Tag: Peace

On Grand Strategy – B.H. Liddell Hart

Synopsis:

B.H. Liddell Hart defines grand strategy – vis-à-vis international affairs – within a context of so-called acquisitive and conservative states. Acquisitive states tend to be predatory, whereas conservative states lean on deterrence as their vital center of policy. Likewise, Liddell Hart stresses economy of force as a keystone of success for both types of states.

Excerpts:

“Whereas strategy is only concerned with the problem of ‘winning the war’, grand strategy must take a longer view – for its problem is the winning of the peace. Such an order of thought is not the matter of ‘putting the cart before the horse’, but but of being clear as to where the horse and cart are going.

“Another conclusion which develops from the study of grand strategy, against the background of history, is the practical necessity of adapting the general theory of strategy to the nature of a nation’s fundamental policy.

“Victory in the true sense implies that the state peace, and of one’s people, is better after the war than before. Victory in this sense is only possible if a quick result can be gained or if a long effort can be economically proportioned to the national resources.

“The less that a nation has regard for moral obligations the more it tends to respect physical strength – the deterrent power of a force too strong to be challenged with impunity.

“It is folly to imagine that the aggressive types, whether individuals or nations, can be bought off – or, in modern language, ‘appeased’ – since the payment of danegeld stimulates a demand for more danegeld. But they can be curbed. Their very belief in force makes them more susceptible to the deterrent effect of a formidable opposing force.

*All excerpts have been taken from Strategy, BN Publishing.

The Problem of Peace – JFC Fuller

Synopsis:

JFC Fuller’s The Conduct of War, surveys the evolution of warfare from the Napoleonic era into the post World War Two order. In the final chapter, Fuller analyzes the idea of peace within a bi-causal context of nuclear weapons and a clash of civilizations. According to Fuller, such a context tends to generate prime conditions for proxy warfare between the competing superpowers.

Excerpts:

“Clausewitz’s insistence that war is a political instrument is the first principle of all military statecraft, but his equal insistence on the complete overthrow of the enemy vitiates the end of grand strategy, which is that a profitable peace demands not the annihilation of one’s opponent, but the elimination or modification of the causes of the war.

“There is always a relationship between force and aim. The first must be sufficient to attain the second, but not so excessive that it cancels it out. This is the crux in nuclear warfare.

“A limited war is a war fought for a clearly defined limited political object, in which expenditure of force is proportioned to the aim; therefore strategy must be subordinated to policy.

“When both sides are equipped with nuclear weapons, that they will become deterrents on the tactical level, which reduces the idea of fighting a limited nuclear war to an absurdity. Thus it comes about that the stalemate is doubly assured, and except for wars other than those which directly involve the two great nuclear camps, such as wars by proxy or police operations.

“While Clausewitz failed to see that peace was the ultimate aim in war, Marx failed to see that in the steam age the ultimate economic and social aims were to create an industrial society through an evolutionary and not a revolutionary process.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Conduct of War: 1789-1961, Da Capo Press.

Perpetual Peace – Immanuel Kant

Synopsis:

In his essay on the development of peace-groups within international politics, Immanuel Kant advances an institutional approach which features consent and consensus networks among nation-states, as well as republican government as the institutional locus providing the binding glue of lasting peace. The Kantian peace-group is generated bottom-up from republican states – which institutionally extend transnationally via consent and consensus mechanisms.

Excerpts:

“The state of peace among men living in close proximity is not the natural state (status naturalis); instead, the natural state is one of war, which does not just consist in open hostilities, but also in the constant and enduring threat of them.

“Without a contract among nations peace can be neither inaugurated nor guaranteed. A league of a special sort must therefore be established, one that we can call a league of peace (foedus pacificum), which will be distinguished from a treaty of peace (pactum pacis) because the latter seeks merely to stop one war, while the former seeks to end all wars forever.

“Now the republican constitution is the only one wholly compatible with the rights of men, but it is also the most difficult to establish and still harder to maintain, so much so that many contend that a republic must be a nation of angels, for men’s self-seeking inclinations make them incapable of adhering to so sublime a form of government.

“That kings should be philosophers, or philosophers kings is neither to be expected nor to be desired, for the possession of power inevitably corrupts reason’s free judgment.

“Both the love of man and the respect for the rights of man are our duty; the former is only conditional, while the latter is a unconditional, absolutely imperative duty, a duty that one must be completely certain of not having transgressed, if one is to be able to enjoy the sweet sense of having done right.

*All excerpts have been taken from Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, Hackett Publishing Company.