Attack and Defence
I have left to the last the consideration of three or four disputed points in Clausewitz. In considering these I shall quote a good deal from General von Caemmerer's "Development of Strategical Science," as in such matters it is best to quote the most recent authors of established reputation.
The most important of these, and the most disputed, is Clausewitz's famous dictum that "the defensive is the stronger form of making war." "The defence is the stronger form of war with a negative object; the attack is the weaker form with a positive object."[66]
General von Caemmerer says, "It is strange, we Germans look upon Clausewitz as indisputably the deepest and acutest thinker upon the subject of war; the beneficial effect of his intellectual labours is universally recognized and highly appreciated; but the more or less keen opposition against this sentence never ceases. And yet that sentence can as little be cut out of his work 'On War' as the heart out of a man. Our most distinguished and prominent military writers are here at variance with Clausewitz.
"Now, of course, I do not here propose to go into such a controversy. I only wish to point out that Clausewitz, in saying this, only meant the defensive-offensive, the form in which he always regards it, both strategically and technically, in oft-repeated explanations all through his works. For instance—
"It is a FIRST maxim NEVER to remain perfectly passive, but to fall upon the enemy in front and flank, even when he is in the act of making an attack upon us."[67]
And again—
"A swift and vigorous assumption of the offensive—the flashing sword of vengeance—is the most brilliant point in the defensive. He who does not at once think of it at the right moment, or rather he who does not from the first include this transition in his idea of the defensive, will never understand its superiority as a form of war."[68] Von Caemmerer comments thus: "And this conception of the defence by Clausewitz has become part and parcel of our army—everywhere, strategically and tactically, he who has been forced into a defensive attitude at once thinks how he can arrange a counter-attack. I am thus unable to see how the way in which Clausewitz has contrasted Attack and Defence could in any way paralyse the spirit of enterprise." Von Caemmerer also justly remarks that, as Clausewitz always insisted both in strategy and tactics, neither Attack nor Defence is pure, but oscillates between the two forms; and as the Attack is frequently temporarily reduced to defend itself, and also as no nation can be sure of never being invaded by a superior coalition, it is most desirable to encourage a belief in the strength of the Defence, if properly used. In this I think that Wellington would probably have agreed. Certainly Austerlitz and Waterloo were examples of battles such as Clausewitz preferred.
Still, one must admit that Clausewitz's chapter on "The Relations of the Offensive and Defensive to each other in Tactics," Book VII. Chapter 2, is the least convincing chapter of his work.
Strategically, the argument is stronger. It always seems to me that we must remember that Clausewitz had taken part in the defensive-offensive in its strongest, most absolute and unlimited form, on the greatest possible scale—the Moscow campaign and the ruin (consummated before a single flake of snow fell) of the Grand Army. If he had lived to complete the revision of his works, it always seems to me that he would have made his theory undeniable by stating that the defensive is the strongest form of war, if unlimited by space. What, for instance, would have happened if the Japanese had tried to march through Siberia on to St. Petersburg?
But, after all, which of the two is absolutely the stronger form of war, attack or defence, is merely a theoretical abstraction, for, practically, the choice is always settled for us by the pressing necessity of circumstances. And, in this connection, let us always bear in mind Clausewitz's dictum: "A swift and vigorous assumption of the offensive—the flashing sword of vengeance—is the most brilliant point in the defensive."