War as an Instrument of Policy

Abstract

The idea of war as a contest focuses on how belligerents interact and how outcomes are achieved. But Clausewitz also needs an external perspective to explain why belligerents engage in a contest at all. War, he proposes, should be seen as a means to achieve the political goals which states set themselves. Their goal is thus not victory in the contest but what victory brings. Were victory alone the objective, war would be an activity in itself and lack wider meaning:

war cannot be divorced from political life [Verkehr], and whenever this occurs in our thinking about war, the many links that connect the two elements are destroyed and we are left with something pointless and devoid of sense. [605]

‘[War] cannot follow its own laws, but has to be treated as part of some other whole; the name of which is policy’. [606]