One False Word Makes A Big Difference In Warfare
So Carl von Clausewitz, when properly understood, was right about how wars do or do not end. Even after a resounding triumph, it behooves the victors to be on guard for what follows. Even final victory is never something absolute.
ByJames HolmesPublished1 day ago
Darned if there’s not another misleading word choice in the standard (and on the whole excellent) Princeton University Press translation of Carl von Clausewitz’s On War, which dates to 1976. Back in 2014 I ran an item over at The Diplomat making the case that translating the Prussian philosopher-soldier’s famous maxim that war is “the continuation of policy by other means” conveyed a false impression about the nature of war. War is a political act, not a mindless, apolitical spasm of violence for its own sake. That was lost in translation.
The piece jumped off from humorist Mark Twain’s reputed quip that it’s not what we know that gets us in trouble; it’s what we “know” that “just ain’t so.”
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/04/one-false-word-makes-a-big-difference-in-warfare/
