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CHAPTER FOUR

LIMITED WAR AND MARITIME EMPIRES—­

Development of Clausewitz’s and Jomini’s
Theory of a Limited Territorial Object, and Its
Application to Modern Imperial Conditions

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The German war plans already cited, which were based respectively on the occupation of Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, and Jomini’s remarks on Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign serve well to show the point to which continental strategists have advanced along the road which Clausewitz was the first to indicate clearly.  We have now to consider its application to modern imperial conditions, and above all where the maritime element forcibly asserts itself.  We shall then see how small that advance has been compared with its far-reaching effects for a maritime and above all an insular Power.

It is clear that Clausewitz himself never apprehended the full significance of his brilliant theory.  His outlook was still purely continental, and the limitations of continental warfare tend to veil the fuller meaning of the principle he had framed.  Had he lived, there is little doubt he would have worked it out to its logical conclusion, but his death condemned his theory of limited war to remain in the inchoate condition in which he had left it.

It will be observed, as was natural enough, that all through his work Clausewitz had in his mind war between two contiguous or at least adjacent continental States, and a moment’s consideration will show that in that type of war the principle of the limited object can rarely if ever assert itself in perfect precision.  Clausewitz himself put it quite clearly.  Assuming a case where “the overthrow of the enemy”—­that is, unlimited war—­is beyond our strength, he points out that we need not therefore necessarily act on the defensive.  Our action may still be positive and offensive, but the object can be nothing more than “the conquest of part of the enemy’s country.”  Such a conquest he knew might so far weaken your enemy or strengthen your own position as to enable you to secure a satisfactory peace.  The path of history is indeed strewn with such cases.  But he was careful to point out that such a form of war was open to the gravest objections.  Once you had occupied the territory you aimed at, your offensive action was, as a rule, arrested.  A defensive attitude had to be assumed, and such an arrest of offensive action he had previously shown was inherently vicious, if only for moral reasons.  Added to this you might find that in your effort to occupy the territorial object you had so irretrievably separated your striking force from your home-defence force as to be in no position to meet your enemy if he was able to retort by acting on unlimited lines with a stroke at your heart.  A case in point was the Austerlitz campaign, where Austria’s object was to wrest North Italy from Napoleon’s empire.  She sent her main army under the Archduke Charles to seize the territory she desired.  Napoleon immediately struck at Vienna, destroyed her home army, and occupied the capital before the Archduke could turn to bar his way.