Clausewitz's Center of Gravity

Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity

Clausewitz realized that wars are won by rivers of blood and cities on fire. They are not won by Rules of Engagement, Laws of War, civilian trialds of enemy mass murderers and paying tribute.A professional soldier who knows the major concepts of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu as well as the German Army concept of Schwehrpunkt (and can apply certain other warfighting principles), can always beat a high tech, US type Army at all three levels of war. There must be one final characteristic too, hardness, the hard ruthlessness grounding a determination to do anything it takes to win , espercially including instilling terror in the enemy. A true professional realize that wars are never over until every enemy politruk, commissar and mullah is liquidated.Over 165 years ago, in 1832, Karl von Clausewitz's book, On War, was published posthumously. Since then, that book has strongly influenced the major military traditions of the modern era. However, to study Clausewitz is useless unless one also studies Napoleon. In fact, Clausewitz's contribution to military art and science was heavily influenced by Napoleon and the Napoleonic era of warfighting.Clausewitz has been held in suspicion only by those nations with the world's best armies, Germany in World War II and the USSR since then.
Invariably, Clausewitz's work has been misinterpreted by all western armies, save Germany. Only a few military experts have understood much of what the Prussian military philosopher had to say.B. H. Liddell Hart gave an excellent description of Clausewitz's contribution to strategic thought. "...Clausewitz blurred the outlines of his philosophy, already indistinct, and made in into a mere marching refrain--A Prussian Marseilles which inflamed the blood and intoxicated the mind. In transfusion it became a doctrine fit to form corporals, not generals. For by making battle appear the only 'real war-like activity', his gospel deprived strategy of its laurels, and reduced the art of war to the mechanics of mass-slaughter. Moreover, it incited generals to seek battle at the first opportunity, instead of creating an advantageous opportunity..."Clausewitz wrote, "...Philanthropists may easily imagine that there is a skillful method of disarming the enemy without great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War...That is an error which must be extirpated..." That classic Clausewitzian phrase would, "...henceforth be used by countless blunderers to excuse, and even to justify, their futile squandering of life in bull-headed assaults...The danger was increased because of the way he constantly dwelt on the decisive importance of a numerical superiority... Even worse was the effect of his theoretical exposition, and exaltation of the idea of 'absolute warfare'--in proclaiming that the road to success was through the unlimited application of force...led to the contradictory end of making policy the slave of strategy...is policy of force without limit and without calculation of costs fits, and is only fit for, a hate-maddened mob. It is the negation of statesmanship and of intelligent strategy..." Clausewitz's demand for bloody battles of annihilation encourages and nurtures the attrition blood sport. Such thinking has crippled US ground forces, the military ground forces of the non-German West, and every army that they have influenced, for over ninety years.
Yet, Clausewitz offered many concepts which facilitated the understanding of strategy. If those concepts are taken en toto, without marrying them to the Clausewitzian bloody battle concept, or the equally unreasonable Clausewitzian disdains for combat intelligence and deception, those unconnected concepts can help unlock some of the mysteries of strategy. It should be remembered however, that many Clausewitzian concepts related to strategic application are contradicted within Clausewitz's own works. Such contradictions may have been caused by errors in translation, errors in Clausewitz's thinking, and evolutionary changes in his thinking which his unfinished and uneditorialized On War manuscript could not reflect because of his untimely death by cholera. Whatever the reason, some such errors can be explained away, others cannot.
Clausewitz's Concept of the Center of Gravity Clausewitz's strategic concept of the center of gravity is contradicted within his own works. In Book VI of On War his definition of the center of gravity reveals a disappointingly attritionist dogmatism. "A center of gravity is always found where the mass is concentrated most densely. It presents the most effective target for a blow; furthermore, the heaviest blow is that struck by the center of gravity." He further defined the center of gravity as the enemy main army and comparatively discounts the value of attacking enemy lines of communication. Such thinking absolutely and unswervingly leads to the ruinous thinking which dominated elephantine French and American armies that were bled white during each of their Vietnam Wars. Those armies directly sought an ever-illusory, set-piece battle with the enemy's main force, or center of gravity. They sought to mass against that illusory enemy mass at a point where they hoped to pound the opposition to dust in the fires of Armageddon.
Clausewitz is redeemed in Chapter 4, Book Eight of On War. There, he develops a contradictory definition of the center of gravity which is useful to strategic art. In that section of his book, Clausewitz posits that an army may be only one of several centers of gravity. He cites other possible candidates: "...the capital. In small countries that rely on large ones, it is usually the army of the protector. Among alliances...the community of interest, ...in popular uprisings...the personalities of the leaders and public opinion..." He then hints that still other centers of gravity may exist by emphasizing the importance of throwing the enemy off balance. By stretching Clausewitz in a rational direction, the center of gravity concept becomes a valuable tool. Thus a center of gravity becomes a place of value to the enemy where he must fight or forfeit part of his strength. By looking at the center of gravity from this angle, a strategist suddenly has a set of designated targets, of varying value to the enemy, which become part of his strategic maneuver potential. Identified enemy vulnerabilities may become decisive aspects of a campaign or series of campaigns that choose battle or the avoidance of battle in maneuvers, which threaten those vulnerabilities.In modern warfare, the Germans have utilized their Schwerpunkt, a modification of Clausewitz's center of gravity, to organize their maneuver. The Germans designate one of their units as the Schwerpunkt, which means that the designated unit will receive all possible support to accomplish its mission. However, the German Schwerpunkt frequently shifts to other units because the Schwerpunkt unit is also the unit which is best exploiting the most important gap or weakness in the enemy array. To the Germans, it is the point of main effort, either in the defense or offense. This concept is also valuable for an organization of strategy, but it is not the same as a center of gravity.Excerpted from, Center of Gravity, By Breaker Mccoy, www.quikmaneuvers.com