From which they know that ends, potentially infinite, can never be means, which are poignantly finite. That’s why war—explicitly in Clausewitz, implicitly in Tolstoy—must reflect policy. For when policy reflects war, it’s because some high-level hedgehog—a Xerxes, or a Napoleon—has fallen in love with war, making it an end in itself. They’ll stop only when they’ve bled themselves bloodless. And so the culminating points of their offensives are self-defeat.
