Psychological Force in War and Politics, A Clausewitzian Analysis

War has always been an interesting thing for me to research. Since I was a kid, I always have been reading military history. There's just something about war that is, how should I put it, a bit attractive to me. 

The notion that peoples are willing to die for their own country and even kill other peoples tends to overwhelmed a lot of people's mind. "Are humans pre-destined to kill each others ?", "is conflict inevitable ?", etc. I also sometimes found myself wondering why do peoples do that too. Would I be willing to die if my country is at war ? Would I be willing to kill in a war ? This are the questions experts try to answers for centuries. Clausewitz is one of them.

Carl von Clausewitz was a Prussian general that was born in 1780, Kingdom of Prussia. Clausewitz had the lucky (or rather, unlucky) circumstance of living in one of the most important era in human history. In 1790s, Kingdom of France was shaken by a revolution that eventually changed the whole fabric of, not just France itself, but also the whole world. The revolutionaries overthrew the Bourbon monarchy and voted with a majority vote to executed the former Bourbon monarch by guillotine.

 The whole Europe was shocked and declare war on the revolutionaries. One of those kingdoms was Clausewitz's homeland. Naturally, Clausewitz fought in the war against French Republic and when Napoleon assumed power in France, he also fought in the Napoleonic Wars too. The war gave Clausewitz a whole new perspective. Before the French Revolution, Prussia had the most professional land army in Europe. Prussia was still proud of the achievement of its previous monarch, King Frederick II. 

However, all this facade suddenly broken when the Prussians suffered defeat at the hand of the (French) Revolutionary Army. When the whole Europe declared war on France, the revolutionaries panic and enacted the famous Levee en masse. Overnight, this decree easily gave the new state an army of 800,000 men. A number unheard of during that era. Not only this revolutionary army suddenly outnumbers the then-largest army in Europe, it also defeated it. The Revolutionary Army, an army mostly consisted of peasant farmers, defeated the most professional army in Europe (Knapp, 2006). This form of war was new to Clausewitz. Previously, the people never really participated in a war. 

In a "Cabinet war", a war is mostly the business of the elite aristocracy with no input from the lower strata. The army tends to be small and the war goal is quite limited. However, that era is clearly has come to a close as we can see, the Revolutionary Army numbered almost a million and the entire population participated in the war (Cederman, 2011).

After the war, Clausewitz set out to write his experiences in the war. In his book, Vom Kriege, he write that "War is the continuation of Politics by other means". There are some truths behind these words. He found that the French Revolution gave birth to a new form of war. In his book, Clausewitz set out a paradigm showing the trinity relationship between war and the people. 

This Revolution made the entire population as citizens of a nation, not just a subject of a monarch. As the Revolution gave the people new political rights, the people also found out that they now have new political obligations to do. All citizens must defend the political nation because they are part of the nation. What I'm trying to discuss in here is how human psychology affects diplomacy. Clausewitz tried to emphasized the force of morale in politics and warfare. He made a clear general principle that says in a war between 2 countries, the one who has the more willpower will eventually prevails (Clausewitz, 1989).

Main Argument

As already mentioned before, I want to talk about how human psychology could affect politics and warfare. Often time, i observed a lot of people I met in my major, International Relations, often have this perception that politics is the realm of human rationality. That political actor (could it be state or individual) often act based on rational decision. But I beg to differ. Through this paper, I would like to give a new perspective on the nature of politics and its actors. To put it simply, I would like to disagree with the statement a lot of my colleagues have that politics is the realm of human rationality and anyone who participate in politics based their act on rational thinking. And by that, I wasn't talking about the old-age "Realist vs Liberal" paradigm. 

No, I believe that in our current age, politics have evolved to become Non-Rational in general, regardless of what paradigm you adopted. Now, some people would start to wonder what I meant by this ? This statement might contradicts what some people had learned in their academia. Some few people could probably tell what I'm heading with this. The problem I found with a lot of colleagues whenever we're talking about politics is that a lack of  "macro-level" perspective in the epoch of politics. Few of my colleagues know the esoteric meanings behind our politics. I'm using the French Revolution as an example a lot in here because it truly is a leap in modern politics.

The French Revolution is unique in that it introduced us a whole new world about politics & warfare as we know it. It shattered our previous understanding about the inter state politics. No longer did a monarch could rule based on Divine Rights of Kings where the doctrine states that the reason a King is ruling was because they had been chosen by "God". The Revolution gave rise to a new entity called Nationalism. And this is quite important. Most countries these days based their rule on Nationalism. 

The idea behind this is a government could only be deemed legitimate as long as it has the support of the population (the nation) (Cederman, 2011). With the birth of nationalism, comes also the birth of a new monster called "Public opinion". The reason why I called it a monster is because in my view, this entity is truly powerful. Public opinion, simply put, is irrational. 

Much of the post-French Revolution politics are based on public opinion. Clausewitz knew this fact about human nature very well when he wrote his book, Vom Kriege. No government, regardless of how authoritarian they are, could survive going against this entity. The psychological force behind this entity is such a strong force that any government risking going against this force, most of the time, are often being overthrown. A lot of state policy these days has to conform to the so-called "National Psychology". This is why a state often create things like national anthem, rituals, and myth narratives (Anderson, 2006). 

All of these is done as to make an imagination that a state is composed of a unified homogenous nation. Clausewitz in his book theorized that in modern era, no government could stand without the support of this new national psychology and no state could win a war without willpower. On that note, a state should unleash the mass loyalty & primordial violence that is inherent deep within the people if it wish to be the victor of a war. He argued that this spirit is much more important than any military maneuver. 

"War is a political instrument to force the enemy to submit to one's will" he argued (Clausewitz, 1989). Clausewitz explained that there are two kinds of war: Limited war and Absolute war. Limited War is a type of war where the political goal is quite clear and the "rational" government placed a check on the mass violence of the "irrational" people. Hence the name "Limited". Absolute War, or some call it Total War, is a type of war where the mass violence of the people went into its most extreme and the war will not ended until the very destruction of the enemy state (or people).

These psychological forces (primal violence, intense nationalism, etc) we can clearly see the effect during the great cataclysmic years of 20th century. Both world wars are what I personally call "Nationalist war". That is, these wars weren't really fought for natural resources per se, like the later wars like 2003 Iraq War. No, those two wars were war between peoples. 

For the First World War, one of the main reasons for the war was the intense Franco-German rivalry. France lost the 1871 war to the Germans and because of that had to ceded the region of Alsace-Lorraine, a region with significant ethnic French, to German Empire. 

This one act intensely humiliated the French people. So intense the hatred, that the French people are willing to have another war in order to take it back. We always have this perception that war is (understandably) bad and no one wanted a war. But when all the countries were declaring war to each others in 1914, a lot of the populations in each states were in jubilee upon hearing the news, even if it were only temporary. The Second World War is also a great example of how potent is the role of national psychology in warfare. 

The invasion of Soviet Union by Nazi Germany brought about one of the cruelest war and atrocities human history has ever seen. The Germans viewed the Slavic people as "inferior", only fit to be exterminated. The official numbers for the casualty the Soviet Union suffered according to the Russian government is around a staggering 26.6 million to 27 million. About which, 15 million to 17 million were civilians murdered in Soviet territory by the Nazis. The Soviet population went from around 200 million on July 1941 dropped down to 170 million on 1945. But even with such a significant loss, why didn't the Soviet Union collapsed as the Germans hoped ? 

Because the Germans failed to break the Soviets' will. As Clausewitz stated before, a state could only win as long as it maintain its willpower. For the Soviets, this war is a war of extermination. 

The Germans waged a war whose purpose is not just to gain resources or something, but for extermination. A war where if the Soviets lose, it's not just territory and natural resources that are at stake, but the literal existence of the Slavic people. If there's one thing the Germans didn't understand is that their intent of destroying the Slavs fanaticized the Slavs to their extreme to fight the Germans. This is shown by the willingness of the Soviet Union to sacrificed 15 percent of its population in order to win the war against the Germans. No matter how good the German military was in the Eastern front, no matter how gargantuan the numbers of Russian troops that were killed by the Germans, the Russians just stubbornly refused to submit to the Germans' will. The will force of the Russians is simply greater than that of the Germans'.

To conclude my argument, Politics is not always the realm of human rationality. We humans are inherently an irrational animal. This is a fact most people tends to dismissed. We like to think that our acts, our decisions, are guided by sound rational thinking but we tends to forget that we are also part guided by our pathos. There are times when we suddenly aren't thinking straight and just immediately act based upon the animal instincts in all of us. We can see this in history repeated over and over again.

 The "rational" Jacobin revolutionaries whom proclaimed that they value human life, only to guillotined so many heads in the French Revolution. Or in 1914 when everyone thought the assassination in the Balkan was just a little thing that won't erupt into a major war, only to find that small event snowballing into major event because every states start mobilizing because of their fear of each others. 

Politics has always been guided by human emotions. As students of politics, it is our job to acknowledge this inherent human nature. Many of Clausewitz readers tends to read his book solely for its military strategy value but personally I think his book, On Waris more than just that. I think if I have to rank it, I valued Clausewitz's On War more than Sun Tzu's book because Clausewitz dive deeper into the human mind. To finish this argument, I'd like to add my own thinking into the whole argument: War is an expression of the will of the people.

References

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.

Beyerchen, A. (Winter 1992-1993). Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War. International Security, 17(3), 59-90. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2539130

Cederman, L.-E., Warren, T. C., & Sornette, D. (2011). Testing Clausewitz: Nationalism, Mass Mobilization, and the Severity of War. International Organization, 65(4), 605-638. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/23016228

Clausewitz, C. v. (1989). On War. (M. Howard, & P. Paret, Eds.) Princeton, New Jersey, United States: Princeton University Press. Retrieved November 2021

Knapp, A. (2006). The Government and Politics of France (5th ed.). New York: Routledge. Retrieved November 2021

Scharf, M. (n.d.). "War! We felt a cleansing, liberation, and a tremendous hope.". Retrieved from First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy: https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/war-we-felt-cleansing-liberation-and-tremendous-hope

Smith, A. D. (1991). National Identity. London, England: Penguin Group.

Stoler, M. A. (2005). War and Diplomacy: Or, Clausewitz for Diplomatic Historians. Diplomatic History, 29(1), 1-26. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/24914782