WJ: Throughout the conduct of war, I think, what generals and leaders have tried to do is bring order out of chaos, and Clausewitz very forthrightly says, war is going to be chaos, and it's going to be chaotic. Jomini on the other hand says, no, here's how you can stop the chaos. You can reduce the chaos. It is possible to apply these and to provide some form of solution that anybody can master. And that's a decided difference between the two approaches.
JW: And we see that difference, in sort of, the different sides that they're on to, right? Jomini is on the winning side, an awful lot. And Clausewitz is on the losing side, in some cases. And I think one of the things that I think about in my own classroom and my Teaching, is that, of course we want to bring order to chaos. That's the point of Strategy. And in some cases is to link causes to effects, and to have decisive effect on a problem. And so it's not unusual that, that we want Jomini-like solutions to these things, even as we understand maybe the importance of Clausewitz, and understanding the importance of unpredictability in this problem that we face.
I think a lot of times, Jomini and Clausewitz are sort of pitted against each other, right? That there's like a cage match of sorts, or that we have to maybe choose between one, and that if we envision ourselves as Clausewitzian, then we have to toss Jomini into the dust bin. So I'm always a little bit uncomfortable with that sort of dichotomy, even as we see important differences between the two. Is it just a difference in style or substance, or is there room for both Jomini and Clausewitz in professional military education?