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Clausewitz in the 21st Century

21 - 23 March 2005

Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Oxford
Manor Road Building

Introduction

In the 1990s a series of high-profile books in English argued that Clausewitz's On War had ceased to be a helpful guide to war today. They included: John Keegan, A history of warfare (1993); Martin van Creveld, The transformation of war (1991); and Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars (1999). Keegan argued that war is more a matter of culture than politics; van Creveld and Kaldor that future wars are more likely to be waged by non-state actors. Defenders of Clausewitz argue that his critics have missed On War's dialectical character entirely, persistently focusing on one proposition to the exclusion of its antithesis, misreading the book's synthesis, and "desperately seeking Jomini"--i.e., looking for cookbook-style military advice that Clausewitz explicitly eschews. In this view, the "nontrinitarians" have confused Clausewitz's detached description of reality for a normative prescription while making stridently exclusionary claims for cultural and political conceptions with which the Clausewitzian approach is, in fact, entirely compatible. The critics, in turn, accuse his proponents of endlessly restating what they take to be eternal truths, being all too ready to tell us why Clausewitz is still relevant, but not how.

Both sides seem to agree, however, that Clausewitz is important. Certainly the underlying military, historical, and philosophical issues about which the controversy swirls are crucial ones. Yet these two camps seem to be arguing past one another, in an increasingly sterile and unproductive debate. Accordingly, this conference, and its resulting volume, will focus on the application and realisation of Clausewitz today. The first session will lay the conceptual groundwork. Session two will deal with the dominance in the Anglo-American tradition of the translation by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, and the effects this has had on interpretations of Clausewitz since 1976. Session three will focus on books I and VIII, the sections of On War which are regarded as most nearly finished. Session four will concentrate on the intervening books. All these sessions will focus on debates inherent within On War itself. Sessions 5-13 will concentrate on the application of Clausewitz today, particularly the current (and topical) issues that define the character of contemporary armed conflict.

This conference will therefore be a crucial step in defining the ideas and institutions of war in the 21st century, which collectively constitute a central element in the CCW Programme.

This conference is sponsored by the CCW Programme.

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Conference format

The assumption is one hour per paper: roughly 20-25 minutes for each speaker and 30 minutes discussion.

An abstract of about 100 words for each paper will be provided for the website by the end of November.

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Programme Speakers and Provisional Programme

For a detailed version of the conference programme, please click here.

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Conference Speakers and Paper Abstracts

  • Hew Strachen (University of Oxford) 'Clausewitz and the Dialectics of War'

    Between 1976 and the end of the Cold War, three linked elements made up the study of Clausewitz. The first is that it was predominantly an Anglophone phenomenon, and particularly an American one (despite Raymond Aron’s contribution). It certainly was not German. The second was the acceptance that war was indeed a political instrument, to the point that that became dogma rather than insight. And the third element undergirding the whole was Michael Howard’s and Peter Paret’s translation of On War, on which all this rested.

    Since 1990, this consensus has been challenged on three counts. The first concerns the issues posed by the Howard/Paret translation, a point which Jan Willem Honig will address more directly in the conference. Suffice it to say that most ‘Clausewitzians’ today base their understanding of their subject matter more on the translation than on the text itself. The second concerns the centrality of the relationship between war and policy to the whole text of On War as opposed to book I alone. Here Azar Gat’s criticisms of Peter Paret are central, and affect the way we read the entire text. Are we right to read it as containing more internal consistency than many of Clausewitz’s earlier critics of the period 1890-1939 allowed? Or is the book internally contradictory? Thirdly, we need to take more account of Clausewitz’s earlier and political writings to realise that he was not a closet liberal, and as much a product of Romanticism as of the Enlightenment.

    Consideration of all these points enables us to put the recent dismissals of Clausewitz, voiced by Martin van Creveld, John Keegan and Mary Kaldor, in context. The key points are these. First, that they focus on books I and VIII of On War to the exclusion of much else. Secondly, that On War is constructed as a continuous dialectic, where norms are tested against reality. Critics too readily treat Clausewitz’s normative statements as though they were assertions of reality. The debate of On War does not readily lend itself to synthesis, but it suits Clausewitz’s critics, and sometimes his advocates, to assume it does. Third, and following from both the two preceding points, debates and interpretations of On War have been shaped by contemporary agendas. Each generation has its own Clausewitz. That of the Cold War was different from that of pre-1914 military thought or Nazi Germany, but each was able to cite textual authority for what it claimed. Much of the current debate about Clausewitz’s contemporary ‘relevance’ is in danger of becoming facile, either mouthing his truisms, or redefining war in ways that explicitly bypass Clausewitz’s more circumscribed understanding while at the same time excluding much contemporary conflict.

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  • Jan Willem Honig (King's College London) ‘Problems of Text and Translation’

    Translation is interpretation. Hence, the three major English translations of Clausewitz’s On War can be said to represent three different interpretations. The most recent, published by Michael Howard and Peter Paret in 1976, may be the most popular by far, but does it offer the best and most defensible interpretation of Clausewitz’s ideas? Do the older translations possibly offer readings that reflect Clausewitz’s ideas more closely? I intend to explore these questions by focusing on two pairs of concepts that are fundamental to the understanding and interpreting of On War: absolute/real war and total/limited war.

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  • Christopher Bassford (National War College, Washington DC) 'The Primacy of "Policy" vs the "Trinity" in Clausewitz's Mature Thought'

This paper discusses Clausewitz's conception of the "fascinating trinity" (wunderliche dreifaltigkeit), its reception in the English-speaking world, current interpretations of it, its meaning in terms of Clausewitzian theory, and its broader implications for thinking about war. There was no substantial discussion of this concept in English until 1981, when US Army COL Harry Summers made it a centerpiece of his critique of American conduct of the war in Indochina. Because of its intense relevance to the post-Vietnam problems of American military institutions, Summers purposefully focused on a subordinate, illustrative reference to the trinity in On War, rather than on the central concept itself. His concrete, structural, "people/army/government" formulation became embedded in the literature of the period's "Clausewitzian renaissance." It then became a prominent focus of an anti-Clausewitz reaction spearheaded by Martin van Creveld and John Keegan. In the meantime, a very different and much more abstract version of the trinity appeared, based on Clausewitz's actual wording and interpreted in the light of late 20th-century nonlinear mathematics and Complexity science. This view was most ably put forward by Alan Beyerchen in 1992. The debate over the trinity relates powerfully both to longstanding controversies (e.g., Clausewitz's views on the nature of war, policy, and politics) and to newer ones regarding the evolution of Clausewitz's concepts, the character of Clausewitz's dialectical approach to theory, and, indeed, the fundamental character of events in the real world and the role of military theory

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  • Daniel Moran (Naval Postgraduate School, California) 'Aims and Objectives in War'


Clausewitz conceived of war as an instrument for the achievement of aims that arise outside the military sphere. This claim is absolutely central to his work. If war is not an instrument, but a self-contained form of cultural practice, then Clausewitz’s ideas lose their theoretical integrity. War becomes virtually unanalyzable except in the most basic psychological or ethnological terms.

Clausewitz’s characterization of war as a specifically political instrument has been a perennial source of misunderstanding. The assignment of war’s aims to the realm of politics is sometimes thought to reduce the value of Clausewitz’s ideas when applied to wars that are conducted by belligerents other than states, or by irregular forces (guerillas, terrorists, and so on). There are also those who have held that the influence of politics on war properly extends only to its origins and outcome, and not to the details of its conduct. Clausewitz’s work affords ample grounds to reject these arguments. The fact that such interpretations persist among those not otherwise disposed to regard war as an object-less, ritualized activity – a statement that applies to most well-educated professional soldiers – nevertheless points toward a characteristic feature of modern conflict, which is that tactical results have increasingly ceased to speak for themselves in strategic and political terms. Clausewitz knew that war’s most distinctive feature – its violence – would react upon the aims for which it was employed, and that reconciling ends and means in war could never be automatic. But such reconciliation has become exceptionally problematic in the century and a half since his death. This difficulty finds expression in complaints about civilian betrayal and “unclear” objectives, and by demands for “exit strategies” as distinct, independent elements of war planning.

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  • Beatrice Heuser (Department of Military History, Bundeswehr) 'Clausewitz's Concept of Strategy and its Relevance for Today'

    Clausewitz's use of German is often obsolete, compared with the modern usage of terms. Moreover, he did not have the benefit of the almost 200 years of strategic literature that we have; many terms have since been coined that he only groped for intellectually. Therefore, On War is easier to read in its translation into contemporary English than its German original, and even then, it is often useful to paraphrase him. This holds true also for his notion of strategy in any modern sense of the term. His own definition of strategy as "The art of using battles for the objective of the war" is clearly not very helpful today. But in order to translate Clausewitz's thinking into our modern terminology, we can establish a definition of strategy in our modern sense (for which I will give examples) from Clausewitz's writing that is a useful tool for the analysis of conflicts past and present. Building on his realisation that war is a contest of wills, other strategists, particularly in France, have built helpful theories of victory and what success constitutes in military encounters. This paper will explore the thinking of Jean Colin, Georges Gilbert, Langlois, Ferdinand Foch and other thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries on the meaning of strategy and victory, thoughts they derived from Clausewitz's image of war as a physical and moral struggle.

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  • José Fernández Vega (Argentine National Research Council) 'War as "Art". Aesthetics and Politics in Clausewitz's Social Thinking'

    The actuality of Clausewitz can be found not only in a number of statements contained in his work, On War but also in his method. What we can understand as his method has very much to do with some of the fundamental approaches of Kant's Third Critique; though, it is impossible to prove a clear intellectual influence of that book in Clausewitz`s social thinking.

    As it is explained in this paper, Clausewitz favours the idea that the strategic thinking is a kind of art rather than a matter of science. It is in this way that his method is linked to the Kantian philosophy of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and it is from this perspective that he criticizes militarism and the approaches that take no notice of chance and danger in war.

    Nowadays, a political approach as that of Clausewitz becomes essential to ponder over the war. What kind of politics will follow todays wars? This crucial question for our contemporary world would mean, for Clausewitz himself, a challenge to the imagination. A concept that Hannah Arendt labelled as Kants great contribution to the political philosophy included in the Critique of the Power of Judgment.

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  • Ulrike Kleemeier (University of Münster, Germany) 'Virtues and Vices in War. Reflections on Clausewitz' (Temporary title)

    Clausewitz` theory of „moral factors“ in war is examined and illustrated in connection with his theory of friction in war. His remarks on both subjects are read as a theory of social action in situations which are extremely threatening and extremely chaotic at the same time. In this context special attention is drawn to the Clausewitzian notion of courage and its implications. One of the leading questions of the paper is the problem how it is possible to combine two seemingly very different military virtues, namely discipline on the one hand and charisma on the other. This question has been explicitly raised by Max Weber. Clausewitz has to tell us a lot about these matters. It will be shown that Clausewitz is the contrary of a purely rationalistic thinker although he is often understood like this. Instead Clausewitz thinks of the ideal soldier as a unity within which reason and emotion are well balanced, but which is finally based on the power of human emotions. They turn out to be the ultimate fundament of every virtue in war. It will also be demonstrated that Clausewitz` thoughts on being a good soldier and a competent military leader have far reaching consequences for military education and training. Today those considerations have lost nothing of their importance.

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  • Antulio J Echevarria II (US Army War College) 'Clausewitz and the War on Terror'

    Globalization—or the spread of information and information technologies, along with greater public participation in economic and political processes—is transforming every aspect of human affairs, to include war. It is especially apparent in the current war on terror. Yet, it is not clear that strategists fully understand the nature of war itself, nor how the forces of globalization might affect the nature of war in general, or the nature of the war on terror in particular. These are more than academic questions, since the nature of a thing tends to determine how it can or cannot be used. War’s nature—and whether or how it might change—should, therefore, be of immense concern to both political and military leaders. The speaker argues that the Clausewitzian Trinity—made up of the subordinating or guiding influence of political leadership, the play of chance and probability, and the force of basic enmity or hostility—remains a valid model for understanding the nature of war. Using Clausewitz’s model as a framework for understanding war in the present day, the author maintains that globalization is strengthening the role that politics plays in war by affording political leaders the capability to exert greater real-time control over military operations. And, contrary to expectations, the increased flow of information attributed to globalization may simply intensify the play of chance and probability, rather than enhance knowledge and situational awareness, as some have claimed. Finally, globalization makes the forces of hostility more critical in the conduct of war. Political leaders can now mobilize hostile passions more quickly and over a larger area than hitherto, even among cultures attempting to resist the influence of globalization.

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  • Alan D Beyerchen (Ohio State University) 'Clausewitz and the Nonlinear Nature of Warfare'

    In this paper I will explore further implications of the nonlinear sciences for our understanding of Clausewitz and his ideas concerning warfare. In particular, I will examine the conception of “self-organization” of systems first proposed by the physical chemist Ilya Prigogine and the extent to which apprehension of such systems can be discerned in On War. This approach to chance and complexity could lead to reappraisals of specific passages of his text, and offer ways to extract from Clausewitz a clearer sense of the relationship between order and disorder in warfare.

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  • David J. Lonsdale (University of Reading) 'Clausewitz and Information Age Warfare'

    On the surface, the information age appears to significantly challenge the Clausewitzian nature of war. In particular, much of the Military Transformation literature suggests that war in the future could be less uncertain, less violent, and less vulnerable to friction. Using a range of contexts, this paper will test the various notions that underpin these claims. The analysis covers the character of the future battlespace, the function of command, and the much-hyped concept of Strategic Information Warfare. In addition, this paper will also examine the nature of Information Power. Through an assessment of both historical and contemporary examples (including events since 9/11), the paper concludes that although the future will witness many changes in the conduct of war, the nature of war, as given theoretical form by Clausewitz, will remain essentially unchanged. This is due to the five main elements of strategy: policy objective, paradoxical logic, geography, polymorphous character of war, and human influence.

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  • Andreas Herberg-Rothe (Humboldt University Berlin) 'Clausewitz and Limitation of War and Violence'

    Although Clausewitz's description of the relation of politics and war is unsurpassable, the question, however is, whether the "political stipulation" of his political concept can still be applied meaningfully today. In his analysis of Napoleon’s disaster in Moscow and his final defeat at Waterloo, Clausewitz developed a basic differentiation between limited and unlimited warfare and emphasized the priority of politics. Bringing together these two ideas I develop a conception of “limitation of war and violence” as overarching purpose of politics in the 21st century.

    At present War and violence are undergoing a process of “unleashing”—both in a spatial sense, for terrorist attacks are potentially ever-present, as well as temporally, since no end to these attacks is in sight. Additionally, there is a further “unleashing” of violence in the civil wars of Africa as well as a new threat posed by the possible possession of weapons of mass destruction by terrorist organizations.

    First, I proceed from the assumption that the “unleashing” of war and violence in global society is so manifold and differentiated a phenomenon that it cannot be opposed through a single strategy. Secondly, in present-day global society—as well as in examples throughout history—one finds numerous processes that run counter to each other, and therefore the consideration of only a single counter-strategy can lead to paradoxical and unintended developments.

    If the single counter-strategy to the unleashing of violence, for example, were a general, world-wide democratization, then with a high probability this would lead to counterproductive results. This is particularly clear in those states and societies where fully developed constitutional democracies are not yet present, but are undergoing the initial process of transformation. In the latter cases, one can speak of the antinomies of democratic peace much more than when referring to developed democracies. Thus it is possible that a one-sided demand for democratic processes without regard to local conditions can even contribute to the creation of totalitarian movements. The historical experience that corresponds to the change from democratic to totalitarian processes is embodied in developments after World War I. In nearly all of the defeated states there was at the beginning a process of democratization; indeed, there were democratic revolutions. Yet almost all ended under totalitarian, i.e, fascist, rule or in dictatorships.

    From the overarching perspective of the limitation of war and violence, it can be reasonable in particular cases to renounce democratization from the outside in favor of a serious disarmament. Despite a different-sounding rhetoric, the United States has in the case of Libya—admittedly a former “rogue state”—abandoned a process of democratization to be carried out militarily, in favor of Libya’s nuclear disarmament, providing a guarantee for the continued rule of Kadafy including the succession of his son. In other cases democratization promoted from the outside is just the appropriate means to contain the unleashing of violence. Therefore an overarching perspective is required to determine which measures are appropriate in individual cases.

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  • Wilfried von Bredow (Philipps University Marburg) 'Civil-Military Relations and Democracies'

    Modern societies seem to have difficulties with their armed forces. And the armed forces seem to have difficulties to find a suitable place in the network of organizations in modern societies.

    On the one hand, the military can be regarded as an agent of modernization. As this process diminishes, however, the meaning of violence in social and political conflicts, the role of the armed forces and the role of warfare are loosing some of their political relevance.

Clausewitz was a thorough observer of the interplay between politics and warfare. His famous remarks about the primacy of politics refer to the pre-democratic societies of the 18th century. They implicitly form the nucleus of a theory of civil-military relations in democratic societies. This paper draws the outline of that theory in the light of recent developments within modern societies (e. g. the rise of non-state actors) and on the inter/transnational level (e. g. the emergence of ‘new wars’).

The mechanisms of democratic control of the armed forces become even more important when the profession of arms and the organization of the armed forces retreat gradually to the periphery of modern society. For this movement encourages inadequate perceptions on both sides of civil-military relations. The organization and the use of violence in conflicts remain a delicate business which can be all too easily mishandled. False expectations by civil society and false self-perceptions by the military remain the salient reasons for an ill-conceived use of the armed forces as an instrument for conflict-management.

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  • Jon Sumida (US Marine Corps University) '“Awaiting” and “Parrying” the Blow: the Clausewitzian Concept of Defense in On War'

    Shortly before the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Vice President Richard Cheney supported the proposed operation with the observation that “everyone knows that offense is the stronger form of war.” The proposition that the offense is the stronger form of war may be valid. But the claim that “everyone knows”--which converts an assertion into a truth without visible demonstration of evidence--is contradicted by Clausewitz’s unequivocal statement to the contrary. Clausewitz contended that it was the defense that was the stronger form of war. Indeed, this may have been the primary strategic argument of On War. Book VI, which is devoted to the examination of the defense in war, is in any case more than twice the length of any of the other of On War’s eight books. The present paper will describe and analyze Clausewitz’s treatment of the defense in Book VI, and relate this discussion to material in Books I, II, and VIII. The major arguments of the paper are 1) Most of Clausewitz’s most famous conceptions, including “war is an extension of politics/policy by other means” and the “remarkable trinity,” cannot be properly understood without reference to his views on the superiority of the defense with respect to the offense; 2) Clausewitz invented the radically novel method of integrating history in theory described in Book II in order to counter conventional historical methodology that tended to promote the view that offense was the stronger form of war; and 3) Clausewitz’s complex and sophisticated reasoning about defense can provide a productive and provocative point of departure for considering the strategic assumptions of the current political leadership of the United States.

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Speaker Biographies

Hew Strachan (University of Oxford)
Hew Strachan took up his appointment as Fellow of All Soul's College, Oxford in January, as Chichele Professor of the History of War, moving from the University of Glasgow, where he had been Professor of Modern History since 1992. The subject of his lecture, war, past, present and future, reflects his wide-ranging academic and research interests. Having come up to Corpus to read history, Hew Strachan completed his PhD whilst a Research Fellow at Corpus. After a year as Senior Lecturer, Department of War Studies and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, he became a Fellow of Corpus in 1979 and appointments as Dean of College, Tutor for Admissions and Senior Tutor followed. He has published extensively and among his many advisory roles, he sits on the Council of the National Army Museum and on the Council of Royal United Services Institutue for Defence Studies.

Jan Willem Honig (King's College London)
Jan Willem Honig is a Senior Lecturer in War Studies, King’s College London. He teaches strategy and leads the Strategy Research Group in the Department of War Studies. His publications on Clausewitz include: ‘Introduction to the New Edition’ of Carl von Clausewitz, On War, tr. Col. J. J. Graham (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004), pp. xv–xxiv; ‘Strategy in a Post-Clausewitzian Setting’, in Gert de Nooy, ed., The Clausewitzian Dictum and the Future of Western Military Strategy (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997), pp. 109–122; ‘Interpreting Clausewitz’, Security Studies 3, no. 3 (Spring 1994), pp. 571–580.

Chris Bassford (National War College, Washington DC)
Christopher Bassford is currently Professor of Strategy at the National War College, in Washington, DC. He is a former US Army field artillery officer and has taught at Purdue University, the Ohio State University, the US Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the U.S. Army War College. He is author of The Spit-­Shine Syndrome: Organizational Irrationality in the American Field Army (Westport,CT: Greenwood Press, 1988); Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); MCDP 1-1, Strategy (USMC, 1997) and MCDP 1-2, Campaigning (USMC, 1997); and one of editors of the business-oriented Clausewitz on Strategy: Inspiration and Insight from a Master Strategist (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001). He is editor of The Clausewitz Homepage, http://clausewitz.com/.

Daniel Moran (Naval Postgraduate School, California)
Daniel Moran is Professor of International and Military History in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, and a Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of a number of books and articles in these fields, including Carl von Clausewitz: Historical and Political Writings [co-edited with Peter Paret] (Princeton, 1992).

Beatrice Heuser (Department of Military History, Bundeswehr)
B.A., M.A. (Lond.), D.Phil. (Oxon.), Habilitation (Philipps-University, Marburg an der Lahn)

Career:
Director of Research, MGFA (Military History Research Office of the Bundeswehr) Potsdam since summer 2003; teaching at the University of Potsdam (apl. Professor) since April 2004.
Professor of International and Strategic Studies at the Department of War Studies, King's College London, (Lecturer at the Department of War Studies since October 1991; Senior Lecturer since 1 Sept. 1997, Professor since 1 Sept. 2000-summer 2003.)
Lecturer at the University of Reims, Department of History; Fellowship at the Institut Historique Allemand, Paris (January-June 1991)
SSRC- MacArthur Foundation postdoctoral Fellow in International Peace and Security, attached to Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House, London) and St. Antony's College, Oxford and to Institut Historique des Relations Internationales Contemporaines at the Institut de France (October 1989-December 1990 and July-September 1991)
Director's research assistant and research fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft and Politik, Ebenhausen, West Germany (April 1988 -September 1989)

Major Publications:
Reading Clausewitz (London: Pimlico, 2002)
The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons in their Historical, Strategic and Ethical Context in the series: Turning Points in History (London: Longman's, 1999)
Nuclear Mentalities? Strategies and Belief Systems in Britain, France andthe FRG (London: Macmillan, July 1998)
NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949-2000 (London: Macmillan, hardback 1997, paperback 1999)
Transatlantic Relations: Sharing Ideals and Costs Chatham House Paper (London: Pinter for RIIA, 1996)
Western Containment Policies in the Cold War; The Yugoslav Case, 1948-1953 London & New York: Routledge, 1989), 304p., Index, Appendices, Map, Bibliography.

Editor with Anja Victorine Hartmann: Thinking War, Peace and World Orders from Antiquity until the 20th century (London: Routledge, 2001)
Editor with Cyril Buffet: Haunted by History: Myths in International Relations (Oxford: Berghahn, 1998)
Editor with Robert O'Neill: Securing Peace in Europe, 1945-62: Thoughts for the Post-Cold War Era (London: Macmillan, 1992)

José Fernández Vega (Argentine National Research Council)
José Fernández Vega teaches social philosophy and aesthetics at the University of Buenos Aires. He is a full time researcher of the Argentine National Research Council (CONICET).

He published a book on Clausewitz and a second one is going to be available in March: Las Guerras de la Poltica. Clausewitz entre Maquiavelo y Pern, Buenos Aires, 2005.

He received fellowships awarded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, (DAAD, Germany) to do research at the Humboldt-University in Berlin and was Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Philosophy Department of the New School University, New York.

Christopher Daase (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany)
Christopher Daase is Full Professor and holds the Chair in International Relations at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Prior to this position which he took up in 2004 he was Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent at Canterbury and Director of the Programme in International Conflict Analysis at its Brussels School of International Studies. He received an MA in Political Science, Philosophy and Literature and a PhD in International Relations from the Free University of Berlin. He was a Fellow of the SSRC-MacArthur Program on International Peace and Security and Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Affairs of Harvard University as well as Guest Scholar at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. He wrote his dissertation on Small Wars: How Unconventional Warfare Changes International Relations, for which he received the prestigious Ernst Reuter-Award in 1997. From 1994 to 2001 he was Assistant Professor at the Center on Transatlantic Foreign and Security Policy Studies at the Free University of Berlin where he taught Theories of International Relations, International Organisations and Security Studies. He is a member of the International Studies Association, British International Studies Association, Deutsche Vereinigung für Politische Wissenschaft and other professional bodies, as well as of standing working groups on Nuclear Nonproliferation, Theories of War, and International Politics and the New Media. His research interests center around the theories and methods of International Relations, war and conflict studies, and conflict management with an emphasis on it institutional aspects. He has published widely on International Relations Theory, Peacekeeping, International Security, Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare and on the Emerging Risks in International Politics. Recently he took over the editorship of the leading International Relations Journal in Germany, Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen.

Herfried Münkler

Ulrike Kleemeier (University of Münster, Germany)
Academic position: lecturer in philosophy at the university of Münster in Germany

Fields of research: political theory, philosophy of language and logic

Recent activities: Research on Ludwig Wittgenstein. Cooperation with several institutions of the German army.

Education
Bielefeld and Oxford (Queen`s College)
Doctoral dissertation 1990 in Bielefeld on the mathematician and logician Gottlob Frege
Habilitation 2001 in Münster on philosophical theories of war

Publications:
Gottlob Frege. Kontext – Prinzip und Ontologie. Verlag Karl Alber. Freiburg/München 1997. Reihe Symposion. Hrsg. von Maximilian Forschner und Ludger Honnefelder.
Grundfragen einer philosophischen Theorie des Krieges. Platon – Hobbes – Clausewitz. Akademie Verlag. Berlin 2002. Reihe „Politische Ideen“. Hrsg. von Herfried Münkler.
A number of essays on Machiavelli, Clausewitz, Weber, the theory of just war etc.

Antulio J Echevarria II (US Army War College)
Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II is the Director of Research at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, USA. A retired Army officer, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1981, and has held a variety of command and staff assignments in Germany and the United States. He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Princeton University, where his study of Clausewitz and German military thinking was facilitated by Peter Paret. His book, After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before the Great War, was published by the University Press of Kansas (2001). He has also published articles in a number of scholarly and professional military journals to include The Journal of Strategic Studies, The Journal of Military History, War in History, War & Society, Naval War College Review, Parameters, Joint Force Quarterly, Royal United Services Institute, Military Review, Airpower Journal, Marine Corps Gazette, and Military History Quarterly. He is currently engaged in writing a manuscript on Clausewitz’s thinking.

Alan D Beyerchen (Ohio State University)
Alan Beyerchen is the Graduate Studies Chair in the History Department at Ohio State University. He attended the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he completed a B.A. in German and Ph.D. in history.

He is best known for his book Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich was published by Yale University Press. Translations have appeared in Japanese, German, Italian, Dutch and Turkish. He has also published on science-technology relationships, nonlinearity, the military theorist Clausewitz and various topics in German history.

After service in the US Army and two years as assistant professor at the University of Florida, he moved in 1978 to Ohio State University, where he has since been a member of the History Department. He has primary responsibility for undergraduate and graduate instruction in German history, and he teaches various courses on European history and historical methodology. He also teaches a summer workshop on the Holocaust and Holocaust Education for middle and high school teachers.

He has received awards for outstanding teaching at the Department, College and University levels, as well as from the Ohio Academy of History. He has won grants or fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the German Academic Exchange Service, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the National Science Foundation and the Holocaust Educational Foundation. He served 1988-94 as a member of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciene and was elected a Fellow of the AAAS in 1992.

David J Lonsdale (University of Reading)
David J Lonsdale is a Lecturer in Strategic Studies at the University of Reading. Prior to this he spent three years as a Lecturer in Defence Studies for King's College London, and was involved in the education of military officers at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. He is the author of The Nature of War in the Information Age: Clausewitzian Future and Killer of Men: Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Art of War, and is currently writing another book on Alexander the Great: Alexander the Great: Lessons in Strategy.

Andreas Herberg-Rothe (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Private lecturer of political sciences, Institute for Social Sciences, Humboldt-University Berlin

Sample Publications:
Das Rätsel Clausewitz: Politische Theorie des Krieges im Widerstreit. Wilhelm Fink Publishers, Munich 2001. ("The enigma of Clausewitz: Political theory of war in conflict." Postdoctoral thesis)
Der Krieg: Geschichte und Gegenwart. Campus Publishers, Frankfurt 2003. (War: History and presence)
Lyotard und Hegel: Dialektik von Philosophie und politischer Theorie. Munich 2005 (forthcoming) (Lyotard and Hegel. Dialectics of philosophy and political theory)

Wilfried von Bredow (Philipps University Marburg)
Wilfried von Bredow , born 1944, studied political science, sociology and German literature at the universities in Bonn and Cologne. He received his PhD in political science at Bonn in 1969 and started there his academic career. In 1972, he became professor of political science at Marburg. He served as vice-president of that institution from 1975 to 1977. Afterwards, he frequently left Marburg as a research fellow (St. Antony’s College, Oxford) guest scholar and visiting professor (France, USA, Canada). In 1994, he received the Diefenbaker Award of the Canada Council and in 1999 he received an honorary doctorate by Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada. From 1999 to 2001 he served as President of the Association of Canadian Studies in German Speaking Countries. Among his main research interests are Germany‘s foreign and security policy, the development and the demise of the East-West conflict, civil-military relations and the future of the military profession. Some recent publications: Die Außenpolitik Kanadas. (ed.) Wiesbaden (Westdeutscher Verlag) 2003. „ Neue Erfahrungen, neue Maßstäbe: Gestalt und Gestaltungskraft deutscher Außenpolitik“ Internationale Politik, vol 58, N° 9, 2003, pp.1-12. „ The Order of Violence; Norms, Rules and Taboos for Organized Violence and the De-Legitimization of the Military“. Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, ed. By. G. Caforio, New York (Kluwer Academic) 2003, pp. 87-98. „ The OSCE: Construction and Identity Problems“. OSCE Yearbook 2000, Baden-Baden (Nomos) 2001. pp.41-49 Demokratie und Streitkräfte. Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Wiesbaden (Westdeutscher Verlag) 2000. „ Global Street Workers? War and the Armed Forces in a Globalizing World“, Defence Analysis. Vol 13, N° 2, Aug. 1997, pp. 169-180.

Jon Sumida (US Marine Corps University)
Professor Sumida received his undergraduate degree in history from Stevenson College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He is the author of two monographs [In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914, and Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command: The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered] and editor of a volume of historical documents [The Pollen Papers: The Privately Circulated Printed Works of Arthur Hungeford Pollen 1901-1916]. Sumida has published twenty major articles [including “The Relationship of History and Theory in On War: The Clausewitzian Ideal and Its Implications,” Journal of Military History, April 2001], four of which have won prizes (three Moncado Prizes from the Society of Military History, and Naval History Author of the Year from the U.S. Naval Institute). He has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and Churchill College, Cambridge University, was a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Military Strategy and Operations at the National War College (2000), and is responsible for the Clausewitz seminars of the U.S. Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting (2002/2003/2004) and the maritime strategy seminar in the Advanced Strategic Arts Program of the U.S. Army War College (2003/2004). Sumida is the chair of the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee, and the Major General Matthew C. Horner Chair of Military Theory at the U.S. Marine Corps University in 2004-5. He is at work on two monographs: The Clausewitzian Mind Engaged: Imagining High Command and Defining Strategic Choice in On War and The Quest for Reach: The Development of British Long-Range Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland. Sumida is a professional musician (natural and piston-valve trumpet) specializing in works written in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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Conference Organisers

Professor Hew Strachan
Dr. phil. habil. Andreas Herberg-Rothe
Dr Andrew Fairweather-Tall (Administrator)

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