and complex
interactions.
Indeed, this one might seem like a parody were it not part of the
events
leading up to the First World War:
By the end of the summer of 1913 there was a real danger of yet
another Balkan
conflict: the King of Greece [said] that Turkey was preparing an
expedition to
recover the islands in Greek hands, and from Constantinople the
German ambas-
sador reported that the Bulgarian minister to the Porte had

informed him of a
verbal Turco-Bulgarian agreement under which Bulgaria would
attack Thrace in
the event of a Turco-Greek war. The danger that a Turco-Greek
war could spread
beyond the Balkans could not be lightly dismissed. If Turkey
and Greece came to
blows the Bulgarians could be expected to seek revenge for the
defeats of the
previous summer; so early a repudiation of the Treaty of
Bucharest would offend
the Rumanians, whilst the Greeks, if attacked by the Bulgarians,
could still invoke
their treaty with Serbia. If Serbia became involved no-one could
guarantee that
Austria-Hungary would once again stand aside.15
Here part of the complexity arises because we are unfamiliar
with the
situation, but this is not the entire story. Look, for example, at
Paul Ken-
nedy’s brief discussion of the multiple relations that interacted
with one
another in the 1930s:
It was not simply . . . that [for Great Britain] dealing with “the
German problem”
involved a constant reference to France and that dealing with
“the Japan problem”
involved equally close consultation with the United States. An
additional compli-
cation was that these two triangular relations interacted with
each other. For ex-
ample, British attempts to improve relations with Tokyo would,
it was argued,
enable a stiffer line to be taken towards Berlin—which would

gratify the French;
but this “appeasement” of the Japanese would enrage the
Americans, possibly with
grave consequences, and that would alarm the Dominions. The
stiffer tone in
Europe might also lead the Germans to settle their differences
with that other
15 R. J. Crampton, The Hollow Detente: Anglo-German
Relations in the Balkans, 1911–1914
(Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980), p. 131. The
late eighteenth century is filled
with similar cases: for examples see Paul Schroeder, The
Transformation of European Politics,
1763–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and T.
C. W. Blanning, The Origins of
the French Revolutionary Wars (London: Longman, 1986).
The first scholars who applied ideas from ecology to
international politics noted that when
elements are interconnected, “any substantial change in one
sector of the milieu is nearly
certain to produce significant, often unsettling, sometimes
utterly disruptive consequences in
other sectors.” (Harold and Margaret Sprout, An Ecological
Paradigm for the Study of Interna-
tional Politics [Princeton University, Center for International
Studies, Research Memorandum
no. 30, March 1968], p. 55.) A more recent study in this vein is
James Rosenau, Turbulence in
World Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1990).Co
py
ri
gh

t
©
1
99
7.
P
ri
nc
et
on
U
ni
ve
rs
it
y
Pr
es
s.
A
ll
r
ig
ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
Ma
y
no
t
be

r
ep
ro
du
ce
d
in
a
ny
f
or
m
wi
th
ou
t
pe
rm
is
si
on
f
ro
m
th
e
pu
bl
is
he
r,
e
xc
ep
t
fa

ir
u
se
s
pe
rm
it
te
d
un
de
r
U.
S.
o
r
ap
pl
ic
ab
le
c
op
yr
ig
ht
l
aw
.
STATE UNIV

Account: eastmain
“mystery” state, the Soviet Union. The whole thing worked in
the reverse order,
too: if Japan threatened aggression in the Far East, the British
would need to
move closer to the United States; but they would probably also
have to “buy off ”
Hitler in Europe, which might alarm France and its smaller
allies.16
As these cases show, it is difficult to know what will happen in
a system,
but at minimum we can say that a change at one point will have
wide-
ranging effects. Thus when the European settlers in North
America made
friends or enemies of a native tribe or gave it modern tools and
weapons,
they affected relations between that tribe and its neighbors,
setting in mo-
tion a ripple effect that affected the behavior of others hundreds
of miles
away.17
Ripples move through channels established by actors’ interests
and strate-
gies. When these are intricate, the ramifications will be as well,
and so the
results can surprise the actor who initiated the change. The
international

history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
centered on
maladroit German diplomacy, supplies several examples.
Dropping the Re-
insurance Treaty with Russia in 1890 simplified German
diplomacy, as the
Kaiser and his advisors had desired. More important, though,
were the indi-
rect and delayed consequences, starting with Russia’s turn to
France, which
increased Germany’s need for Austrian support, thereby making
Germany
hostage to its weaker and less stable partner. In 1902, the
Germans hoped
that the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, motivated by Britain’s
attempt to reduce
its isolation and vulnerability to German pressure, would
worsen British
relations with Russia (which was Japan’s rival in the Far East)
and France
(which sought British colonial concessions).18 There were
indeed ramifica-
tions, but they were not to Germany’s liking. The British public
became less
fearful of foreign ties, easing the way for ententes with France
and Russia.
16 Paul Kennedy, “The Logic of Appeasement,” Times Literary
Supplement, May 28, 1982,
p. 585.
17 As one historian has noted, “A tribe whose enemies had the
weapons which it lacked had
few alternatives, and all of them were unpleasant. It inevitably
made war upon the competitor.
So quickly did such hostilities arise after the entry of the

Europeans, and so fiercely did they
continue, that observers were prone to consider war as the usual
intertribal relationship, not
knowing how they themselves had transformed these relations”
(George Hunt, The Wars of the
Iroquois [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1940], p.
19). For the argument that the
explanation for why lions encountered by the European settlers
in East Africa had a propensity
to eat humans can be traced to ecological changes brought about
by earlier European activities
elsewhere on the continent, see Craig Packer, “Coping with a
Lion Killer,” Natural History 105
( June 1996), p. 16. Ecologists sometimes try to trace relations
by removing the members of a
species from an area, although the extent to which these
experiments can mimic natural pro-
cesses is not entirely clear: See, for example, Stuart Pimm, The
Balance of Nature? Ecological
Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1991), chapter 12.
18 P. J. V. Rolo, Entente Cordiale (New York: St. Martin’s,
1969), p. 121.Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
1
99
7.
P
ri
nc

et
on
U
ni
ve
rs
it
y
Pr
es
s.
A
ll
r
ig
ht
s
re
se
rv
ed
.
Ma
y
no
t
be
r
ep
ro
du
ce
d
in
a

ny
f
or
m
wi
th
ou
t
pe
rm
is
si
on
f
ro
m
th
e
pu
bl
is
he
r,
e
xc
ep
t
fa
ir
u
se
s
pe
rm
it
te

d
un
de
r
U.
S.
o
r
ap
pl
ic
ab
le
c
op
yr
ig
ht
l
aw
.
STATE UNIV
Account: eastmain
10 C H A P T E R 1
Furthermore, Japan, assured of Britain’s benevolent neutrality,

was able to
first challenge and then fight Russia. The Russian defeat,
coupled with the
strengthening of the Anglo-Japanese treaty, effectively ended
the Russian
threat to India and so facilitated Anglo-Russian cooperation,
much against
Germany’s interests and expectations.
The interwar period also reveals the way changes in bilateral
relations
both ramify through the system and are conditioned by it. Great
Britain,
realizing that the strength of its potential enemies outran its
resources, was
unable to act on the sensible impulse to conciliate Japan
because doing so
would have alienated the United States. But, in the end,
American hostility
to Japan turned out to serve Britain well: Without the attack on
Pearl Har-
bor, Britain might have lost the Second World War. Indeed,
Japan attacked
the American naval base as well as Malaya and the Dutch East
Indies in the
questionable belief that the U.S. and U.K. were so closely
linked that the
former would respond with force to an attack on the latter’s
empire. Fur-
thermore, the U.S. was spared a terrible dilemma when Hitler,
Japan’s ally,
responded by declaring war on the U.S. despite the fact that he
had previ-
ously taken great care not to match the American provocations
in the Atlan-
tic.19 These processes do more than reflect established

interests: Alliances
often derive their influence less from norms or the value that
states place on
their reputations for living up to their commitments than from
the way
interconnections expand and alter states’ concerns.20
We Can Never Do Merely One Thing
In a system, the chains of consequences extend over time and
many areas:
The effects of action are always multiple. Doctors call the
undesired impact
of medications “side effects.” Although the language is
misleading—there is
no criterion other than our desires that determines which effects
are “main”
and which are “side”—the point reminds us that disturbing a
system will
produce several changes. Hardin again gets to the heart of the
matter in
pointing out that, contrary to many hopes and expectations, we
cannot de-
velop or find “a highly specific agent which will do only one
thing. . . . We
can never do merely one thing. Wishing to kill insects, we may
put an end to
the singing of birds. Wishing to …
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalC
ode=tsur20
Survival

Global Politics and Strategy
ISSN: 0039-6338 (Print) 1468-2699 (Online) Journal homepage:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsur20
War and Peace After the Age of Liberal
Globalisation
François Heisbourg
To cite this article: François Heisbourg (2018) War and Peace
After the Age of Liberal
Globalisation, Survival, 60:1, 211-228, DOI:
10.1080/00396338.2018.1427378
To link to this article:
https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2018.1427378
Published online: 29 Jan 2018.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 51
View related articles
View Crossmark data
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalC
ode=tsur20
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsur20
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.108
0/00396338.2018.1427378
https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2018.1427378
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCo
de=tsur20&show=instructions

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCo
de=tsur20&show=instructions
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/00396338.2018.14
27378
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/00396338.2018.14
27378
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/00396338.20
18.1427378&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-01-29
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/00396338.20
18.1427378&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2018-01-29
Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted
disturbance of
all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish
the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen
relations,
with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and
opinions, are
swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they
can
ossify. All that is solid melts into air … [The] cosmopolitan
character to
production and consumption in every country … has drawn from
under
the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.1
I

In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
hit the nail on
the head when they described, 169 years ago, what was not yet
called ‘glo-
balisation’. Their remarkable statement does not demonstrate, as
one would
say in French, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Rather
the opposite.
Notwithstanding the Hegelian foundations from which they
developed
dialectical materialism, the authors of the Manifesto may have
underes-
timated the ‘cunning of Reason’: in the following decades,
nationalism
developed with a strength and a ferocity entirely out of keeping
with Marx
and Engels’s assumption that the internationalisation of
productive forces
Closing Argument
War and Peace After the Age of
Liberal Globalisation
François Heisbourg
François Heisbourg is Chair of the IISS Council. This closing
argument is adapted from his 2017 Alastair Buchan
Memorial Lecture, titled ‘War and Peace After the Age of
Liberal Globalisation’ and delivered at Arundel House,
London, on 16 November 2017.
Survival | vol. 60 no. 1 | February–March 2018 | pp. 211–
228 DOI 10.1080/00396338.2018.1427378

212 | François Heisbourg
would lead to the triumph of a global proletarian revolution. (A
similar
fate awaited Francis Fukuyama when he decreed his own neo-
Hegelian
end of history.) The more useful lesson from the Manifesto is
the reminder
that international and security relations are not an immutable
given but
a human construct whose nature, players and rules are
susceptible to
wrenching damage.
During the past six centuries, as the globalisation of
international
relations gathered pace, several sea changes occurred in the
nature of
global affairs. These started with the emergence of the first
lasting global
empire in the Spanish conquests, underpinned by a common
religion and
the preponderance of dynastic polities. That empire was
challenged, and
eventually cut down to size, by the forces unleashed by the
Reformation, a
revolution which began exactly five centuries ago. The
Westphalian order
it eventually led to, in 1648, has proven to be exceptionally
durable as an
eventually globalised modus operandi of inter-state relations.
The nature
of the players of the Westphalian system has, however,
undergone upheav-

als, initially as a consequence of the Enlightenment and
culminating in the
paroxysm of the French Revolution, which ushered in the global
triumph
of the nation-state and its non-hereditary rule. Then came the
monumental
imperial and ideological clashes of the twentieth century.
This attempt to pot six centuries of world history in 150 words
serves
not only to stress the malleable nature of the very notion of
international
and security relations, but also to underline the pre-eminent role
played
by belief systems – not simply massive changes in the
productive forces,
to use Marx’s vocabulary – in redefining these relations. Even if
the
latter feed into the former, there is no mechanical correlation
between
the virulence of a belief system and the state of the economy:
9/11 was a
middle-class affair; while in the 1930s, the Great Depression
led to the New
Deal in the United States, and to the rise of Hitler in Germany.
Prosperous
societies are not immune to radical narratives, and hardship is
no excuse
for extremism.
Ongoing changes – similar in force, if not in form, to those
above – are
tearing apart and eventually will remodel the global security
system. They
can be summarised as follows.

War and Peace After the Age of Liberal Globalisation | 213
The increasing acceleration of innovation in information
technology is
having massive effects at all levels, from individuals to the
global collec-
tive. While Moore’s law – the maxim, coined by Gordon Moore
in 1965,
predicting the increase of information processing at an
exponential pace
– will eventually reach its empirical limits, the new potential of
quantum
data processing promises to give a new boost to the digital
revolution,
one in which China appears to be one of only two leaders. In
parallel, the
convergence between biotech (specifically genomics) and
information tech-
nology (IT) is another wave of the tsunami which is sweeping
away old
certainties, within the space of less than a generation.
This rapid IT innovation has combined with changes in the
develop-
ment of air transportation and container shipment of goods to
drive
globalisation, which became truly global a quarter-century ago,
with
China’s opening to the world market and the collapse of the
closed Soviet
empire. Globalisation has relied on and created an increasingly
dense
network of close-to-real-time connectivity in all areas of social
activity

unprecedented in its scale but more importantly in its pace.
The advent of the Anthropocene means that human activity is
changing
the planet itself. Global warming, as a main component, is
interacting with
the unfolding impact of massive and differentiated demographic
change:
the early ageing of the twentieth century’s industrial powers in
Europe
and East Asia; the growth-sustaining youth bulge of
economically compe-
tent rising powers, notably China; and the unmitigated
population growth
of an ill-equipped sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, the
rapid urbani-
sation of the majority of the world’s population is creating
unprecedented
concentrations and inequalities of wealth and misery, power and
frustra-
tion. This process interacts in novel ways, both positive and
negative,
with the digitalisation of society, which facilitates entry into the
formal
economy while creating new injustices and vulnerabilities.
These forces are intertwined with effects that are mutually
amplified.
In their reshaping of the global security system, they can be
bundled into
four main categories. The first is the generally increased
potential for what
the French have labelled ruptures stratégiques, best translated as
‘strategic
upsets’.2 Instant connectivity, strong differentials of power and
wealth,

rapidly decreasing entry barriers to disruptive technologies
(including
those of a war-making nature), and the increasing vulnerability
of urban
and coastal areas all lead to higher risks of unexpected and
brutal catas-
trophe. The pace of diplomacy, the functioning of multilateral
institutions
and the stabilising role of nuclear deterrence were not designed
to cope
with this type of universe. A Kantian order would be more
inherently com-
petent to deal with this brave new world than an anarchically
Hobbesian
system, but, in most respects, a Kantian order is not what we
have, except
at the regional level with the European Union.
Then there is the differentiating process between those
countries which
are acquiring the skill set and the technological base which
allows them
to translate globalisation, innovation, the youth bulge, the
energy transi-
tion and urbanisation into power and influence, and those that
are left
behind. This will largely determine the ranking of actors in
peace and
war. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) will sharpen this
differentia-
tion further. Here, it is worth quoting at some length from an

article by a
Chinese practitioner and thinker in this key area:
The AI revolution … is poised to bring about a wide-scale
decimation
of jobs … The solution to [this] problem of mass unemployment
… will
involve [service] jobs that AI cannot do, that society needs and
that give
people a sense of purpose [such as] accompanying an older
person [or]
mentoring an orphanage.
And here comes the punchline:
This transformation will result in enormous profits for the
companies
that develop AI [or] adopt it … Most of the money … will go to
the
USA and China. AI is an industry in which strength begets
strength
… Most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable AI
companies
to subsidise their workers … They will be forced to negotiate
with
whichever country supplies most of their AI software – China or
the

United States – to essentially become that country’s economic
dependent
… [Such] arrangements would reshape today’s geopolitical
alliances.3
Europe, broadly defined, is currently absent from this contest,
which will
begin to play out in the coming years, not decades.
Thirdly, increasingly powerful, non-state corporate actors are an
ever-
more-prominent part of the world system, not only in the
absolute but also
relative to a world in which 100 states out of 191 have a GDP of
less than
$40 billion, and some 40 members of the United Nations have a
popula-
tion of less than 2 million.4 Such corporate actors are
ultimately beholden
to the goodwill of only the most powerful states or, in the case
of corpora-
tions, those which have the largest marketplace. The ‘GAFAs’
(Google,
Apple, Facebook, Amazon) are ultimately American, and are
also depend-
ent on the EU’s regulatory authorities; Alibaba and Tencent are
definitely
Chinese. In other words, the power differential in the world will
polarise
further, with a few (the US, China and to some extent the EU)

capable of
reining in the tech giants. Some will be able to ride their coat-
tails. Others
(and sometimes the same) will try to carve out their own
specialised niche.
The larger number of countries may be condemned to the
sidelines with
the prospect of state capture or state failure.
Paradoxically, in such a world, powerful non-state actors
increase
rather than decrease the role of the limited number of key state
players
who can bring them under control, and will increasingly want to
do so.
The rise of the non-state thus leads to the reaffirmation of state
power,
not to its abdication.
Lastly, and possibly most portentously, by generating a sense of
loss
of control, the disruptive changes described earlier are having a
massive
political and ideological impact. This trend was exacerbated,
but not
created, by the great financial crisis of ten years ago, in which
the overpaid
Masters of the Universe were seen as destroying value on an
epic scale.
This reaction affects ageing populations pining for the
restoration of a
mythical Golden Age. It also animates middle classes thrown
into disar-
ray by the delayering of management and the loss of a secure
place for
themselves and their offspring in hierarchies threatened by the

forces of
technological change in the era of liberal globalisation. The
yearning for
authority, including state authority, is part of this broad
movement to take
back control.
In the most violent way imaginable, it also inspires mainly
young
radicals violently searching for their own version of paradise.
Coping
with challenges such as the jihadi threat is a daunting but
compara-
tively straightforward task: there exist vast pluralities ready and
able to
do exactly that, and international coalitions are rightly seen as
valuable,
including by the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Fighting ter-
rorism does not, in and of itself, undermine the elements of
order in the
international system.
The non-violent response to the sense of a loss of control is
possibly
more important in terms of transforming the international
system. For
instance, will there still be a West if President Trump’s
transactional and
bilateral world vision strikes long-lasting roots in the United
States? As we
wait for the answer to that question, lesser actors in the global

system have
to hedge against the eventuality, while others, such as Russia or
China,
may welcome it. Indifference is not an option.
From Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and the generals in
Thailand
to the populist wave in Central Europe, to messy Brexit in the
UK and the
triumph of Trump in America, we may be witnessing the end of
what the
late Gerald Segal called a ‘Westernistic’ order.5 Ours is a world
in which
Chinese President Xi Jinping stated at the Communist Party
Congress this
autumn that ‘it is time for us to take centre stage’. China is
‘standing firm
and tall in the East’, and presenting ‘a new choice for other
countries’.6
II
In the recent past, non-liberal states, such as China and the Gulf
monar-
chies, were beneficiaries of a global order whose rules and
regulations
were Western-centric and liberal in their inspiration. Today,
this Western-
centric character is waning in a rather Hegelian cunning-of-
reason manner,
as its non-Western beneficiaries have grown in power,
especially China,
while the Western powers, not least the US and the UK,
question their own
role as key liberal rule-makers. If non-Western powers are
thrust into the
rule-making role, what will that system look like?

In attempting to answer that question, we must recognise the
limits of
what we know about ourselves, let alone others. Donald
Rumsfeld wasn’t
wrong when he distinguished between three types of knowledge:
known
knowns; known unknowns; and unknown unknowns.7 But it’s
even more
complicated than that: there are also the ‘unknown knowns’ –
that is,
information which is at hand but the availability of which we
don’t actu-
ally recognise. Big data increases our ability to tease out these
unknown
knowns, with, for instance, its practical and possibly decisive
use by the
Leave campaign or Trump’s electoral strategy in 2016. Those
entities
which will have direct or indirect control over maximising this
category of
knowledge will have an edge in domestic and international
power. Think
Cambridge Analytica – the company that worked for Trump’s
presidential
campaign and for the Leave camp in the run-up to the UK
referendum on
EU membership – multiplied by several orders of magnitude.
For the time being, the nature and the name of the new era
remain

undefined by key agents of the transformation, except in the
negative.
We were told by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif at this
year’s Munich Security Conference that we have entered ‘the
post-Western
global order’.8 His Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov, at the
same venue,
stated that ‘the post-Cold War era has come to an end … The
world has
become neither “Western-centric” nor a safer and more stable
place.’9 We
are told what the world has ceased to be, but not what it is
becoming.
When the Cold War ended, and notwithstanding Lavrov’s choice
of words,
we didn’t simply enter a post-Cold War era defined by an
absence: as early
as 1991, Charles Krauthammer wrote about ‘America’s unipolar
moment’,10
opening the way to Hubert Védrine’s hyperpuissance trope.11
The new era, for want of a better name, can be described as one
of
‘bipolar disorder’, with bipolarity in the form of US–Chinese
rivalry, and
disorder in the sense that unlike its Cold War predecessor, this
system will
be both unstable and inchoate. To make this case, we should
first assess the
basic alternatives.
One alternative to bipolar disorder would be the return of the
American moment, as China collapses into division and
anarchy.
Historically, China has indeed witnessed a number of such

episodes,
tumbling most recently from pre-eminence and unity a mere two
cen-
turies ago to chaos and marginalisation during much of the
twentieth
century. However, the quantum of power and wealth
accumulated by
China during the last 40 years is such that its great-power
momentum
cannot be easily stopped. And China’s government, and
probably its
people as well, are desperate to avoid a return to the horrors of
times
which still belong to the living memory of many.
A second alternative is China’s unipolar moment, with the
United
States becoming the functional equivalent, in strategic terms, of
other
continental-scale nations such as Brazil or Indonesia. But even
with Donald
Trump at the helm, it is difficult to imagine how this could
happen.
A third is a truly multipolar system, in which the European
Concert of
Nations, as it prevailed for close to 100 years after Waterloo, is
replicated
at the global level. Because we know that the concert eventually
crystal-
lised into world war between the Entente and the Central

Powers, we tend
to forget how broadly power was spread around, with countries
such as
Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Austria–Hungary
possessing great-
power status, notably through their imperial possessions.
Indeed, elements
of such multipolarity will figure in a bipolar-disorder system –
but the
head start of the United States, and more recently of China, will
make it
unlikely for a true global concert to emerge. Of the alternatives,
though,
this is less unlikely than the unipolar ones described above.
A fourth alternative is for pandemonium to break out, as
anarchy and
chaos spread from their Middle Eastern and African abodes to
Europe,
Russia and the Indian subcontinent, with no power or grouping
of powers
having the ability to restore a modicum of order. The first part
of this
proposition can be considered a dystopian extrapolation of the
million-
strong march of refugees from the Middle East to Europe in
2015–16. The
second assumption is much more questionable, as realpolitik
coalitions of
the willing tend to emerge, whether to get a grip on population
movement
as between the EU and Turkey, to face down the threat of jihadi
terrorism
or to cooperate against climate change and epidemics. There are
what I
would call ‘spoiler states’ such as Russia, with a GDP the size

of Spain’s,
which will seek to compensate for their relative weakness by
weaponising,
with the help of the IT revolution, every facet of human
activity. And we
also know that narrow-minded, dysfunctional governments can
emerge
in even the most robust democracies – but self-preservation is a
powerful
counter to the risk of pandemonium.
A final alternative to bipolar disorder, as improbable as the
others but
not impossible, is the triumph of the non-state vis-à-vis the
state as the
prime political organising principle of human societies. This
assessment
may appear to be questionable: after all, the tech giants are
transforming our
societies. As agents of political power, they have been able to
engineer their
own sophisticated version of state capture in order to shape
their very own
fiscally permissive environment. But as the current travails of
Facebook and
Twitter in the US political debate indicate, at the end of the
day, they are
more likely to join the ranks of the regulated rule-takers than to
become rule-
making regulators. And the Chinese Politburo can be counted on
to remind

the corporate world who calls the shots behind the Great
Firewall.
Having eliminated or sidelined the alternatives, the default
option
is bipolar: the US will not fade into irrelevance, and China will
neither
collapse nor rule alone; both will have a vested interest in
avoiding the
triumph of pandemonium or the non-state, and other nations will
not be in
a position to catch up anytime soon.
III
Twentieth-century history has witnessed two very different
forms of global
bipolar systems. The Cold War, from the late 1940s to the
collapse of the
Soviet empire, was comparatively long-lasting, remains close to
the living
memories of most senior decision-makers, and has left a legacy
of insti-
tutions which is still with us, in the form of the UN system, the
Bretton
Woods institutions, the American alliance system and the
European Union.
This comparatively stable and order-rich precedent makes it
easy to forget
that the two world wars were preceded by other bipolar systems.
From the
1890s onwards, both the Triple Entente and the Central Empires
developed
and organised bipolarity, which made world war possible if not
inevitable.
From the mid-1930s onwards, the Axis formed its grouping of
expansion-

ist powers: its ambitions prompted the creation of a vast,
extraordinarily
diverse and eventually victorious coalition. Bipolarity does not
in itself
generate stability.
In attempting to describe the instabilities of ‘bipolarity with
disorderly
characteristics’ (to paraphrase Deng Xiaoping’s statement about
‘socialism
with Chinese characteristics’), we need not be mechanically
forecasting
world war, twentieth-century style.12 But the picture will be a
dangerously
disturbing one nonetheless, more Game of Thrones than House
of Cards,
overtaken as the latter has been by such extravagant real-world
happen-
ings as the election of Mr Trump.
The most basic cause of instability is a product of the real-time
connec-
tivities and volatility of the global system, with its inherent
potential for
ruptures stratégiques alluded to earlier. This instability is not
directly caused
by the bipolarity itself, but it can magnify the effects of other
sources of
disorder. Civil engineers would talk about ‘entering into
resonance’, as can
happen if a company of soldiers is imprudently allowed to
march in lock-

step across a bridge. This is a global system in which a premium
should be
put on carefulness in the execution of one’s policies.
Carefulness is not a
synonym of prudence or patience: a spur-of-the-moment venture
such as
Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 invasion was handled with
exquisite
care. And strategic prudence, of the sort advocated and
practised by presi-
dent Barack Obama in Syria in 2013, was implemented with
carelessness.
To make things worse, digitalisation fuels instability insofar as
cyber
operations straddle the increasingly fuzzy line between peace
and war.
Cyber weapons are in many ways the polar opposite of nuclear
weapons:
they are weapons not of deterrence but of use, indeed constant
use; the
attribution of an attack is difficult to prove; operating them is
often both
comparatively easy and relatively cheap; they belong both to the
state and
to the non-state. ‘Hybrid’, or ‘non-linear’, warfare is to a large
extent a lazy
misnomer for what has largely existed since the beginnings of
history,
including guerrilla warfare and ‘hearts-and-minds’ operations.
But cyber
warfare is the epitome of true hybridicity in the same way that
nuclear
weapons are its exact reverse, hence the sobriquet ‘weapons of
mass dis-
ruption’.13 In addition, new and frightening issues arise when

the paths
of cyber war and nuclear weapons happen to cross: what
happens to the
stability of nuclear deterrence if nuclear arsenals are hacked, as
is currently
being considered by the United States vis-à-vis North Korea?
Another facet of digitalisation is the advent of autonomous
weapon
systems with built-in machine-learning capabilities, in other
words pos-
sessing artificial intelligence. How weapons with a mind of
their own will
affect deterrence and crisis stability is anybody’s guess, but the
impact of
this Golem can only be massive.
In a time which calls for carefulness, cyber warfare and
artificial intel-
ligence make the duty of care all the more difficult to exercise.
Arguably,
this should reinforce the trend towards the reaffirmation of the
power of
the state as the indispensable regulator of these rising forces of
disruption.
Then come the instabilities flowing from the lack of knowledge
or the
mistaken judgements made about one’s opposite number in a
bipolar
relationship. In an otherwise relatively stable US–Soviet order
during the

Cold War, it is these faulty assessments which continue to give
one the
greatest retrospective shivers – for instance, during the course
of the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis. George Kennan, in his ‘Long Telegram’
of 1946, and
others may have given the Americans a remarkably sound
understanding
of what made the Soviet leadership tick. But if this knowledge
served as a
remarkable guide for determining Cold War grand strategy, it
was largely
irrelevant in terms of forming a reasoned judgement during the
1962 crisis
given, inter alia, the paucity of American intelligence on Soviet
nuclear
dispositions and procedures in and around Cuba. The current
situation
gives no cause to believe that mutual knowledge and
understanding has
improved. The contrary is more likely, if only because the
number and the
variety of players has increased.
The bipolar relationship between the US and China is also
destabilised
by the asymmetries between the two contenders. During the
Cold War, each
antagonist represented a clear ideological, cultural, economic
and political
alternative, underpinning the strategic contest. In the case of
China today,
this clarity is also present, even if market Leninism bears little
resemblance
to the USSR’s centrally planned economy. But what of the US,
which, in

counterpoise to this Chinese model, appears to be reconsidering
its erst-
while role as the pivot of, and a model for, the post-Second
World War
order? Even as it remains the wellhead of technological
innovation, an as-yet
peerless military power, a tried-and-tested constitutional
democracy and
a paragon of the rule of law, the US is tempted to turn its back
on liberal
globalisation, the concept of an open society and the network of
influence
sustained by its Asian and European allies. Some are tempted to
broaden the
question to the West in general. As a group of Atlanticist
American schol-
ars put it recently: ‘There is no post American West. There is a
post liberal
West.’14 This may seem excessive: after all, Trump was not
elected in Paris
or Berlin. But it may yet turn out to be true, in the same way
that the end of
the USSR was precipitated most decisively by Russia’s choice
to free itself
from what it considered to be the shackles of an exceedingly
onerous Soviet
system. To use an old saying, ‘the fish rots from its head’.
The US is hesitating between sustaining the status quo and
turning
inwards. China is turning its back on the status quo and

reaching out-
wards. China also strengthens its hand as a dynamic power by
operating
asymmetrically, projecting itself globally in the key
technologies of tomor-
row while doing its utmost to keep the outside world truly
outside, on the
other side of the Great Firewall. This is China’s version of
being ‘some-
where’ and ‘anywhere’ at the same time, while avoiding the fate
of ending
up ‘nowhere’, to use (and maybe abuse) David Goodhart and
Prime
Minister Theresa May’s choice of words.15 Dynamism versus
stasis is not in
itself a strategically winning proposition: history is littered with
the wrecks
of empires that overreached. But it is a destabilising
combination.
Finally, there are what I would term the ‘derivative’
instabilities of a
bipolar system, of the sort …
BOOK TWO
on the fact that the engagement is the only effective means in
war—its purely
geometrical character, still makes it another lopsided principle
that could
never govern a real situation .3
ALL THESE ATTEMPTS ARE OBJECTIONABLE
It is only analytically that these attempts at theory can be called

advances
in the realm of truth; synthetically, in the rules and regulations
they offer,
they are absolutely useless.
They aim at fixed values; but in war everything is uncertain,
and calcula-
tions have to be made with variable quantities.
They direct the inquiry exclusively toward physical quantities,
whereas
all military action is intertwined with psychological forces and
effects.
They consider only unilateral action, whereas war consists of a
continuous
interaction of opposites.
THEY EXCLUDE GENIUS FROM THE RULE
Anything that could not be reached by the meager wisdom of
such one-
sided points of view was held to be beyond scientific control: it
lay in the
realm of genius, which rises above all rules .
Pity the soldier who is supposed to crawl among these scraps of
rules,
not good enough for genius, which genius can ignore, or laugh
at. No; what
genius does is the best rule, and theory can do no better than
show how
and why this should be the case.
Pity the theory that conflicts with reason! No amount of
humility can
gloss over this contradiction; indeed , the greater the humility,

the sooner it
will be driven off the field of real life by ridicule and contempt
.
PROBLEMS FACING THEORY WHEN MORAL FACTORS
ARE INVOLVED
Theory becomes infinitely more difficult as soon as it touches
the realm of
moral values. Architects and painters know precisely what they
are about
as long as they deal with material phenomena . Mechanical and
optical
structures are not subject to dispute. But when they come to the
aesthetics of
their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or
on the senses,
the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.
Medicine is usually concerned only with physical phenomena .
It deals
with the animal organism, which , however, is subject to
constant change,
and thus is never exactly the same from one moment to the next.
This
renders the task of medicine very difficult, and makes the
physician's judg-
ment count for more than his knowledge. But how greatly is the
difficulty
3 The reference is to A . H . Jomini . See P. Paret, “The Genesis
of On 'War ," pp .
10-11 above. Eds.
* 36

r
C H A P T E R T W O
increased when a mental factor is added , and how much more
highly do
value the psychiatrist!we
MORAL VALUES CANNOT BE IGNORED IN WAR
Military activity is never directed against material force alone;
it is always
aimed simultaneously at the moral forces which give it life, and
the two
cannot be separated.
But moral values can only be perceived by the inner eye, which
differs
in each person , and is often different in the same person at
different times.
Since danger is the common element in which everything moves
in war,
courage, the sense of one’s own strength , is the principal factor
that influ-
ences judgment. It is the lens, so to speak, through which
impressions pass
to the brain.
And yet there can be no doubt that experience will by itself
provide a
degree of objectivity to these impressions.
Everyone knows the moral effects of an ambush or an attack in
flank or
rear. Everyone rates the enemy’s bravery lower once his back is

turned, and
takes much greater risks in pursuit than while being pursued .
Everyone
gauges his opponent in the light of his reputed talents, his age,
and his
experience, and acts accordingly. Everyone tries to assess the
spirit and
temper of his own troops and of the enemy’s. All these and
similar effects
in the sphere of mind and spirit have been proved by
experience: they
recur constantly, and are therefore entitled to receive their due
as objective
factors. What indeed would become of a theory that ignored
them?
Of course these truths must be rooted in experience. No
theorist, and no
commander, should bother himself with psychological and
philosophical
sophistries.
PRINCIPAL PROBLEMS IN FORMULATING A THEORY
OF THE CONDUCT OF WAR
In order to get a clear idea of the difficulties involved in
formulating a theory
of the conduct of war and so be able to deduce its character, we
must look
more closely at the major characteristics of military activity.
FIRST PROPERTY: MORAL FORCES AND EFFECTS
HOSTILE FEELINGS
The first of these attributes consists of moral forces and the
effects they

produce.
Essentially combat is an expression of hostile feelings. But in
the large-
scale combat that we call war hostile feelings often have
become merely hos-
tile intentions. At any rate there are usually no hostile feelings
between
individuals. Yet such emotions can never be completely absent
from war.
* 37
B O O K T W O
Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations;
this serves
more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals. Even
where
there is no national hatred and no animosity to start with, the
fighting itself
will stir up hostile feelings: violence committed on superior
orders will stir
up the desire for revenge and retaliation against the perpetrator
rather than
against the powers that ordered the action. That is only human (
or animal,
if you like ) , but it is a fact. Theorists are apt to look on
fighting in the
abstract as a trial of strength without emotion entering into it.
This is one
of a thousand errors which they cjuitc consciously commit
because they have
no idea of the implications.

Apart from emotions stimulated by the nature of combat, there
are others
that are not so intimately linked with fighting; but because of a
certain
affinity, they are easily associated with fighting: ambition , love
of power,
enthusiasms of all kinds, and so forth .
'THE EFFECTS OF DANGER
COURAGE
Combat gives rise to the element of danger in which all military
activity
must move and be maintained like birds in air and fish in water.
The effects
of danger, however, produce an emotional reaction, either as a
matter of
immediate instinct, or consciously. The former results in an
effort to avoid
the danger, or, where that is not possible, in fear and anxiety.
Where these
effects do not arise, it is because instinct has been outweighed
by courage .
But courage is by no means a conscious act; like fear, it is an
emotion . Fear
is concerned with physical and courage with moral survival.
Courage is the
nobler instinct, and as such cannot be treated as an inanimate
instrument
that functions simply as prescribed. So courage is not simply a
counterweight
to danger, to be used for neutralizing its effects: it is a quality
on its own .

EXTENT OF THE INFLUENCE EXERCISED BY DANGER
In order properly to appreciate the influence which danger
exerts in war,
one should not limit its sphere to the physical hazards of the
moment .
Danger dominates the commander not merely by threatening
him per-
sonally, but by threatening all those entrusted to him ; not only
at the
moment where it is actually present, but also, through the
imagination, at
all other times when it is relevant; not just directly but also
indirectly
through the sense of responsibility that lays a tenfold burden on
the com -
mander’s mind . He could hardly recommend or decide on a
major battle
without a certain feeling of strain and distress at the thought of
the danger
and responsibility such a major decision implies. One can make
the point
that action in war, insofar as it is true action and not mere
existence, is
never completely free from danger .
138
r
C H A P T E R T W O
OTHER EMOTIONAL FACTORS
In considering emotions that have been aroused by hostility and

danger as
being peculiar to war, we do not mean to exclude all others that
accompany
man throughout his life. There is a place for them in war as well
. It may
he true that many a petty play of emotions is silenced by the
serious duties
of war; but that holds only for men in the lower ranks who,
rushed from
one set of exertions and dangers to the next, lose sight of the
other things
in life, forego duplicity because death will not respect it, and
thus arrive at
the soldierly simplicity of character that has always represented
the military
at its best. In the higher ranks it is different. The higher a man
is placed ,
the broader his point of view. Different interests and a wide
variety of
passions, good and bad, will arise on all sides. Envy and
generosity, pride
and humility, wrath and compassion —all may appear as
effective forces in
this great drama .
INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES
In addition to his emotional qualities, the intellectual qualities
of the com -
mander are of major importance. One will expect a visionary,
high-flown
and immature mind to function differently from a cool and
powerful one .
THE DIVERSITY OF INTELLECTUAL QUALITY RESULTS
IN A

DIVERSITY OF ROADS TO THE GOAL
The influence of the great diversity of intellectual qualities is
felt chiefly in
the higher ranks, and increases as one goes up the ladder. It is
the primary
cause for the diversity of roads to the goal—already discussed
in Book I —
and for the disproportionate part assigned to the play of
probability and
chance in determining the course of events.
SECOND PROPERTY: POSITIVE REACTION
The second attribute of military action is that it must expect
positive reac-
tions, and the process of interaction that results. Here we are
not concerned
with the problem of calculating such reactions—that is really
part of the
already mentioned problem of calculating psychological
forces—but rather
with the fact that the very nature of interaction is bound to
make it unpre-
dictable. The effect that any measure will have on the enemy is
the most
singular factor among all the particulars of action. All theories,
however,
must stick to categories of phenomena and can never take
account of a
trulv unique case; this must be left to judgment and talent. Thus
it is natural
that military activity, whose plans, based on general
circumstances, are so
frequently disrupted by unexpected particular events; should
remain largelv

* 39
.
C H A P T E R T W O
OTHER EMOTIONAL FACTORS
In considering emotions that have been aroused by hostility and
danger as
being peculiar to war, we do not mean to exclude all others that
accompany
man throughout his life. There is a place for them in war as
well. It may
be true that many a petty play of emotions is silenced by the
serious duties
of war; but that holds only for men in the lower ranks who,
rushed from
one set of exertions and dangers to the next, lose sight of the
other things
in life, forego duplicity because death will not respect it, and
thus arrive at
the soldierly simplicity of character that has always represented
the military
at its best. In the higher ranks it is different. The higher a man
is placed ,
the broader his point of view. Different interests and a wide
variety of
passions, good and bad , will arise on all sides. Envy and
generosity, pride
and humility, wrath and compassion—all may appear as
effective forces in
this great drama .

INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES
In addition to his emotional qualities, the intellectual qualities
of the com-
mander are of major importance. One will expect a visionary,
high -flown
and immature mind to function differently from a cool and
powerful one .
THE DIVERSITY OF INTELLECTUAL QUALITY RESULTS
IN A
DIVERSITY OF ROADS TO THE GOAL
The influence of the great diversity of intellectual qualities is
felt chiefly in
the higher ranks, and increases as one goes up the ladder. It is
the primary
cause for the diversity of roads to the goal—already discussed
in Book 1—
and for the disproportionate part assigned to the play of
probability and
chance in determining the course of events.
SECOND PROPERTY: POSITIVE REACTION
The second attribute of military action is that it must expect
positive reac-
tions, and the process of interaction that results. Here we are
not concerned
with the problem of calculating such reactions—that is really
part of the
already mentioned problem of calculating psychological
forces—but rather
with the fact that the very nature of interaction is bound to
make it unpre-

dictable. The effect that anv measure will have on the enemy is
the mostJ *
singular factor among all the particulars of action. All theories,
however,
must stick to categories of phenomena and can never take
account of a
truly unique case; this must be left to judgment and talent. Thus
it is natural
that military activity, whose plans, based on general
circumstances, are so
frequently disrupted by unexpected particular events; should
remain largely
239
B O O K T W O
a matter of talent, and that theoretical directives tend to be less
useful here
than in anv other sphere.
THIRD PROPERTY: UNCERTAINTY OF ALL
INFORMATION
Finally, the general unreliability of all information presents a
special prob-
lem in war : all action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of
twilight, which ,
like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem
grotesque and
larger than they really are.
Whatever is hidden from full view in this feeble light has to be
guessed

at by talent, or simply left to chance. So once again for lack of
objective
knowledge one has to trust to talent or to luck .
A POSITIVE DOCTRINE IS UNATTAINABLE
Given the nature of the subject, we must remind ourselves that
it is simply
not possible to construct a model for the art of war that can
serve as a
scaffolding on which the commander can rely for support at any
time. When -
ever he has to fall back on his innate talent, he will find himself
outside the
model and in conflict with it; no matter how versatile the code,
the situation
will always lead to the consequences we have already alluded
to: talent and
genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with
practice .
ALTERNATIVES WHICH MAKE A THEORY POSSIBLE
THE DIFFICULTIES VARY IN MAGNITUDE
There are two ways out of this dilemma .
In the first place, our comments on the nature of military
activity in
general should not be taken as applying equally to action at all
levels. What
is most needed in the lower ranks is courage and self -sacrifice,
but there are
far fewer problems to be solved by intelligence and judgment.
The field of
action is more limited , means and ends are fewer in number,

and the data
more concrete: usually they are limited to what is actually
visible. But the
higher the rank, the more the problems multiply, reaching their
highest
point in the supreme commander. At this level, almost all
solutions must
be left to imaginative intellect.
Even if we break down war into its various activities, we will
find that the
difficulties are not uniform throughout. The more physical the
activity, the
less the difficulties will be. The more the activity becomes
intellectual and
turns into motives which exercise a determining influence on
the command -
er’s will, the more the difficulties will increase. Thus it is
easier to use theory
to organize, plan, and conduct an engagement than it is to use it
in deter-
mining the engagement’s purpose. Combat is conducted with
physical weap-
ons, and although the intellect does play a part , material factors
will domi-
140
C H A P T E R T W O
nate. But when one conies to the e f f e c t of the engagement,
where material
successes turn into motives for further action, the intellect alone
is decisive.

In brief, tactics will present far fewer difficulties to the theorist
than will
strategy.
THEORY SHOULD BE STUDY, NOT DOCTRINE
The second way out of this difficulty is to argue that a theory
need not be
a positive doctrine, a sort of manual for action . Whenever an
activity deals
primarily with the same things again and again—with the same
ends and
the same means, even though there may be minor variations and
an infinite
diversity of combinations—these things are susceptible of
rational study. It
is precisely that inquiry which is the most essential part of any
theoryy and
which may quite appropriately claim that title. It is an
analytical investiga-
tion leading to a close acquaintance with the subject; applied to
experience—
in our case, to military history—it leads to thorough familiarity
with it . The
closer it comes to that goal, the more it proceeds from the
objective form of
a science to the subjective form of a skill, the more effective it
will prove
in areas where the nature of the case admits no arbiter but
talent. It will,
in fact, become an active ingredient of talent. Theory will have
fulfilled its
main task when it is used to analyze the constituent elements of
war, to
distinguish precisely what at first sight seems fused, to explain
in full the
properties of the means employed and to show their probable

effects, to
define clearly the nature of the ends in view, and to illuminate
all phases of
warfare in a thorough critical inquiry. Theory then becomes a
guide to any-
one who wants to learn about war from books; it will light his
way, ease his
progress, train his judgment, and help him to avoid pitfalls.
A specialist who has spent half his life trying to master every
aspect of
some obscure subject is surely more likely to make headway
than a man
who is trying to master it in a short time. Theory exists so that
one need
not start afresh each time sorting out the material and plowing
through it,
but will find it ready to hand and in good order. It is meant to
educate the
mind of the future commander, or, more accurately, to guide
him in his self -
education, not to accompany him to the battlefield; just as a
wise teacher
guides and stimulates a young man’s intellectual development,
but is care-
ful not to lead him by the hand for the rest of his life.
If the theorist’s studies automatically result in principles and
rules, and
if truth spontaneously crystallizes into these forms, theory will
not resist
this natural tendency of the mind. On the contrary, where the
arch of truth
culminates in such a keystone, this tendency will be underlined
. But this is
simply in accordance with the scientific law of reason, to

indicate the point
at which all lines converge, but never to construct an algebraic
formula for
use on the battlefield. Even these principles and rules are
intended to pro-
vide a thinking man with a frame of reference for the
movements he has
been trained to carry out, rather than to serve as a guide which
at the
moment of action lays down precisely the path he must take.
r 4i
A l S O O f l 7 4 5 b T 7
CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ,v
ON WAR
V
Edited, and Translated by
MICHAEL HOWARD and PETER PARET
Introductory Essays by PETER PARET,
MICHAEL HOWARD, and BERNARD BRODIE;
with a Commentary by BERNARD BRODIE
Index by ROSALIE WEST
I 1 • j
P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

P R I N C E T O N , N E W J E R S E Y
C O N T E N T S
t
BOOK TWO
On the Theory of War
Classifications of the Art of War
On the Theory of War
Art of War or Science of War
Method and Routine
Critical Analysis
On Historical Examples
1 2 7i
x 3 32
1483
1314
1565
6 1 7O
BOOK THREE
On Strategy in General
Strategy
Elements of Strategy

Moral Factors
The Principal Moral Elements
Military Virtues of the Armv
Boldness
Perseverance
Superiority of Numbers
Surprise
Cunning
Concentration of Forces in Space
Unification of Forces in Time
The Strategic Reserve
Economy of Force
The Geometrical Factor
The Suspension of Action in War
The Character of Contemporary Warfare
Tension and Rest
1771
1 8 32
1843
1 8 64
1873
6 1 9 0
* 937
8 * 9 4
1 9 89
2 0 21 0

2 0 411
20512
210x 3
2 1 3x 4
1 3 2 1 4
2 1 616
l l 2 2 0
1 8 2 2 1
vi
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern
gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery—
In short, when I’ve a smattering of elemental strategy
You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a-gee.
For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.
—Gilbert and Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance
In the famous patter song from their light opera of 1879,
Gilbert and Sullivan have their “modern major general”

parading his knowledge of all
things historical, classical, artistic, and scientifi c. Only at the
end does he
admit that the gaps in his knowledge are those exactly relevant
to his trade.
When he admits that his military knowledge has yet to reach the
start of the
nineteenth century, he is saying that it is pre-Napoleonic,
therefore belong-
ing to a quite different age and unfi t for contemporary
purposes.
Martin van Creveld has asked whether strategy existed before
1800. 1
From the perspective of this book, of course, it existed from the
moment
primates formed social groupings. Van Creveld accepted that
there were
always some informed notions of the conduct of war and how to
achieve
victory. Commanders had to work out their approach to battle
and organize
The New Science of Strategy chapter 6
70 s t r a t e g i e s o f f o r c e
their forces accordingly. What van Creveld had in mind was a
step change
that occurred around this time. Before 1800, intelligence-
gathering and
communication systems were slow and unreliable. For that
reason, generals
had to be on the front line—or at least not too far behind—in

order to adjust
quickly to the changing fortunes of battle. They dared not
develop plans of
any complexity. Adopting measures such as splitting forces in
order to attack
the enemy from different directions or holding back reserves to
reinforce
success was likely to lead to command and logistical
nightmares. Roads were
poor and movement was bound to be slow. Although it was no
longer neces-
sary to live off the land, logistical support required that
magazines be moved
along supply lines. This entailed a serious vulnerability if the
enemy man-
aged to cut the lines. Modest maneuvers or nighttime marches
were the best
options for catching an enemy by surprise. Armies that lacked
passion and
commitment, whose soldiers were easily tempted to desert if
food was in
short supply or conditions too harsh, did not encourage confi
dence in sustain-
able campaigns. Prudence suggested concentrating on pushing
enemies into
positions where they would feel vulnerable or struggle to stay
supplied. All
this limited the impact of wars on the apparently stable
European balance of
power. Then, as transport systems were improving and lands
were becoming
properly mapped, along came Napoleon Bonaparte, self-
proclaimed emperor
of France. Napoleon embodied a new way of fi ghting wars: a
combination of
individual genius and mass organization, and objectives far

more ambitious
than those of his predecessors.
The French Revolution of 1789 was a source of great energy,
innovation,
and destruction. It unleashed political and social forces that
could not be
contained in their time and whose repercussions continued to be
felt in the
succeeding centuries. In military affairs, the Revolution led to
large, popular
armies whose impact was enhanced by the developing means of
transport-
ing them over long distances. There was a move away from
limited wars of
position, bound up with quarrels between individual rulers and
shaped by
logistical constraints and unreliable armies, to total wars
engaging whole
nations. 2 With Napoleon, wars became means by which one
state could chal-
lenge the very existence of another. No longer were they an
elaborate form of
bargaining. The high stakes removed incentives to compromise
and encour-
aged a fi ght to a bloody conclusion. Military maneuvers were
no longer ritu-
alistic—their impact reinforced by the occasional battle—but
preludes to
great confrontations that could see whole armies effectively
eliminated and
states subjugated.
This section opens with the introduction of the modern concept
of strat-
egy and then describes the views of its two key exponents,

Baron Henri de
t h e n e w s c i e n c e 71
Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz. They developed their ideas at a
time of
great political turbulence, a time when individual battles redrew
the maps of
Europe and new challenges were thrown up by the need to
mobilize, moti-
vate, move, and direct mass armies. The focus was on battle and
the possibil-
ity of infl icting such a defeat that the enemy would be left in a
politically
hopeless position. This was when the idea of the battle of
annihilation was
fi rmly implanted in military minds. Lost in this process was a
view of battle
as the “chance of arms” which until then had been accepted by
the belliger-
ents as an appropriate form of dispute resolution.
This view survived well into the nineteenth century, and
arguably only
collapsed in that century’s second half. It was, however, always
tenuous and its
days were numbered. It was the product of a monarchical
system in which the
causes and outcomes of war were bound up with matters of most
interest to
rulers, such as dynastic succession or sovereignty over
particular pieces of ter-
ritory, and so it was vulnerable to the rise of nationalism and
republicanism. It

was part of a normative framework that was always subject to
interpretation at
its edges. In the most restrained version, victory was the agreed
outcome of a
day’s fi ghting, which would leave one army triumphant on the
fi eld of battle,
looking for booty and stripping enemy corpses. It still depended
on the enemy
accepting the result. Certain victories appeared to have more
legitimacy than
others, for example, those achieved without recourse to gross
deceptions. But
the notionally defeated sovereign could challenge his
predicament by observ-
ing that while retreat might have been necessary, the other side
took more
casualties; or the retreat was in suffi ciently good order so
another battle could
be fought. The victor had to calculate whether suffi cient
damage had been
done to convince the enemy to now negotiate sensibly. This
depended in part
on what was at stake, as well as on whether the enemy had any
capacity to
fi ght back or else might be coerced through sieges and
rampages through the
countryside, which he was helpless to prevent.
Even a badly bruised opponent might fi nd a way to continue
resistance,
regroup, or acquire an external ally. Given the uncertainties and
explosive
tendencies connected with war, was it wise to assume that this
was no more
than a form of violent diplomacy? If it was bound to end with a
compromise,

why not settle the matter with diplomacy before blood was shed,
or look for
alternative—possibly economic—forms of coercion? Forming
alliances and
undermining those of the enemy—evidently a matter of
statecraft—could be
of as much or even greater importance to a war’s outcome than
a display of
brilliant generalship.
The starting point for nineteenth-century strategic discourse,
however,
was the expectation of a decisive battle, from which exceptions
might be
found, rather than the demands of statecraft, for which battle
might be the
exception. Military circles encouraged the characterization of
the interna-
tional system as extensions of the battlefi eld, as constant
struggles for sur-
vival and domination.
Strategy as Profession and Product
If we consider strategy to be a particular sort of practical
problem-solving, it
has existed since the start of time. Even if the word was not
always in use, we
can now look back and observe how personalities engaged in
activities that
would later be called strategy. Did the arrival of a word to

capture this activity
make an important difference to the actual practice? Even after
its introduc-
tion, strategy was not universally employed as a descriptor
even by those who
might now be considered accomplished strategists. What was
different was
the idea of strategy as a general body of knowledge from which
leaders could
draw. The strategist came to be a distinctive professional
offering special-
ist advice to elites, and strategy became a distinctive product
refl ecting the
complexity of situations in which states and organizations found
themselves.
We noted earlier the role of the stratēgos in 5th-century
Athens. According
to Edward Luttwak, the ancient Greek and Byzantine equivalent
to our strat-
egy would have been stratēgike episteme (generals’
knowledge) or stratēgōn sophia
(generals’ wisdom). 3 This knowledge took the form of
compilations of strata-
gems, as in the Strategematon , the Greek title of the Latin
work by Frontinus.
The Greeks would have described what was known about the
conduct of war
as taktike techne , which included what we call tactics as well
as rhetoric and
diplomacy.
The word strategy only came into general use at the start of
the nineteenth
century. Its origins predated Napoleon and refl ected the
Enlightenment’s

growing confi dence in empirical science and the application of
reason. Even
war, the most unruly of human activities, might be studied and
conducted
in the same spirit. This fi eld of study at fi rst was known as
tactics , a word
that had for some time referred to the orderly organization and
maneuver of
troops. Tactics defi ned as “the science of military
movements” could, accord-
ing to Beatrice Heuser, be traced back to the fourth century
BCE. There
was no corresponding defi nition of strategy until an
anonymous sixth-century
work linked it explicitly with the general’s art. “Strategy is the
means by
which a commander may defend his own lands and defeat his
enemies.” In
900, the Byzantine emperor Leo VI wrote of strategía to
provide an overall
term for the business of the strategos. A few centuries later
there was some
knowledge of Leo’s work, but when in 1554 a Cambridge
professor translated
the text into Latin, which lacks a word for strategy, he used “the
art of the
general” or “the art of command.” 4
In 1770, Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert,
published his
Essai général de tactique . Then only 27, Guibert was a

precocious and extrava-
gant French intellectual who had already acquired extensive
military experi-
ence. He produced a systematic treatise on military science that
captured the
spirit of the Enlightenment and gained enormous infl uence. At
issue was
whether it was possible to overcome the indecisiveness of
contemporary war.
Guibert’s view was that achieving a decisive result with a mass
army required
an ability to maneuver. He distinguished “elementary tactics,”
which became
“tactics,” from “grand tactics,” which became “strategy.”
Guibert wanted a
unifi ed theory, raising tactics to “the science of all times, all
places and all
arms.” His key distinction was between raising and training
armies, and then
using them in war. 5 By 1779, he was writing of “la
stratégique.” 6
The sudden introduction of the word is attributed by Heuser to
Paul
Gédéon Joly de Maizeroy’s translation of Leo’s book into
French in 1771.
Joly de Maizeroy identifi ed Leo’s “science of the general” as
being separate
from the subordinate spheres of tactics. In a footnote, he
observed: “ La stra-
tégique is thus properly said to be the art of the commander, to
wield and
employ appropriately and with adroitness all the means of the
general in
his hand, to move all the parts that are subordinate to him, and
to apply

them successfully.” By 1777, a German translation of the work
used the term
Strategie . Joly de Maizeroy described strategy as “sublime” (a
word also used
by Guibert) and involving reason more than rules. There was
much to con-
sider: “In order to formulate plans, strategy studies the
relationships between
time, positions, means and different interests, and takes every
factor into
account . . . which is the province of dialectics, that is to say, of
reasoning,
which is the highest faculty of the mind.” 7 The term now
began to achieve
a wide currency, offering a way of inserting deliberate,
calculating thought
into an arena previously remarkable for its absence.
In Britain from the start of the nineteenth century, a plethora of
words
emerged: strategematic, strategematical, strategematist,
strategemical. All sought
to convey the idea of being versed in strategies and stratagems.
Thus, a strat-
egemitor would devise stratagems, while a stratarchy referred to
the system
of rule in an army, starting with the top commander. This word
was once
used by British prime minister William Gladstone to refer to
how armies
would go beyond hierarchy to require absolute obedience to
superior offi -
cers. Then there was stratarithmetry, which was a way of
estimating how
many men you had by drawing up an army or body of men into a
given

geometrical fi gure. An alternative word for strategist was
strategian, which
goes neatly with tactician—though this did not catch on.
The distinction between strategy and tactics was of
acknowledged impor-
tance as a means of distinguishing between different levels of
command and
contact with the enemy. Thus strategy was the art of the
commander-in-chief
“projecting and directing the larger military movements and
operations of
a campaign,” while tactics was “the art of handling forces in
battle or in the
immediate presence of the enemy.” 8 Soon the word
migrated away from its
military context and into such diverse areas as trade, politics,
and theology.
The speed with which the word strategy gained currency
meant that it
came to be used without a generally agreed upon defi nition.
There was a
consensus that strategy had something to do with the supreme
commander
and that it was about linking military means to the objects of
war. It involved
making connections between all that was going on in the
military sphere
beyond the more intimate and small-scale maneuvers and
encounters handled

at the lower levels of command. But the activities that came
under the head-
ing of strategy were also understood to be intensely practical, a
consequence
of the sheer size of the armies of the new age, the extraordinary
demands
posed by their movement and provisioning, and the factors that
would gov-
ern how enemies should be approached. Much of this might be
subject to
forms of practical knowledge and principles that could be
described in a
systematic and instructive way, with checklists of
considerations to be taken
into account by the more forward-looking commanders. It is not
surprising
therefore that strategy became closely associated with planning.
Questions
of supply and transport limited what could be achieved, and
calculations of
fi repower and fortifi cation infl uenced decisions on the
deployment of troops.
Put this way, strategy covered all those aspects of a military
campaign that
might properly be determined in advance.
Improved maps made an enormous difference to planning of this
sort.
Developments in cartography meant that it was possible to
consider how
a campaign might develop by plotting its likely course on sheets
of paper,
representing base camps and lines of supply, enemy positions,
and oppor-
tunities for maneuvers. A start had been made on the
reconceptualization

of war in spatial terms by a Henry Lloyd, who had left Britain
because of
his participation in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and then
fought with a
variety of European armies. Having observed that those who
embraced the
profession of arms took “little or no pains to study it,” he
claimed to have
identifi ed fi xed principles of war that could vary only in their
application. 9
Lloyd is credited with inventing the term line of operations ,
which remains
in use to this day and describes an army’s path from its starting
point to its
fi nal destination. Lloyd infl uenced subsequent military
theorists, including
the Prussian Heinrich Dietrich von Bulow, who went to France
in 1790 to
experience the Revolution fi rst hand. Having studied
Napoleon’s methods,
he wrote on military affairs, including a Practical Guide to
Strategy in 1805.
He got somewhat carried away by the possibilities of geometric
representa-
tions of armies preparing for battle. His reliance on
mathematical principles
led to him to offer proofs on how armies might constitute
themselves and
move forward, according to distances from their starting base
and enemy
objective. The approach can be discerned from his defi nition of

strategy as
“all enemy movements out of the enemy’s cannon range or
range of vision,”
so that tactics covered what happened within that range. 10
His observations
on tactics were considered to have merit, but much to his
chagrin his descrip-
tion of the “new war system” was ignored by Prussian generals.
Whatever the scientifi c method might bring to the battlefi eld,
when it
came to deciding on the moment, form, and conduct of battle,
much would
depend on the general’s own judgment—perhaps more a matter
of character,
insight, and intuition than careful calculation and planning.
When battle
was joined, the theory could say little because of the many
variables in play.
At that point, war became an art form. Strategy could be
considered a matter
of science, in the sense of being systematic, empirically based,
and logically
developed, covering all those things that could be planned in
advance and
were subject to calculation. As art, strategy covered actions
taken by bold
generals who could achieve extraordinary results in
unpromising situations.
Napoleon’s Strategy
Napoleon preferred to keep the critical ingredients behind his
approach
beyond explanation. The art of war, he insisted, was simple and
commonsen-

sical. It was “all in execution . . . nothing about it is
theoretical.” The essence
of the art was simple: “With a numerically inferior army” it was
necessary
to have “larger forces than the enemy at the point which is to be
attacked or
defended.” How best to achieve that was an art that could “be
learned neither
from books nor from practice.” This was matter for the military
genius and
therefore for intuition. Napoleon’s contribution to strategy was
not so much
in his theory but in his practice. Nobody could think of better
ways of using
great armies to win great wars.
Napoleon was not creating new forms of warfare completely
from scratch.
He was building on the achievements of Frederick the Great, the
most admired
commander of his time. Frederick was king of Prussia from
1740 to 1786 and
a refl ective and prolifi c writer on war. His success was the
result of turning his
army into a responsive instrument, well trained and held
together by tough
discipline. Initially he preferred his wars to be “short and
lively,” which required
accepting battle. Long wars exhausted a state’s resources as
well as its soldiers,
and Frederick’s country was relatively poor. His seizure of

Silesia early in his
reign, during the War of Austrian Succession, made his
reputation as a tactical
genius. Whitman uses this campaign as a prime example of how
a “law of vic-
tory” could ensure restraint, so long as both sides accepted
battle as a form of
wager. Frederick observed that battles “decide the fortune of
states” and could
“put an end to a dispute that otherwise might never be settled.”
As kings were
subject to “no superior tribunal,” combat could “decide their
rights” and “judge
the validity of their reasons.” 11
Over time, however, Frederick became more wary of battle due
to its
dependence upon chance. Success might need to come through
the accumula-
tion of small gains rather than a single decisive encounter.
Unlike Napoleon,
Frederick preferred to avoid fi ghting too far from his own
borders, did not
expect to destroy the opposing army in battle, and avoided
frontal attacks.
His signature tactic was the “oblique order,” an often complex
maneuver
requiring a disciplined force. It involved concentrating forces
against the
enemy’s strongest fl ank while avoiding engagement on his own
weak fl ank.
If the enemy did not succumb, an orderly retreat would still be
possible; if
the enemy fl ank was overrun, the next step was to wheel round
and roll up
his line. What Frederick shared with Napoleon—and what later

OneIntroductionWhen you pick up one piece of this plan.docx

OneIntroductionWhen you pick up one piece of this plan.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to OneIntroductionWhen you pick up one piece of this plan.docx

Similar to OneIntroductionWhen you pick up one piece of this plan.docx (9)

More from amit657720

More from amit657720 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

OneIntroductionWhen you pick up one piece of this plan.docx