Fighting in the Napoleonic Wars was in the continuity of the eighteenth century and even the two preceding ones. Major changes in weapons on a large scale would not occur before the years 1850. Generals and officers were still nurtured by the military writers of the eighteenth century, but among these writers some had envisioned what war could become if large-scale ‘operations’ were conducted and if armies grew in size. With the Revolution and the dictatorial power Napoleon inherited from it, France set the tone for waging war with more intensity, in the movement of armies as well as in tactics on the field of battle. Other powers simply had to follow, but interior conditions and social imperatives resulted in partly adaptations and half-measures.

War features prominently in the broader formation of thought commonly referred to as French Theory. Particularly in the late 1970s and 1980s war attracted the attention of a number of the leading thinkers in France. In 1976 Michel Foucault offered his lecture course at the Collège de France, Il faut défendre la société; in the same year Raymond Aron published his large tome Penser la guerre: Clausewitz; in 1980 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari developed their theory of nomadology and the war machine in Milles plateaux; and in 1987 Guy Debord and Alice Becker-Ho published their wargame Le Jeu de la guerre, originally invented in 1965. This chapter examines the key role that war comes to play in French Theory from the 1970s onward. It traces the flux of historical concepts from early-nineteenth-century Prussian military thought into high theory in France and their transformation from military concepts into metaphors and figures of thought. It thereby offers an overview of the of the productive impact of war on French Theory, but also critically stakes out the limits of the militarization of thinking.

Liddell Hart’s Foreword to Samuel Griffith’s 1963 translation of Sunzi is the locus classicus for the interpretation that Sunzi advocated an “indirect approach” to strategy. Liddell Hart asserted that Sunzi was the world’s greatest military thinker, with only Clausewitz comparable, if dated, and that much of the suffering caused by World War I and World War II would have been avoided if planners had absorbed some of Sunzi’s “realism and moderation” to balance Clausewitz’s theoretical emphasis on “‘total war’ beyond all bounds of sense.” Although Sunzi appeared in Europe with a French translation in the late eighteenth century, and appealed to the “rational trend of eighteenth-century thinking about war,” it was not influential because of “the emotional surge of the Revolution.” A new and complete translation was needed, particularly with the appearance of nuclear weapons, and with China becoming a great power under Mao Zedong.

For more than thirty years, a conventional mindset of applying force has clashed with the passions of the Iraqi people, complicating decisive outcomes despite US-led coalitions possessing overwhelming technological superiority in Iraq. Most studies of Operation Iraqi Freedom focus almost exclusively on the first few weeks of largely conventional

force employment, thereby missing how much this campaign has in common with other contemporary air campaigns. Air power made enormous contributions against the military “leg” of the Clausewitzian triangle over the course of thirty years with precision and stealth capabilities, but this advantage does not translate neatly into enduring strategic effect. As such, OIF should be reevaluated in a balanced manner that focuses more on the complex interactions between militaries, governments, and people and less on the overwhelming application of US kinetic force.

Chapter 2 surveys and analyzes the greatest ideas and theorists in war theory and strategy – including the philosophies of Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli, Jomini, Clausewitz, Liddell Hart, and Mao. This chapter makes war theory and its recurring themes more accessible by presenting diverse perspectives spanning all eras of military thought from classical through the twentieth century. Each theorist’s background and main ideas are presented, and their strengths and weaknesses are summarized. As history’s preeminent but also most misunderstood war theorist, special attention is given Clausewitz. Principal themes include war’s fluidity, unpredictability, violence, and reciprocity; concentration and momentum; adaptability, intelligence, and relative capacity; military genius; centers of gravity and decisive points; fog, friction, chance, and policy; guerrilla, asymmetric, and nuclear warfare; and war’s moral and physical dimensions.

Chapter 2 illustrates how material necessity reflects a two-fold truism that it is in each belligerent’s strategic interest to do what is necessary and to avoid what is unnecessary. The notion evaluates how the means taken advances the ends sought under the prevailing circumstances. A given act can be a military necessity compared to some alternatives, yet a non-necessity compared to some other alternatives. Acts that are wasteful, excessive, inapposite, futile or purposeless are improvable military non-necessities rather than solely the results of war’s irresistible friction. The necessity assessment of particular action cannot be meaningfully generalised or seen outside of its factual context.

Learning how to think about limited war is a critical skill for American political and military leaders. Currently, the US is failing to win its war in Afghanistan, a war now being fought to preserve the Afghan government. The US has been fighting for seventeen years, and there is no indication that victory is at hand. One of the biggest rèasons for this is the Taliban’s possession of sanctuary in Pakistan. As long the Taliban has this, and is willing to keep fighting, the US cannot guarantee the survival of Afghanistan’s government. Additionally, the most likely type of war in the immediate future – and the most likely one that the US will face – is a war fought for limited aims. India and Pakistan have bitter, unresolved border issues, and China is a revisionist regional power determined to become a global one. The US cannot afford to continue making the same mistakes in regard to so-called limited wars that it has made for the last seventy years.

Beginning with Harry Truman and the Korean War, America’s so-called “first limited war,” too often US leaders have refused to admit that the US is at war, been unclear about what they want, and failed to seek victory. Helping drive this is broken ideas about limited war that intertwine all US thinking about war and poisoned the US ability to fight any war. We need a clear foundation for critically analyzing our wars. The only thing that provides this is the political aim. Do we seek regime change, or something less than this? Anything less is a limited political aim. Our definitions of and ideas about limited war are generally based upon the military means used, something too subjective to provide a basis for analysis. You must understand the aim to understand the nature of the war. If you don’t understand the nature of the war, it is hard to figure out how to win it. Cold War works on limited war also taught us to not seek victory, which injured the US ability to do just this. If you aren’t trying to win the war, you aren’t trying to end it. This leaves us with “forever wars.”