Word: clausewitzian
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...necessity. When Neville Chamberlain declared ''peace for our time'' after Munich, he gave peacemakers a reputation for fatuous optimism and appeasement from which it took them years to recover. Philosophers of war since Hiroshima have taught, hopefully, that the nuclear threat has made armed conflict ultimately untenable as a Clausewitzian instrument (foreign policy that happens to kill) useful in settling disputes. But not everyone has absorbed the lesson. Among other things, war has an archetypal prestige and bristling drama with which peace has trouble competing: Milton's Lucifer in Paradise Lost is much more interesting than Milton...
...then asked if it was worth going to war to liberate Kuwait. It was a Clausewitzian question, which I posed so that the military would know what preparations it might have to make. I detected a chill in the room. The question was premature, and it should not have come from me. I had overstepped; I was only supposed to give military advice. Nevertheless, as National Security Adviser for Ronald Reagan, I had wrestled with the politics and economics of crises for almost two years in the White House, in this very room. I had participated in superpower summits. More...
...major change in international relations Eban does observe is the decreasing effectiveness of force as another form of diplomacy. The use of the military has been reduced from its Clausewitzian role to that of a primarily defensive one. Eban observes that since 1945 no nation has won a war it has initiated (excluding preemptive strikes against inevitable aggressors) although unexplainably he omits North Vietnam's attack on South Vietnam from the list. The causes of this change are numerous. The nuclear threat lurks ominously over many conflicts and world opinion and support has often come to the side...
Sadat was a visionary with a talent for astonishing; he had a Clausewitzian instinct ("For great aims, we must dare great things"). He was also a profound, serene fatalist-which may have been the secret of his equilibrium. Such fatalism might serve others well now. Since 1970, 22 heads of state or government have been assassinated. As Theologian Paul Tillich remarked: "Death has become powerful in our time." -By Lance Morrow
Maneuvering the bill toward Senate passage through an obstacle course of conservative opposition and a labyrinth of parliamentary rules was a Clausewitzian tactical feat executed by a most improbable general-Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. Long opposed to open-housing legislation, Dirksen lately reversed his field and joined up with the Republican-Democratic liberal coalition (TIME, March...