{"id":11714,"date":"2015-09-01T07:44:11","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T12:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11714"},"modified":"2015-09-01T07:44:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T12:44:11","slug":"ron-paul-and-lost-lessons-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11714","title":{"rendered":"Ron Paul and Lost Lessons of War"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/08\/31\/ron-paul-and-lost-lessons-of-war\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ron Paul and Lost Lessons of War<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"entry-meta\"><strong>Neocon dominance has grown so strong in Official Washington that old lessons about the hazards of ill-considered wars are forgotten and must be painfully relearned, a message from Ron Paul\u2019s new book,\u00a0<em>Swords into Plowshares<\/em>, as described by\u00a0retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<hr \/>\n<p>Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul lays out a national security strategy for the United States in his book,<em>Swords into Plowshares<\/em>, which Carl von Clausewitz , the author of\u00a0<em>On War<\/em>, would have approved. Clausewitz, a Prussian general in the early Nineteenth Century, is considered perhaps the West\u2019s most insightful strategist, and\u00a0<em>On War<\/em>\u00a0is his classic work on the inter-relationship between politics and war.<\/p>\n<p>A close reading of\u00a0<em>On War<\/em>\u00a0reveals a book far more on the strategy of statecraft, that is Grand Strategy, than it is on the mere strategy of warfare. Unfortunately, very few readers have understood that. Indeed, Clausewitz\u2019s target audience may have been principally civilian policy makers with his view that the political perspective must remain dominant over the military point of view in the conduct of war.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ronpaulnh.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6138\" src=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ronpaulnh-300x280.jpg?55ac53\" alt=\"Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, answering questions while campaigning in New Hampshire in 2008. (Photo credit: Bbsrock)\" width=\"300\" height=\"280\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Whether or not Ron Paul ever read Clausewitz,\u00a0<em>Swords into Plowshare\u00a0<\/em>restores a proper understanding of statecraft as Clausewitz understood it and today\u2019s American leaders fail to.<\/p>\n<p>Helmuth von Moltke, who became Chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, almost immediately misappropriated and reinterpreted\u00a0<em>On War<\/em>\u00a0for his own militaristic purposes. (Clausewitz died in 1831.) Moltke was followed in this in 1883, when Prussian General Count Colmar von der Goltz, later known as the Butcher of Belgium in World War I, while paying homage to Clausewitz, wrote\u00a0<em>The Nation in Arms<\/em>, a revision of Clausewitz\u2019s\u00a0<em>On War<\/em>\u00a0and its complete opposite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ron Paul and Lost Lessons of War Neocon dominance has grown so strong in Official Washington that old lessons about the hazards of ill-considered wars are forgotten and must be painfully relearned, a message from Ron Paul\u2019s new book,\u00a0Swords into Plowshares, as described by\u00a0retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce. Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul lays [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8618,6963,8616,525,8619,692,827,834,8617,862],"class_list":["post-11714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-carl-von-clausewitz","tag-consortium-news","tag-grand-strategy","tag-military","tag-on-war","tag-ron-paul","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-hegemon","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11715,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714\/revisions\/11715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}