# Everything You Know About Clausewitz Is Wrong



## a_majoor (5 Dec 2020)

Well maybe not everything, but this article argues that a common mistranslation has seriously affected how "we" in the West understand both Clausewitz and how we apply his ideas to warfare:

https://thediplomat.com/2014/11/everything-you-know-about-clausewitz-is-wrong/



> Everything You Know About Clausewitz Is Wrong
> A botched translation of Clausewitz has had an enduring impact on our thinking on warfare.
> By James R. Holmes
> November 12, 2014
> ...



While we have moved away from seeing armed conflict as a sort of "event horizon" with ideas like "Whole of government approach" and "DIME" (Diplomacy Information Military Economic) gaining ascendency, these are still relatively new (I don't recall hearing _any_ discussion about them until the 1990's and in context of Former Yugoslavia), and a lot of military thinking still exists in silos isolated from the larger world outside (I'm very guilty of that myself). Other ideas like Russian "Hybrid War" and Chinese "Unrestricted Warfare" seem to conceptualize this much better than we do.

It's funny how very simple things have the potential to lead to profound consequences.


----------



## Infanteer (5 Dec 2020)

The title is somewhat silly except to those who like to dwell on every noun and article, especially when its understood that On War was, save books 1 and 8, an unfinished manuscript published posthumously by Clausewitz's widow.  The Howard and Paret edition is just fine to understand the essential aspects of the Master's thinking.

However, over at Clausewitz.com, the Jolles translation is recommended as the most accurate rendition in the English language.  Read 'em both I guess....



			
				Thucydides said:
			
		

> ideas like "Whole of government approach" and "DIME" (Diplomacy Information Military Economic) gaining ascendency, these are still relatively new (I don't recall hearing _any_ discussion about them until the 1990's and in context of Former Yugoslavia),



Albert Wiedermeyer's ends his memoires with a description of using DIME as an approach to confronting communism - written in the 1950s, I'm convinced he may of actually coined the term, and he ascribes his thinking to his experience as a student at Germany's _Kriegsakademie_ in the 1930s.


----------

