Key Arguments

• Foucault reverses the usual Clausewitzian emphasis by noting that while ‘war as strategy is a continuation of politics’, politics itself ‘has been conceived as a continuation, if not exactly and directly of war, at least of the military model as a fundamental means of preventing civil disorder’, indicating that political order is modeled on military discipline.
• He argues that politics, ‘as a technique of internal peace and order, sought to implement the mechanism of the perfect army, of the disciplined mass, of the docile, useful troop, of the regiment in camp and in the field, on manoeuvres and on exercises’, explicitly describing politics as the extension of army mechanisms into civil life.
• In the ‘great eighteenth-century states’, the army guaranteed civil peace not only ‘because it was a real force, an ever-threatening sword’, but also ‘because it was a technique and a body of knowledge that could project their schema over the social body’, showing that what is transferred is a schema of tactics and discipline.
• Foucault distinguishes two series: ‘If there is a politics-war series that passes through strategy, there is an army-politics series that passes through tactics’, conceptually separating interstate strategic relations from intra-societal tactical discipline.
• He specifies the different explanatory roles: ‘It is strategy that makes it possible to understand warfare as a way of conducting politics between states; it is tactics that makes it possible to understand the army as a principle for maintaining the absence of warfare in civil society’, linking tactics directly to the political maintenance of internal peace.

Source Quotes

with one another’ (Joly de Maizeroy, 2). It may be that war as strategy is a continuation of politics. But it must not be forgotten that ‘politics’ has been conceived as a continuation, if not exactly and directly of war, at least of the military model as a fundamental means of preventing civil disorder. Politics, as a technique of internal peace and order, sought to implement the mechanism of the perfect army, of the disciplined mass, of the docile, useful troop, of the regiment in camp and in the field, on manoeuvres and on exercises.

But it must not be forgotten that ‘politics’ has been conceived as a continuation, if not exactly and directly of war, at least of the military model as a fundamental means of preventing civil disorder. Politics, as a technique of internal peace and order, sought to implement the mechanism of the perfect army, of the disciplined mass, of the docile, useful troop, of the regiment in camp and in the field, on manoeuvres and on exercises. In the great eighteenth-century states, the army guaranteed civil peace no doubt because it was a real force, an ever-threatening sword, but also because it was a technique and a body of knowledge that could project their schema over the social body.

Politics, as a technique of internal peace and order, sought to implement the mechanism of the perfect army, of the disciplined mass, of the docile, useful troop, of the regiment in camp and in the field, on manoeuvres and on exercises. In the great eighteenth-century states, the army guaranteed civil peace no doubt because it was a real force, an ever-threatening sword, but also because it was a technique and a body of knowledge that could project their schema over the social body. If there is a politics-war series that passes through strategy, there is an army-politics series that passes through tactics.

In the great eighteenth-century states, the army guaranteed civil peace no doubt because it was a real force, an ever-threatening sword, but also because it was a technique and a body of knowledge that could project their schema over the social body. If there is a politics-war series that passes through strategy, there is an army-politics series that passes through tactics. It is strategy that makes it possible to understand warfare as a way of conducting politics between states; it is tactics that makes it possible to understand the army as a principle for maintaining the absence of warfare in civil society.

If there is a politics-war series that passes through strategy, there is an army-politics series that passes through tactics. It is strategy that makes it possible to understand warfare as a way of conducting politics between states; it is tactics that makes it possible to understand the army as a principle for maintaining the absence of warfare in civil society. The classical age saw the birth of the great political and military strategy by which nations confronted each other’s economic and demographic forces; but it also saw the birth of meticulous military and political tactics by which the control of bodies and individual forces was exercised within states.

Key Concepts

• It may be that war as strategy is a continuation of politics. But it must not be forgotten that ‘politics’ has been conceived as a continuation, if not exactly and directly of war, at least of the military model as a fundamental means of preventing civil disorder.
• Politics, as a technique of internal peace and order, sought to implement the mechanism of the perfect army, of the disciplined mass, of the docile, useful troop, of the regiment in camp and in the field, on manoeuvres and on exercises.
• In the great eighteenth-century states, the army guaranteed civil peace no doubt because it was a real force, an ever-threatening sword, but also because it was a technique and a body of knowledge that could project their schema over the social body.
• If there is a politics-war series that passes through strategy, there is an army-politics series that passes through tactics.
• it is tactics that makes it possible to understand the army as a principle for maintaining the absence of warfare in civil society.

Context

Concluding paragraphs of 'The composition of forces', where Foucault generalizes from military disciplinary techniques to argue that modern politics internalizes the army’s tactical model as a technology for securing internal order, distinguishing a politics–war relation via strategy from an army–politics relation via tactics.