The assumptions of cohesion and symmetry do not in any way weaken the concept of the two-struggle.
This certainly seems to be true for Clausewitz, as both metaphors he uses when introducing the concept, wrestling and dueling, are symmetrical.3 Clausewitz was an observer of the Napoleonic wars after all, and so his natural focus would be on regular armies maneuvering directly against each other. Moreover, while belligerents in the two-struggle may have different strategic objectives and may employ different capabilities in different ways, the Zweikampf is essentially symmetrical in that both belligerents are attempting to get their way by applying force directly against the other. This, of course, leads to Sunzi’s notion of attacking alliances and Boyd’s of attacking cohesion. Once we involve more than a single actor on each side, however, we find ourselves dealing with alliances or coalitions of various sorts-whether between states, within states, or among actors of any kind. The Zweikampf implies cohesion within each fighter and symmetry between fighters. It also argues that this way of thinking about war is foundational for, and may even be distinctive to, Marines. 2, “The Zweikampf Dynamic,” ( MCG Oct 2020), argues that the two-struggle is inherently nonlinear and that that nonlinearity makes war fundamentally uncertain, unpredictable, and frictional.
Instead, the enemy is an intelligent will that does everything in its power to achieve its own objectives. A critical insight of the term is that it is a serious mistake to think of the enemy as an inanimate object to be acted upon like an anesthetized surgery patient-a seemingly obvious point that has been violated repeatedly throughout history.
#Proxie models stealth infantry trial#
In Clausewitz’s time, the term Zweikampf was used to describe wrestling matches, duels, trial by combat,2 and even the fights between Achilles and Hector before the walls of Troy. Warfighting steals a page from Clausewitz’s On War by proposing the Zweikampf, or “two-struggle,” as the essential, universal definition of war.1 It defines war as a violent clash between two independent and hostile wills-each trying to impose itself upon the other by force and constrained only by its own limits and the countervailing efforts of the other.
0 kommentar(er)
