Each war represents an isolated case, requiring an understanding
Alexander Svechin
of its own particular logic, its own unique character.
Some compare the game of chess to the art of war. As a generality, the comparison is spurious. Chess is a game. War is for real. You can walk away from chess. You cannot walk away from war. The geography of chess is always the same. The geography of war is never the same. The rules of chess are enforceable and never vary. War has no enforceable rules, although it does have constants. Chess and war are incomparable just as science and religion are incomparable. Each has its use in its realm. There are commonalities, even similarities, but there is no identity between the game of chess and the art of war.
Note please that, of all the nations of the world, only Russia has will clean and means military sufficient to oppose successfully the inconsolable greed and adamantine arrogance of the American Foreign Policy Establishment comprising atheistic derivatives of Ashkenazy Jews, Anglicans, and Jesuits.
Tactics, Operations, and Strategics are practiced and understood — although their political geo-strategics less so — and are not, therefore, my focus here. Furthermore, my learning regarding these three is from books and speech, not direct experience.
Here I want to examine the Spiritual and Theological dimensions of the art war. Of these I have direct experience as well as learning from book and speech. War itself is an art, meaning, among other things, that war uplifts when conducted as a profession and degrades when conducted as a passion.
“By long years of military experience [Kutuzov] knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that it is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands of others struggling with death, and he knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannons or of slaughtered men, but by the intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in his power.”
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book 10, Chapter 35
The word spirit is English for Latin spiritus. Its counterpart in Hebrew is nephesh. In Greek, the counterpart is pneuma. For each, the gross meaning is wind while the subtle meaning is breath in the sense of that which measures aliveness.
When he has breath in his lungs, a man is alive. When he stops breathing with his lungs, a man is dead. The presence of breath or not in their lungs is the objective measure of the presence of life or death in a human or animal body.
But there is also breath of the heart, and it too is spirit. Love is the wind, the breath of the heart. Love’s first compliment is self-confidence. Self-confidence is the minimum requirement for a man’s heart to be in a condition to support life, which is to say, able to love and be loved. His self-confidence is the objective measure of the condition — alive or dead — of a man’s heart.
Out of self-confidence means a man is out of love and dead from not breathing with his heart. In self-confidence means a man is able to build a life for himself and others because his heart breathes. A self-confident man is known as a good neighbor.
A man whose heart breathes very well, in fact brims with love, has self-satisfaction. He is known as a leader, revered, whose advice is sought and implemented.
A man whose heart breathes superbly well, abundantly and selflessly, and without interruption, a man in whose presence others feel a transcendent presence as of divinity, such a man has self-sacrifice. This man is known as a hero. His powers are great though not endless. A mere glance from his eye can transport one into ecstasy and another into an inferno of self-destructive rage.
Armies comprise good neighbors, leaders, and heroes. These are the breath of armies, lung and heart, their spirit. Rank does not automatically distribute good neighbors, leaders, and heroes to where they are needed to effect an army’s mission. It may be said, however, that the more an army’s senior NCO and Officer echelons comprise leaders and heroes — men and women full of self-satisfaction and self-sacrifice — the easier and sooner, and least costly, will be that army success.
Self-confidence, self-satisfaction, and self-sacrifice are cumulative forces. The army who loves the most, the army who has the most leaders and heroes, this army has the best spirit. The army who breathes to the fullest and deepest, this army is the victor in battle and war.
Luther describes the most desirable condition of men, including as an army, as Ob Sie Christum Treiben: that inclination of breathing in lungs and heart which moves homewards towards Christ. Such a spirit embodies the grandeur of God. It inspires an army with the same benediction.
Ultimately, an army rides on their spirited devotion to Almighty God. When embodied, an army’s love transcends itself in favor of its members’ spouses and children, family and town, country and nation, humanity and all creatures. For, these are all clothes God wears for parts of the plays he writes, produces, and enacts.
Thus, clergy bring religious relics and liturgies onto the fields of conflict to be venerated and adored by Soldiers. And to console them with reminders of the transcendent unity of power and meaning.
The Spiritual dimension of the art of war is where power and meaning unite.
This describes the Spiritual dimension of the art of war.
In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass and some unknown x. … That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are not, fighting under the command of a genius, in two—or three-line formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous conditions for fighting. … The spirit of an army is the factor, which multiplied by the mass gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this unknown factor – the spirit of an army – is a problem for science.
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book 14, Chapter 2
The Theological dimension of the art of war is subtler even than its Spiritual dimension. Here we delve into the question of just war, by which we mean war The Almighty approves.
War is neither good nor evil. It is inevitable and necessary. Anyway, who knows what is good and what is evil. What’s the measuring instrument?
In every war, one combatant is right and the other one is wrong, which is not the same as one being good and the other being evil. A combatant may be right in one war and wrong in the next. Good and evil are not in the picture.
Let us stipulate first, therefore, that by just war we do not mean war justified by jurisprudence or legislative or executive action. Legal considerations factor into the conduct of war but not into its Theological permit. No. We mean whether war is offensive or defensive. The Almighty does not approve offensive war. He does approve defensive war.
The motivation of a war, not its mundane legalities, comprises the objective measure of the Theological dimension of the art of war. Theology ruminates on phenomena, not opinions.
Moreover, since only defensive warfare is permitted, warfare minimizes harm to friend and foe while forcing foe to acknowledge in public his condition of unconditional surrender.
It is probably safe to say that the origin of most wars is offensive action. Most wars are not Theologically permitted and are therefore illegitimate. They are murder, not warfare.
Envy, anger, and greed for dominion, wealth, and women incite and occasion most wars. Whatever the civil or ecclesial scrupulosity adduced to excuse or condemn them, such wars are by definition offensive actions which cannot benefit from God’s approval. Again, they are murder, not warfare.
However, there are defensive wars. By definition — and again, regardless of civil or ecclesial legalities adduced to excuse or condemn them — such wars are Theologically permitted and approved by The Almighty.
Any war not motivated by self-aggrandizement is a just war. This is easy. There is only one kind of warfare not motivated by self-aggrandizement, and that is defensive warfare.
Defensive warfare occurs when one resolves to deny an aggressor or throw off an oppressor. An attack is an immediate aggression. An oppression is a sustained aggression. Aggression creates the Theologically permitted occasion to conduct warfare that has more than a trivial chance of success. The objective of such warfare is to annihilate an aggressor’s will to aggress. Reaching for a forlorn hope, attacking an aggressor with will and means insufficient to accomplish that objective, is suicide, not heroism, and certainly not warfare. Suicide is not approved by God.
This is the truth that every inhabitant of about 150 countries that do not belong to the West has in his subcortex: there is no need to arrange your fights on our territory. And if the world with its economy is global, then you don’t need to arrange these fights at all, you need to be able to negotiate. For agreements, there are as many places and mechanisms as you like, for example, the G20 in Indonesia.
Dmitry Kosyrev, RIA
When elephants fight on the lawn, the grass suffers.
Indonesians and the people of the world hope that the leaders will refrain from using precious moments at the summit just to criticize and attack each other. The world is on the verge of economic, military and other catastrophes – and the third world war is on the verge. . . . . If leaders, or some of them, are unwilling or unable to work together to find a way out of the global economic and security impasse, at least they can show modesty so as not to worsen the suffering of many people around the world. . . . . . [The leaders of the G-7, i.e. the West,] need to give up their long held belief that they cannot be wrong and therefore have the right to impose their will on other nations not so big and not so rich.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo
Russia and her colleagues will dismantle or repurpose to catholicity institutions set up since 1944 to support and extend The USA/NATO global hegemony: World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, World Economic Forum, a host of NGOs, and also, The International Olympic Committee. Russia and her colleagues are in a defensive war against The USA/NATO and so must prosper as with a just war approved by The Almighty.
The tragedy is that we have nowhere to go back.
Victoria Nikiforova
That West, with which we quite normally traded and
played football, is no longer there. They en masse
embarked on the ship of fools and sailed into the
Great Nothingness, waving us goodbye.
This describes the Theological dimension of the art of war.
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
By Artists M and F Graham
At Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, India
