When the war in Iran was about to turn five weeks old, on April 1, the American site The Debrief published an interview on the subject conducted using artificial intelligence (AI) with a long-dead general.

Instead of the great military strategists such as Napoleon Bonaparte, William Tecumseh Sherman or Erwin Rommel, the chosen one was a Prussian who in life did not enjoy a fame comparable to that of the first three.

Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) did not imprint his vision on every aspect of the art of war like Napoleon, he did not expand the limits of military action like Sherman, and much less was he an operational genius of the stature of Rommel.

However, when it comes to reflecting in theoretical - and for some, even philosophical - terms on war, Clausewitz's legacy eclipses that of others.

That is why, every time a major conflict shakes the world, his name and ideas are remembered.

The director of the Academy of the General Staff of the German Armed Forces, Beatrice Heuser, considers that the interest in Clausewitz is a sign of the validity of his thought.

“Clausewitz is still read today because he was the first person to write about war not from the point of view of ethics or theology, nor with the aim of providing a manual of principles of war: if you do X, Y or Z, you will win the battle,” says Heuser, in an interview with BBC News Brazil.

“Their goal was simply to reflect on war in order to better understand the phenomenon and draw insights from it about its nature and the way it is influenced by politics.”

Your concepts

Unlike the authors who preceded him, this soldier, born into a noble family from Burg bei Magdeburg, in the kingdom of Prussia, considered war as a discipline with its own resources and laws, whose objective is to force the defeated to act in accordance with the victor's designs.

Clausewitz's thought influenced everyone from the Duke of Wellington to the American executive Jack Welch, including the Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin, the French philosopher Raymond Aron and the American Nobel Prize winner in economics Thomas Schelling.

“Clausewitz provides the only coherent conceptual framework to analyze the relationship between war activity, war capacity and the demands of a society or a group in interaction with other groups and societies with which they may enter into conflict,” says Eugenio Diniz, coordinator of the Observatory of Military Capabilities and Defense Policies.

The questions posed by The Debrief give insight into why a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars may be relevant in the analysis of a conflict fought with ballistic missiles and drones.

“How should we judge the decision of the United States and Israel to go to war against Iran?”, “What do you think about the stated war goals of the United States and Israel?” and “What are the strategic successes that the United States and Israel have achieved so far?” were some of the questions for which the chatbot simulated answers based on the writings of and about Clausewitz.

“The fact that we try to understand what the United States' objectives were in the war is largely due to the fact that we have learned at least something from the old Prussian Clausewitz,” says Sandro Teixeira Moita, professor of Military Sciences at the Brazilian Army Command and General Staff School (Eceme).

The researcher maintains that, while it seems easy to identify Iranian and Israeli targets, the same cannot be said for the Americans.

"Is the American objective to contain China? Create problems for Europe? Dominate Iran? Take control of another source of energy in the world and, with it, more than 60% of world oil production?" he asks.

“The mere fact of listing all these reasons already shows that we are not sure what the United States' strategy is in this conflict,” he adds.

Hew Strachan, professor of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, in Edinburgh (Scotland), states that, although in his book “On War” Clausewitz reflects the experience of the early 19th century, his objective was to understand “war as a phenomenon.”

"Because he looked at war not from a technological perspective, but from a social and political perspective, he was able to say things that are still relevant today. He raised questions rather than offering superficial answers."

Days after the publication of the interview in The Debrief, the British magazine The Economist published an image of a bombing on Iran on its cover with the title “A war without strategy.”

Derived from Greek, the word strategy literally means command of the army.

Clausewitz uses the term to designate the central competence of the military leader: leading his forces towards the achievement of certain objectives.

Summaries of his thought invariably begin with a famous definition of war.

The Prussian writes: “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means” (free translation from the German “Der Krieg ist eine blosse Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln”).

The phrase is found in his book “On War”, which he left unfinished and was edited and published posthumously by his widow, Marie von Clausewitz, in 1832.

Strachan states that the central idea of ​​the book is “the impact of strategy as a way of conducting war.”

"Clausewitz defined strategy as the use of battle for the purposes of war. He famously said that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Neither the United States nor Israel seem to have a coherent strategy according to those criteria, but Iran does," he maintains.

“Goals can change during conflict”

Pointing out the difficulties of analysis based on existing information, Diniz makes a different assessment.

For the researcher, Iran has been “dramatically weakened,” Israel is “quite strengthened at the regional level” and the United States, “at least for now, is, from the point of view of the relevant balances of power, significantly strengthened.”

“The most difficult thing is to know what will happen to the Iranian regime: although it apparently has not been overthrown, there are strong indications of a chaotic environment, and that, in fact, it would no longer function according to the model it had before the end of February,” he adds.

Emphasizing that he is not referring specifically to the Iran war, but to any conflict, Heuser highlights the importance Clausewitz places on strategic clarity.

“In relation to any war, he [Clausewitz] says you shouldn't wage it unless you have a clear idea of ​​the purposes, what the objectives are, what you're trying to impose on the other side in terms of the purpose of the war, but you should also understand what the nature of the war is,” Hauser explains.

"Once the nature of war is understood in this way, is it limited? Are the purposes limited? Are they very broad? Are they unlimited? Is it a war in which the existence of a country is at stake, or simply the granting of a specific objective of a small fraction of territory or whatever?"

Contrary to what Clausewitz maintains, however, the researcher affirms that combatants can modify their own objectives throughout the conflict.

“I really think, unlike Clausewitz, that in a war it is possibly necessary to adjust the war objectives depending on what can be achieved and also what is discovered about the adversary,” says Hauser.

“Thus, from this point of view, Clausewitz's reflections may not apply to all wars.”

“Clausewitz's comments, that one must be completely sure of the purpose when starting out, or that it must be a purpose to hold on to during the war, are debatable, because you may have to change them in light of events and what you discover,” observes the researcher, who teaches courses on strategy and strategic studies at the Academy of the General Staff of the German Armed Forces.

It is significant that the concept of war as a continuation of politics is not the only important one in “On War” and in the rest of Clausewitz's work.