0199232024.pdf by Nieizviestno

Author:Nieizviestno
Language: rus
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-20T13:20:35+00:00

156

Beatrice Heuser

by all sides during the disintegration of the Soviet Empire in 1989–91. It could be argued that the relative freedom from any fear that NATO would exploit the situation was a central reason why the Warsaw Pact collapsed peacefully, since the embattled Communist regimes could not rally support for their own survival on the pretext that they confronted an external threat.

In both East and West, the CSCE process, which finally led to the creation of the OSCE at the end of the Cold War, was detached from military strategy. This dual track approach, in which the two tracks were practically uncoordinated on both sides, was largely to blame for the last peak of the Cold War, from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the arrival of Gorbachev (1979–85).

The Clausewitzian concept of war as a contest of wills influenced a parallel strand of thinking in the West, and this concerned conflict management.

Here the contest of wills was extended to include the manipulation of the adversary’s imagination with regard to the further development of a conflict.

Conflict managers argued that the enemy’s imagination should be influenced to deter him from escalating a conflict and to coerce him to act in ways advantageous to one’s own side. In On War, Clausewitz had written: If the enemy is to be coerced you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of that situation must not of course be merely transient—at least not in appearance. Otherwise the enemy would not give in but would wait for things to improve. Any change that might be brought about by continuing hostilities must then, at least in theory, be of a kind to bring the enemy still greater disadvantages.56

This idea of signalling and threatening impressed some of Clausewitz’s American disciples, among them in particular Bernard Brodie and Thomas Schelling. They added to it the metaphor of the commercial transaction: Clausewitz had written towards the end of book I, chapter 2 that ‘The decision by arms is for all minor and major operations in war what cash payment is in commerce [ Wechselhandel].’57 For Clausewitz and his contemporaries, the Wechselhandel took the form of presenting, but normally not cashing, a cheque for a high amount, in order to obtain credit. (Clausewitz’s contemporary Heinrich Heine, for example, had angered his rich uncle by actually cashing such a Wechsel given to him by his uncle with the sole purpose of persuading a bank to give young Heinrich credit.) What Clausewitz was implying was that you could influence the adversary by merely threatening battle, or threatening to intensify hostilities, without necessarily carrying out the threat.

But if the enemy called one’s bluff, a bluff it had better not be: the readiness to fight must always underpin the threatening, deterrent, or coercive gesture.

56 On War, I, 1, § 4, p. 77.

57 Ibid. I, 2, p. 97.

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