Name: What would Sun Tzu and Clausewitz say about the Iran war? | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-03-04T17:32:25.000Z
Duration: 8 min 26 s
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Have you ever heard of the phrase war is the continuation of politics by other means?

How about appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak?

Basic passive voice

They were said by two of history's most well known military strategists.

The Prussian Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote the massive book titled on war in the 19th century, and

China's Sun Tzu, who lived more than 2,000 years earlier in the 5th century B.C.

But what does any of that have to do with the war in Iran?

Quite simply, generals around the world can never seem to stop quoting these two guys.

Today's top military leaders make decisions and often attribute their thinking to Clausewitz or Sun Tzu.

The two are taught in military academies around the world, including at West Point.

They actually contribute a lot to 21st century thinking about how to conduct war, why you'd want to start a war, or why or when you should stop.

We're going to look at the past few days of the Iran conflict with these two strategists in mind, with the help of Professor Hugh Strachan of the University of St.

He's a military historian who has served as advisor at defense institutions.

I started out by asking him what these two thinkers say about the nature of war.

The first thing is that Clausewitz would say does say is that insofar as war has its own dynamic, it tends to escalate.

It will logically go to extremes because killing people actually creates a division in terms of how we behave towards each other.

So you cannot assume that a war will remain limited in the way in which it's conducted.

He moderates that because obviously he allows for the possibility that policy will set limited objectives and that will constrain the war.

But he does not see war as limited of itself.

So it might be easy to start a war, but where it goes from there is anyone's guess.

US President Donald Trump has said he imagines the fighting could last four or five weeks.

And sure, Sun Tzu wrote about how speed is critical to war fighting.

But the Chinese philosopher also warned that the general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought.

Whether it was the intervention in Venezuela, which really nobody saw coming.

This buildup, of course, had to be more transparent because it took time to get the US Fleet and the aircraft carriers to the Gulf and so on.

Particularly a man who talked about peace, that he'd be ready to go on talking about peace rather than engage in a conflict.

You know, I think the real issue here is the United States does not have the capacity to sustain this over the long term.

And if the Iranians are still in the fight in two weeks time, then exactly where is the United States going to find a way out of this?

And in that case it would have been better to go on talking.

And even if there is a collapse of the regime and there is a provisional government of some sort installed in Iran within a two week window, and

precisely how is that provisional government to get legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people when it will be seen to have been imposed upon it or upon them from outside.

And so I don't see that as likely to produce a good answer or a good outcome.

It's very striking that the rhetoric coming out of the United States has been, well, this will be brief, it'll be limited.

That's obviously what they're trying to do, understandably having made the decision to go to war.

But that is not possibly in Iran's interests for it to be limited because this is now about the survival of the regime.

It's therefore an existential conflict and they have every interest in escalating it even at the expense of their immediate neighbors with the consequences that that might bring.

So if one side is fighting this as a limited engagement that is not existential.

Israel would see it I suspect is existential, but

the United States is not keen to then that is actually historically where the United States has got itself in trouble because it's not been prepared to commit the resources to a war that has become existential for its opponent.

Simply to limit the means you're using in this war when you have very open ended objectives, means actually you're going to over promise and under deliver.

I suspect, particularly when what you're trying to do is effectively remove the regime and have no clear idea about what a post Islamic republic structure would look like.

That's why there's been so much criticism of this war in the United States from both Democrats and Republicans.

Those old enough remember US adventurism in Iraq a generation earlier.

A war that most Americans today consider a disaster.

One of Clausius lines that was regularly quoted in 2003, both at the time and in the aftermath, especially by American commentators, was the advice where he says first judge the sort of war in which you're going to get engaged.

And I don't see much sign that there's been much attempt to think about that.

There's clearly been a desire to use both maritime and air power only, not to have boots on the ground, to have a devastating effect in short order model presumably on Israel's apparent success in using force with devastating effects in short order in relation to its neighbors since the October 2023 attacks.

I would, you know, and that may possibly deliver.

But experience suggests that's not how it's going to be.

And what Hugh told me is that taking on Iran will be a much bigger challenge than even attacking Iraq.

And Iran has actually presents a far greater problem than Iraq ever did.

And I think the real problem too here is that the, you know, I just, you know, the real problem in 2003 was not fully understanding the country being too reliant on Iraqi exiles for views about what the situation was in the country, not having a proper idea of what you were trying to create, having achieved a quick military victory.

And all the signs so far seem to me that those conditions continue to apply in a country that is much bigger, has a much greater sense of its own past than Iraq sees itself as, you know, a power that goes back 2, 3000 years to the pasture of Zeksky's virus and so on.

I don't see how this ends well, Hugh and frankly, many other security analysts over the past few days have said this, that the current conflict won't end well and that all countries involved face a lose, lose situation.

Well, I can't help it as a reporter covering international security and especially especially China to make this observation.

Something that Sun Tzu said, the best way to win a war is to do so without ever fighting.

DW News is covering this breaking news story, giving you the latest and also giving you deep dives on here and across the rest of social media.