limited war and
maritime empires—
development of clausewitz's and jomini's
theory of a limited territorial object, and its
application to modern imperial conditions
the german war plans already cited, which were based respectively on the occupation of belgium and alsace-lorraine, and jomini's remarks on napoleon's disastrous russian campaign serve well to show the point to which continental strategists have advanced along the road which clausewitz was the first to indicate clearly. we have now to consider its application to modern imperial conditions, and above all where the maritime element forcibly asserts itself. we shall then see how small that advance has been compared with its far-reaching effects for a maritime and above all an insular power.
it is clear that clausewitz himself never apprehended the full significance of his brilliant theory. his outlook was still purely continental, and the limitations of continental warfare tend to veil the fuller meaning of the principle he had framed. had he lived, there is little doubt he would have worked it out to its logical conclusion, but his death condemned his theory of limited war to remain in the inchoate condition in which he had left it.
it will be observed, as was natural enough, that all through his work clausewitz had in his mind war between two contiguous or at least adjacent continental states, and a moment's consideration will show that in that type of war the principle of the limited object can rarely if ever assert itself in [pg 53] perfect precision. clausewitz himself put it quite clearly. assuming a case where "the overthrow of the enemy"—that is, unlimited war—is beyond our strength, he points out that we need not therefore necessarily act on the defensive. our action may still be positive and offensive, but the object can be nothing more than "the conquest of part of the enemy's country." such a conquest he knew might so far weaken your enemy or strengthen your own position as to enable you to secure a satisfactory peace. the path of history is indeed strewn with such cases. but he was careful to point out that such a form of war was open to the gravest objections. once you had occupied the territory you aimed at, your offensive action was, as a rule, arrested. a defensive attitude had to be assumed, and such an arrest of offensive action he had previously shown was inherently vicious, if only for moral reasons. added to this you might find that in your effort to occupy the territorial object you had so irretrievably separated your striking force from your home-defence force as to be in no position to meet your enemy if he was able to retort by acting on unlimited lines with a stroke at your heart. a case in point was the austerlitz campaign, where austria's object was to wrest north italy from napoleon's empire. she sent her main army under the archduke charles to seize the territory she desired. napoleon immediately struck at vienna, destroyed her home army, and occupied the capital before the archduke could turn to bar his way.
the argument is this: that, as all strategic attack tends to leave points of your own uncovered, it always involves greater or less provision for their defence. it is obvious, therefore, that if we are aiming at a limited territorial object the [pg 54] proportion of defence required will tend to be much greater than if we are directing our attack on the main forces of the enemy. in unlimited war our attack will itself tend to defend everything elsewhere, by forcing the enemy to concentrate against our attack. whether the limited form is justifiable or not therefore depends, as clausewitz points out, on the geographical position of the object.
so far british experience is with him, but he then goes on to say the more closely the territory in question is an annex of our own the safer is this form of war, because then our offensive action will the more surely cover our home country. as a case in point he cites frederick the great's opening of the seven years' war with the occupation of saxony—a piece of work which materially strengthened prussian defence. of the british opening in canada he says nothing. his outlook was too exclusively continental for it to occur to him to test his doctrine with a conspicuously successful case in which the territory aimed at was distant from the home territory and in no way covered it. had he done so he must have seen how much stronger an example of the strength of limited war was the case of canada than the case of saxony. moreover, he would have seen that the difficulties, which in spite of his faith in his discovery accompanied his attempt to apply it, arose from the fact that the examples he selected were not really examples at all.
when he conceived the idea, the only kind of limited object he had in his mind was, to use his own words, "some conquests on the frontiers of the enemy's country," such as silesia and saxony for frederick the great, belgium in his own war plan, and alsace-lorraine in that of moltke. now it is obvious that such objects are not truly limited, for two reasons. in the first place, such territory is usually an organic part of your enemy's country, or otherwise of so much importance to him that he will be willing to use unlimited effort to retain it. in the second place, there will be no strategical [pg 55] obstacle to his being able to use his whole force to that end. to satisfy the full conception of a limited object, one of two conditions is essential. firstly, it must be not merely limited in area, but of really limited political importance; and secondly, it must be so situated as to be strategically isolated or to be capable of being reduced to practical isolation by strategical operations. unless this condition exists, it is in the power of either belligerent, as clausewitz himself saw, to pass to unlimited war if he so desires, and, ignoring the territorial objective, to strike at the heart of his enemy and force him to desist.
if, then, we only regard war between contiguous continental states, in which the object is the conquest of territory on either of their frontiers, we get no real generic difference between limited and unlimited war. the line between them is in any case too shadowy or unstable to give a classification of any solidity. it is a difference of degree rather than of kind. if, on the other hand, we extend our view to wars between worldwide empires, the distinction at once becomes organic. possessions which lie oversea or at the extremities of vast areas of imperfectly settled territory are in an entirely different category from those limited objects which clausewitz contemplated. history shows that they can never have the political importance of objects which are organically part of the european system, and it shows further that they can be isolated by naval action sufficiently to set up the conditions of true limited war.
jomini approaches the point, but without clearly detaching it. in his chapter "on great invasions and distant expeditions," he points out how unsafe it is to take the conditions of war between contiguous states and apply them crudely to cases where the belligerents are separated by large areas of [pg 56] land or sea. he hovers round the sea factor, feeling how great a difference it makes, but without getting close to the real distinction. his conception of the inter-action of fleets and armies never rises above their actual co-operation in touch one with the other in a distant theatre. he has in mind the assistance which the british fleet afforded wellington in the peninsula, and napoleon's dreams of asiatic conquest, pronouncing such distant invasions as impossible in modern times except perhaps in combination with a powerful fleet that could provide the army of invasion with successive advanced bases. of the paramount value of the fleet's isolating and preventive functions he gives no hint.
even when he deals with oversea expeditions, as he does at some length, his grip of the point is no closer. it is indeed significant of how entirely continental thought had failed to penetrate the subject that in devoting over thirty pages to an enumeration of the principles of oversea expeditions, he, like clausewitz, does not so much as mention the conquest of canada; and yet it is the leading case of a weak military power succeeding by the use of the limited form of war in forcing its will upon a strong one, and succeeding because it was able by naval action to secure its home defence and isolate the territorial object.
for our ideas of true limited objects, therefore, we must leave the continental theatres and turn to mixed or maritime wars. we have to look to such cases as canada and havana in the seven years' war, and cuba in the spanish-american war, cases in which complete isolation of the object by naval action was possible, or to such examples as the crimea [pg 57] and korea, where sufficient isolation was attainable by naval action owing to the length and difficulty of the enemy's land communications and to the strategical situation of the territory at stake.
these examples will also serve to illustrate and enforce the second essential of this kind of war. as has been already said, for a true limited object we must have not only the power of isolation, but also the power by a secure home defence of barring an unlimited counterstroke. in all the above cases this condition existed. in all of them the belligerents had no contiguous frontiers, and this point is vital. for it is obvious that if two belligerents have a common frontier, it is open to the superior of them, no matter how distant or how easy to isolate the limited object may be, to pass at will to unlimited war by invasion. this process is even possible when the belligerents are separated by a neutral state, since the territory of a weak neutral will be violated if the object be of sufficient importance, or if the neutral be too strong to coerce, there still remains the possibility that his alliance may be secured.
we come, then, to this final proposition—that limited war is only permanently possible to island powers or between powers which are separated by sea, and then only when the power desiring limited war is able to command the sea to such a degree as to be able not only to isolate the distant object, but also to render impossible the invasion of his home territory.
here, then, we reach the true meaning and highest military value of what we call the command of the sea, and here we touch the secret of england's success against powers so greatly superior to herself in military strength. it is only fitting [pg 58] that such a secret should have been first penetrated by an englishman. for so it was, though it must be said that except in the light of clausewitz's doctrine the full meaning of bacon's famous aphorism is not revealed. "this much is certain," said the great elizabethan on the experience of our first imperial war; "he that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much or as little of the war as he will, whereas those that be strongest by land are many times nevertheless in great straits." it would be difficult to state more pithily the ultimate significance of clausewitz's doctrine. its cardinal truth is clearly indicated—that limited wars do not turn upon the armed strength of the belligerents, but upon the amount of that strength which they are able or willing to bring to bear at the decisive point.
it is much to be regretted that clausewitz did not live to see with bacon's eyes and to work out the full comprehensiveness of his doctrine. his ambition was to formulate a theory which would explain all wars. he believed he had done so, and yet it is clear he never knew how complete was his success, nor how wide was the field he had covered. to the end it would seem he was unaware that he had found an explanation of one of the most inscrutable problems in history—the expansion of england—at least so far as it has been due to successful war. that a small country with a weak army should have been able to gather to herself the most desirable regions of the earth, and to gather them at the expense of the greatest military powers, is a paradox to which such powers find it hard to be reconciled. the phenomenon seemed always a matter of chance-an accident without any foundation in the essential constants of war. it remained for clausewitz, [pg 59] unknown to himself, to discover that explanation, and he reveals it to us in the inherent strength of limited war when means and conditions are favourable for its use.
we find, then, if we take a wider view than was open to clausewitz and submit his latest ideas to the test of present imperial conditions, so far from failing to cover the ground they gain a fuller meaning and a firmer basis. apply them to maritime warfare and it becomes clear that his distinction between limited and unlimited war does not rest alone on the moral factor. a war may be limited not only because the importance of the object is too limited to call forth the whole national force, but also because the sea may be made to present an insuperable physical obstacle to the whole national force being brought to bear. that is to say, a war may be limited physically by the strategical isolation of the object, as well as morally by its comparative unimportance.
