Clausewitz and The Politics of War A Con PDF

Journal of Strategic Studies
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Clausewitz and the politics of war: A contemporary

theory
George Dimitriu
To cite this article: George Dimitriu (2018): Clausewitz and the politics of war: A contemporary
theory, Journal of Strategic Studies
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1529567
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THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1529567
ARTICLE
Clausewitz and the politics of war: A contemporary

theory
George Dimitriu@
@
Utrecht University, Utrecht
ABSTRACT
This paper re-examines the theoretical underpinnings of Strategic Studies,
proposing a novel theory and a new framework for analysing war’s fundamental
relationship with politics in line with the Clausewitzian tradition. Throughout
modern history, Clausewitz’s concept of politics has been misconstrued as
referring only to policy whereas in fact, for him, ‘politics’ was a much broader
concept, including domestic power struggles. The political logic of war is
defined here as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles
and policy objectives within a given polity that restrains and enables these
political forces. The analysis of the Clausewitzian political logic of war is con-
ducted through the sociological ‘liquid modern’ lens. It is argued that with
power increasingly shifting from centralised state-oriented political leadership
towards market forces, non-state actors and other political bodies, the effec-
tiveness of war has been reduced. This is evident in the fragmentation of
Western political systems and, as a result, suboptimal strategy and the domina-
tion of domestic power struggles in political decision-making concerning war.
Introduction
Dramatic historical changes act to challenge our understanding of reality
and lead to debates on existing sociopolitical concepts and theories. The
fall of the Berlin Wall, ‘9/11’, the revelation of Stuxnet and the Russian
occupation of Crimea were all such significant events. These events and
the tectonic security changes that ensued – the end of the Cold War, the
Global War on Terror, the rise of cyber conflict and the re-ascent of Russia
on the global stage – have led to a crisis in the field of Strategic Studies.
Some scholars have concluded that the field has lost its relevance, tradi-
tional war has become obsolete and strategy merely an illusion.1 For
CONTACT George Dimitriu g_dimitriu@hotmail.com Utrecht University, Domplein 29, 3512 JE,
Utrecht
1
Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jeffrey H. Michaels, ‘Revitalizing Strategic Studies in an Age of Perpetual
Conflict’, Orbis, 60/1 (2016), 22–35; Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in
Historical Perspective (Cambridge: University Press 2013), 105; John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday:
The Obsolescence of Major War (NY: Basic Books 1989); Richard Betts, ‘Is strategy an illusion?’,
International Security 25/2 (2000), 5–50.
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and repro-
duction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 G. DIMITRIU
others – those who advocate ideas on Fourth Generation Warfare, the

Revolution in Military Affairs, Non-Trinitarian War and post-Clausewitzian
War – these events have led to a reinterpretation of the theory of war and
a re-thinking of strategic studies’ key premises, in particular Carl von
Clausewitz’s treatise. Many experts have proclaimed a theory of New
Wars, arguing that wars of today differ entirely from those in the past in
terms of scope, tempo, methods and strategies.2 Most fundamentally, New
War scholars contend that war can no longer be explained by Clausewitz’s
classic dictum as being the ‘mere continuation of policy’ but should rather
be explained by other, modern factors, such as identity politics, culture
and economic motives.3
While students of strategy have repeatedly argued against a Revolution
in Military Affairs, Fourth Generation Warfare and New War theory,4 the
persistence of these ideas demonstrates that the current body of literature
on Strategic Studies has so far failed to explain contemporary wars satisfac-
tory. Strategists, governments and scholars alike all agree that conceptual
and strategic thinking on war lags behind current developments and experi-
ences on the battlefield.5 Adapting the existing war paradigm to give a
more convincing explanation of current events on the battlefield is therefore
urgently required – both in academia and for the military. In line with the
Clausewitzian tradition, it is suggested here that an adequate understanding
of war calls for a more thorough and meticulous investigation of its political
determinations than strategic studies scholars have so far attempted.
The aim of this paper is thus to re-think war’s fundamental relationship
with politics and adapt the classic Clausewitzian theory of the political logic of
war to the contemporary political condition – with a special eye to the fluidity
of politics6 in the contemporary world. The present theoretical approach
entails a two-stage argument. First, a reinterpretation of the Clausewitzian
notion of politics is necessary in order to adapt the Clausewitzian political
logic of war to contemporary sociopolitical conditions. Second, against that
2
Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organised violence in a global era (Stanford: University Press 1998);
Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War (Cambridge: Polity Press 2005), 39–42; Donald Snow,
Uncivil wars: International security and the new internal conflicts (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers
1996).
3
Kaldor, New and Old Wars, 218.
4
Siniša Malešević, The Sociology of War and Violence (Cambridge: University Press 2010); Antulio J.
Echevarria II, ‘Deconstructing the Theory of Fourth Generation Warfare’, Contemporary Security Policy
26/2 (2005), 233–241; Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘New’ and ‘old’ civil wars: A valid distinction?’, World Politics
54/1(2001) 99–118.
5
Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Strategic Illiteracy. The Art of Strategic Thinking in Modern Military Operations,
Inaugural lecture on the acceptance of the Special Chair in Strategic Studies at Leiden University, 10
June 2013; Lukas Milevski, ‘A Collective Failure of Grand Strategy: The West’s unintended wars of
choice’, RUSI 156/1 (2011), 30–33; Michael Clarke, ‘The Helmand decision’, in: Michael Clarke (ed.), The
Afghan papers (London: RUSI 2011), 5–29; House of Commons Public Administration Committee, Who
does UK national strategy? Further report, London: House of Commons, 2010–2011.
6
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press 2000).
THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES 3
background, a novel analytical framework is developed for interpreting the

Clausewitzian political logic of war.
The theory presented builds on the works of Clausewitz scholars and stra-
tegic theorists, such as Beatrice Heuser, Hew Strachan, Lawrence Freedman, Jan
Willem Honig and Richard Betts. These authors have determined that
Clausewitz held a broad interpretation on the political logic of war but that
his theory has been structurally misunderstood and has been applied too
narrowly as being only state policy.7 Antullio J. Echevarria II has demonstrated
that ever since the dawn of Strategic Studies, scholarship has been dominated
by the primacy accorded to policy.8 However, as pointed out by those who
have studied Clausewitz thoroughly, his use of the term Politik in the original
text connoted different English concepts at different times, such as politics,
policy, polity and power.9 Moreover, the narrow application of Clausewitzian
Politik ignores classical political theory and tends to overlook the evidence of
other political forces in war, such as domestic power struggles.
The first thesis of the argument underlying the analytical framework is that
throughout modern history, the Clausewitzian notion of politics has been
systematically misinterpreted as policy. The adoption of this narrow policy-
construct as the framework for understanding the logic of war came to
dominate Western strategic thinking in the Cold War era, culminating after
the Vietnam War. This led to contemporary conceptual fallacies, such as ideas
on ‘new war’, ‘non-trinitarian war’ and ‘post-Clausewitzian war’ as developed
by Mary Kaldor, Martin van Creveld, John Keegan and many others.10 In the
second thesis of my argument, I analyse the Clausewitzian political logic of
war in the context of the contemporary sociopolitical world. With reference to
contemporary sociological thought, it is explained what the current leading
sociological ideas on the ‘liquid’ condition of modernity mean for the theory
7
Jan Willem Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War: Problems of Text and Translation’ in: Hew Strachan and
Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz in the Twenty-first Century (Oxford: University Press 2007) 57–73;
Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz (London: Pimlico 2002); Strachan, The Direction of War, 13–14, 35,
51–55; Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A history (Oxford: University Press, 2013); Betts, ‘Is strategy an
illusion?’, 5–50.
8
Antulio J. Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War (Oxford: University Press 2007), 84–97.
9
Panajotis Kondylis, Theorie Des Krieges: Clausewitz–Marx–Engels–Lenin (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1988), 28;
David Kaiser, ‘Back to Clausewitz’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32/4 (2009) 681. Thomas Waldman, War,
Clausewitz and the Trinity (Oxon: Routledge 2016), 73–101; Andreas Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s
Concept of the State’, in: Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Jan Willem Honig, and Daniel Moran (ed.),
Clausewitz: The State and War (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2011), 28; Jan Willem Honig,
‘Clausewitz and the Politics of Early Modern Warfare’, in: Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Jan Willem
Honig, and Daniel Moran (ed.), Clausewitz: The State and War (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag
2011), 29–48.
10
Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War’, 57–73; Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe, ‘Introduction’, in:
Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (ed.), Clausewitz in the twenty-first century (Oxford:
University Press 2007), 7–10; Strachan,The Direction of War, 13–14, 35, 51–55; Harry Summers,
American strategy in Vietnam: A critical analysis (New York: Dover Publications 1981); John Keegan,
A history of warfare (London: Hutchinson 1993), 386–392; Martin Van Creveld, The transformation of
war: The most radical reinterpretation of armed conflict since Clausewitz (New York: The Free Press
2008), 124–156; Kaldor, New and Old Wars.
4 G. DIMITRIU
of war and for the Clausewitzian political logic in particular. Contemporary

ideas on the sociopolitical ‘liquid’ condition of Western societies postulate an
ongoing process in which power increasingly moves away from national
politics, with political agencies becoming increasingly prone to power-seeking
at the expense of policymaking. This becomes manifest in short-term think-
ing, risk aversion and over-sensitivity to a capricious consumer civil society. In
such a political landscape, war becomes less effective; the use of force must
compete with other forms of power (such as market forces) and the fragmen-
tation of Western political systems compromises sound strategy. War’s utility
is further compromised in these contemporary conditions since it is increas-
ingly subject to continuing domestic political power struggles and to a lesser
extent by policy objectives.
Based on the deduction that politics consists of the core concepts of policy,
power and polity, I will then present a theory on the contemporary political logic
of war, which Clausewitzian by nature, aims to provide an analytical framework
for a better understanding of modern war. I propose a definition of the political
logic of war as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles
and the policy objectives within a given polity that restrains and enables these
political forces. This leads to a definition of strategy as a process, in which political
agents, acting in a polity that both restrains and enables, balance ends, ways and
means in order to find an optimal equilibrium between achieving policy objec-
tives and a favourable distribution of political power shares.
Strategic studies and the problem of the policy paradigm

The end of the Cold War caused a crisis in the field of Strategic Studies,
defined here as the interdisciplinary field of study that looks at leading ideas
on the threat and use of force to fulfil the end(s) of policy.11 Since the end of
the Second World War, the field was able to present a valid conceptual
framework for understanding major interstate wars and deterrence.
Notwithstanding the established status of this field of research, the end of
the Cold War triggered a massive overhaul of existing theories and studies,
since most of the conflicts that occurred since then have been of other
(more limited and restrained) kinds.12 While the utility of force in these
contemporary conflicts is increasingly questioned and revisited, very few
useful answers have emerged.13 The field has been criticised for being
outdated, state-centred, rationalist, militarist, confused with security-studies,
11
Duyvesteyn and Michaels, ‘Revitalizing Strategic Studies’, 22–35; Pascal Vennesson, ‘Is strategic
studies narrow? Critical security and the misunderstood scope of strategy’, Journal of Strategic
Studies 40/3 (2017), 358–391.
12
Richard K. Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, World Politics 50/1 (1997), 7–33.
13
Duyvesteyn and Michaels, ‘Revitalizing Strategic Studies’, 22–35.
either too practical or too theoretical.14 Some have even wondered whether
what is left of strategy is no more than an illusion, or whether it has lost its
meaning completely and is simply no longer a useful concept.15 And
although belief in the importance of strategic scholarship continues, a
fundamental reevaluation of strategic concepts and a reinvigoration of the
field are sorely needed.
One of the major contentions within (and against) strategic theory is its
premise of the primacy of policy as the guiding principle for the logic of war.
According to ‘New War’ scholarship, this premise is no longer applicable to
the understanding of contemporary wars. The primacy of policy has indeed
been one of the underpinnings of strategic theory since the dawn of
Strategic Studies.16 The central question of Strategic Studies is the essential
Clausewitzian problem of how to make force a rational and purposeful
instrument of policy or, as in the often cited words from the influential
military historian Basil Liddell Hart, to distribute and apply ‘military means to
fulfil the ends of policy’.17 Typical strategic studies research programmes
proceed from policy issues, to theoretical formulation, to empirical testing,
to policy application. There is by now a fairly universal consensus that the
primacy of policy is basic to Western Strategic Studies scholarship. This
provides the customary lens through which the logic of wars has been
observed, analysed and interpreted. Despite thorough Clausewitzian scho-
larship and rejection of the ‘New War’ fallacy, however, the importance of
policy as the principal guiding logic for understanding war has been over-
stated in the strategic literature.
This claim is based on identifying four points of contention. First, as several
students of Clausewitz, such as Honig, Strachan, Heuser, Herberg-Rothe and
Echevarria, have correctly pointed out, the interpretation of policy has been
applied far too narrowly, which conflicts with the original German text in
which Clausewitz uses the term Politik to connote several different concepts,
which in English translate as policy, politics and polity.18 The Clausewitz
scholar Christopher Bassford notes that Clausewitz’s Politik inherently con-
cerns power – and power is so much more than mere policy.19 As outlined
14
Isabelle Duyvesteyn & James E. Worrall, ‘Global Strategic Studies: a manifesto’, Journal of Strategic
Studies, 40/3 (2017), 347–357; Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, 7–33; Strachan, The Direction
of War, 2013.
15
Betts, ‘Is Strategy an illusion?’, 5–50; Strachan, The Direction of War, 14, 41.
16
Bernard Brodie, War & politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973).
17
Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, 8; B. H. Liddel Hart, Strategy (New York: Penguin Group
1991), 321.
18
Kondylis, Theorie Des Krieges, 28; Kaiser, ‘Back to Clausewitz’, 681. Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the
Trinity, 73–101; Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s Concept of the State’, 28; Echevarria II, Clausewitz and
Contemporary War, 84–97; Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War’, 57–73; Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics’,
29–48.
19
Christopher Bassford, ‘The Primacy of Policy and the “Trinity” in Clausewitz’s Mature Thought’, in Hew
Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds.), Clausewitz in the twenty-first century (Oxford: University
Press 2007), 74–90.
6 G. DIMITRIU
below, Clausewitz used a broad conception of politics indeed, but throughout

modern history, a narrow policy-oriented interpretation has dominated stra-
tegic thinking. Consequently, as Strachan observed, while Clausewitz
intended to present a descriptive, philosophical theory, strategic scholarship
has increasingly assumed that Clausewitz’s theoretical philosophy could be
interpreted as a prescriptive doctrine of how to determine the necessary force
in order to achieve the policy objectives at stake.20
Second, this narrow policy-oriented approach tends to neglect classical
political theory and its conceptual treatment of policy and power. The
concept of policy emerged together with the concept of the state in Italy
at the end of the fifteenth century.21 Since then, the potential for conflict
between power and policy has been of central concern. The founders of
modern political science, such as Nicolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guardini,
were already deeply concerned with the conflicts between the ragione di
stato against interesso suo and discussed ways of balancing the collective
interest with concerns of personal power.22 The tension between the two is
evident and becomes increasingly manifest with their performative actions:
policymaking and power-seeking, or politicking. While the aims of policy-
making are trying to achieve a better state of affairs and serving the
collective, politicking is concerned with optimising one’s share of power.23
For politicians, both are important. Striving for power has a negative con-
notation, as it is associated with the politician seeking for personal prestige,
status and the joy of having power to nurture the self. Normative judge-
ments or questions of legitimacy, however, are insufficient reason to exclude
this important variable. In a Weberian sense, moreover, power also serves as
a means to an end, based on the assumption that without power, there is no
position (Handlungsmacht) to make policy.24 Power and policy are thus
locked together in a complex, but unmistakable relationship, conflicting
and inseparable at the same time. Overlooking the way this tension
between power and policy influences our conceptualisation of war under-
mines a better understanding of modern war itself.
Third, history demonstrates that the political logic of war is ill-served by a
too narrow focus on policy, since this logic is also determined by other
political forces and conditions, such as the composition of the polity and
20
Hew Strachan, The Direction of War.
21
Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (London: Penguin Press
2002), 79–87.
22
Machiavelli, ‘Discources on the first decade of Titus Livius’, in: Allan Gilbert (trans.), Machiavelli: The
chief works and others volume I (Durham and London: Duke University Press 1989), 218–219,
240–242. Nicolai Rubinstein (ed.), Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance
Statesman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1965), 121.
23
Kari Palonen, ‘Four Times of Politics: Policy, Polity, Politicking and Politication’, Alternatives 28/1
(2003), 171–186.
24
Kari Palonen, Eine Lobrede für Politiker, Ein Kommentar zu Max Webers ‘Politik als Beruf’ (Wiesbaden:
Springer Fachmedien 2002), 40–42.
domestic power struggles. Politicians in every era have pursued foreign

policies they believed were detrimental to national interest but nevertheless
persisted in their course because their thinking was dominated by concerns
of power.25 One only has to consider Napoleon III (no fool by any standard),
whose war strategy was guided solely by his ambition to secure personal
power, to be lauded by the public and respected by the kings of Europe. We
could also take Franklin Roosevelt, who was so concerned to avoid accusa-
tions of entering the Second World War in Europe for purely electoral
reasons that he delayed acting in the genuine national interest by embark-
ing on such a course. Other examples include Lyndon Johnson, who was
obsessed to first ‘win, win, win the elections’ and only then to win the war in
Vietnam; or the Argentine regime that invaded the Falklands in 1982 in
order to increase the junta’s domestic popularity. After the release of the
gruesome videos of the murder of two American journalists in 2014,
President Barrack Obama felt the pressure of his advisors and public opinion
to deploy troops to Iraq and fight Islamic State. He decided not to rush to
war, however, even though he realised the political implications of this
decision, reflecting that ‘I am aware I pay a political price for that’.26
According to the renowned strategist Colin Gray, policy goals can be elusive.
He acknowledges the neoclassical realist view that domestic forces influence
the conduct of strategy-making. Yet he, among others, maintains that these
are corrupting forces and that the strategy of war should serve the policy
goals that are part of the polity’s broader vision.27 Hence, as Clausewitz
scholars rightly conclude, the political forces in war either do not merit
sufficient attention or are wrongly interpreted.28
Fourth, the narrow lens of policy becomes increasingly inadequate to
understand the logic of contemporary war involving Western democracies.
As Strachan points out, politicians are nowadays in immediate and simulta-
neous contact both with the forces on the battlefield and their electorates at
home, which allows them to intervene at the tactical level for direct domes-
tic political effect.29 Consequently, the contemporary battlefield is increas-
ingly pervaded by political forces – a tendency that manifests itself in the
strict political guidance and oversight on the conduct of operations, by
national caveats, limitations of what soldiers are allowed to do and to say,
and by restraints on the use of force.30 These political restraints on the
25
Jack Levy, ‘Domestic Politics and War’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18/4 (1988), 653–673.
26
‘Paths to War, Then and Now, Haunt Obama’ New York Times, 14 September 2014.
27
Colin Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: University Press, 1999), 10, 17, 20, 60.
28
Michael Howard, ‘The Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy’, Foreign Affairs 57/5 (1979) 975–986; Hew
Strachan, ‘The lost meaning of Strategy’, Survival 47/3 (2005), 41.
29
Strachan, The Direction of War, 260.
30
Stephen M. Saideman and David P. Auwerswald, ‘Comparing Caveats: Understanding the Sources of
National Restrictions upon NATO’s Mission in Afghanistan’, International Studies Quarterly 56/1 (2012),
67–84.
8 G. DIMITRIU
conduct of war cannot be explained by means of a conventional

Clausewitzian interpretation of the logic of policy. Nevertheless, many scho-
lars and practitioners have tried to do so, arguing that the poverty of
political logic of wars and underlying strategy is due to the lack of civil–
military dialogue, invalid strategic advice from the civilian and military
bureaucracy, and a lack of political understanding of strategy and the utility
of force.31
The aim of this paper is not to focus on questions of how the strategic
studies can provide better practical advice, find strategic answers or support
the design of sound policy but rather to reconceptualise the theoretical
underpinnings of the field. In particular, it aims to replace the narrow
analytical prism of the primacy of policy by a more comprehensive analytical
framework of politics, aligned to Clausewitz’s ideas and classic political
theory and adapted to the contemporary condition.
First, let us study the way the polity, politics and the context of policy as the
force of war have changed. I offer a reading of the interpretation of Clausewitz
through time, thereby demonstrating how his notion of the political logic of
war has been structurally misunderstood. I will then make the case for the way
that the sociopolitical conditions for waging and thinking war have changed,
and how Clausewitz’s notion of politics may be deployed to develop a frame-
work for dealing with this new strategic landscape.
Strategic theory: the primacy of policy

The primacy of policy has dominated modern strategic thinking since Carl
von Clausewitz noted that war is not an independent phenomenon but a
modification of political intercourse.32 It has been critically acclaimed as
the most important and most fundamental part of Clausewitz’s work.33
War may have its own nature of passion and violence, chance and prob-
ability, but its ‘first consideration’ is the political objective, as Clausewitz
concluded. His work fell on fertile ground, not least because of the work of
contemporaries such as the Prussian Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern,
who already argued in 1818 that every war needed a cause and a purpose,
a why and a what for; these had to determine the character and the
conduct of the war.34 Clausewitz and his contemporaries realised that a
31
Milevski, ‘A Collective Failure, 30–33; Colin Gray, ‘Strategic thoughts for Defence Planners’, Survival
52/3 (2010), 159–178; Patrick Porter, ‘Why Britain doesn’t do Grand Strategy’, RUSI 155/4 (2010),
6–12.
32
Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle: The Political Theory of War (Oxford: University Press
2007), 34.
33
Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, 84; Raymond Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War
(London: Routledge 1985).
34
Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern, Handbuch für den Offizier zur Belehrung im Frieden und zum
Gebrauch im Felde (Zweite Abteilung) (Berlin: Reimer 1818), 8.
successful outcome on the battlefield is not the purpose of the war itself.
Operations on the battlefield, how brilliantly performed, are worthless if
they do not contribute to achieving the political objective. It is ultimately
about winning the war, and that is always a political matter. War, accord-
ing to Clausewitz, was a constituent part of political activity and ‘in no
sense an independent thing in itself’.35 Political forces aim to control the
nature of war, these ‘are the forces that give rise to war [and] the same
forces [that] circumscribe and moderate it’.36 As such, he concluded in his
most famous dictum, ‘Der Krieg ist eine blosse Fortsetzung der Politik mit
anderen Mitteln’, more familiar to us as ‘war being a mere continuation of
policy by other means’.37 Future generations of strategic thinkers took this
as a basis for further reflection on this field.
Students of Clausewitz’s work by strategic scholars such as Strachan,
Freedman, Heuser, Honig, Echevarria and Herber-Rothe, however, have pro-
vided a deeper understanding of his concept of Politik, which the Prussian
philosopher never explicitly conceptualised. In the original German text of
Vom Kriege and in his other writings, it becomes clear that Clausewitz had a
broad conception of politics.38 Studies on Clausewitz’s work have convin-
cingly demonstrated that his use of Politik could mean policy, politics or polity
and that Clausewitz meant different things at different times.39 The link
between war and Politik was the central concern of Clausewitz’s intellectual
life and the key concept to his theory of war.40 Remarkably, however,
Clausewitz’s conception of war’s instrumental relationship with politics
evolved gradually throughout his academic endeavour. In one of his earlier
manuscripts, Clausewitz regarded war as the continuation of ‘l’intérêt naturel
des états’, being much in conformity with the primacy of policy as we know it
today.41 This gradually however changed first into Staatspolitik and finally into
Politik when he wrote his last version of Vom Kriege after 1827.42 This was the
result of the quest for a unifying theory for both the pre-Napoleonic ‘limited
wars’ of the ancient regimes and the Napoleonic revolutionary wars, coming
35
Carl Von Clausewitz, On war (Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret) (Oxford: University Press
1976), 252; Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, 84.
36
Clausewitz, On War, 14.
37
Karl von Clausewitz, Hinterlassene Werke über Krieg und Kriegführung, Zweite Auflage (Berlin:
Dümmler, 1857), 24; Clausewitz, On War, 28.
38
Clausewitz, On War, 252–258; Andreas Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s concept of the state‘ in Andreas
Herberg-Rothe, Jan Willem Honig, and Daniel Moran (eds.), Clausewitz: The state and War (Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner Verlag 2011), 20, 28.
39
Strachan and Herberg-Rothe, ‘Introduction’, 9; Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity, 90–91;
Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz, 30–33.
40
Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics’, 29.
41
Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Considerations sur la manière de faire la guerre á la France’, in: Werner Hahlweg
(ed.), Carl von Clausewitz: Schriften-Aufsätze-Studien-Briefe, vol. I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
1966), 58–63.
42
Paul Donker, Aphorismen über den Krieg und die Kriegführung as the first version of Clausewitz’s
masterpiece: A textual comparison with Vom Kriege (Breda: Netherlands Defence Academy 2016),
30–31; Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 24.
10 G. DIMITRIU
closer to the theoretical ‘absolute wars’.43 The former type of war could
indeed not be explained as the result of policy, but rather the ‘political
ambitions, private interests and vanity of those in power’.44 In particular, the
domestic political influence on France’s defeat at Waterloo, which limited
Napoleon’s options as to where to fight and the number of troops at his
disposal, inspired Clausewitz to determine politics as the unifying concept
that determines war.45 A broader concept than l’intérêt naturel des états or
Staatspolitik was therefore required. It was only in the later manuscripts that
he finally united both ‘absolute wars’ and ‘limited wars’ in one theoretical
conception as war being a continuation of Politik.
Politik, in Clausewitz’s view, was thus broader than merely state interest
but encompassed the entire political constellation; its system, its institutes,
but also its internal power struggles, private ambitions and political interplay.
Clausewitz indeed, as Andreas Herberg-Rothe and Hew Strachan rightly
pointed out, considers that personal ambitions and political interplay should
not drive wars: [das] gehört nicht hierher.46 Clausewitz here followed the
ethical reasoning of Machiavelli, whom he greatly admired, viz. that rulers
should not strive for personal ambitions but should strictly serve the interest
of the state.47 This recommendation should not be seen as a denial of the
existence of other interests,48 but unfortunately many scholars have since
mistaken his normative views for theoretical or epistemological claims and
have assumed that Clausewitz’s concept of Politik excluded all politicking and
self-interest. To comprehend the conflation of normative and descriptive
viewpoints in Clausewitz’s work, it is necessary to contextualise Clausewitz’s
work, to historicise his words and see him as the modern patriot and Prussian
reformer he was. The young Prussian officer, who felt humiliated by Prussia’s
devastating defeat at Jena in 1806 and its subservience to France, despised
the weakness and moral cowardice of the political leadership. Generally,
Clausewitz had a rather pessimistic view of politicians, who in his view were
largely driven by personal ambitions: ‘those heads of state behaving them-
selves as they would do privately are true egoists. They consider themselves
as the purpose and the state interest as a side-issue’.49 Despite his rejection of
such conduct, Clausewitz’s texts reveal that he nevertheless was aware that
politics, both the concept and the practice, include domestic political
43
Aron, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, 104.
44
45
Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s puzzle, 146–147.
46
Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s Concept of the State’, 20–21.
47
Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (eds.), Carl von Clausewitz: Historical and Political Writings (Princeton:
University Press 1992), 268; Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the politics of warfare’, 47; Brodie, War and
Politics, 438.
48
Bassford, ‘The Primacy of Policy’, 88; Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics’, 47.
49
Paret and Moran (eds.), Carl von Clausewitz, 223–235; Hans Rothfels, Carl von Clausewitz, Politik und
Krieg, Eine ideengeschichtlich Studie (Berlin: Dümmlers Verlagsbuchhandlung 1920), 198. Translation
by the author.
interplay and private interest. Moreover, it was Clausewitz’s realisation of the

influence of this ‘petty politics’ on war that allowed for the full maturation of
his concept of war. With this understanding, he could formulate a unified
theory that covered both Napoleonic wars and those more politically gener-
ated pre-Napoleonic wars. In sum, the Clausewitzian war paradigm should be
regarded as the continuation of politics in its broadest sense, comprising the
whole gamut of policy goals, objects of power, private interests and the
political constellation in which politics are played out.
Despite Clausewitz’s emphasis on the influence of politics and other
forces such as passion, chance and friction, the primary guide for the
events on the battlefield would be the policy objective. One of
Clausewitz’s admirers (and one of his students at the German
Kriegsakademie) and an early example of a warrior looking at war through
the narrow lens of policy was Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke
(1800–1891), a Prussian general and military commander. Moltke held the
opinion that the political leadership could determine when and whether
war was declared and determine its purpose, but from the moment the
cannons roared, the war was in the hands of the generals until the time
came for peace negotiations. This radical (re-)interpretation of Clausewitz
would lead to disastrous decisions in the First World War a few decades
later, in part decisions taken by Moltke’s own cousin Johann Ludwig von
Moltke, who was the German commander in 1914. He insisted that it was
up to the military to determine whether or not Germany could still win a
total victory. The German Supreme Command, however, had only eyes for
total military victory on the battlefield and ignored any possibility of
political compromise – even when total victory appeared to be no longer
possible. Post-First World War analysts would subsequently scrutinise the
War’s utility primarily in terms of achieving policy objectives and con-
cluded that the First World War was the example par excellence of a war
without any political benefit. Scholars such as the influential British military
historian Basil Liddell Hart and later the British military historian John
Keegan have concluded that such a war cannot be seen as a rational
form of warfare serving the cause of political utility. The notion of the
primacy of policy was demonstrably flawed.
Nevertheless, as military historian Williamson Murray has already pointed
out, a broader conception of Politik would have led to more nuanced
conclusions. For example, in November 1914, German Chancellor Bethman
Hollweg was already advised by General Erich von Falkenhayn, the chief of
the Great Prussian Staff, to start peace negotiations with Russia and France
because the war could not be won. Hollweg, however, refused and chose to
fight until the bitter end because of a fear of domestic political losses. He
presumed that the German public would not accept the Reich’s surrender
after such great cost and so many casualties and feared the fall of the
12 G. DIMITRIU
monarchy and the overturn of internal political order.50 Scholarly literature

on the First World War was, however, dominated by policy-driven analyses
in which domestic power struggles and internal politics would be largely
absent.51 Liddel Hart unjustly regarded Clausewitz as the main proponent of
policy-driven war, which damaged Clausewitz’s authority as a war theorist in
the Western world.52 In short, his careful and philosophical dialectical reflec-
tions on the relationship between war and politics were reduced to a
simplified recommendation to take policy as the sole guiding principle
of war.
With the World Wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945, the body of
thought on war and strategy further developed. Basil Liddell Hart ana-
lysed strategy, defining the concept in 1954 as the coordination of ‘all
the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of
the political object of the war – the goal defined by fundamental
policy’.53 The idea of ‘grand strategy’, came into being, defined as ‘the
development and use of all resources in peace and war in support of
national policies’.54 In mid-1940, Edward Mead Earle had already con-
cluded in his authoritative book, Makers of Modern Strategy that military
strategy was only part of an overall strategy, which he described as ‘the
art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation [. . .] to the end
that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and secured against
enemies’.55 The primacy of policy would, however, remain the dominant
paradigm.56 The integration of weapons of mass destruction after the
Second World War did not change this but prompted new strategic
questions in both the Soviet Union and the West. What political objec-
tive could justify the use of atomic bombs or even risking the chance
on mutual physical annihilation? The idea of deterrence came into
being, focused on the political objective of avoiding and preventing
war, with a larger nuclear arsenal as the means to achieve this policy
goal. Clausewitz’s ideas, which focused on the political utility of war,
were no longer widely discussed.
50
Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change (Cambridge: University Press
2011), 319–320.
51
For some exceptions, see: Hew Strachan, ‘Clausewitz and the dialectics of war, in: Hew Strachan and
Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds.), Clausewitz in the twenty-first century (Oxford: University Press 2007),
26–28.
52
Basil Liddell Hart, ‘Limited war’, Harper’s Magazine, 192/3 (1946), 193–203.
53
Basil Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: Penguin Books 1991), 322.
54
Liddell Hart, Strategy, 319–360; Edward Mead Earle, ‘Introduction’, in: Edward Mead Earle (ed.),
Makers of modern strategy: Military thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton: University Press
1943), viii.
55
Earle, ‘Introduction’, vii–xi.
56
However, there were some notable exceptions, see Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War’, 72–73.
The primacy of policy in modern times

Jumping ahead to the US War in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, a
Clausewitzian revival set in – and with him the primacy of policy.
Influential studies, such as those from Bernard Brodie and Harry Summers,
concluded that the US failure in Vietnam was caused by the absence of clear
policy objectives and sound strategy to achieve those goals.57 Ignoring the
crucial impact of domestic politics and in particular vote-seeking president-
elects as primary determinants in the course of the war, their work influ-
enced political and military leaders such as Caspar Weinberger and Colin
Powell. Weinberger and Powell based their doctrine and decision-making
during the first Gulf War solely on the Clausewitzian principle of policy: a
clear political purpose and national interest at stake. These were the glory
days of the primacy of policy. At the same time, this was the reduction of
Clausewitz’s philosophy of war to a mere checklist, a decision diagram for
the state leader to decide whether going to war was the right thing to do or
not.58 And as history would soon prove, this simplifying disregard of political
forces in the course of war would only provide a shallow and incomplete
picture of what guides war in the first place.
Major conceptual fallacies began to emerge in the 1990s and 2000s, with
the series of ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa, when
it was no longer immediately clear what national interest or policy objec-
tives could be distinguished. The one-dimensional policy-driven idea could
no longer be maintained. In the post-Westphalian world after 1989, and
after the end of the bipolar conflict between East and West, clear-cut
doctrines failed to reflect the amalgam of non-state actors, guerrillas, terror-
ists and international criminal networks that pursued their causes through
military force. The context of so-called failed states or rogue states emerged,
states which appeared at first sight to practice violence irrationally, or even
unrestrained. This again invited criticism of the notion of policy as war’s
guiding principle, specifically criticising Clausewitz’s dictum. Debates
sparked New War theories, Fourth Generation Warfare, ‘new’ ideas on asym-
metric or hybrid conflict and ‘Western ways’ to fight those wars.
The fiercest attacks on Clausewitz were deployed by the Israeli military
expert Martin van Creveld, the British historian John Keegan and the British
political scientist Mary Kaldor. According to Van Creveld, war is not a rational or
utilitarian means within a larger policy framework, but it is merely an autono-
mous phenomenon that is driven by cultural dynamics. War is not a means to a
political end, it is a cultural and a masculine expression.59 Keegan concurs,
concluding that culture is a ‘prime determinant of the nature of warfare’. Based
57
Summers, American Strategy in Vietnam, 113–222.
58
Van Creveld, The transformation of war, 124–156.
59
Ibid.
14 G. DIMITRIU
on anthropological insights and assumptions, Keegan also sees war as an

expression, like a ritual, the continuation of sports and cultufre by other
means. War is for him more a symbolic than a political activity. War is at the
service of latent psychological, social or psychological needs and mechanisms
and should therefore absolutely not be seen as a consequence of rational,
strategic calculations.60 On the basis of her case study of the war in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, Mary Kaldor added that new wars are mainly driven by identity
politics and economic motives, and to a lesser extent by policy objectives.61
While these critics have raised important issues, their claims have repeat-
edly been repudiated for being conceptually flawed, factually inaccurate or,
particularly in the case of Martin van Creveld, for simply having cherry-
picked some general ideas from Vom Kriege, while misinterpreting the
central messages and the Clausewitzian trinity in particular.62 Their works
are moreover based on a misguided and narrow interpretation of politics,
ending up with a new interpretation of Clausewitz’s work instead of achiev-
ing his goal of disproving him.63 As Richard Betts concluded of one of the
critics: ‘Keegan is a respectable historian of military operations, but a naïf
about politics, so he cannot render a verdict on the strategy that connects
them’.64 Overall, the emergence of New War concepts and the attempts to
dismiss Clausewitz are outweighed by a vast body of literature based on a
more thorough understanding of Clausewitz’s ideas and a broader and more
nuanced interpretation of the politics of war.
While Clausewitz’s work has resisted these attacks and survived the
march of time, the narrower idea of the primacy of policy is still reflected
in much of the modern literature on war, including the memoirs of promi-
nent military commanders. According to many strategic scholars, war is and
should be an instrument of ‘high policy’, and not just the outcome of the
daily political climate and news cycle.65 The political logic of war is primarily
explained through the lens of policy and only in rare occasions do domestic
power struggles, electoral politics or politicking occur in strategic case
studies. These forces are discredited as corrupting forces, spoiling the course
of war as ‘it should be’ and disrupting its effectiveness in leading towards
achieving a policy goal. This aspect of mundane politics is considered as
white noise, polluting the train of normal political decision-making and
eroding a strategy, by making it less coherent, focused and goal oriented.66
60
Keegan, A history of warfare, 386–392.
61
Kaldor, New and Old Wars.
62
Kalyvas, ‘”New’’ And ‘“Old”’ Civil Wars’, 103; Strachan, ‘Clausewitz and the Dialectics of War’, 43;
Malešević, The Sociology of War, 65; Herberg-Rothe and Strachan, ‘Introduction’, 7.
63
Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s Puzzle, 164.
64
Betts, ‘Is Strategy an Illusion?’, 25.
65
Peter Moody, ‘Clausewitz and the Fading Dialectic of War’, World Politics 31/3 (1979), 417; Hew
Strachan, ‘Making strategy: Civil-military relations after Iraq’, Survival 48/3 (2006), 59–82.
66
Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge:
University Press 2010), 495, 499.
This goes so far that even in one of the most critically acclaimed translations
of Vom Kriege, by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, the word ‘politics’ is even
deliberately avoided because policy is a more neutral and state-centric term
and because of the negative connotation of politics in English.67
In sum, Clausewitz’s broad conception of politics has structurally been
applied in the narrow policy paradigm, which hampers our understanding of
war. This becomes increasingly manifest in the contemporary condition,
which is investigated in the following section. In line with Clausewitzian
scholarship, the aim is to further justify the adaption of the Clausewitzian
political logic of war, providing a novel analytical framework by a close
examination of war’s relationship with politics under contemporary socio-
political conditions.
Contemporary war: bringing politics back in

The central question in this section is what is this contemporary political
condition, in the context of current western states and societies constrained
by the democratic rule of law, and is the Clausewitzian logic of politics still
capable of explaining war? Like war, politics is a product of its place and
time, and from a Clausewitzian perspective, while the concept remains the
same, its manifestation is never static and always changeable. Political
science offers valuable relevant insights, such as public choice theory,
which assumes that politicians carry out their social function primarily as a
means of attaining their private ends – income, prestige or power. Thus, the
collective interest and private ambitions compete in any attempt to define
the purpose of war. Contemporary Foreign Policy Analysis theory has
adopted more complex models, for example the underlying Diversionary
Theory and the Bureaucratic Politics model, which provides a framework for
discussing war expeditions as foreign solutions to cover domestic problems,
or as consensual expeditions resulting from a conflicted administrative
apparatus. The field of Strategic Studies can benefit from these theories
and models, as they offer valuable perspectives on how political action
ultimately boils down to two central activities: policymaking and power-
seeking. It does not however offer an overarching or grand theory of the
contemporary political condition by which to conceptualise war. A (macro)
sociological approach to politics and war does present a valuable analytical
framework and fits neatly with Clausewitz’s approach.
A sociological approach to politics and war acknowledges that a com-
prehensive knowledge of these concepts requires an understanding of the
social. War does not occur in a vacuum and knowledge of the politico-
sociological context in which war occurs is critical to understand
67
Honig, ‘Clausewitz’s On War’, 70–71; Freedman, Strategy: A history, 86.
16 G. DIMITRIU
contemporary conflict. Clausewitz was very aware of that, noting in On War

that ‘if wars between civilised nations are far less cruel and destructive than
wars between savages, the reason lies in the social conditions of the states
themselves’.68 Only few contemporary political sociologists such as Martin
Shaw, Mary Kaldor and Sinisa Malesevic, and social theorists such as
Zygmunt Bauman, have explored this territory. Whereas unmistakably rele-
vant from a sociological perspective, their work lacks familiarity with the
Strategic Studies body of literature. While strategic theorists tend to look at
war from a rather microsociological perspective, neglecting the politico-
sociological context, sociologists in their turn habitually only superficially
touch on the epistemology of war studies. Consequently, war theorists tend
to treat war as if it were a self-contained process operating according to its
own laws, while sociological accounts often feel the need to present new
theories, such as New War, without invalidating or even discussing the
epistemological foundations of war theory in the first place.69 Remarkably,
Clausewitz writes as a sociologist as well a war theorist, combining deep
political thought with his conceptualisation of war.70 It was only when he
fully grasped the concept of politics that he was able to arrive at his grand
theory of war as its instrument. It is in this tradition that strategic theory will
be confronted here with contemporary politics in order to develop a mod-
ern theory of war. What is the contemporary politico-sociological condition,
what does that mean for war and does the Clausewitzian logic of politics in
war still hold?
It is common in sociology to accept that the Western world has moved
into an era of liquid modernity, also defined by other leading sociologists as
postmodernity, late modernity or reflexive modernity.71 The varying terms
used reflect remarkably similar ideas. In Bauman’s view, the contemporary
condition is situated in the context of a transition from a stable, solid and
regulated world order, towards a globalised, chaotic, fast-moving and unre-
gulated modernity. Today’s life is increasingly saturated with conditions of
precariousness, instability, impermanence, fluctuation and disorientation
while traditional social forms that guard choices, routines, rules and norms
are decomposed. Liquid modernity represents a categorical shift in the con-
struction and contextualisation of nation states in the late twentieth century.
This condition includes three interrelating macro-trends in particular that
influence our understanding of contemporary war and affect what we see
on today’s battlefield. These are the declining power of traditional politics, the
68
69
Ian Roxborough, ‘Clausewitz and the Sociology of War’, The British Journal of Sociology 45/4 (1994),
619–622.
70
Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s concept of the state’, 20.
71
Bauman, Liquid Modernity; Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernisation:
Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge: Polity Press 1994).
reign of individualising freedom and the consequential struggle of political

leadership to adapt to these developments while still clinging to power.
The first and central change, according to Zygmunt Bauman, is an ongoing
process of the separation of power from politics. In other words, power
increasingly moves away from the national, centralised, state-oriented poli-
tical leadership, into the hands of transnationally operating market forces,
non-state actors and other political bodies.72 According to Bauman, power
increasingly becomes less a matter of authoritative, territorial control and
more the ability to move freely and swiftly and to let capital and trade flow
without any boundaries and imposed regulations.73 While market powers
increasingly unite, become globalised and are enabled by this condition,
political institutions have not followed suit but remain local and become
increasingly disempowered. The incoherent and disconnected local forms of
politics are surpassed by the coordinated machinery of the global market in
which market forces, commerce and capital can no longer be controlled by
the political institutions; marketing strategies enter politics to sell policies. As
power flows from the political to the market, the power that is left in the
political sphere increasingly becomes fragmented and shared with suprana-
tional, subnational and non-state entities. Constitutional theorist and strate-
gic scholar Philip Bobbitt described similar developments in his historical
analysis of strategy, legal order and the state. In his view, as of the 1990s,
the globalisation of strategic threats, markets and culture put enormous
pressure on the role of the state, which is too rigid, too prescriptive of
(economic) behaviour and too much focussed on collectivist values. The
state, which was previously given its legitimacy by assuring the common
welfare of all people, subsequently turned towards one providing the max-
imum opportunities for the satisfaction of individual interests. However, as
Bobbitt also warns, the rising power of the markets has negative side effects.
The market may optimise choices, but it is not well adapted to the promotion
of public goods and moral values, such as loyalty, civility, trust in authority or
giving voice to all groups. In his view, in particular the threat of non-state
actors has increased. While guerrillas, gangs and terrorists have always been
part of the domestic security environment, their access to weapons, technol-
ogy and media has changed dramatically. As such, Bobbitt argues, modern
terrorist groups mimic and are enabled by the decentralised, outsourcing,
privatised, globalised and networked world.74 As I will outline below, the
ongoing relocation of centralised, state-oriented political power to the
72
Zygmunt Bauman, In Search of Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press 1999), 5, 74; Mikael Carleheden,
‘Bauman on Politics – Stillborn Democracy’, in: Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Poul Poder (eds.), The
Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman: Challenges and Critique (Oxon: Routledge 2008), 181.
73
Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 14.
74
Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, 230–231, 469, 814; Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the
Twenty-First Century (London: Penguin Group 2008), 66.
18 G. DIMITRIU
market, non-state actors and other political bodies has transformed the
conduct of war.75
Second, collectivity has disintegrated and been replaced by humans operat-
ing rather as individual consumers than citizens of their respective polity.76
These consumer-citizens, or ‘netizens’, feel the need to turn towards the
responsive politician only for the fulfilment of short-term private needs, at
the expense of long-term public policies such as war. The liquid modern
condition means that individuals have the ability to design their own life and
identity. Class and gender used to be ‘facts of nature’ and the only task left to
individuals was to ‘fit in’ the allocated niche by behaving as the other occupants
of the same niche. Now one’s identity is no longer a ‘given’ fate, but has
transformed into a ‘task’, charging the individual with the responsibility to
perform that task. In his journey to self-assertion, the individual has traded
the worry about the public good and a coherent vision of the good society for
the freedom to pursue private satisfaction. This however does not free him
totally from society or the political as a whole. The dark side of freedom for the
individual is that his autonomy comes with a growing sense of insecurity.
Wrested from regulations, norms and boundaries and confronted with profu-
sion of options, an uncertain future and lack of a guiding framework such as
grand narratives or collective identities, the free individual is now alone with
the task of pattern-weaving his identity and with no one else to blame for any
imperfection in life but himself. Burdened by this overwhelming task, the
uncertainty and insecurity that comes with it and insufficient means and
resources available, the individual turns to the political to seek public solutions
for his private troubles and concerns.77
Political agents have not been able to adapt to the forces of global markets,
declining power and individualisation. Political leaders are on the one hand
confronted with the consumer-citizen, seeking for fulfilment of desires and the
eradication of extraterritorial fears, threats and risks, and on the other with the
weakening framework of political power and thus increasingly becoming
impotent to solve, contain or address the issues of the electorate. Lacking the
political power and increasingly unable to address a public agenda filled with
private fears and desires, politics become increasingly detached from society.
This is enabled by media, which, in their competition to deliver consumer-
citizens/netizens to advertisers, rather portray governments as villains than
heroes.78 Political participation, election turnouts and public trust in politicians
75
Keith Dickson, ‘War in (Another) context: Postmodernism’, Journal of Conflict Studies 24/2 (2004),
78–91.
76
Bauman, In Search of Politics, 8.
77
Ibid., and Bauman, Liquid Modernity.
78
Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, 226.
and political parties are steadily declining.79 Long-term factors such as social
background and socio-economic status do not have the same degree of
influence on a person’s voting behaviour as they once did.80 The electorate
has become more volatile, fragmented, vulnerable to short-term influences,
leadership performance and prone to populism.81 The skyrocketing rise of
popular support for (right-wing) politics, such as France’s Front National and
the German party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) and the election of
President Donald Trump are illustrative examples. Rather than presenting
alternative policies, these political entities easily adapt to tap effectively into
the current dissatisfaction and feelings of insecurities among the public and use
these to engage the established ‘illegitimate and corrupt political Kartell’. The
AfD for example, after initially having success as a Euro-sceptic party during the
Euro-crisis in 2013, skilfully transformed itself into an anti-immigrant party
during the refugee influx in 2015 and 2016.
These trends have prompted politicians to change from rather patriarchal
agents distributing the collective good towards short-term oriented, power-
seeking agents in a fluid world of direct presentist goals and gains. At the
same time, consumer-citizens have increasingly become spectators of poli-
tics instead of participants, observing politics as if it were a sporting event
with winners and losers.82 This evidently does not serve the careful crafting
and designing of conflict-solving policies and according strategies. As
Bauman observes, ‘politicians [. . .] no more have a programme. Their pur-
pose is to stay in office’.83 Politicians are reduced to favour-doers, agenda-
setters and protectors of established institutional routines, filling the arena
with tit-for-tat politics: you give me your vote, I fulfil your individual desire.84
At the same time, politicians are more sensitive to risks, with devastating
loss of votes or drops of opinion polls constantly lurking. In the language of
vote-seeking politicians, following opinion poll statistics, complex, existen-
tial problems and widespread feelings of insecurity are translated into
populist, simplistic formulae that problematise race, ethnicity, religion and
all other lifestyles that are deemed deviant or merely abnormal.85 In the race
to demonstrate their usefulness and to win the citizen’s vote, politicians are
not rewarded by the electorate for their efforts on the long-term, existential
issues, such as climate control, overpopulation and policies for war and
79
Piero Ignazi, ‘Power and the (il)legitimacy of political parties: An unavoidable paradox of contem-
porary democracy?’ Party Politics 20/2 (2014) 163; Lekakis, ‘A liquid politics?’, 321; Bobbitt, The Shield
of Achilles, 224–225.
80
Jusin Fisher and Edward Fieldhouse, The Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behavior and Public
Opinion (Oxon: Routledge 2017).
81
James Dalton, ‘Citizen Attitudes and Political Behaviour’, Comparative Political Studies 33/6&7 (2000),
912–940.
82
Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, 230–231.
83
Bauman, In search of politics, 4.
84
David R. Mayhew, Congress: The electoral connection (New Haven: Yale University 1974), 100.
85
Bauman, In search of politics, 52, 179.
20 G. DIMITRIU
peace. The rising anonymous power of the market does not favour attention
to the long term, not yet urgent, issues. As a result, according to Bauman,
liquid modernity causes the decline of political life and constitutes ‘the
collapse of long-term thinking, planning and acting’, which are of course
the precondition, the very essence, of war policies and strategy.86
In sum, the contemporary political condition of western societies is charac-
terised by the increased fluidity of modern life and the ongoing process of the
separation of power from politics, of power in politics and with political agencies
increasingly prone to power-seeking at the expense of policymaking. This pro-
cess is manifest in short-term thinking, risk aversion and sensitivity to a capri-
cious, short-term oriented consumer-citizen. The examples mentioned above are
not to say that the liquid sociopolitical condition and its implications for war are a
one-way street or a prediction for the future. This is a generalised account of the
contemporary Western state of political affairs and the translation of
Clausewitzian Politik into the twenty-first century, but the liquid condition is
not fixed in time or space and may still become temporarily solidified, for
example by strategic shocks, such as devastating environmental changes or
dramatic (e.g. nuclear) attacks.
The liquid modern condition and contemporary war

The next question is, what does this all mean for contemporary war and its
relationship with politics? As further outlined below, the fluidity of politics, the
steady process of the separation of power from politics and the political leader-
ship increasingly motivated by power have led to a decline in war’s effectiveness
as a means of achieving policy, while at the same providing a tool for enhancing
domestic power. First, in terms of policy, the fluid movement, fragmentation and
the decline of power in politics are reflected by a similar decline in the value of
war as a political instrument. As politics and policymaking have become more
fluid and less powerful, war – as its dependent variable – has followed accord-
ingly. Second, in terms of power, with politicians increasingly motivated by their
political power share at the expense of policy, war has increasingly become a tool
to serve domestic power shares instead of serving collective policy goals. It is
particular this latter development that has been the main cause of the incom-
prehension of contemporary war. I will elaborate on these matters in turn.
The fluid and fragmented political condition in which power increasingly
moves away from politics has decreased the effectiveness of using force for
the purpose of policy. First, in the current sociopolitical condition,
war’s utility seems to be steadily declining in the context of global market
forces.87 In the past, when properly exploited by politicians, war could bring
86
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid times: Living in an age of uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity 2007), 3.
87
Bauman, In search of politics, 20, 172–173.
immense gains, transforming societies, delivering vast amounts of resources

or bringing nations to their knees. Whereas the state and war had the
capacity to dominate society and override market relations, contemporary
wars are generally subordinate to the globalising market.88 For example, as
of 2014, financial institutions have found legal loopholes to circumvent the
political sanctions imposed by Western nations on Russia and continue to
do business with the Federation.89 As an alternative to force, China assumed
territorial control over a port and 15,000 acres of land in Sri Lanka, largely by
means of its economic power in 2018. Under the burden of enormous debts
and without feasible options to repay the loans, Sri Lanka saw no alternative
to handing over the territory for 99 years, providing the Asian republic with
a strategic foothold along a critical commercial and military waterway.90 In
addition, non-state political power has increasingly gained currency, such as
non-governmental organisations, terrorists groups like Al Qaida and
Hezbollah and activist groups. The hacktivist collectives Anonymous and
CtrlSec, for example, effectively engaged Islamic State in the virtual domain.
They have carried out several waves of online attacks since 2014 and have
managed to take down several thousands of Twitter accounts, Facebook
pages and websites linked to Islamic State.
The fragmentation of power in democratic countries means that the
political logic of war is determined by a kaleidoscope of competing political
agents, including opposition parties, opinion-makers, trade unions and
voters – all with their own ideas and preferences and enabled by the
contemporary media landscape. Traditionally, war was waged between
two powers, whereas postmodern war is a confrontation between a multi-
plicity of competing powers.91 With power in the hands of many, war and its
purpose consequentially becomes a merger of government aims, opposition
objections, electoral concerns, opinion makers’ and agenda-setters’ influ-
ence, international pressure and subjective media framing. The ‘consensus
war’ that results may partially serve the interests of some or all of these
parties but is no longer recognisable as such to any party and difficult to
translate into a sound military strategy or a coherent narrative. Indeed,
Richard Betts concludes, consensus war has proved to be the enemy of
effective war.92 An example is the Dutch mission to north Afghanistan in
2011, which was designed by six political parties with significantly divergent
ideas and which required the support of the Dutch Parliament (because
there was a minority government). The ‘integrated police training mission’
88
Shaw, The New Western Way of War, 55; Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday, 219.
89
Emma Ashford, ‘Not-So-Smart Sanctions: The Failure of Western Restrictions on Russia’, Foreign Affairs
95/1 (2016), 114–126.
90
‘Paying China with territory’, New York Times, 28 June 2018, page 1.
91
George R. Lucas jr, ‘Postmodern War’, Journal of Military Ethics 9/4 (2010) 290.
92
Betts, ‘Is strategy an illusion?’, 5–50.
22 G. DIMITRIU
that followed became a merger of all ideas of the parties involved and
included a whole range of strategies and objectives, such as strengthening
the judicial system, building a legitimate government, creating economic
development, promoting gender rights, contributing to stabilisation,
improvement of the rule of law and the preventing of terrorism.93 But
every party also imposed its own restrictions. Some, for example, explicitly
objected to the use of Afghan police officers trained by the Dutch forces for
combat purposes, arguing that they could be utilised for police tasks only.
The result was that the Dutch-constructed mission only partly met Afghan
requirements and, as a result, some soldiers had to return home due to lack
of work. The mission increasingly divided the political parties and was
terminated before the anticipated end date.94
The fluidity of politics, with its fluid shifting of power, is also transmitted to the
conduct of war. This has resulted in a state of affairs with floating coalitions, wars
without a clear beginning and without a clear end, a perpetual state of conflict
and a fluctuating mosaic of participating militaries, non-governmental organisa-
tions, private military companies and civilians. The US War on Terror is a point in
this case, which according to some has taken on the character of an ‘endless war’,
an ‘unending war’ a ‘forever war’, or, adding a spatial dimension to the temporal
one, an ‘everywhere war’.95 Indeed, as part of this war, US Special Forces conduct
military operations all over the world, which are mostly less overt and not formally
announced as wars or conflicts. In 2013, US Special Forces were being deployed in
over 130 countries throughout the world, with not only counterterrorist raids and
drone strikes in Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen but also capacity building missions
in Africa, mostly without a clear condition of war.96 The Obama administration, for
example, bypassed the regular democratic decision-making procedure and did
not ask Congress for the authorisation of its intervention in Libya in 2011, on the
basis that the military engagement was only limited and that the risk to their own
casualties was virtually absent.97 Western European countries are involved in a
wide variety of military operations as well: the UK Army was deployed in over 80
countries around the world in 2017, while in the same year as small a country as
the Netherlands was involved in over 15 military missions.98 Between the
93
The Netherlands Parliament, Second chamber records, Parlementaire handelingen [Official
Parliamentary Reports], 27925, no. 415 (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij 2011).
94
The Netherlands Parliament, Second chamber records, Parlementaire handelingen [Official
Parliamentary Reports], 27925, no. 494 (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij 2011); Marno de Boer, ‘In
Kunduz was er te weinig werk’ Trouw, 24 juni 2014, retrieved at https://www.trouw.nl/home/in-
kunduz-was-er-te-weinig-werk~a87c964b/.
95
Max Mutschler, ‘On the Road to Liquid Warfare? Revisiting Zygmunt Bauman’s thoughts on liquid
modernity in the context of the “new Western way of war”’, BICC Working Paper 3, (2016), 17.
96
Nick Turse ‘American Special Operations Forces Are Deployed to 70 Percent of the World’s Countries’,
The Nation, 2017, retrieved at https://www.thenation.com/article/american-special-forces-are-
deployed-to-70-percent-of-the-worlds-countries/.
97
Max Mutschler, ‘On the Road to Liquid Warfare?’, 10.
98
Retrieved on 8 November 2017 at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-
defence and at https://www.defensie.nl/onderwerpen/missies/huidige-missies.
concepts of war and peace, there exists a murky twilight increasingly referred to
as ‘grey zone conflicts’, describing hostile and aggressive activities that remain
below the threshold of what is perceived as war by public opinion.
To summarise, the decline of power in state-level politics, combined with
the increasing fluidity of political power, results in war having less strategic
effect, while at the same time being increasingly omnipresent. Its reduced
effects are not determined by the nature of war or of the force itself, but
because of the sociopolitical condition in which the use of force competes
with other forms of power, and because of the fragmented political make-
up of Western political systems producing suboptimal strategy.
Flowing power and the political war at home

In the contemporary condition, power in domestic politics increasingly replaces
policy objectives as the primary purpose of war. In other words, the effective-
ness of force is to a lesser extent defined by the achievement of a policy
objective and increasingly by the electoral consequences. Clausewitz already
noticed that the limited wars in his age, in marked contrast to the major wars of
the Revolution, were permeated (durchziehen) and even saturated (gesättigt)
with politics.99 And indeed, as the Dutch government collapse in 2002 over
Srebrenica and in 2010 over Afghanistan demonstrates, war has the potential to
ruin political careers. The concern for votes and public support brings a whole
different political rationale into the design of war and, as Rupert Smith warns,
may even lead to deployment of military forces for purposes for which they are
neither trained or intended, such as policing, reconstruction or humanitarian
tasks.100 First, political leaders deliberately build in loopholes so as to be able to
pull out of the war when it suits politically, or even reject intervention based on
political calculations. An example is the UK debate on the government proposal
to intervene in Syria in 2013, in which the House of Commons successfully
prevented UK involvement. As James Strong argues, this was less about the
content of the foreign policy, but more about winning the vote of the public.
The discussion among MPs was heavily influenced by public opinion polls,
which demonstrated a very sceptic attitude as a consequence of the long wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan and after watching post-Gaddafi Libya slide into
chaos.101 Bringing the decision to Parliament heavily politicised the Syrian
war and dissuaded the UK and subsequently the US from intervening.
On the other hand, politicians feel the need to react when dramatic
footage is aired or when terrorist attacks on the homeland instigate a public
99
Paret and Moran, Clausewitz: Historical and Political Writings, 22; Honig, ‘Clausewitz and the Politics’,
33.
100
Rupert Smith, The utility of force: The art of war in the modern world (London: Penguin 2006), 9, 25.
101
James Strong, ‘Interpreting the Syria vote: parliament and British foreign policy’, International Affairs
91/5 (2015), 1123–1139; Hansard (Commons), 29 August 2013, vol. 566, col. 1535.
24 G. DIMITRIU
outcry for retaliation. This ‘something must be done’ approach was coined by
Rupert Smith over the Balkans conflict, which referred to the political ten-
dency to be more concerned for the safety of the force and the avoidance of
political risk than to solve the crisis.102 The instant Western response after
images of fleeing ethnic Yazidis for Islamic State and the subsequent public
pressure to act in 2014 is a case in this point. Following the terrorist attacks in
Paris in November 2015, France dramatically increased its attacks on IS in
Syria and Iraq. Interestingly, analysts have observed that scaling up the
bombing of IS did not have any significant effect on the terrorist group,
leaving former Navy pilot and analyst of the Institute for the Study of War
Chris Harmer to conclude that the France retaliatory attacks were not so
much aimed for IS but ‘100 per cent for domestic consumption’.103 The
political sensitivity to public opinion has also become manifest in other
ways. For example, it has become a habit only to commit troops for a preset
and fixed period and hold annual or biennial reviews to decide whether the
deployment of forces should be prolonged or terminated. UN, EU and NATO
have iterating ‘force generation’ processes in order to get sufficient troops for
missions, for example the NATO mission in Afghanistan and the UN mission in
Mali. Enabled by technological developments, politicians prefer to contribute
with forces that leave the nation uncommitted. During the previously men-
tioned war in Libya, US and British forces fired over 100 Tomahawk cruise
missiles and the US-led coalition carried out numerous air and drone strikes.
Without boots on the ground (except for some special forces), the step to
withdraw became morally more acceptable, even when the situation signifi-
cantly deteriorated. At the same time, war’s more inconvenient by-products
could be avoided, such as post-war administrative and managerial responsi-
bilities and costly nation-building obligations (such was the case in Iraq and
Afghanistan). Distant fighting, defined by some scholars as hit-and-run war-
fare, offers the middle-ground strategy to address the public fears of terrorism
or the desire to help the helpless, while remaining uncommitted and easily
able to opt out when the citizen-consumer has been satisfied.104
Further, when political leaders do contemplate war, they tend to present it
in a way that will gain the consent of political opposition and public opinion.
An illustrative example is the way Western politicians have ‘labelled’ the war or
the strategy in Afghanistan, such as ‘nation-building’, ‘reconstruction’, ‘winning
hearts and minds’ and ‘comprehensive approach’. Clausewitz already warned
that political considerations which conflict with the nature of war may hinder
the accomplishment of its objectives and may even have rebounding (and
102
Smith, The Utility of Force, 332–345.
103
Paul D. Shrinkman, ‘A Year After Charlie Hebdo, a Glimpse at French Revenge’, US News and World
Report, 2016, retrieved at https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016/01/07/a-year-since-charlie-
hebdo-heres-what-french-revenge-looks-like.
104
Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 187–189; Mutschler, ‘On the Road to Liquid Warfare?’, 7.
often detrimental) effects on politics.105 Fashionable labels can have an author-

itative and suggestive power with its own inhibitory influence on strategy-
making and the conduct of war. On a tactical level, moreover, these labels tend
to conflict with the actual situation on the ground, confronting soldiers fighting
an insurgency with a myriad of complex political constraints and expectations.
When the mission is portrayed and advertised as a stabilisation or reconstruc-
tion mission, as was the case in some Western countries deploying to
Afghanistan, it becomes difficult to explain heavy fighting in such a narrative.
Too much wishful thinking may even backfire on the political leadership. As an
example, after selling German combat in Afghanistan for 8 years as a peace-
keeping or a stabilisation mission, Germany’s political leadership finally had to
admit that the country was involved in a war and had to change its strategy
and its strategic communication accordingly. Political rhetoric can only go so far
that it does not contradict the nature of the military instrument under their
control when determining objectives. The military is trained to kill and destroy
and instinctively inclined to battle. The reciprocal effect between politics and
war manifests when communication diverges too much from reality, or when
military force is deployed for purposes for which they are neither trained nor
intended. According to Rupert Smith, this was exactly what happened with the
Western forces in Iraq after the Iraqi forces were defeated in May 2003. Whilst
being an effective military force during the fighting, the force lost its utility
when employed for policing and humanitarian tasks.106
War’s reflection of domestic political power struggles and the impulse to
avoid electoral risks compound the political tendency to pay less attention
to the long-term effects, the policy objective or the outcome of the war.107
Instead, politicians increasingly concentrate on how war is performed and
can be demonstrated to the consumer-citizen. In the war to retake the
Falklands from Argentine forces, British political pressure forced the com-
manding officer to capture a garrison at Goose Green which he deemed
absolutely irrelevant from a military perspective but had to be executed
simply ‘to register a British success to win back the headlines’.108 Colin Gray,
among others, has criticised western nations for not having formulated a
political goal or a strategy for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.109 Indeed,
the policy documents on the decisions of Western nations such as the
United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands to send troops to
Afghanistan reveal only brief and very broad descriptions of what a success-
ful outcome would look like and how this could be achieved.110 On the
105
Strachan, the Direction of War, 13, 54–55, 207.
106
Smith, The utility of force, 9, 12, 25.
107
Max Muttschler, ‘On the Road to Liquid Warfare?’, 7.
108
109
Colin Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (London: Orion Books 2005), 111.
110
Beatrice de Graaf, George Dimitriu and Jens Ringsmose, Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War:
Winning domestic support for the Afghan war (London: Routledge, 2015).
26 G. DIMITRIU
other hand, political guidelines for the conduct of war, which used to be the
domain of generals, were described meticulously. At the height of the
Western war in Afghanistan in 2009–2010, over 50 constraining restrictions
and caveats were imposed on different contributing nations.111 The German
forces in Afghanistan for example were to abstain from offensive activities
and were not allowed to operate in the volatile southern part of the country.
In today’s risk society, war has become an exercise in the avoidance of
risks. Conflicts are not solved but rather managed. The consumer-citizen
demands ever higher levels of security, while at the same time displaying an
increasing aversion to war and a lack of belief in ideas of heroism or fighting
for a noble cause.112 Politicians increasingly transfer risks by using proxies,
such as the Western nations’ use of private military companies like
Blackwater and Control Risk Group which were involved in combat opera-
tions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the war against Islamic State in 2016 and
2017, Western forces left the heavy fighting to local militias and the Iraqi
Army. But this trend is not restricted to the West. Russia, for example,
employed contractors in Ukraine and Syria in 2014 and 2015, and Iran has
a long record of waging war with insurgent movements. In Africa, countries
such as Liberia, Uganda and Tanzania have made use of proxy forces to
protect their national interest.113 Political risk avoidance has gradually
turned Western militaries into politico-sensitive entities, incorporating so-
called red card holders who check every military activity to ensure that it fits
with the political mandate.114 The prevention of collateral damage and
civilian casualties has become a mantra on its own, not because of empathic
feelings with foreign populations, but because of the consequences at
home; and this is not without reason; a NATO airstrike in Afghanistan killing
many Afghan civilians involving German forces in 2009 had significant
political repercussions, ultimately leading to the resignation of Frans Jozef
Jung, Defence minister at the time of the attack.
In brief, the purpose of war in the current sociopolitical world is increas-
ingly defined by domestic political power and to a lesser extent by policy
objectives. Both power-seeking and policymaking forces conform to the
Clausewitzian logic of politics, but, as I have tried to explain, increased
politicisation has had its effects on the conduct of war. The course of the
war, its conduct and its presentation is moulded and shaped so to serve
domestic political power struggles and to satisfy the consumer-citizen. War
111
David P. Auerswald and Stephen M. Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting together, fighting alone
(Princeton: University Press 2014).
112
Frans Osinga and Julian Lindley-French, ’Leading military organizations in the Risk Society: Mapping
the new strategic complexity’, in: Joseph Soeters, Paul C. van Fenema and Robert Beere (eds.),
Managing Military Organizations: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge 2010), 17–28.
113
Andreas Krieg & Jean-Marc Rickli, ‘Surrogate Warfare: the art of war in the 21st century?’ Defence
Studies 18/2 (2018) 118–130.
114
Auerswald and Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan, 5.
as the continuation of party politics or, the politicisation of warfare, is both a

contemporary development in the West, and at the same time the least
understood. Strategic thinkers and practitioners usually fail to understand
the politico-sociological context in which contemporary wars occur and as a
result they simply conclude that the West suffers from strategic illiteracy, has
lost its institutional capacity for long-term thinking and that political leaders
no longer act strategically. When domestic political forces are actually
recognised, they are regarded as external disruptive factors rather than
inherently political.115 For example, a former British chief of defence con-
tends that politicians have no feeling for strategy as: ‘[strategy] ties them in
and stops them veering and hauling according to the latest opinion poll’. In
his recent monograph, Christopher Eliot blames Tony Blair for being more
concerned with winning upcoming elections than success in Afghanistan.116
In the view of some scholars, these Western wars demonstrate that govern-
ments should deal with war entirely apart from the domestic political
sphere.117 Indeed, the logic of contemporary politics is difficult to grasp
for strategists; for the war theorist it makes no sense that the Dutch
government collapsed over the extension of the mission in Afghanistan in
2010, only to have the following government presenting a new mission in
Afghanistan a couple of months later. Operational planning becomes diffi-
cult when the political leadership intends to deploy a symbolic number of
soldiers merely in order to demonstrate international loyalty, or in response
to the international pressures that go with a seat in the UN Security Council.
However, one cannot ignore that such motives are inherent to the political
logic of strategy and war.
Where are we now: the return to Clausewitz

Neither the war theorist who accuses politicians and strategists of being
strategically illiterate nor the sociologist who presents a new theoretical
perspective can provide a solution to the current unsatisfactory state of
affairs outlined above. I contend that politicians do behave strategically (and
even rationally) but that their primary purpose of engaging in war expedi-
tions has gradually shifted from policy goals to objectives of power. It is
precisely the convergence of the power-seeking politicians with the military
policy-oriented strategist that leads to friction and incomprehension – what
I would term the politico-military disconnect. Vote-maximising, power-seek-
ing politicians tend to wrap their political ambitions in noble policy
115
Richard Hooker, ‘The strange voyage: A short précis on strategy’, Parameters 42/4 (2013), 59–68.
116
Christopher Elliot, High command: British military leadership in the Iraq and Afghanistan war (London:
Hurst and Company 2015), 124.
117
David Ucko and Robert Egnell, Counterinsurgency in crisis: Britain and the challenge of modern
warfare (Columbia: University Press 2013), 166.
28 G. DIMITRIU
purposes and for obvious reasons refrain from openly disclosing their real
motivation. The military in turn tends rather naively to take the formally
stated, often broad and ambitious, political purpose for granted, overlook-
ing the unspoken, but primary motives of its political masters. The politico-
military disconnect boils down to the fundamental question: what is the
utility of force? From the perspective of the military, it is to realise policy,
while from the politician’s view, it is rather to consolidate power. To make
this more specific, one could take the wars in Vietnam, the Balkans and Iraq.
These wars have often been regarded as policy failures. Communist influ-
ence in Vietnam was not halted, genocide in Bosnia was not prevented and
Iraq is still war-torn. However, when seen through the lens of domestic
political power, the outcome of these wars is rather different: Lynden
Johnson prolonged the Vietnam War but got re-elected; Tony Blair, who
brought the United Kingdom into Iraq, remained longer in office than any
other Labour leader in British history, while the Dutch government cabinet
during the Srebrenica massacre is the only cabinet in two decades that did
not collapse.
It will not come as a surprise that the politico-military disconnect works
further down the chain of command and is increasingly misunderstood on
the battlefield. The more undisclosed power-seeking forces determine the
political logic of war, the less war is understood by the military body. In his
brilliant monograph, soldier-scholar Emile Simpson articulates this very
succinctly: when ‘he look[ed] up from the battlefield and consider[ed] the
concepts that put [him] there’ it struck him that war is no longer what war is
typically understood to be. Contemporary war, he concludes, is distinct from
the established idea set out by Clausewitz, of being an extension of policy
by other means.118 I sympathise with strategists and soldiers like Emile
Simpson who no longer understand ‘war from the ground up’, from the
perspective of policy, but (even though I have been in the same position) at
the same time I realise that modern wars make perfect sense for the power-
seeking politician looking at ‘war from the top down’. What Simpson
describes and what confuses so many is not a deviation from
Clausewitzian war but, as I have tried to explain, the developments in
contemporary politics. War, as its dependent variable, has merely followed
course. Only a deeper understanding of the contemporary political condi-
tion and the implications for warfare can restore coherence – both concep-
tual and in practice.
The main point I have aimed to put forward here is that the sociopolitical
condition in which war is waged has changed and so has its conduct. Like
war, politics is changeable and a product of its sociological context. The
118
Emile Simpson, War from the ground up: Twenty-first century combat as politics (New York: Columbia
University Press 2012), 2–4.
logic of war in the age of liquid modernity, however, is still fundamentally

determined by politics in a Clausewitzian sense, so the fundamental rela-
tionship between politics and war still holds. What is happening on the
battlefield today is war infused with politics, perhaps even the true revela-
tion of war as the continuation of politics, with all the political complexities
directly translated into restraints and constraints which then operate at the
lowest levels in the theatre of war.
Having demonstrated how the contemporary sociopolitical conditions
have changed, how Clausewitz’s political logic of war has been persistently
misunderstood and misinterpreted, and in particular having affirmed war’s
relationship with politics, it is time to offer a new approach which does
justice to the concept of politics in a Clausewitzian tradition. This brings me
to the next section of this paper in which I shall try to lay out a new
framework for understanding Clausewitz’s logic of war, in order to demon-
strate how his notion of the relationship between war and politics can
continue to survive the passage of time.
The political logic of war: taking Clausewitz back into the future
Conceptualisation and definition
In this part, the Clausewitzian dictum of war being the continuation of
politics will be attuned to provide a contemporary theory, including an
analytical framework, a research methodology and indicative research ques-
tions for future case studies. The theory aims to cover not only major,
interstate wars but also small wars, civil wars and what is called today
‘hybrid war’. These are not restricted to state-actors or to the West but
may include any political entity in any geographical (or virtual) area partici-
pating in war. This addendum is based on the two basic theses of my
argument presented at the beginning of this article. First, throughout mod-
ern history, Clausewitz’s remarks on ‘politics’ have been structurally misun-
derstood and misinterpreted as ‘policy’, while politics should have been
regarded in its broadest form, entailing policymaking, power struggles and
the polity constellation. Second, and only after this adjustment, may we
consider the broad interpretation of Clausewitzian politics a valid construct
for the analysis of war in the contemporary sociopolitical condition. The
theory presented here is Clausewitzian in nature and takes as a premise the
instrumental relationship of war being subordinate to politics.
Since Clausewitz himself did not present a theory of Politik, I follow the
reasoning of Strachan, Heuser, Herberg-Rothe, Echevarria and Bassford and
disentangle from his use of this term three separate key concepts of policy,
power and polity. Viewed through the lens of the political logic of war, I
consider politics, as the overarching concept, as the systemic process of
30 G. DIMITRIU
power distribution and policymaking by a political entity within a polity.

‘Polity’ is understood here as a metaphorical space that demarcates the
‘political sphere’; the political constellation of entities and practices. It is the
fabric, the composition in which politics take place.119 Power is the ability to
exercise influence and control. It is often perceived as an adversarial and
polarised concept (one’s increase of power automatically lessens the
other’s). Power is a precondition for policymaking, but in a Nietzschean
sense, power also serves as an end in itself. ‘Policy’ is a rather unilateral
concept, and its end is conceived as a better state of affairs in the future,
statecraft for the good and the interest of the collective.120 This concept,
however, hides a plural, dynamic and multifaceted compromise of individual
political actors with conflicting interests competing for resources.121 It is
important to note that policy and power, to adopt a metaphor favoured by
Clausewitz, have a magnetic relationship, sometimes attracting and over-
lapping, at other times repelling and conflicting, i.e. the execution of war
policy may positively affect the agent’s share of power on one occasion,
while in other cases, or over time, the assumed war will incur significant
political cost. Overall, the political logic is determined by both conflicting
and overlapping policy objectives and power struggles within a given polity
which demarcates the space of manoeuvre and provides the rules of the
game. Finally, from this it follows that Clausewitzian Politik or the political
logic of war can be defined as the convergence of the interrelating factors of
power struggles and policy objectives within a given polity that entails
restraining and enabling conditions.
Ideal types of politics in war

To gain a better understanding of this definition, it helps to present two
ideal outcomes of this political logic. In line with the dialectic approach of
the master of strategic thinking himself, the relationship between policy and
power can be further analysed. Assuming a situation of an unrestrained
polity, I present two ideal types of war and opposing poles: the policy-driven
war and the politicised (politically determined) war.
In policy-driven war, the political logic of war is instrumental, systematic
and mechanical. Policymakers and strategists investigate different possible
future outcomes and mathematically decide on the optimal mixture of ends,
ways and means in terms of national interest. The purpose of the war is
evaluated solely by its effect in achieving a situation that serves the collec-
tive and changes the current situation for the better. The political body,
119
Palonen, ‘Four Times of Politics’, 179.
120
Ibid., 176; Bassford, ‘The Primacy of Policy’, 85.
121
Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity, 83–88.
including parties in the opposition, is not receptive or responsive to fluctu-

ating public opinion or media framing. Setbacks are accepted as inherently
associated with war and are not exploited in the political arena. Progress is
measured by continuously taking the end into account and weighing it
against the ways and means applied. A war continues until either the policy
objectives have been achieved or its costs have exceeded the expected
gains that the policy objective might achieve.
In a politicised war, the political logic is a product of internal political struggles.
Political agents decide on war and its conduct solely in terms of optimising their
power shares. Military expeditions typically start with public pressure or dramatic
media pictures, creating a sense of urgency among politicians to do something in
order to satisfy the consumer-citizen. Subsequent strategy-making is not about
the purpose of the mission, long-term considerations or the utility of force but
focuses solely on the question how to demonstrate to the keen public that
something is being done. Political leaders seek the deployment of forces which
have visible impact but are at low risk of being killed. Composition of the force its
tasks and the mandate is strictly overseen, in order to balance the political risks
associated with the deployment of troops with the public expectations. Success
and failure are measured by public approval ratings, electoral gains and the
amount of coverage on the six o’clock news. Progress and setbacks on the
ground are judged by their media-worthiness, regardless of the factual situation
on the ground. Political agents are not interested in what the forces are achieving
but are only concerned on a day-to-day basis with what the troops are doing and
how their conduct might affect their political position. When the war loses utility,
i.e. loses popular support and ceases to win votes, the military conflict is either
popularised, neglected or terminated. Here, neither the primacy of force, of
military might or pride nor overarching policy goals but rather internecine
power struggles and contentions provide the real frontline of the war.
These ideal types of war, the politicised and the policy-driven, are two ends
to the political spectrum and do not represent reality. From a dialectical
perspective, both types of wars are at the opposite ends of the political
spectrum rather than distinct and incompatible constructs. A Clausewitzian
synthesis would return to the assumption that in reality, the pendulum swings
between the two ideal types of the political logic of war. The next question is
then how can a war be analysed and explained on the basis of political forces
of policymaking and politicking? In other words, how can it be shown what
political forces determine the start, the course and the outcome of a given
war? In order to comprehend and map the political logic of wars ranging from
the ideal-type of the politicised war to the policy-driven war, I hypothesise
three determining factors: the ‘sociopolitical condition’ in which politics takes
place; the ‘agents’ being the political participants, and the threats, interests
and opportunities being the ‘issues at stake’. These determinants explain the
32 G. DIMITRIU
political logic of wars ranging from the ideal-type of the politicised war to the
policy-driven war.
Determinants
First, the sociopolitical condition shapes the manoeuvre space for political
agents within the polity, determines the framework within which policy is
defined, and the way power operates and is distributed. The sociopolitical
condition comprises the (macro)societal condition, international coalitions,
the political system, the type of regime and the political climate, including
the level of volatility, changeability and fluctuation of existing power struc-
tures. Attention should be paid to civil–military relationships, the suscept-
ibility and responsiveness of the political to its people, the influence of
media frames and public (in particular dissident) opinion.
Second, the agents comprise all participants in politics, including the
formal bodies (government, bureaucracy, legislation, opposition) and other
actors such as voters, pressure groups, media, dissidents, NGOs, terrorists,
hacktivists and so on. Agents operate within the polity for the purpose of
the (partly conflicting, partly overlapping) objects of power and policy. Their
ideologies, belief systems, ambitions, intentions and motives of political
agents shape the political discourse for war and consequently war’s logic.
These transpire through discourses, narratives, frames, war plans, strategies,
execution of policies and acts of politicking. Some influential factors may
remain hidden and unspoken, such as party-political agendas, conflicting
policy preferences and individual political ambitions.
Third, the ‘issues at stake’ pertain to the unceasing flow of events in the
polity that shape political agents’ perceptions of threats, opportunities and
interests for shaping policies and seeking power. From the outset, attach-
ment to a policy objective at the expense of power-seeking is expected to
be greater when a threat is perceived as imminent and existential (such as a
hostile nuclear attack), while consequences for power distribution are
increasingly prioritised when the issue is less urgent or threatening and as
such as causes political division (e.g. the decision to send a peacekeeping
force to another continent).122 This perception of threats, opportunities and
interests differs per political agent (with its own beliefs, ambitions and
motives) and is continuously shaped not only by endogenous factors as
the war unfolds, such as dramatic events, intelligence reports, setbacks and
successes, but also by exogenous events, such as alternative policies com-
peting for resources, national elections or a change of governing parties.
122
Indicative research questions and analytical framework

These determinants generate research questions for looking at the political
logic of a given war. The most fundamental and central question is how can
the course of the war be explained by the political logic? Some subsidiary
questions could be then: (how) can the political logic of the war be
explained as the convergence of power struggles and policy objectives
within a given polity? How does the sociopolitical condition shape the polity
constellation and the way political agents perceive the policy–power nexus?
How are political agents influenced by motivation for either achieving policy
objectives and/or acquiring power? And to what extent are political agents
susceptible to the continuous flow of endogenous and exogenous issues at
stake?
Relevance for the field

I have tried to present a contemporary theory of war, including the con-
ceptualisation of key concepts and ways of operationalising these in case
studies. It is hoped that the field of Strategic Studies will be enriched with
the provision of a broader analytical framework within which to understand
the political logic of war. Although the aim here is to reinterpret the
conceptual foundations of Strategic Studies, it is argued that this approach
does not conflict with the fundamental Clausewitzian view of war as sub-
ordinate to politics. On the contrary, the reconceptualisation intends to
revitalise the Clausewitzian imperative on war. Because the field of
Strategic Studies is interdisciplinary, the analytical framework can benefit
from a range of existing models and theories of International Relations,
political science, sociology and history. The broader interpretation of
Politik may also prompt a reconsideration of the logic of strategy in war,
currently assumed to be about balancing ends, ways and means in a
synchronised and systematic way in order to reach a policy objective.
Strategy as envisaged in this paper is still about balancing ends, ways and
means, but it also takes into consideration the politicians contemplating
war, who not only have a policy objective in mind but also have a share of
political power to defend or to obtain. When political power is factored into
strategic thinking, this leads to a redefinition of strategy as a process in
which political agents, acting in a polity that both restrains and enables,
balance ends, ways and means in order to find an optimal equilibrium
between achieving policy objectives and a favourable distribution of poli-
tical power shares.
With the intention to add more depth to the field of Strategic Studies,
this broader analytical framework of the political logic of war presents a new
set of challenges for those who study war. Crucial as it may be to
34 G. DIMITRIU
understand a war, a leader’s true motive for going to war is generally not
announced in public.123 Politicians normally express their motivation for war
in terms of policy, ideology and collective interest, and not in personal
benefit or electoral gains. This makes sense, as it is unlikely that a public
would be attracted to serve a politician’s personal goal. In most cases,
therefore, to discover to what extent politicking, such as vote-seeking or
election-maximising, has influenced the political logic of the war, one has to
resort to speculative analysis or at best the meticulous exclusion of other
factors. This obviously reduces the scientific value of such analysis in general
and detracts from the internal validity of research in particular. The complex-
ity, ambiguity and changeability of politics thus add further to the challenge
of determining the political logic in war: to what extent do these political
forces – competing policies, power struggles and personal interests, both
visible and below the surface – affect the course of a war?
The complexity of the analytical framework is justified by its explanatory
power. Without delving too deep in the details of a single case study,
combining the notion of policy, politics and polity enables us to better
understand, for instance, the course of the Dutch mission in Uruzgan. A
classical strategic studies approach, with its narrow policy perspective,
would focus on whether the applied means served to achieve the formu-
lated policy objectives. This would however miss the domestic political
forces which heavily influenced the course of the Dutch contribution. The
course of the mission in Uruzgan cannot be understood without factoring in
the party political considerations over the mission from the outset. For
example, in the early stages of the decision-making process in 2005, the
party leader of Democratic Party D66, Boris Dittrich, deliberately attempted
to destabilise the cabinet by his public declaration that his party (which was
part of the government of that time) would not support the decision to
contribute to ISAF. This politicised the Uruzgan mission from the outset,
damaged the mission’s legitimacy and fuelled distrust among the opposi-
tion, the media and public opinion. Further, the broad and vague aims and
descriptions of the nature and the purpose of the mission provided a
window of opportunity for the rise of a counter-narrative on the Uruzgan
mission as a ‘combat mission being sold as a reconstruction mission’.
Accusations of non-transparency and even deception kept recurring until
the cabinet collapsed over the mission in 2010.124 The political power
struggles widened the gap between the public understanding of the mis-
sion and the reality on the battlefield. The political debate also affected the
soldiers on the ground. The deployed commanders of the Task Force
123
Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity, 97.
124
G.R. Dimitriu, and B.A. de Graaf, ‘The Dutch COIN approach: three years in Uruzgan, 2006–2009’,
Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21/3 (2010), 429–458.
Uruzgan found it difficult to avoid being sucked into the political fighting –
reconstruction debate.125 Extensive research among junior leadership
demonstrates that the politicisation of the mission affected even the lowest
levels of the Uruzgan force. In the eyes of platoon commanders, the political
frames of the Uruzgan campaign unjustly simplified and misunderstood the
complexity of the counter-insurgency operation they were involved in and
obscured the fundamental purpose of their mission.126
In a nutshell, the above example indicates that a broader conception of
politics and the inclusion of power politics in the field of Strategic Studies are
essential if one is to reach a better understanding of today’s challenges regard-
ing fighting larger and smaller wars. This approach answers to the questions
raised by Rupert Smith, who asked why ‘we fight to preserve the force’, or
Daniel Borger, who tries to comprehend why ‘the West lost the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan’.127 More importantly, this structural inclusion of politics and polity
in the domain of strategic studies underpins Emile Simpson’s statement that
‘war from the ground up’ looks different than before.128 War on the ground
indeed looks different today, it is however important to note that this is not
because the instrumental relationship between war and politics has changed,
but because politics as war’s determining variable has changed. Strategic
scholars David Ucko and Robert Egnell concluded that the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan have taught the West the strategic lesson that governments
should decide for military operations on terms that serve policy alone, separate
from the sphere of domestic politics.129 This may sound attractive as a practical
advice, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that in the modern world, it is
impossible to detach the political logic for the use of military force from power
struggles in the polity.
Ultimately, the approach presented here is intended to lead to a better
understanding of war, and in particular of the influence of the political
imperative on the reasons why wars are waged and why they unfold the
way they do.
Conclusion
In an attempt to contribute to the reinvigoration of the field of Strategic
Studies and to overcome the overemphasis on the primacy of policy in
125
Theo Koelé, ‘We gaan doen wat nodig en mogelijk is [We are going to do what is necessary]’, de
Volkskrant, 5 juli 2006; Hans van Griensven, ‘It’s all about the Afghan people’, Eén jaar 1(NLD/AUS)
Task Force Uruzgan’, Atlantisch perspectief, 17/6 (2007), 4.
126
Jos Groen, Task Force Uruzgan: Getuigenissen van een Missie [testimony of a mission] (Elijzen
producties: Ede 2012).
127
Smith, The utility of force, 292; Daniel Borger, Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and
Afghanistan Wars (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing 2014).
128
Simpson, War from the ground up.
129
Ucko and Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis, 166.
36 G. DIMITRIU
literature, I have presented an original way to interpret Clausewitz’s political

logic of war. Through a Clausewitzian lens, a broader understanding of politics
is presented that fits within the contemporary sociopolitical condition. The
liquid modern condition in the West presents a situation in which the
fragmentation of state-level political power has decreased the effectiveness
of force. It has resulted in a state of affairs where wars are fought without a
clear beginning and without a clear end, a permanent state of conflict
involving a fluctuating variety of militaries, non-governmental organisations,
private military companies and civilians. In addition, the fluidity of politics and
the decline of power in state-level politics have caused politicians who con-
template war to become increasingly occupied with electoral considerations
at the expense of crafting sound policy objectives. One of the consequences
is the growing disconnect between the bureaucracy and the political leader-
ship when it comes to understanding the utility of force.
In addition, the Clausewitzian dictum of war being the continuation of
politics has been refined to provide a contemporary theory and a novel
analytical framework with which to study the political logic of in war. On the
basis of my understanding that politics essentially consists of the core
concepts of policy, power and polity, I propose that the political logic of
war can be defined as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power
struggles and policy objectives within a given polity that entails restraining
and enabling conditions. Further, three determining factors are hypothe-
sised: the sociopolitical condition, the agents and the issues at stake. These
determinants explain the political logic of different types of war, ranging
from the ideal-types of the politicised war to the policy-driven war.
Clausewitz’s idea of the political logic of war has thus not been so
radically transformed after all. Indeed, as Clausewitz already observed,
war must be judged in the light of the sociopolitical zeitgeist and, because
war is ‘a true chameleon’, it will adapt its characteristics accordingly.130
Wars change because their primary determinant, politics, changes. The
fundamental flaw in the reasoning of New War-istas is that these authors
regard wars as being new merely because they are fought for novel
reasons. The converse however is the case: because politics have evolved,
its dependent variable, war, has changed accordingly. Had war not chan-
ged to what it is now, Clausewitz’s postulation of war being nothing more
than politics would have been seriously compromised. The forms of war of
today only confirm Clausewitz’s idea. What we see in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Syria today is not New War but rather a mirror of contemporary Western
politics, attempting to tame, mould and utilise wars abroad in order to win
wars at home.
130
Clausewitz, On War, 30, 240.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Beatrice de Graaf, Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Frans Osinga and Alistair
Reed for their valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
George Dimitriu (MA MSc) is a PhD candidate of Utrecht University and a research
fellow at the Netherlands Defence Academy. He has spent over 18 years in active
military service and authored several articles on war and strategy in journals such as
Small Wars & Insurgencies, Foreign Policy Analysis and Intelligence and National
Security. He co-edited the Routledge volume ‘Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion
and War’.
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Clausewitz and the politics of war: A contemporary

others – those who advocate ideas on Fourth Generation Warfare, the

background, a novel analytical framework is developed for interpreting the

of war and for the Clausewitzian political logic in particular. Contemporary

Strategic studies and the problem of the policy paradigm

below, Clausewitz used a broad conception of politics indeed, but throughout

domestic power struggles. Politicians in every era have pursued foreign

conduct of war cannot be explained by means of a conventional

Strategic theory: the primacy of policy

interplay and private interest. Moreover, it was Clausewitz’s realisation of the

monarchy and the overturn of internal political order.50 Scholarly literature

The primacy of policy in modern times

on anthropological insights and assumptions, Keegan also sees war as an

Contemporary war: bringing politics back in

contemporary conﬂict. Clausewitz was very aware of that, noting in On War

reign of individualising freedom and the consequential struggle of political

The liquid modern condition and contemporary war

immense gains, transforming societies, delivering vast amounts of resources

Flowing power and the political war at home

often detrimental) eﬀects on politics.105 Fashionable labels can have an author-

as the continuation of party politics or, the politicisation of warfare, is both a

Where are we now: the return to Clausewitz

logic of war in the age of liquid modernity, however, is still fundamentally

power distribution and policymaking by a political entity within a polity.

Ideal types of politics in war

including parties in the opposition, is not receptive or responsive to ﬂuctu-

Indicative research questions and analytical framework

Relevance for the ﬁeld

literature, I have presented an original way to interpret Clausewitz’s political

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