Clausewitzean Micropolitics
A few days ago in Confirmation and Disconfirmation in History I quoted a passage from Clausewitz’s On War regarding the final decision of combat, which Clausewitz regarded as never truly finished:
Lastly, even the final decision of a whole war is not always to be regarded as absolute. The conquered state often sees in it only a passing evil, which may be repaired in after times by means of political combinations. How much this also must modify the degree of tension and the vigour of the efforts made is evident in itself. (On War, Bk. 1, Ch. 1, sec. 9)
This follows from the political conception of war: if war and politics are continuous, then the transition from armed hostilities to “peaceful” negotiation or even cooperation is simply the transition to a different form of struggle.
While Clausewitz made this claim for the political entities current in his time (that is to say, his analysis concerned the macro-politics of nation-states), it is equally true of the micro-politics of relationships between individuals.
Probably everyone reading this has known individuals who insist on causing confrontations, and who believes that “having it out” in a face-to-face confrontation will resolve matters that cannot be resolved by other means. In fact, this presupposition is the basis of most Western legal systems, which rely on a dramatic face-to-face confrontation between accuser and accused in a courtroom. (Other cultures and other civilizations have and had legal systems that do not involve this proxy courtroom battle.)
Most rational people learn fairly early in life that, while an open confrontation may settle a conflict, it does not necessarily settle a conflict. In other words, an open conflict only settles a dispute when the parties to that dispute (implicitly or explicitly) accept the convention that the result of combat will settle a dispute. This is a perfectly rational decision procedure, whether between individuals, nation-states, or civilizations. But it is not the only decision procedure.
If you feel strongly about your cause (whether that cause be your individual interests or those of a nation-state) you will refuse to accept a convention that acknowledges your defeat. You may be forced under duress to accept temporary defeat, but as soon as you are free to pursue your own purposes, you will return to the pursuit of your interests, even if it leads to another open conflict. If one open conflict can be survived, so can a second, and so forth.
Thus you may lose a fistfight in a alleyway, and the victor of that fight may enjoy for the moment his tawdry triumph, but as long as you are still alive (or any loyal representative who will treat your interests as their own), the contest is not yet settled, and it will not be settled until both sides have agreed that it is over.
This idea of the continuity of conflict is formalized in the tradition of vendetta. Those cultures that recognize the vendetta as a conventional feature of social interaction recognize that “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” This is Clausewitzean micro-politics par excellence.
