2 changes in government to support even Cited by Andrew Mackay, “Helmand new audiences. Stoker’s biography is 2007–2008: Behavioural Conflict,” inBritish a respectable role for the country in the also the result of a fruitful collabora- Generals in Blair’s Wars, ed. Jonathan Bailey, most likely of scenarios. Richard Irons, and Hew Strachan (Burlington tion with Vanya Eftimova Bellinger, the What makes Ucko and Egnell’s VT: Ashgate 2013), 261. first historian to publish a biography in work unique and invaluable is its take 3 See the chapter titled “Cracking On: English about Clausewitz’s formidable on future missions and its evaluation of British Military Culture and Doctrine” in Frank wife and intellectual partner, Countess Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars: British Military options for British policy planners. Given Marie von Brühl. Together, Stoker Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan (New Haven: the reduced resources and the experi- Yale University Press, 2011). and Bellinger mined a treasure trove of ences of the last decade, they concisely recently rediscovered correspondence examine the merits of scaling down between Carl and Marie held in Germany British contributions to niche invest- by the couple’s descendants. Stoker ments, employment of more indirect sprinkles this correspondence throughout approaches, and greater burden-sharing his work, and it provides great value in with regional organizations. The authors understanding Clausewitz as he confides are doubtful that these approaches will his innermost thoughts to his soulmate, meet British political objectives, noting the woman who took his unfinished work that “strategic abstinence and ‘strategic and had it published. The author also selectivity’ are options fraught with a dif- uses Clausewitz’s own histories as well as ferent type of risk, particularly for a state those of his contemporaries (including with global expeditionary ambitions or Antoine-Henri de Jomini) to inform his when alliance commitments come into work, including recent English transla- play.” Given the U.S. ambitions and its tions of Clausewitz’s work such as that of role in the world, American strategists the Waterloo campaign by Christopher should take serious note of Ucko and Bassford. In addition to these primary Egnell’s conclusions. sources, Stoker uses the most recent and This is a serious and objective schol- cutting-edge Napoleonic scholarship on arly analysis of British strategic and key campaigns by Alexander Mikaberidze operational performance. The United and Michael Leggiere. States needs a similar assessment, as its Finally, there is the issue of accessibil- leaders and key decisionmakers have ity for new audiences. Stoker states that been less willing to come to grips with its his purpose for the book is to answer the own shortfalls in the council chambers of question “How did it come to be writ- government. Hopefully, someone in the ten?” The reader learns that from the age United States will take up the challenge Clausewitz: His Life and Work of 11 until his death in 1831 at the age of of writing a similar book about U.S. stra- 51, Clausewitz served first and foremost By Donald Stoker tegic performance. as a soldier. This speaks to the book’s ap- Oxford University Press, 2014 Because of its objective analysis and peal to military professionals. Stoker has 354 pp. $27.99 solid scholarship, Counterinsurgency in made Clausewitz more accessible to the ISBN: 978-0199357949 Crisis is recommended to professionals military professionals of today by putting in the transatlantic community interested Reviewed by John T. Kuehn him into the context of his times as a in strategic studies, civil-military rela- long-serving soldier—including his disap- tions, military history, and contemporary pointments, frustrations, and personal conflict. JFQ onald Stoker, a professor of experiences with cold, heat, thirst, and strategy and policy at the Naval danger—providing additive credibility D Postgraduate School, has written and a human dimension. Readers meet a Dr. F.G. Hoffman is a Senior Research Fellow what could be labeled a military biogra- human Clausewitz who felt pain, hunger, in the Center for Strategic Research, Institute for National Strategic Studies, at the National phy of . One might and loneliness, experienced setbacks, and Defense University. reasonably ask why a biography of the struggled with chronic ailments such as Prussian general and military theorist is gout and arthritis throughout his life. necessary, given Peter Paret’s towering Readers will also discover in detail Notes intellectual biography Clausewitz and Clausewitz’s participation in some of the the State (Princeton University Press, most famous campaigns of the French 1 Alexander Alderson, “Counter-insurgency: 1985). and , including Russia Learn and Adapt? Can We Do Better,” The British Army Review, no. 142, Summer 2007. The answer is threefold: new sources, in 1812 and Waterloo in 1815, as well as new scholarship, and accessibility for some of the more obscure battles. These

JFQ 81, 2nd Quarter 2016 Book Reviews 125 include formative experiences fighting the Kriegsakademie (the Prussian mili- is where it is on mine. This book is abso- limited and even irregular war as an tary academy) in Berlin. Stoker suggests lutely essential for military and security adolescent in the 1790s, and serving as a that Clausewitz, his life-long desire for a professionals, and deserves as broad an de facto chief of staff to a multinational major accomplishment in war and com- educated readership as possible. JFQ corps in the little-known northwestern bat stymied, turned to his meisterwerk German theater in 1813. Readers will as an outlet. Clausewitz, as one of the find of particular interest the chapter Prussian reformers, could do little else Commander John T. Kuehn, USN (Ret.), Ph.D., is the Major General William Stofft Professor titled “The Road to Taurrogen (1812),” in the reactionary political environment of Military History at the U.S. Army Command which serves as the median of the book. that prevented him—and his mentor and General Staff College. His latest book is Stoker argues, correctly in this reviewer’s Gneisenau—from exerting real influ- Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns (Praeger, 2015). assessment, that Clausewitz’s greatest ence in the Prussian military and state. historical triumph was achieved as an of- Stoker argues that this, in fact, resulted ficer in the Russian army at this obscure in a far greater and lasting triumph: Lithuanian village where he served as an “The fame Clausewitz hoped to win for agent for the Prusso-German uprising himself—with sword in hand—he won against in the wake of the di- with his pen” (287). Stoker also manages sastrous Russian campaign. to skillfully avoid becoming mired in the It is, however, Clausewitz’s great major Clausewitz “controversies,” while intellectual triumph, On War, that still making the reader aware of them and permeates the book, as well it should. adding value to those debates. For exam- Stoker does a commendable job of inter- ple, on the issue of just how finished On weaving and referring to the evolution War really was, Stoker writes, “In reality of Clausewitz’s key ideas on war, includ- we simply don’t know how complete On ing friction (48, 101), center of gravity War truly is, and this is a question that (100), and defense, including the idea of cannot be definitively answered because “political defense” (97). All of this oc- we know that Clausewitz never finished curs against the backdrop of Clausewitz’s the book” (264). Readers can draw their life as a professional soldier who, at the own conclusions. My own position is that same time, was developing into a impres- had Clausewitz died at the ripe old age of sive military intellectual, historian, and 80, the manuscript would still have been theorist. For example, Stoker highlights sitting in his closet unpublished. Had Clausewitz’s early writing on the rela- he outlived his devoted wife, Marie, we tionship between war and policy in his might never have seen it. treatise Strategie in the period between Although a very well-written book, Prussia’s wars with France from 1796 there are a number of discontinui- until 1806. The Clausewitz revealed here ties. For example, the larger historical Superforecasting: The Art is the original ends-ways-means guru, narrative of the Napoleonic wars at and Science of Prediction and this emerges in spades in the writing times becomes desynchronized with By Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner that Stoker highlights. Furthermore, if a Clausewitz’s role in those events. This is Crown Publishing Group, 2015 man is to be judged by the character and especially true later in the book when the 352 pp. $20.51 esteem of his closest friends, Clausewitz reader is taken back in time as the allies ISBN: 978-0804136693 ranks high in this regard due to Gerhard prepared to drive on Paris in 1814, to von Scharnhorst and August Neidhardt the summer of 1813 when Clausewitz Reviewed by Michael J. Mazarr von Gneisenau, two giants of German assumed the role of chief of staff to the military history whom Stoker portrays as corps of General Count Ludwig von virtual foster fathers to Clausewitz. Wallmoden-Gimborn observing Marshal hilip Tetlock has worked for With the end of the Napoleonic Louis-Nicolas Davout in Hamburg. decades on the problem of judg- wars in 1815, Stoker moves into the However, these problems fade when P ment in national security affairs. endgame of the book, the lengthy penul- one considers the totality of what Stoker He became justly renowned for his timate chapter titled “The Sum of It All has accomplished in his book. For those book Expert Political Judgment: How (1813–1831),” which provides readers readers who want a clear and up-to-date Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princ- an excellent precis of Clausewitz’s major biography of Clausewitz as a soldier— eton University Press, 2006), which ideas as outlined in On War. Stoker does without myth and without excuse—I can demonstrated, among other things, this against the backdrop of the historical think of no better title to have on the that foreign policy experts were no framework of Clausewitz as director of bookshelf right next to On War, which more accurate in their forecasts than

126 Book Reviews JFQ 81, 2nd Quarter 2016