My Take | What Clausewitz teaches about de-escalating conflicts

The escalation of conflicts is pervasive in human affairs. This may be because people have trouble living together and accepting each other. Conflicts are inherent in social interactions. The simmering underlying tensions that burst through the surface in Hong Kong with the violent anti-government protests of 2019 have been an eye-opening if highly disturbing experience for many locals.

But escalation is not just about politics or war. Conflicts can escalate between couples, colleagues and any number of groups. It could even be within the same person, say, in terms of a conflict of internal values and interests, and that can seriously disturb one’s psychological equilibrium. What intrigues me is how conflicts can get out of hand, but often not. Something pulls them back before ultimate disaster.

Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general who fought Napoleon, wrote On War during the Restoration period. The book is sometimes called the West’s answer to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. It is all about escalation, so it could just as well be called, perhaps even more directly, to state its main theme, On Escalation.

While for a time, Sun Tzu was one of Wall Street’s favourite authors, traders at investment houses in Germany, I was told by one of them, read Clausewitz. Go figure!

But I think anyone can and should read some Clausewitz. Unlike impenetrable German writers such as Hegel, Spengler and Kant, reading On War is a breeze, despite its formidable reputation. It’s especially good if you are into specific battles of Napoleon’s such as those at Jena, Austerlitz and Borodino; or those of the Punic wars, say, between Scipio and Hannibal (no, not Lecter).

But above all, Clausewitz doesn’t teach or advocate escalation until there is total war and complete annihilation, a British myth or misinterpretation perpetuated by such writers as the military historian Liddell Hart after the first world war. Rather, he teaches what stops escalation and reverses it. That to me is the universal message of Clausewitz.