Carl Von Clausewitz on War - Essay Example

As an initial matter, if one wishes to understand how leaders and military strategists approach the issues associated with war, it is necessary to understand the types of logic that they espouse. One school of thought, attributed to Karl Von Clausewitz, approaches war as a series of rational calculations. He rejects the notion that war is initiated, prosecuted, or terminated as a result of emotional whims; quite the contrary he sets forth a detailed framework by which relevant actors either do or ought to consider at each stage.

In effect, he establishes a type of cost-benefit analysis attached to a political object. This cost-benefit analysis he has stated thusly: war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and duration. Once the expenditure of efforts exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow (Von Clausewitz, 1873). This short statement contains a number of relevant factors relevant to the conduct and termination of a war.

First, the political object must be clearly defined or it may become very challenging to engage in any type of cost-benefit analysis. Nations that do not have a clearly defined political objective, or which find themselves confronted with changing political objectives, may find themselves unable to calculate meaningfully. America’s war in Iraq is a case in point; to illustrate, the political object was publicly stated to be the need to eliminate a dictator’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.

This was a clearly defined political object and a cost-benefit analysis would have been rather straightforward. The American leadership could have determined the sacrifices, financially and in terms of lives lost, by determining the magnitude and duration of the military operation required to eliminate such weapons of mass destruction. A problem,