Burke and Clausewitz on the limitation of war
| Published date | 01 October 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088215569368 |
| Author | J Furman Daniel,Brian A Smith |
| Date | 01 October 2015 |
Journal of International Political Theory
2015, Vol. 11(3) 313 –330
© The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1755088215569368
ipt.sagepub.com
Burke and Clausewitz on
the limitation of war
J Furman Daniel III
George Washington University, USA
Brian A Smith
Montclair State University, USA
Abstract
Restraining the violence of war is difficult under the best of circumstances. In their
observations on the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, Edmund Burke and Carl
von Clausewitz consider the peculiar violence of wars fought for abstract and world-
transformative goals. While the beliefs that animated those wars have faded, in this essay
we argue that Burke and Clausewitz offer insight into the ways that modern political
violence becomes unmoored from limitation and restraint and that their arguments
show a surprising unity between the concerns of realists and just war theorists about
the limitation of war.
Keywords
Burke, Clausewitz, just war, realism, restraint of war
Introduction
In 1793, the French National Assembly announced its intentions to defend their revolu-
tion with total mobilization in the starkest possible terms:
[T]he entire French nation is permanently called to the colors. The young men will go into
battle; married men will forge weapons and transport supplies; women will make tents and
uniforms, and serve in the hospitals; children will make old cloth into bandages; old men will
have themselves carried to the public squares to rouse the courage of the warriors and preach
hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic. (Knox and Murray, 2001: 8)
Corresponding author:
Brian A Smith, Department of Political Science and Law, Montclair State University, 1 Normal Avenue,
Montclair, NJ 07043, USA.
Email: smithbr@mail.montclair.edu
569368IPT0010.1177/1755088215569368Journal of International Political TheoryDaniel and Smith
research-article2015
Article
314 Journal of International Political Theory 11(3)
This national sacrifice led to one of the most destructive series of wars in human his-
tory. Because the revolution sought extreme ends, it was willing to accept extreme meas-
ures. Of these measures, perhaps the most dangerous was the purposeful abandonment of
the traditional restraints on the ends and means of war (Whitman, 2012: 215–216).
Without those restraints, the Napoleonic Wars returned Europe to levels of violence and
political unrest that had not existed since the end of the Thirty Years’ War.
This essay focuses on using Edmund Burke and Carl von Clausewitz to help us under-
stand this abandonment of restraint and draw from them lessons concerning the limita-
tion of war in the present. Despite numerous attempts to impose limits on the horrors of
war, the world remains a regrettably violent place, in no small part because of the destruc-
tion of the established limits of warfare that in modern times began with the French
Revolutionaries and continued up to the present day. A focus on the restraint of violence
resonates clearly with three branches of the contemporary literature on moral problems
and international relations and shows some of the concerns that contemporary realists,
constructivists, and just war theorists share.
Scholars in these traditions differ considerably in emphasis. Realists typically mini-
mize the importance of any form of morality to their scholarship and instead focus on
structural or institutional mechanisms that restrain war’s violence. Constructivists under-
stand the importance of norms, but with few exceptions generally deny that there is any
fixed human nature or structural imperative that stands in the way of restraining war’s
violence. Just war theorists come to the subject matter with a set of explicitly moral
standards and criteria, but often lack an explanation of how to practically convince mili-
tary and political authorities that their theoretical restraints are the ones worth enshrining
in law and policy.
We turn to Burke and Clausewitz for two main reasons: first, they serve as a bridge
between two traditions of thinking that largely disagree. Burke is commonly labeled a
just war (or even holy war) thinker, while Clausewitz falls squarely in the realist tradi-
tion (Armitage, 2000; Paret, 1992; Welsh, 1995). We hope to show one of the principal
ways that just war and realist thinkers historically align—on the virtues, character
traits, and institutions necessary for the restraint of war’s conduct (Coates, 1997: 33–37).
Second, Burke and Clausewitz agree that the French Revolution’s ideas and institu-
tions undermined restraint in great power war. Although these authors differed some-
what in their diagnosis of how democratic styles of thinking and practice affect the
nature of war, they concurred in their wariness of the consequences mass mobilization
would bring without proper limits on war and human passions. The troubling tendency
among mass revolutionary movements was and remains the difficulty of restraining
them. This lack of restraint, if combined with mass mobilization, could lead to tremen-
dous violence.
The escalation of political rhetoric embodied by the French Revolution was exacer-
bated by parallel technological and bureaucratic advancements such as the leveé-en-
mass, standardization of weaponry, and improvements in food and medical care. For
Burke and Clausewitz, these mass armies were more durable and destructive killing
machines. This abandonment of the traditional limits meant that these mass armies
served the interests of revolutionary leaders and could be used to achieve their increas-
ingly ambitious ends. Whereas a tyrant from ages past would ultimately lose favor or be
To continue reading
Request your trial