by Richard Martin, President, Alcera Consulting Inc.
I originally wrote this paper in 2002 for a graduate seminar in Theories of War for a PhD in War Studies at Royal Military College of Canada. I will probably update it in the future, but for now it provides a good primer on the way to assess wars and conflicts in the 21st century. You may forward any comments or suggestions directly to me, at info@alcera.ca.
Rather than reproduce the full paper here, I’ve created a pdf version for download. Feel free to quote and share with appropriate attribution.
Introduction: “The First of All Strategic Questions”
The critical task of the strategist in any situation of conflict is, first, to understand the nature of warfare and conflict in general, and second, to understand the nature of the war one is involved in. This “first of all strategic questions” is critical, for the consequences of error have a direct bearing on the survival and interests of a state. As Handel has shown, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Jomini, Corbett, and Mao are all in agreement on this basic point.[1]
While these theorists hint at the judgment criteria that a strategist must follow to determine the nature of a war, none, except for Clausewitz, provides anything that could be considered a holistic theoretical model for explaining and describing conflict and warfare. Furthermore, Clausewitz maintains that there is no substitute for genius and coup d’oeil. This may have been sufficient in the early part of the nineteenth century, although one suspects that Clausewitz’s attempt at formulating a general theory of the conduct of war is an implicit recognition that this is not sufficient. War and conflict in the modern world are so complex that it is doubtful that any one individual or group possesses anything like the experience required to make an intuitive judgment on these matters.
What the strategist requires, then, is a proper framework for analyzing and assessing any situation of political conflict which can potentially lead to armed confrontation and war. The aim of this paper is to provide the outlines of just such a strategic framework of analysis.
Various models have been proposed to explain the gradations, types, and varieties of conflict and war. These include several “spectrums of conflict”, Kahn’s ladder of escalation[2], and conflict typologies (guerrilla war, revolutionary war, protracted war, total war, etc.). Spectrums of conflict have been invented based on ends/means analysis (limited vs. total war), as well as the intensity of operations (high, medium, and low intensity war/operations). This latter categorization schema has also been linked to the requirements of international intervention for conflict management, such Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace.[3] A full comparison of these approaches to the understanding of war is beyond the scope of this study. However, it is assumed that none of these models provides a ready-made framework, nor even the basis for development of one, that would allow the systematic analysis of wars and conflicts.
On the other hand, Clausewitz does provide a kind of model for determining the nature of any war – the social “trinity” of government, army, and people – and puts it to use in Book Eight of On War in analyzing the history of armed conflict in Europe. While the “trinitarian” model has some serious limitations, it does provide a basis for a fully developed theoretical model for determining and analyzing the nature of wars and conflicts, both inter- and intrastate.
This paper will focus on developing this model further, to the point where it has some heuristic value in analyzing conflict and war. To do so, it must be understood that the state, as a historical form of social organization, is fundamental to war and political conflict in general. Clausewitz’s trinity will then be used as a basis for further developing this historical insight into a full-blown hierarchical model of the state as a “war-machine”. The state-hierarchy model of war will then be used as a framework for analyzing war and conflict in the modern world.
This is a purely theoretical discussion concerning the nature of war and strategy. The state-hierarchy model of war that is developed herein is not meant in any way to describe the actual functioning of any state. Rather, it is a heuristic device for understanding the nature of war and conflict. By stating that war is fundamental to the state and that the state is fundamental to war, the intent is to highlight the fact that the most basic function of the state is to protect itself from internal and external threats to system integrity. This model has limitations, but a discussion of these will be left to the conclusion so that the reader can develop an overall appreciation for the concept and its workings before attempting a critique of the method.
[1] Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, 3rd, Revised and Expanded Edition, London: Frank Cass Publishers, pp. 91-117
[2] Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1965
[3] See for instance, Erwin A. Schmidl, “The Evolution of Peace Operations from the Nineteenth Century”, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 10, No. 2, Autumn 1999, pp. 4-20.