Carl von Clausewitz, painting by Karl Wilhelm Wach
That body of knowledge usually published in books and journals that examines the nature of war and the art of war on an abstract level. Military theory should be distinguished from other related terms, such as military science, military thought, the science of war, and strategic studies, in that it normally refers to theoretical texts that either discuss certain general hypotheses such as the principles of war or seek to extrapolate from history in order to make predictions. It should be seen as overlapping with military history, but nonetheless distinctly different. The historical significance of military theoretical texts rests on the influence they have exerted on commanders; the reception they received on publication, either in their country of origin or abroad; the quality and originality of the ideas and hypotheses; and whether they have continued to be read after the death of the author or are representative of a specific era or school of thought.
The first known major theorist of warfare was the Chinese general Sun-tzu, whose The Art of War (c. 500 B. C. E.) contains maxims on such subjects as war plans, attacks, tactics, terrain, and spies. The first French translation was made in 1782 and the first English translation only in 1905, but interest in his work has been nonetheless great. Another Chinese soldier, Sun Pin, reputedly Sun-tzu’s great grandson and born around 380 B. C. E., produced a follow-up work, Military Methods, which was first discovered in 1972 and published in English only in 1995. Although basing his tactical principles on Sun-tzu’s work, Sun Pin introduced some refinements; hence the opportunity to study this text has increased the understanding of the concepts and influence of The Art of War.
The most influential military treatise to survive from Roman times is Flavius Vegetius Renatus De re militari, often referred to as The Military Institutions of the Romans. Although not a professional soldier, Vegetius sought to summarize the contents of previous texts and military regulations. His work played no great part in Roman military history, but it contains important insights into the art of war of ancient armies, as well as many maxims that became commonplace in later military theory, such as “he, therefore, who aspires to peace should prepare for war.” The influence of Vegetius’s work cannot be underestimated; it was reputedly carried by Richard the Lionhearted and Henry II during their campaigns. Translated into French and English before the advent of printing, the first published edition appeared as early as 1473 and the first English version in 1489. Not long after, Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Art of War (1521) was published, elucidating a series of general rules for the conduct of warfare, together with a call for new military institutions. Signaling a new phase in military theory, Machiavelli was later regarded by Friedrich Engels as the first modern military writer.
My Reveries upon the Art of War, by Hermann Maurice, Comte de Saxe, is an example of a text that is significant much less for its influence than for its content. Maurice’s Reveries were published in 1757, seven years after his death, and translated into English in the same year but so badly that the sense was completely distorted. Maurice wrote his text because he found it strange that all the sciences had rules and principles, but war apparently none. His arguments are pertinent because he was at heart a military innovator and reformer who disdained conventional wisdom: he wanted, for example, to redesign uniforms to make them suitable for wearing in the field rather than on the parade ground. His work is significant for the modernity of its insights into tactics and leadership, and his dislike of dogmatic schemes allows it to be compared favorably with Raimondo Montecuccoli’s writings (written in the period 1640- 1670), particularly The Military Art, which was a more exhaustive study of the key factors in generalship.
The Enlightenment produced other theoretical works of note: Frederick the Great’s General Principles of War (1748), better known as Military Instructions for the Generals; on sieges and fortifications, the highly mathematical system of ideas developed by Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban; and the General Essay on Tactics, published in 1772, in which the Frenchman Comte Jacques-Antoine de Guibert attempted to establish universal principles for tactics. These works, although they touched on the issue of war as a science, were generally restricted to a how-to-fight approach. Ironically, the man who should have contributed most to the theory of generalship, Napoleon I, died without writing any work on either the art or the science of war. His Military Maxims were compiled from his letters and memoirs, reinforcing the view that an understanding of war could be gained by studying the great commanders. However, the experience of the Napoleonic Wars arguably produced the two single most influential military theorists: Antoine Henri, Baron de Jomini, and Karl von Clausewitz.
Jomini’s writings exerted great influence during the nineteenth century, particularly on French and Russian military thought. His first book, Treatise on Grand Tactics, was published in 1804-1805 and his most famous work, Summary of the Art of War, in 1837-1838, the latter being translated into German in 1839, Spanish in 1840, and English in 1854. There has been a tendency to deprecate the significance of Jomini’s work in favor of the work of Clausewitz, but the classification of types of wars and the definitions of strategy, grand tactics, and tactics in Summary of the Art of War continued to influence theorists well into the twentieth century.
Nonetheless, historians of military theory are in agreement that Clausewitz’s magnum opus, On War, published posthumously by his widow in 1832, remains not only the seminal military theoretical work of the nineteenth century but the most important treatment of the theory of war and strategy ever published. Serious interest in Clausewitz’s writings emerged after the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). They were popularized partly by Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke (“the Elder”), who himself made important contributions to military theory, most notably in his writings on operations. In France, Ferdinand Foch sought to digest the lessons of 1870-1871 in The Principles of War (1903), citing Clausewitz rather than Jomini; but he was influenced more by Ardent du Picq and the “cult of the offensive”; his book illustrates the dangers of succumbing to the intellectual fashions of the day. In fact, neither Foch nor Moltke bettered the work of Jomini or Clausewitz.
The interwar period (1919-1939) was perhaps the most dynamic in the development of military theory. In the British, German, and Red armies it is possible to speak of a flowering of military theory caused by a number of factors: The complexity of military operations in World War I led to intense debate and the search for lessons for future war; the reduced military budgets in the 1920s and the rapid development of military technology in the period led to pressure within armies to study war systematically; the catastrophe of World War I, the influence of pacifism, disarmament conferences, and the League of Nations compelled theorists to examine the nature of war in more depth than ever before; major military controversies-such as the cavalry versus the tank-led to a culture of military dispute enlivened by the growing involvement of publicists in military theory, which widened the scope of theoretical debates.
In the search for a general and scientific theory of war, the two most important interwar works are J. F. C. Fuller’s The Foundations of the Science of War (1926) and A. A. Svechin’s Strategy (2d ed., 1927). Although very different in approach, both works are similar in some of their fundamental assumptions and goals: both are serious attempts to analyze the effects and lessons of World War I, Fuller using a highly abstract approach based on a threefold system in which war consists of mental, moral, and physical dimensions; and Svechin employing a more historical method based on a thorough knowledge of military-political literature. Both works identified three levels of war (tactical, operational, and strategic); both emphasized the importance of the political direction of war and the role of economics in strategy. Moreover, both authors were advocates of open debate on military-theoretical questions, which led to their being shunned in their own armies.
The opposition that the radical ideas of innovative thinkers provoked was partly due to the resistance of the hierarchical general staff systems (not that much earlier the products of military “reform” themselves) to an opening up of military theoretical discussions to younger officers and civilian outsiders. The most widely read civilian writer of the period was Basil Liddell Hart, who published works on tactics, strategy, and military policy, one of his most important concepts being his provocative but contentious “strategy of the indirect approach. “The emergence of civilian theorists had, in fact, begun before World War I, the most noteworthy writer being the Polish banker I. S. Bloch, who produced six volumes on the changing nature of war in 1897; volume 6 appeared in English with the title Is War Impossible? (1899), predicting with considerable accuracy the stalemate of World War I. Nonetheless, it should not be forgotten that in the interwar period, heated theoretical discussions were conducted in military journals over the future organization, employment, and tactics of mechanized forces, the most innovative thinking taking place in the British army in the 1920s and the Red and German armies in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. The theoretical discussions conducted by younger officers contributed greatly to the successful development of the new weapons of mobile warfare but led to an excessive preoccupation with tactics and operations.
During the course of World War II, the involvement of civilian scientists, code breakers, inventors, economists, and even historians in the war effort of all the major participants led to a new development: the expansion of military theory and its increasing fragmentation into sub-disciplines. In the period of superpower conflict (1945-1990), civilian, academic involvement dominated the developing fields of strategic studies, nuclear theory, geopolitics, and operations research. In Western Europe and the United States, traditional considerations of land warfare and conventional military theory became almost footnotes in discussions of limited nuclear war and surprise attack. However, when the American frustration in Vietnam exposed the grave limitations of many of the methods employed by civilian analysts, the U. S. Army and defense establishment embarked on a major rethinking of the foundations of military conflict. An expression of the return to traditional theory was Colonel Harry Summers’s On Strategy (1982), which used Clausewitz to assess the Vietnam conflict. The discovery of Soviet military theory was also instrumental in this theoretical change. Although somewhat based on the ideologies of Marxism- Leninism, Soviet military theory in the twilight of the Soviet system had developed sophisticated theories on the nature and types of war, military operations (or military art), strategy, nuclear war, and the concept of the military-scientific revolution. One of the most important claims of Soviet military theory was that the principles of war are not eternal but are historically conditioned, leading to the emergence of new laws and the extinction of others. (The “laws” of Marxism- Leninism itself, of course, remain eternal.) The influence of the study of Soviet theory on U.S. military doctrine can be argued as one of the causes of success in the Gulf War of 1990-1991.
Considering its historical evolution, then, military theory can be determined as mainly, although not exclusively, ideas that are not classified and thus accessible to a reasonably large group of individuals. In this sense, it differs from military doctrine, which normally falls under security regulations and cannot necessarily be discussed publicly, and in addition, military theory is not always written by serving officers.
References and further reading: Clausewitz, Karl von. On War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Gat, Azar. The Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1992. —. Fascist and Liberal Visions of War. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. Paret, Peter, ed. Makers of Modern Strategy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
