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Reconsidering the American Way of War: U.S. Military Practice From the Revolution to Afghanistan

State of Doom: Bernard Brodie, the Bomb, and the Birth of the Bipolar World. By Barry Scott Zellen (Continuum, 2011). ISBN: 1441124624. This book examines Bernard Brodie's strategic and philosophical response to the nuclear age, embedding his work within the classical theories of Carl von Clausewitz. Zellen is a Researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, USA, where he is Research Director of the Arctic Security Project. The managing editor of Culture and Conflict Review and Strategic Insights journals, he has published several books, including On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, 2009) and Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger, 2009).

Clausewitz's On War: A Biography (Books That Changed the World). By Hew Strachan (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006). ISBN: 0871139561. Strachan, one of the world’s foremost military historians, offers some answers to many of the problems posed by Clausewitz's writings. He explains how and why On War was written, elucidates what Clausewitz meant, offers insight into the impact it has had on conflict, and evaluates its continued significance in our world today.

Clausewitz Reconsidered (Praeger, 2009). By H.P. Wilmott and Michael B. Barrett. ISBN: 0313362866. This book would have been a lot better had Wilmot spent some time actually reading Clausewitz before buying wholesale into the fantasies of the "New Wars" scholars. The authors assess Clausewitz's theories, examining their viability at a time when asymmetric warfare and "war" conducted by and against nonstate actors is increasingly common and state control often ephemeral. The basis of the book's analysis is an examination of war over the last four centuries, since the Thirty Years' War, including the Cold War and subsequent conflicts. They start with the dubious assumption that war today is far more endemic and brutal than when Clausewitz tried to explain it. This volume explores that alleged paradox and shows that if anything, we can anticipate further uncontrolled violence. The authors conclude that Clausewitz and On War have assumed a status akin to holy writ, but are obviously dated. The aim of Clausewitz Reconsidered is to bring the master's theories up to date, providing the current generation with a new basis for thought and analysis.

On Wellington: A Critique of Waterloo (University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). By Carl von Clausewitz as translated by Peter Hofschröer. ISBN: 0806141085. This is a translation of Clausewitz's Der Feldzug von 1815 in Frankreich (Berlin, 1835). The translator uses Clausewitz's campaign study (which focuses equally on all of the top commanders of the campaign) to continue his personal vendetta against Wellington. Unfortunately, Clausewitz did not share this translator's blatant prejudices. Ironically, given its artificial focus on Wellington, and unlike On Waterloo (truth-in-advertising: a ClausewitzStudies.org production), it contains only Clausewitz's campaign study, not Wellington's original after-action report or his reply to Clausewitz, Clausewitz's post-battle letters, or essays by other scholars. But buy both and let us know what you think.

Clausewitz and America: Strategic Thought and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq. By Stuart Kinross. (Routledge, 2008). ISBN: 041556963X. While many reviewers seem to regard Kinross's book as a long-overdue attack on Clausewitz, Kinross's actual views are a great deal more sophisticated than that view would imply.

Buy the standard English translation of Clausewitz's On War, by Michael Howard and Peter Paret  (Princeton University Press, 1976/84). ISBN: 0691018545 (paperback). Kindle edition. This quite readable translation appeared at the close of the Vietnam War and has become the modern standard. However, if you're serious about reading Clausewitz in detail, read the much more accurate translation by O.J. Mattjis Jolles. See edition to far right of this column. For background, see this discussion of the various English translations of Clausewitz's Vom Kriege.

On War, by Carl von Clausewitz, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976/84). ISBN: 0679420436. This is the Everyman's Library edition. This is a very fine edition of the Howard/Paret translation, superior in some ways to the standard Princeton version. However, the pagination is different, making it a bit more difficult to locate specific quotations, etc. If you're serious about reading Clausewitz in detail, read the much more accurate translation by O.J. Mattjis Jolles. See this discussion of the various English translations of Clausewitz's Vom Kriege.

Recommended for serious readers. The Book of War (The Modern Library, February 2000). ISBN: 0375754776. Clausewitz and Sun Tzu in one book. The translation of Clausewitz's On War is the 1943 version done by German literary scholar O.J. Matthijs Jolles at the University of Chicago during World War II—not today's standard translation, but certainly the most accurate. The only error we're aware of is spelling Clausewitz's first name with a 'K'—almost certainly the publisher's decision, not the translator's. With an interesting introduction by contemporary military guru Ralph Peters. The version of Sun Tzu included is also excellent—this is the modern translation by Roger Ames, based on complete ancient texts found by archaeologists.

On Waterloo: Clausewitz, Wellington, and the Campaign of 1815. Ed./trans. Christopher Bassford, Daniel Moran, and Gregory W. Pedlow (ClausewitzStudies.org, 2010). ISBN: 1453701508. This book is built around a new and complete translation of Clausewitz's study "The Campaign of 1815: Strategic Overview," first published as Der Feldzug von 1815 in Frankreich (Berlin, 1835). It is vol. 8 of Clausewitz's collected works (Hinterlassene Werke des Generals Carl von Clausewitz über Krieg und Kriegführung). This study was written late in Clausewitz's life, after most of On War had already been drafted. Thus it reflects Clausewitz's most mature thinking but, unlike many of his earlier historical studies, its findings have not been incorporated into Clausewitz's magnum opus. Thus most readers will find it new material. The book also includes the responses of Wellington and his circle, as well as analytical essays by the editors.

Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945, by Christopher Bassford (Oxford University Press, 1994). ISBN: 0195083830. Explores what soldiers, academics, and others in the English-speaking world were saying about Clausewitz between 1815 and the 1990s—and, more intriguingly, why. Not always a pretty tale. Buy a used version of this classic—the publisher's price is an outrage. The full text is on-line free HERE.
 

Clausewitz and the State, 2nd edition. By Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 2007). ISBN: 0691131309. The new edition of this classic 1976 work—the best biography of Clausewitz available in English—includes a preface that allows Paret to recount the past thirty years of discussion on Clausewitz and respond to critics. A companion volume to Clausewitz's On War, this book is indispensable to anyone interested in Clausewitz, his theories, and their proper historical context.

Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War (University Press of Kansas, 2008). By Jon Tetsuro Sumida. ISBN (hardcover): 9780700616169 (paperback 0700618198). Sumida contends that Clausewitz's central value lies in his method of reenacting the psychological difficulties of high command in order to promote the powers of intuition that he believed were essential to effective strategic decision-making. Sumida also correctly notes Clausewitz's argument that the defense is a stronger form of war than the offense and goes on to argue that this is in fact his primary strategic proposition. This concept, Sumida maintains, must be understood in order to make sense of Clausewitz's positions on absolute and real war, guerrilla warfare, and the relationship of war and policy/politics. Here is the Preface and Table of Contents. Here is the preface to the (revised) paperback edition (2011). See Reviews.

Historical and Political Writings, by Carl von Clausewitz, trans. Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (Princeton University Press, 1992). ISBN: 0691031924. This companion volume to On War brings together Clausewitz's political writings and a selection of his historical works. This material reveals Clausewitz as an exceptionally independent observer both of the past and of his own times, distinguished by an unideological pragmatism and a keen sense of the possibilities and shortcomings of state power. Contents.

ABOVE: Hans Delbrück (1848-1929), History of the Art of War within the Framework of Political History, 4 vols., trans. [Brigadier General, USA] Walter J. Renfroe, Jr. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975-85).
 

The German military historian Hans Delbrück is not widely read in English, but even John Keegan acknowledged him as "the father of modern 'scientific' military history." Unfortunately for the Clausewitz-hating Keegan, Delbrück himself was an ardent Clausewitzian.

 

"In a report that [Clausewitz] wrote on 10 July 1827 and that is placed at the head of the work he left behind, Vom Kriege, he considers redoing this work once more from the viewpoint that there is a double art of war, that is, the one "in which the purpose is the overthrow of the enemy," and the one "in which one only intends to make a few conquests on the borders of the country." The "completely different nature" of these two efforts must always be separated from one another. Clausewitz died in 1831, before he could carry out this work. To fill out the lacuna that he left has been one of the purposes of the present work. (Delbrück, vol.4, p.454.)

 

William H. McNeil, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). A comprehensive analysis of the development of military power over the past thousand years by a famed world historian. ISBN: 0226561585

Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species (Basic Books, 2002). Purely a book on biology, this approach to the sources of evolutionary--and thus strategic--innovation should affect your understanding of strategy in the human domain. ISBN 0465043925 (Paperback).

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (W.W. Norton: 1999). Geographer Diamond asks why the civilizations of Eurasia, esp. the West, have such complex material civilizations, providing a rich, multi-factor analysis--a valuable contrast to V.D. Hanson's interesting work on the cultural origins of Western military superiority. ISBN: 0393317552. See review by Christopher Bassford.

Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed (Viking, 2005). While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why some ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. ISBN: 0670033375. ISBN: 0393317552. See review by Christopher Bassford.

Gary A. Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (MIT Press, 1997). Klein, a cognitive psychologist, spent a decade watching fire-fighters, critical care nurses, pilots, nuclear power plant operators, battle planners, chess masters, and others making split-second decisions on the job, acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions. This book is a clear and engaging account of his findings, and it offers historians and military theorists a more realistic model for understanding the behavior of military and political decisionmakers than many have followed in the past. ISBN: 0262611465

John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Westview, 2003). Lynn is an expert on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century warfare, esp. French, but here he has written a sweeping look at the cultural aspects of warfare in contexts ranging from classical Greece and India to medieval and modern Europe, Japan, and Egypt. More important, he has done so without succumbing to the "war & culture" crowd's tendency towards single-factor analysis, and his discussion of Clausewitz—despite some unhealthy over-reliance on Azar Gat—is sensible and insightful. ISBN: 0813333725

Mitchell M. Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science At The Edge Of Order And Chaos (Simon & Schuster, 1992). Waldrop tells us the historical development of the birthing ground of Complexity science, the Santa Fe Institute. However, his main subject is complexity science itself and its implications. As one reviewer puts it, "He not only tells you what Complexity IS, but WHY you should care about it." As with James Gleick's Chaos, this is must reading for any 21st-century Clausewitzian wannabe. (See Alan D. Beyerchen's essay on the connection.) ISBN: 0671872346

James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987). In the 20th-anniversary edition of this now-classic work, Gleick, formerly a science writer for the New York Times, depicts the beginnings of Chaos theory, which draws on the seemingly random patterns that characterize many natural phenomena. It explains the thought processes and investigative techniques of Chaos scientists, illustrating concepts like Julia sets, Lorenz attractors, and the Mandelbrot Set with  sketches, photographs, and wonderful descriptive prose. Must reading for any Clausewitzian. (See Alan D. Beyerchen's essay on the connection.) ISBN: 0143113453

Robert Drews, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. (Princeton University Press, 1993). A fascinating exploration of a major archaeological, historical, and military mystery The Bronze Age came to a close early in the twelfth century b.c. with one of the worst calamities in history: over a very short period, destruction descended throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing to an end the Levantine, Hittite, Trojan, and Mycenaean kingdoms and plunging some lands into a dark age that would last more than four hundred years. In his attempt to account for this destruction, Robert Drews rejects the traditional explanations and proposes a military one instead. ISBN: 0691025916

Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Simply one of the best books we've read in years. Unlike the faux-anthropological nonsense published in recent years by academic historians, it gives us a genuine look at the anthropology of war--the author is an actual anthropologist and archaeologist. Looking at warfare among pre-state, pre-literate  peoples from the stone age to the present day, Keeley convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. ISBN: 0195119126.

John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Is history a science? Gaddis answers these and other questions in this short, witty, searching look at the historian's craft. Historians combine the techniques of artists, geologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists, paralleling in intriguing ways the "new sciences" of chaos and complexity, but not the social sciences, where the pursuit of independent variables functioning within static systems seems divorced from the world as we know it. ISBN: 0195171578

Azar Gat, The Development of Military Thought - The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1992). This is a useful and important book, though Gat is an uncommonly pompous academic and tends to take his own insights a little too seriously. ISBN: 0198202466.

Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2001). Gat continues both to have some good ideas and to take all of his own ideas rather more seriously than either the evidence or the nature of reality can justify. ISBN: 0199247625.

Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times, by Peter Paret (Princeton, 1976). ISBN: 069100806X. The best and standard biography of Clausewitz available in English.

BUSINESS

BUSINESS

Carl von Clausewitz, Clausewitz On Strategy: Inspiration and Insight from a Master Strategist. Edited by Tiha von Ghyczy, Bolko von Oetinger, and Christopher Bassford
From the Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Institute
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons.
ISBN: 0471415138 "Writers who use war as a metaphor for business have always been less than appealing to me. Maybe it's because, as some folks say, "It's a 'guy' thing," and I'm not a guy. On the other hand, I had trouble putting down Clausewitz on Strategy (Wiley, 2001), a publication of the Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Institute and edited by Tiha von Ghyczy, Bolko von Oetinger, and Christopher Bassford. In their carefully chosen selections from Clausewitz's On War and in their lengthy commentary in the introduction, these present-day strategists present much food for thought." (Marilyn Norris, Strategy & Leadership
May/June 2001)

Philosophers of Peace and War: Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels and Tolstoy, by W. B. Gallie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). ISBN 052129651X; 978-0521296519. From the book announcement: Intellectual eminence apart, what did Kant, Clausewitz, Marx and Engels, and Tolstoy have in common? Professor Gallic argues that they made contributions to 'international theory'—to the understanding of the character and causes of war and of the possibility of peace between nations - which were of unrivalled originality in their own times and remain of undiminished importance in ours. But these contributions have been either ignored or much misunderstood.

Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps Between Plans, Actions and Results (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2011). ISBN-10: 1857885597 ISBN-13: 978-1857885590. We hear increasingly that "strategy" is irrelevant and that all we really need is better execution. We're pretty sympathetic to the frustrations underlying that view, but the author of The Art of Action understands that strategy and execution are not separate domains. Stephen Bungay, who enjoys real credibility as a businessman (including 17 years with The Boston Consulting Group) and as a military historian (graduate work at Oxford and Tübingen) demonstrates a sophisticated grasp both of Clausewitz and Moltke's thinking and of how that thinking was reflected in practice by the German General Staff. Crucially, and unusually for writers who attempt to map the military domain to business, he genuinely understands that "business is not war."

Reading Clausewitz. By Beatrice Heuser. Paperback - 320 pages (Pimlico, 2002) ISBN: 071266484X. This is a wide-ranging but rather shallow study on how to read Clausewitz and how others have read him—from the military commanders in World War One through Lenin and Mao Zedung to strategists in the nuclear age. Designed for Staff College students. See review.

Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, by Michael Handel (Cass, 3rd ed, 2001). ISBN: 0714681326. Handel's work compares the thoughts of Sun Tzu, Jomini, and Clausewitz.

Clausewitz: A Biography. By Roger Parkinson (New York: Stein and Day, 1971). Reissued 2002. This book is poorly regarded by many, but it does have some strengths in covering Clausewitz's personal life and experiences. It will be superceded by Donald Stoker's Clausewitz: His Life and Work. Softcover ISBN: 0815412339.

The Cognitive Character of War: Prussia, 1806. By Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 2009). ISBN 0691135819. This book traces Napoleon's victory over Prussia in 1806 and Prussia's effort to recover from defeat to show how in one particular historical episode operational analyses together with institutional and political decisions eventually turned defeat to victory. In the concluding chapter, Paret addresses the impact of 1806 on two men who fought on opposing sides in the campaign and sought a new theoretical understanding of war—Henri Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz. Reviewed by Jennie Kiesling [USMA].

War, Politics, and Power. Selections from On War, and "I Believe and Profess." By Carl von Clausewitz, translated and edited by Edward M. Collins (COL, USAF) (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1962). Softcover, 209pp. ISBN: 0895264013. 

Carl von Clausewitz, On War (8 Cassettes), (probably 1873 Graham edition), Read by Nadia May. Format: Audiotape. Pub. Date: December  1990. Edition Description "Unabridged," but we're dubious. ISBN: 0786101946.

Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia. Trans. anonymous [Francis Egerton, Lord Ellesmere]. London: J. Murray, 1843. Foreword by Gerard Chaliand. This reprint publication 1997. Softcover, 148pp. ISBN: 0962871583. Another version of this text is available free on-line.

Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia. Trans. anonymous [Francis Egerton, Lord Ellesmere]. London: J. Murray, 1843. Hardcover, 260pp. Publisher: Stackpole Books. This reprint publication 1992. ISBN: 1853671142. Another version of this text is available free on-line.

Michael Howard. Clausewitz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Textbook Paperback, 79th ed., 79pp. ISBN: 0192876074.

Cimbala, Stephen. Clausewitz and Escalation: Classical Perspectives on Nuclear Strategy. London: Frank Cass, 1991. Hardcover, 218pp. ISBN: 0714634204.

Carl von Clausewitz, Principles of War. This apears to be a reprint of the 1942 Hans Gatzke translation. Dover Books. ISBN: 0486427994. This text is free on-line HERE.

Handel, Michael I., ed. Clausewitz and Modern Strategy. London: Frank Cass, 1986. Hardcover, 324pp. ISBN: 0714632945. Softcover 0714640530.

The Essential Clausewitz: Selections from On War, by Carl von Clausewitz, edited by Joseph I. Greene. This is a Dover reprint of the version published by Cassell and Company, London, 1945.

NOT Recommended. Here's why.
Carl von Clausewitz. On War. Edited and abridged by Anatol Rapoport. Paperback, 461pp. Publisher: Viking Penguin, 1968; based on the 1873 Graham translation; includes elements of 1908 F.N. Maude edition). ISBN: 0140444270.