At first glance, readers may think the headline on this essay makes no sense. Nowhere in On War does Carl von Clausewitz take up the moral dimension of using force in the contemporary understanding of “moral.” When he uses the term, he uses it to mean the will itself, as well as other psychological and emotional factors of war that “cannot be classified or counted.”
These kinds of subjective, unquantifiable factors are, as Clausewitz states, part of the reason war is not solely a rational affair, or the type of problem that admits to mathematical- or engineering-type solutions. However, a closer look at On War, first published posthumously in 1832, suggests a different conclusion, one where “moral” does have a more contemporary ring relating to right and wrong, good and bad.
Given the current strategic environment—ongoing hot wars, simmering regional conflict, nuclear threats, great-power competition that could burst into open conflict, and the rise of autocratic regimes—a closer look at On War seems particularly necessary and timely.
Policy and War
Core to Clausewitz’s understanding of the nature of war is war’s instrumentality. This notion permeates Book I as well as Book VIII, especially the section entitled “War as an Instrument of Policy.” Instrumentality arises most vividly when Clausewitz introduces his central idea of war being a trinity, one element of which concerns war as an “instrument of policy.” In his view, war—the use of violent means—is always subordinate to policy aims or purposes of the war. Why? Because for him, war is not an end in itself. It is not an independent or autonomous activity.
Much of the argument in Chapter I of Book I builds toward the essential conclusion that war is merely an instrument. For example, in Section 27, just preceding his discussion of the trinity, he says, “war should never be thought of as something autonomous but always as an instrument of policy.” Several sections earlier, he writes, “war is not a mere act of policy, but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means (i.e. violent force). … The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.”
Instrumentality is the door through which the moral dimension enters. Instruments may be morally neutral, but the purposes for which an instrument is used are not. For example, using my chainsaw to help a neighbor cut down a fallen tree that blocks driving in our neighborhood is different from Leatherface’s use of his chainsaw in 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not all uses of an instrument are morally equal: true in the domestic arena and in the international arena.
Matter of Perspective
Moral inequality applies to the political purposes of war. Using force to defend one’s state from unprovoked aggression is morally (and importantly) different from the aggressor’s use of force. Adolf Hitler’s use of war to conduct unprovoked aggression to seize what he wanted just because he could is different from the purposes for which the Allies used the violence of war. That difference mattered then, and it matters now.
Kim Il Sung’s purpose in seeking to take over South Korea in 1950—another example of a war of unprovoked aggression—is not morally equivalent to the U.N. resorting to war to defend South Korea. Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine and NATO’s aid in support of Ukraine’s defense is a recent example of this morally important pattern. These are clear cases, and history provides many such examples.
History also is replete with morally ambiguous cases concerning a political community resorting to war—some place the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 in this ambiguous category. Others do not. Hence the ambiguity.
However, ambiguous cases do not nullify key questions: Is this particular use of force an example of rightly resorting to force and violence? Are the purposes of this specific war worth the violence, killing and destruction that war always includes? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to these questions. There’s no wartime litmus paper that leaders could throw at a situation to get an answer. There’s no algorithm that senior political and military leaders can use. And there’s no global final arbiter to whom leaders can appeal.
In some states, the “will of the people” can hold leaders accountable for their decisions to use war to attain political aims; in other states, usually ruled by an autocrat, no such ability exists. The will of the people is irrelevant to the aggressive ambitions of such political leaders. Often such autocrats manipulate public will through “fake news”—
to use a current term; propaganda, to use an old term. Sometimes the question of the “rightness” of a war or the decision to resort to war isn’t clear until the war is over.
Responsible Actions
But all this ambiguity doesn’t erase a key implication of war being an instrument of policy: that not all uses of that instrument are morally equal. Nor does it erase a second implication embedded in Clausewitz’s idea of instrumentality: Instruments do not wield themselves. They must be wielded by someone or some collective body. The ambiguity associated with this second implication demands a theory of responsibility.
In Chapter VI of Book VIII, Clausewitz addresses responsibility. Here he discusses who is responsible for the decision to go to war and to set the political purposes of the war: the leader of the political community and his Cabinet—in his words, “the government.”
Further, he admits that “unless [the] statesman and soldier are combined in one person [like Napoleon], the only sound expedient is to make the commander-in-chief a member of the cabinet.”
Clausewitz’s clear implication is this: the monarch and the Cabinet, which may include the commander in chief, are responsible for the deliberations associated with making sure the purposes of war justify war’s destructiveness and that the conduct of “war is … fully consistent with political objectives”—not only at the start, but throughout the war.
Simply put: Using war as an instrument of policy is a responsibility of the leaders of a political community, usually of a set of leaders—political and military—who are empowered by the community to use the instrument of war on the community’s behalf.
What’s Right?
Clausewitz has much to say about how to increase the probability of attaining one’s political purposes through war’s use of force. Unfortunately, he has little to say about how the government ensures those purposes are “right.” Or that the purposes selected and the methods used justify the death and destruction inherent in resorting to war, the damage done to individuals—combatants as well as innocents, the injury done to families and communities, and the risks to the political community as a whole. But his use of instrumentality begs us to ask and answer such questions.
Fortunately, there is a body of knowledge that is helpful in identifying some principles and criteria that those responsible for going to war and conducting war can use.
These principles and criteria lie between two extremes. At one extreme sits the view that the strong do what they want because they can; the weak suffer what they must. This position justifies too much and is anathema to a stable domestic or international order. At the other extreme sits the pacifist view, that nothing can justify resorting to the violence and destructiveness of war. This position justifies too little; it allows strong states to trample weaker ones, thus creating as much instability as does its opposite.
Between these extremes sits what is commonly called the just-war tradition. This is a long tradition that holds some wars and some actions in war are justified and others are not. It then presents guides that governmental officials—the senior political and military leaders authorized by a political community to decide and act on its behalf—may use in exercising their judgments about using the instrument of war.
Important Questions
An illustrative but incomplete example of the principles and criteria that make up the guide for senior political and military leaders is contained in the following questions: Are you a victim of aggression—the violation of your political community’s inherent rights of political sovereignty and territorial integrity, or are you coming to the aid of a political community victimized by armed aggression? Is your intention right, or are you hypocritically conjuring up an excuse to do what you want? Is there a reasonable probability that you can succeed? Is your belief that the war will be short (a common, but often wrong, assumption before a war starts) properly analyzed?
If it ends up dragging on longer than you anticipated, do you have the means and will to continue? For how long? Do you have a reasonable theory of victory? Can you bring the war to an end? Will the good that you intend as the outcome of resorting to war outweigh the death, damage and misery using force always entails? How will you ensure that the conduct of war remains consistent with and limited by its legitimate purposes? Is resorting to the violence of war a last resort? Do you have the legitimate authority to authorize using force or resorting to war in this case?
Of course, this list of questions gives rise to many other, equally important and difficult questions that can admit to no quantifiable answers. Each also demands factual evidence before one can make proper judgments.
And, since war is the realm of fog, friction, uncertainty and ambiguity, the information or evidence may or may not be available when it is needed, as complete as needed or acceptable to operators or decision-makers.
Limited Judgments
The judgments of those deciding to go to war and conducting that war are just that—judgments limited by the availability, quality and acceptability of the information upon which they are based.
They also are limited by the processes by which they are made and the character of those in positions of responsibility. Clausewitz is right when he says there can be no fully quantifiable or completely empirical way to understand, fight or wage war. War is simply not an engineering problem and never will be.
This is why proper decision-making processes, adequate civil-military dialogue and solid character and capability of those involved in the weighty decisions of war matter so much. Processes, dialogue, character and capability help allay biases, egocentric self-interest or any other of the many prejudices that creep into human discourse. They also help ensure that the blood and treasure used in war are not misused or used in vain.
Improper decision-making processes, inadequate civil-military dialogue and weak character or insufficient capability of leaders involved all put decisions at risk. These conditions, in turn, lower the probability of making good judgments about the purposes of war being as “right” as circumstances permit and the use of the instrument—and the brutality it always includes—remaining limited by those purposes and not devolving into mere butchery and wanton violence.
Claiming that Clausewitz’s On War does not address the moral dimension of war and using force in the contemporary sense is superficial. His notion of instrumentality—central to his understanding of war and all it entails—is the door through which the discussion of war’s moral dimension enters.
Today’s senior political and military leaders ought not to fall prey to the superficial reading of On War. Our nation’s security, reputation—and maybe even our identity as Americans—are at stake.
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Lt. Gen. James Dubik, U.S. Army retired, a former commander of Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, is a senior fellow of the Association of the U.S. Army. He holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and is the author of Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory.