On War, with apolgies to Carl von Clausewitz

With America's failure in Vietnam the US Army returned to the study of strategy, and with the creation of Air-Land Battle doctrine embraced the fundamental precepts espoused by Baron Carl von Clausewitz nearly 150 years earlier. It was intended the understanding of strategy should be fundamental in how the force was shaped to win the next war. At the time, America's number one perceived threat was the Soviet Union, and the concepts of "On War" fit nicely within the context of what the Army wanted to shape itself to. This seemed to be validated by the the overwhelming success in our first Iraq war when we fought an Army trained in Soviet tactics.

What seems to be lost, to most military, in the study of von Clausewitz is the fundamental understanding military operations are ALWAYS subordinate to the political. At the tactical level they may be the most visible projection of political will, but in the strategic they have to support the national political objectives. People who dismiss "On War" as only relevant to full scale conflict seem to think that Baron von Clausewitz failed to understood limited national objectives. I believe he only ran out of time to edit those thoughts before he died. 

Within our political system, the military suffers each time they attempt to get in front of the political objectives. In our current national debate, the politicians do not seem to understand how important a common and agreed political purpose must be. This is especially critical when we have limited national objectives, such as now. For in that time, dissent and debate clouds the true purposes and causes the military leadership to lose focus.

We are in the midst of a long, ambiguous, and cloudy ideological conflict. I believe the dangers in engaging non-state actors, like pirates, or the Taliban, will cause us to overlook the larger political questions of religious coexistence between the Muslim and non-Muslim world. The non-religious will dismiss this as an absurd idea, but where do the terrorists and extremists come from? The average American, and our average politician think the world thinks like us. It does not, and until we understand that and come to grips with how to act with those who don't think as us we are at risk.