Shooting down a drone usually doesn't do it partly because of the political implications: it would be deeply unpopular to put "boots on the ground" over a shot-down drone.
> if there is no political goal, there will be no war
In Clausewitz, this is more of a normative statement than a rule about war in reality. One of the things he's trying to caution against is the escalatory dynamic that he views as inherent to purely military logic – that war (in a vacuum, so to speak) will always increase in intensity. But in reality, certain factors can and should ameliorate this inexorable escalation – political goals, "friction," and the "fog of war" are examples. War without the control of a political goal will be ceaselessly increasing destruction to the point of purposelessness. This is one reason why we insist on civilian control of the military, because we do not wish for an independent general staff to be prosecuting a war according solely to war's inner logic.
It's possible that even if Russia intentionally downed a US jet, it would not immediately trigger a war. The US would likely add more sanctions, but they would probably show incredible restraint as well.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/21/us-war-crimes-yemen-stop...
https://news.usni.org/2016/10/11/uss-mason-fired-3-missiles-...
https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2020/03/houthis-incr...
This isn't to dispute evidence of US war crimes, to be clear, but claiming the Houthis have just been doing nothing in response does not line up with the overwhelming evidence.
This is synonymous with a political goal. War is politics by other means. The dirty secret under that being most wars democracies engage in are publicly supported, at least at the outset.
Somehow I doubt a war would start if a NATO ally would be attacked. Perhaps if invaded but not if attacked. And it’s not the US i don’t trust, it’s continental western europe. It lacks the military and the economy to carry out a war against any country with a bit of power. Continental Western Europe has already proven a lack of will and capacity. Wars in eastern europe are cataclismic events and the only country that can survive and potentially win is the US and the countries in the region if well armed and properly motivated.
Therefore, as soon as a NATO country is attacked, west europe will claim tough luck, pull back and appease. The US won’t want to do it alone - and rightfully so. Putin knows this and is marching on. The cost of invasion for him and Russia is negligible - if anything it’s a net positive, as he now knows what his army lacks and it exposed those in his ranks that need replacement.
Worth noting is that Clausewitz lived in a world where wars were events that were declared between states.
Today a major difference is insurgency/counterinsurgency. And our state likes to wage wars without formal declaration. Not to mention its wars against abstract concepts instead of foreign states.
This really well fits what Russian gov does (as someone from there).
I actually think every offensive war is explained by concepts because people don't want to just kill people, they need a higher explanation to risk death and sleep at night after some murdering. It is in the name of religion or unification or against Nazism or against rotting capitalism. Only true defence doesn't need explanation.
ok but I am pretty sure the OP was talking about the US's politically-motivated forever wars on nouns, the "War on Some Drugs" and the "War on Terror But Not The Causes Of Or Allies Hosting Terror".
Sort of. Born 1780, died 1831, the main wars in his life were the Napoleonic Wars.
But he would not have been unfamiliar with the Wars of Religion that convulsed Europe for 150 years following Luther's Protestant Reformation and culminated in the Peace of Westphalia. These we not regular state-on-state wars, but were a series of internationalized civil wars, caused by Protestant and Catholic low-level violence, coups, usurpations, overthrows, assassinations, and other civil conflicts. These low-level conflicts caused by non-state actors who were part of a transnational religious/ideological movement were not unlike the religious/ideological insurgencies we see today.
Clausewitz would also have seen wars of colonization/imperialism and decolonization in the New World. These were also wars of states against irregular non-state combatants. Especially after the Napoleonic Wars, when the Concert of Europe was keeping stability in Europe, the main form of warfare Clausewitz would have been observing would have been wars of colonization/decolonization.
The political goal of a war is one part, which the governments are trying to achieve. But once the bullets start flying, there is also the anger, rage, and passions of the people as their relatives come home dead, maimed, or hurt. And finally there is the interplay of chance and luck, which the military leadership has to leverage through skilled command. To Clausewitz, war is a trinity of these things, not “the continuation of politics by other means.”
He does also go into the “cost of the object.” Whereby not every war goal is necessarily worth mobilizing the entire society and fighting an existential fight. And when the cost of achieving the goal exceeds its worth, nations will come to the table and negotiate peace.
Supposedly there are political implications for not responding to the shooting down the drone too. How are those taken into account I wander?
It seems that there is a deep believe in the US that if they wouldn’t “provoke” then russia would not attack as it would not have a reason to do it.
While I understand the logic it is still a very serious and dangerous miscalculation because “provocation” happens within russian head independently of the reality. russia can simply claim it was provoked/attacked by NATO so I really do not understand how “trying not to escalate to avoid provoking” works as deterrence.
From what I observed it doesn’t and only gives green light message to russian aggression and this could be hardly seen as a desirable political goal for US as I understand.
Your description is also not factually correct considering multiple revolutions in Ukraine that tried to set the course toward NATO and EU but you have to also take into account that Ukraine is also too important for Russia and Ukraine was actively attacked by Russian intelligence services and finally direct war against Ukraine in 2014 to prevent it joining NATO.
We should also take into account deceptive manipulations by the West like the Budapest memorandum that created an impression of false security.
But even regardless of this, not supporting Ukraine would be incredibly dumb move for US that will seriously hurt its geopolitical position. War in Ukraine, multiple coups in Africa, Hamas attack on Israel, now these attacks on ships.
Look to where just cowardly moving out of Afghanistan has taken us.
Another humiliating retreat would be a colossal blow to US.
Another humiliating retreat would be a colossal blow to US."
It's not about humiliation at this point. The US actually cannot beat these countries straight up in a shooting war anymore. The combination of post-Cold War deindustrialization, the lack of morale after 2 decades of fruitless wars, and the politicization of the military reducing its appeal to its traditional recruits, especially in the rank-and-file, have shown their fruits in the collapse of American deterrence ability in the 2020s. Russia wouldn't have dared to attack Ukraine in the first place if the US was stronger, and NATO's performance has only been good enough to avoid Russia steamrolling Ukraine, not to significantly retake Russia's gains. Russia can make more artillery shells than NATO combined. Ukraine is even more at risk now that the West's attention has wandered to the Middle East, endangering the aid that's kept them in the war so far.
Some would blame this on the current president, but I think the rot is much broader and deeper. If there is a future of the American military, it will probably consist of Anduril taking it over.
But yes, Russia seems to use this "poking" tactic quite often, trying to provoke a response.
Are you talking about the drone or NATO adding Ukraine?
The funny thing about reality is there is none except our own observations. Not to get too philosophical, but Russians "reality in their heads" is exactly what everyone experiences.
Claiming "I was provoked" as justification means some arbitrary line was crossed. That line will be different for you and me, and as such it's not an objective measure. Ergo, it is disconnected from the objective reality of the situation, and much more connected to the subjective interpretation of the situation.