On War by Carl von Clausewitz

Author:Carl von Clausewitz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2008-09-01T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Interaction between Attack and Defense

The time has come to consider defense and attack separately, insofar as they can be separated. We shall start with defense for the following reasons. While it is quite natural and even indispensable to base the principles of defense on those that govern attack and vice versa, there must be a third aspect to one of them that serves as a point of departure for the whole chain of ideas and makes it tangible. Our first question, therefore, concerns this point.

Consider in the abstract how war originates. Essentially, the concept of war does not originate with the attack, because the ultimate object of attack is not fighting: rather, it is possession. The idea of war originates with the defense, which does have fighting as its immediate object, since fighting and parrying obviously amount to the same thing. Repulse is directed only toward an attack, which is therefore a prerequisite to it; the attack, however, is not directed toward defense but toward a different goal—possession, which is not necessarily a prerequisite for war. It is thus in the nature of the case that the side that first introduces the element of war, whose point of view brings two parties into existence, is also the side that establishes the initial laws of war. That side is the defense. What is under discussion here is not a specific instance but a general, abstract case, which must be postulated to advance theory.

We now know where to find the fixed point that is located outside the interaction of attack and defense: it lies with the defense.

If this argument is correct, the defender must establish ground rules for his conduct even if he has no idea what the attacker means to do, and these ground rules must certainly include the disposition of his forces. The attacker, on the other hand, so long as he knows nothing about his adversary, will have no guidelines on which to base the use of his forces. All he can do is to take his forces with him—in other words, take possession by means of his army. Indeed, that is what actually happens: for it is one thing to assemble an army and another to use it. An aggressor may take his army with him on the chance that he may have to use it, and though he may take possession of a country by means of his army instead of officials, functionaries, and proclamations, he has not yet, strictly speaking, committed a positive act of war. It is the defender, who not only concentrates his forces but disposes them in readiness for action, who first commits an act that really fits the concept of war.

We now come to the second question: what in theory is the nature of the underlying causes that initially motivate the defense, before it has even considered the possibility of being attacked? Obviously, it is an enemy's advance with a view to taking possession, which we have treated as extraneous to war but which forms the basis for the initial steps of military activity.

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