Battling to the End e-bog

Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the Prussian military theoretician who wrote On War, is known above all for his famous dictum: "e;War is the continuation of politics by other means."e; In Ren Girard's view, however, the strategist's treatise offers up a more disturbing truth to the reader willing to extrapolate from its most daring observations: with modern warfare comes the insanity of tit-for-tat escalation, which political institutions have lost their ability to contain. Having witnessed the Napoleonic Wars firsthand, Girard argues, Clausewitz intuited that unbridled "e;reciprocal action"e; could eventually lead foes to total mutual annihilation. Haunted by the Franco-German conflict that was to ravage Europe, in Girard's account Clausewitz is a prescient witness to the terrifying acceleration of history. Battling to the End issues a warning about the apocalyptic threats hanging over our planet and delivers an authoritative lesson on the mimetic laws of violence.