Letters from Vienna #113
Clausewitz, War and the Ukraine
1813
1813 was a year of extremes for Carl von Clausewitz. On the one hand he was reunited with his beloved wife: Marie, on the other he came close to death in a number of battles. Above all else: he was scarred by his time in Russia and was a changed man.
The year before, 1812, began badly: “I have travelled the road which I passed along with you last year, my dear wife, when I was happy,” he wrote home in March 1812. “This time I was in the sweat of fear and cursing every stone. The farewells at Frankfurt were very painful for me and increased my headache.”[1] Not long after he lamented: “Sadness has gently taken hold of me yet has not made me depressed. Being with you is my only happiness. If war does not snatch me into its whirlpool soon, I will become very homesick for you, my beloved sweetheart. Every dear stroke of your dear handwriting is precious to me. Not hearing from you is the most terrible experience, and one which I have to expect in the future.”[2]
In Russia he was appointed General Phull’s aide-de-camp but was aware that he would have a difficult time as he spoke no Russian and thus could fill no independent command.[3]
Once Napoleon invaded, in June 1812, life in the field was rough: “The difficulties of this campaign are extraordinary. For nine weeks now, we have been on the march. For five weeks we have had no change of clothes. Heat, dust, filth, filthy water and often near-starvation. Until now I have spent each night in the open, with few exceptions, because few people live in this locality and their pitiful huts have been destroyed. Despite these hardships I feel better than I did in Berlin. Gout tortures me now and then. I have toothache practically all the time, since Vilna I have had three hollow teeth. I am also losing my hair; and my hands, which have not seen gloves for a fortnight, look like yellow leather.”[4]
General Phull was of the opinion that one should fight Napoleon soon after he crossed the Russian border but Clausewitz discovered to his horror that the defences made were far from adequate. He tried in vain to dissuade Phull from his folly but thankfully the opinion of Scharnhorst, who believed that the Russians should retreat deep within their frontiers, prevailed.[5]
Clausewitz was a witness to the stupidity of Count Uvarov at Borodino, who only belatedly took his advice, the burning of Moscow and the horror of Berezina: “Trampled by horses, slaughtered by bullet or cannon fire, frozen to the ground by the deteriorating weather, men and women were stripped by the Cossacks and thrown in the snow – they died in many different and terrible ways. Clausewitz, riding in the middle of it all, saw the hundreds stiffening corpses, the dying, the phantom-like humans who screamed out for food and help. He wept as he rode among them. “What ghastly scenes have I witnessed here,” he wrote to Marie. “If my feelings had not been hardened it would have sent me mad. Even so, it will take many years before I can remember what I have seen without feeling a shuddering horror.”[6] Others, who were also witnesses to the horrors of the French retreat, such as Stendhal (who was on the French side), never spoke of them.
Clausewitz finally returned home in March 1813. “Inevitably (Marie) found him much changed by the ordeals of the tiring campaign and the Russian winter. At Königsberg he had been as thin as a skeleton, and when he reached Berlin he was still very gaunt. His red hair was sparser and was frosted with grey, and his face was darkly blotched by ice sores. Above all, his personality had altered. Always withdrawn by nature, events had made him more so; he easily alternated between short bursts of wild enthusiasm and deep depression.”[7]
On War
“War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale,” Clausewitz opined in his classic work: “On War”, which was first published in 1832. “If we would conceive as a unit the countless number of duels which make up a war, we shall do so best by supposing to ourselves two wrestlers. Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: each endeavours to throw his adversary, and thus render him incapable of further resistance. War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.”[8]
“Violence, that is to say, physical force (for there is no moral force without the conception of States and Law), is therefore the means; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object. In order to attain this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed, and disarmament becomes therefore the immediate object of hostilities in theory. It takes the place of the final object and puts it aside as something we can eliminate from our calculations.”[9]
“Two motives lead men to War: instinctive hostility and hostile intention. In our definition of War, we have chosen as its characteristic the latter of these elements, because it is the most general.”[10]
“If we desire to defeat the enemy, we must proportion our efforts to his powers of resistance. This is expressed by the product of two factors which cannot be separated, namely, the sum of available means and the strength of the will. The sum of the available means may be estimated in a measure, as it depends (although not entirely) upon numbers; but the strength of volition is more difficult to determine and can only be estimated to a certain extent by the strength of the motives.”[11]
“The War of a community—of whole Nations, and particularly of civilised Nations—always starts from a political condition and is called forth by a political motive. It is, therefore, a political act.”[12]
How should all this be applied to the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine?
The first point to be made is that the antagonism on the part of the Anglo-American Empire toward Russia is over a century old (see letter #104) and that there has been a “cold war” between the “collective West” and “Putin’s Russia” for decades now. In fact, had Hilary Clinton been elected in 2016, a war with Russia would have, in all probability, started a good deal earlier.
The Anglo-American Empire has long sought to impose its will upon Russia and, occasionally, has actually succeeded in doing so. One example was the Russian Revolution, which was sponsored by Wall Street and the Bank of England. Another was the Yeltsin era, in which democracy in Russia was brutally suppressed while American “liberalisation” of the economy led to a radical drop in life expectancy.
Yet this antagonism is limited to the powerful and dominant financial oligarchy and doesn’t extend to the broader populace. Thus, according to one source 89% of Portuguese and Greeks want to end the war in Ukraine and the European average is 82%.[13] Yet the conflict continues…
According to the Rand corporation: “Some analysts make the case that the war is heading toward an outcome that would benefit the United States and Ukraine. Ukraine had battlefield momentum as of December 2022 and could conceivably fight until it succeeds in pushing the Russian military out of the country. Proponents of this view argue that the risks of Russian nuclear use or a war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will remain manageable. Once it is forced out of Ukraine, a chastened Russia would have little choice but to leave its neighbor in peace—and even pay reparations for the damage it caused. However, studies of past conflicts and a close look at the course of this one, suggest that this optimistic scenario is improbable. In this perspective, therefore, we explore possible trajectories that the Russia-Ukraine war could take and how they might affect U.S. interests. We also consider what the United States could do to influence the course of the conflict.”[14]
“An absolute Ukrainian victory is also unlikely. Ukraine has never officially proclaimed an intention to achieve an absolute victory as the literature defines it. President Zelensky’s declared objectives have changed over time, but, as of December 2022, his stated goal is to retake all of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea and the areas of the Donbas that Russia has occupied since 2014. Still, complete territorial reconquest would not constitute an absolute victory. If the Ukrainian military were to eject Russian forces from Ukraine, they would doubtless seriously degrade the Russian army in the process. Nonetheless, Russia would have a wide variety of capabilities on its territory and beyond—particularly the navy and the aerospace forces, which have not taken major losses in the war—that could enable continued strikes on targets deep within Ukraine. Russian ground forces could readily regroup and launch another large-scale offensive. To achieve absolute victory, Ukraine would have to deny Russia the ability to contest its territorial control. Forcing the Russian military to cross the international border would not produce that outcome. And although Ukraine has surprised observers with its ability to defend its own homeland, it is fanciful to imagine that it could destroy Russia’s ability to wage war. Therefore, Kyiv would probably need regime change in Moscow in addition to victory on the battlefield to avoid living under the constant threat of reinvasion. Some analysts contend that Russia’s poor performance in the war, mounting casualties, and mobilization could cause political instability and lead to Putin’s overthrow and replacement with a new regime that would stop fighting, come to terms with Ukraine, and pose a diminished threat over the long term. However, there is little historical evidence to suggest that regime change in Russia would necessarily ensue following battlefield failures. Leaders of personalist regimes like Russia’s have often remained in power after a military defeat. Moreover, there is no guarantee that a new Russian leader would be any more inclined to make peace with Ukraine than Putin is. As Shawn Cochran writes, “it is difficult and probably pointless to predict the outcome of any wartime change of leadership in the case of Russia’s war in Ukraine. At a minimum, however, the West should not assume a change of leadership would result in an end to the war, at least in the short term, as Putin’s war could very well continue without Putin.” Moreover, regime change in Moscow might not reduce the intensity of the competition between the United States and Russia on other issues. Regardless, Kyiv has not proclaimed regime change as its stated objective, although some Ukrainians understandably hope for it.”[15]
“Since neither side appears to have the intention or capabilities to achieve absolute victory, the war will most likely end with some sort of negotiated outcome. Negotiated ends to wars, unlike absolute victories, require the belligerents to accept a degree of risk that the terms of the peace could be violated; even the relative “loser” in the conflict will retain the ability to threaten the other side. Agreements to end wars are highly contingent on the particulars of a given conflict, but it is analytically useful to distinguish between lasting cease-fires or armistice agreements on the one hand and political settlements on the other.”[16]
The ominous phrase: “regime change in Moscow” is the real reason for the proxy war. The current conflict, as most conflicts, has political roots, as Clausewitz pointed out two centuries ago.
[1] p.137 Clausewitz, Roger Parkinson
[2] p.140 Ibid
[3] p.140 Ibid
[4] pp.160-161 Ibid
[5] p.145 Ibid
[6] p.194 Ibid
[7] pp.212-213 Ibid
[8] p.73 On War, Clausewitz
[9] p.74 Ibid
[10] p.76 Ibid
[11] p.82 Ibid
[12] p.124 Ibid
[13] https://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/survey-europeans-want-peace-not-sanctions
[14] https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html
[15] Ibid
[16] Ibid