4.1The claim
The best-known sentence of On War is that war is a continuation of policy by other means. The claim of this section is that the sentence cannot be read alone. In Book I of On War it stands beside an account of war as a medium that resists every plan: a medium of uncertain information, of chance, and of friction that cannot be described on paper. The two together set a problem: policy must keep a continuous influence on the conduct of war, yet the resistance it must govern is known by experience at the point of execution. Clausewitz sees the problem and answers it most clearly in Book VIII. Read this way, the text adds to the civil-military debate an account of why the relation between civilians and executors is never only a matter of authority: it is also a matter of who carries what cannot be known in advance.
4.2The political object as the standard
The first chapter of Book I builds war as a concept toward an extreme and then brings it down to the real world. Once war is waged by actual states rather than abstractions, the extreme gives way to probability, and the political object returns.
Thus, therefore, the political object, as the original motive of the War, will be the standard for determining both the aim of the military force and also the amount of effort to be made.
The political object is a measure, not only a starting point. Clausewitz then guards the claim: policy is not a tyrant over the means and must adapt to them.
Still, the political object is no despotic lawgiver on that account; it must accommodate itself to the nature of the means, and though changes in these means may involve modification in the political objective, the latter always retains a prior right to consideration. Policy, therefore, is interwoven with the whole action of War, and must exercise a continuous influence upon it, as far as the nature of the forces liberated by it will permit.
Two phrases in that passage carry the argument of this article. Policy "retains a prior right to consideration", and it must exercise its influence "as far as the nature of the forces liberated by it will permit". The second admits a limit set by the means themselves. Earlier in the same section Clausewitz names one source of that limit: real war's powers at one time "expand sufficiently to overcome the resistance opposed by inertia or friction", at another are "too weak to produce an effect". Friction appears in the paragraph that establishes the primacy of policy, before the chapter that names it.
The famous formulation follows in the next section.
We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the Art of War in general and the Commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one.
The third sentence is easy to pass over. The commander may demand that policy not be incompatible with the means, "and this claim is truly not a trifling one." Clausewitz does not let the demand reverse the order: however powerfully it reacts on policy, he continues, "still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception." The two sides speak; one has the prior right.
4.3Uncertainty: the plan that must be replaced without the data to replace it
The third chapter of Book I, on the genius for war, contains the sentence the reading note summarises.
War is the province of uncertainty: three-fourths of those things upon which action in War must be calculated, are hidden more or less in the clouds of great uncertainty. Here, then, above all a fine and penetrating mind is called for, to search out the truth by the tact of its judgment.
The chapter follows uncertainty into the life of a plan. When events make a plan nugatory, a new one must be made, "but at the moment the necessary data are often wanting for this, because in the course of action circumstances press for immediate decision". More often, a correction does not overturn the plan but only unsettles it.
But it more often happens that the correction of one premise, and the knowledge of chance events which have arisen, are not sufficient to overthrow our plans completely, but only suffice to produce hesitation. Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is, that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees; thus our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience; and the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be “under arms.”
"Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased." The sentence denies the comfortable assumption that more information settles a question. A decision made under these conditions cannot be closed once and left. It must be held open to fresh experience arriving by degrees, which is what a schedule of reopening conditions, in a later age, tries to formalise.
4.4Information and the multiplication of bad news
Chapter 6 of Book I turns from uncertainty in general to the reports on which decisions rest.
Great part of the information obtained in War is contradictory, a still greater part is false, and by far the greatest part is of a doubtful character. What is required of an officer is a certain power of discrimination, which only knowledge of men and things and good judgment can give. The law of probability must be his guide.
The chapter goes on to say that "the timidity of men acts as a multiplier of lies and untruths" and that "every one is more inclined to lend credence to the bad than the good." A finding that some claims lack confirmation is the kind of report that invites the worst reading. Clausewitz also ties this difficulty to friction: "This difficulty of seeing things correctly," he writes, "which is one of the greatest sources of friction in War, makes things appear quite different from what was expected." Information is one of friction's sources, and the chapter closes on "one of the great chasms which separate" conception from execution.
4.5Friction: what distinguishes real war from war on paper
Chapter 7 of Book I is short, and its opening paragraphs give the concept in full.
Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen War, Suppose now a traveller, who towards evening expects to accomplish the two stages at the end of his day’s journey, four or five leagues, with post-horses, on the high road—it is nothing. He arrives now at the last station but one, finds no horses, or very bad ones; then a hilly country, bad roads; it is a dark night, and he is glad when, after a great deal of trouble, he reaches the next station, and finds there some miserable accommodation. So in War, through the influence of an infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described on paper, things disappoint us, and we fall short of the mark.
The traveller's journey is a lesson in where friction lives. Nothing in the plan was wrong: two stages, four or five leagues, a high road. Each obstacle is small and none is anyone's fault. The phrase "which cannot properly be described on paper" sets the limit on any written plan, including a decision record.
The next paragraph moves friction from the road into the organisation.
Friction is the only conception which in a general way corresponds to that which distinguishes real War from War on paper. The military machine, the Army and all belonging to it, is in fact simple, and appears on this account easy to manage. But let us reflect that no part of it is in one piece, that it is composed entirely of individuals, each of which keeps up its own friction in all directions. Theoretically all sounds very well: the commander of a battalion is responsible for the execution of the order given; and as the battalion by its discipline is glued together into one piece, and the chief must be a man of acknowledged zeal, the beam turns on an iron pin with little friction. But it is not so in reality, and all that is exaggerated and false in such a conception manifests itself at once in War. The battalion always remains composed of a number of men, of whom, if chance so wills, the most insignificant is able to occasion delay and even irregularity.
This is the passage that bears most directly on the principal-agent debate, though Clausewitz writes long before it. The theoretical picture is a chain of responsibility: the commander answers for the order, the battalion is glued into one piece, and the beam turns on an iron pin. Clausewitz calls that picture exaggerated and false. Delay and irregularity can come from the most insignificant member, by chance, without anyone having chosen to shirk. Friction says that many delays have no author.
Friction, he adds, is "everywhere brought into contact with chance": fog keeps "a report from reaching the General", rain makes a battalion late. "Activity in War is movement in a resistant medium."
Who knows friction? Clausewitz answers plainly and sets a limit on what theory can teach.
The knowledge of this friction is a chief part of that so often talked of, experience in War, which is required in a good General. Certainly he is not the best General in whose mind it assumes the greatest dimensions, who is the most over-awed by it (this includes that class of over-anxious Generals, of whom there are so many amongst the experienced); but a General must be aware of it that he may overcome it, where that is possible, and that he may not expect a degree of precision in results which is impossible on account of this very friction. Besides, it can never be learnt theoretically; and if it could, there would still be wanting that experience of judgment which is called tact, and which is always more necessary in a field full of innumerable small and diversified objects than in great and decisive cases, when one’s own judgment may be aided by consultation with others.
The passage contains a rule for judging results: a general "may not expect a degree of precision in results which is impossible on account of this very friction." It also contains a warning against the opposite error, the over-anxious general for whom friction looms too large. And it locates the knowledge of friction in experience and tact, which cannot be learnt theoretically and matter most among "innumerable small and diversified objects", less in great cases where consultation can help.
4.6The only oil
Chapter 8 of Book I gathers danger, bodily exertion, information and friction into one notion and asks whether anything reduces it.
Those things which as elements meet together in the atmosphere of War and make it a resistant medium for every activity we have designated under the terms danger, bodily effort (exertion), information, and friction. In their impedient effects they may therefore be comprehended again in the collective notion of a general friction. Now is there, then, no kind of oil which is capable of diminishing this friction? Only one, and that one is not always available at the will of the Commander or his Army. It is the habituation of an Army to War.
Habituation cannot be given at once, and peacetime exercises are a weak substitute; Clausewitz nonetheless asks that they be designed to include some of the causes of friction, so that leaders do not meet them for the first time in war.
The chapter then names a misreading that friction produces in those who suffer it: "In War the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consequence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole". The young soldier attributes ordinary hardship to someone's fault. It is the misreading the chain-of-responsibility picture invites in a principal, seen from the other end. Preparation, in Clausewitz's account, includes learning in advance which difficulties are normal.
4.7Who frames the plan: Book VIII
The last book of On War returns to policy. In Chapter 6, section B, Clausewitz states the primacy of the political point of view in its strongest form.
That the political point of view should end completely when war begins, is only conceivable in contests which are wars of life and death, from pure hatred: as wars are in reality, they are as we before said, only the expressions or manifestations of policy itself. The subordination of the political point of view to the military would be contrary to common sense, for policy has declared the war; it is the intelligent faculty, war only the instrument, and not the reverse. The subordination of the military point of view to the political is, therefore, the only thing which is possible.
He then turns to the case in which policy and military interest appear to conflict, and he gives the conflict a diagnosis.
At all events, from this point of view, there is no longer in the nature of things a necessary conflict between the political and military interests, and where it appears it is therefore to be regarded as imperfect knowledge only. That policy makes demands on the war which it cannot respond to, would be contrary to the supposition that it knows the instrument which it is going to use, therefore, contrary to a natural and indispensable supposition.
The phrase "imperfect knowledge only" connects Book VIII to Book I, which has explained why the instrument is hard to know: its resistance is friction, learned by experience. Clausewitz draws the institutional conclusion in two steps. First, he rejects the separation of a purely military judgment from the cabinet's decision: to leave a great enterprise, or the plan for one, to soldiers alone is in his words "a distinction which cannot be allowed, and is even prejudicial", and he calls it irrational to consult professional soldiers for an opinion confined to their own field on what the cabinet should do.
Second, he states what he does recommend.
If war is to harmonise entirely with the political views and policy, to accommodate itself to the means available for war, there is only one alternative to be recommended when the statesman and soldier are not combined in one person, which is, to make the chief commander a member of the cabinet, that he may take part in its councils and decisions on important occasions. But then again, this is only possible when the cabinet, that is the government itself, is near the theatre of war, so that things can be settled without a serious waste of time.
Two conditions attach to the recommendation: the chief commander joins the cabinet's councils "on important occasions", and the arrangement works only when the cabinet is near enough that things can be settled "without a serious waste of time." The government's distance from execution is itself a source of friction, and the remedy depends on reducing it. He adds in the same section that "a certain knowledge of the nature of war is essential to the management of political commerce", while denying that such knowledge is the chief qualification for a war minister.
4.8What the case adds
Read together, these chapters yield three propositions that the civil-military notes of Section 2 do not contain.
First, uncertainty about the means is located at the point of execution and is learned there, by degrees; partial corrections increase it rather than reduce it.
Second, policy keeps its prior right throughout, and must therefore acquire knowledge of the instrument it governs. Clausewitz's institutional answer (the chief commander in the cabinet, near the theatre, on important occasions) brings knowledge of friction into the place where policy is made, in time.
Third, shortfall is normal. A principal who expects from the executing side "a degree of precision in results which is impossible", or who reads delay as the fault of the person nearest it, has mistaken friction for failure, as the young soldier in Chapter 8 mistakes fatigue for misconduct.
The first and third propositions bear on Feaver's model: they describe a condition under which a principal who monitors results will often be unable to tell working from shirking. The second bears on Huntington and Cohen: Clausewitz rejects a purely military plan and wants the commander's knowledge inside the cabinet, nearer to a dialogue than to a division of fields, while keeping the political view on top. The resemblance to Cohen's dialogue is the article's observation, not something his note says.