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Total War

© Frank Monaldo

Carl von Clausewitz was born of a middle class family over two hundred years ago in 1780 near Magdeburg, Prussia. During the conflict of the Prussian army with the French Revolutionary army, he observed the success of forces motivated by passionate ideological and nationalistic fervor against more professional mercenary forces. After his eventual appointment as head of the Prussian War College, Clausewitz had time to integrate this experience with his historical studies and military strategy to produce what is perhaps the most-cited work on military strategy, On War.

Clausewitz first articulated the concept of "total war." For many centuries in Europe, wars were fought by forces generally far from population centers. It is not that civilian populations were safe from abuse from warring armies, but total war, in the Clausewitzian vision, pitted entire societies against one another. All an enemy's territory, property, and citizens were potential targets. Indeed, the more ruthless, merciless and complete an army's tactics, the more likely Clausewitz believed their victory to be.

Clausewitz's ruthlessness and seemingly cavalier prescription is captured in his oft-cited observation that "war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with the admixture of different means." World Wars I and II are the most conspicuous examples of total war, the total mobilization of one society against another other. The vanquished society in a total war suffers total cultural collapse.

Clausewitz's popularity in academic circles fluctuates with contemporary academic fashions. During the Cold War it seemed that total war was self-defeating. There is no possible positive political outcome of a major nuclear exchange. However, Clausewitz's argument that defensive warfare — where the goal is simply to resist an enemy long enough for him to tire — is militarily and politically easier to implement seemed particularly applicable during Vietnam.

John Keegan is his seminal work A History of Warfare (1993) objects to idea that war is extension of politics, that war is just one more step in a continuum. The objects of war, the means employed, the type of leadership qualities required are fundamentally different from political objects, political means and political leadership. Much of the academic debate centers around the question of whether Clausewitz's observation was a lamented statement of the way things are or an expression of preference.

On the eve of what may be a conflict with Iraq it is perhaps time to reflect on the objects and means of war. The Gulf War seemed at the time like a triumph of western