Benoît
Chantre (Paris)
Clausewitz
and Girard: War Understood as a Duel
My presentation will seek to show that contemporary new forms of conflict, far from making the Clausewitzian conception of war as a "duel" obsolete, on the contrary show it to be their most powerful explanation. The Clausewitzian concept of war presents us with a paradox: how can we understand the object of study at the very moment it becomes inaccessible to reason? Far more than the thinker of the "decisive battle," Clausewitz is the thinker of the uncontrollability of war. Today, then, he should be known for having understood "war without limits," that is to say a war in which each of the two adversaries never stop accusing the other of having started hostilities. What are these “new wars” if not asymmetrical wars (opposing a master and a slave) and reciprocal wars (each of the warring parties being master and slave at the same time)?
Within a Girardian framework, I will attempt to show that the impossiblity of forgiveness bears witness, in its very exaggeration, to a fundamental kind of denial: that of the Gospels which reveal that we are always the ones who throw the first stone. It is this refusal of the Christian insight which, in the name of the victims themselves, results in increasing numbers of victims. The paradox is as follows: the revealed innocence of all scapegoats has caused a growing instrumentalization of and a constant increase in victims. Only the recognition of this denial, because it goes to the heart of the victimary mechanism, could open up a path to reconciliation. Girard’s interpretation of Clausewitz provides us with the formula of modern wars, suggesting to us the urgency of a moral choice. Morality is a symmetrical relationship (relating one subject to another subject) and irreversible (whereas the master-slave relationship necessarily will be transformed into the service of the servant). The moral relationship, therefore, reveals the negative reciprocity at work in relations of war.
