Culmination in Ukraine and Its Misinterpretation

What ISW Gets Wrong, and the True Importance of Culmination

“[The point of culmination is] that point which, at the moment of stopping and assuming the defensive, still promises him good results. That is, equilibrium.”

I have few issues with the coverage of the war in Ukraine by the Institute for the Study of War. Their day-by-day breakdowns are invaluable and their assessments are generally credible. That said, throughout their reports, there has been consistent use of the term “culmination” in a way that I will argue is inconsistent with its meaning. This is important because the concept of the “point of culmination,” as Clausewitz defines it,  is essential to understanding war, particularly the relationship between the attack and the defense. 

That the ISW (among others) has gotten an element of Clausewitz wrong is more than understandable. The history of Clausewitz’s magnum opus, On War, consists largely of its misinterpretation. That is not to say that Clausewitz’s actual intentions were completely lost before later scholarly re-evaluation, but many ideas were erroneously attributed to Clausewitz, and a number of his central concepts were neglected. The incomplete state of the manuscript Clausewitz left, and the difficulties inherent in theoretical treatment of war as a social phenomenon, made such an outcome unsurprising. 

This is particularly understandable in the case of “culmination,” given the limited treatment Clausewitz gives the concept. His discussion of culmination consists of about a page and a half on the culminating point of the attack and a draft of a chapter on the culminating point of victory. From the incomplete state of this work, it is a challenge to discern his thesis. In light of this, I hope to take this opportunity to outline Clausewitz’s concept of culmination by contrasting it with the sense used by ISW, and explain the importance of understanding the concept clearly. 

Clausewitz defines the culminating point of victory as “that point which, at the moment of stopping and assuming the defensive, still promises him good results. That is, equilibrium.” To fully understand what he means by this, we must address one of Clausewitz’s central concepts, namely that the defensive is the stronger form of warfare compared to the offensive. This is a subject extensively developed by Clausewitz, but the short of it is that the attacker is impeded by friction, unfamiliar terrain, and prepared defenses. These factors degrade the force of the attacker meaning that over the course of an offensive, leading to the advantage that induced the attacker to take up the offensive eroding. 

The attacker assumes the weaker form of war because he has, what Clausewitz terms, “positive purpose,” that is to say, he has some political goal for which he is willing to undertake a war. As such, he has no choice but to rely on superior strength to overcome the disadvantages of the attack, or else give up on getting whatever political objective through military force. 

The strategic offensive weakens the attacking party, but brings it closer to its political objectives. Victory on the battlefield, as Clausewitz notes, is itself a good, but it must be balanced against the inherent costs of the offensive. The advantages gained by victory in battle may well fall short of costs a further offensive incurs. In this way, even in victory the balance of force can swing against the aggressor as the advantages of the defender degrade the assailant’s army. 

As a result of this degradation, at some point in the offensive, the power of the attacker and the defender will be in a state of equilibrium, where continuing further would degrade the force of the attacker disproportionately and shift the advantage towards the defender. This is the point that Clausewitz refers to as the “point of culmination” or “the culminating point in victory.” 

“The assailant purchases advantages to be turned to account in the subsequent negotiations for peace; but he has to pay cash for them on the spot with his forces. 

This is the essential point to understanding culmination, in that the point of culmination is the point at which the attacker has been so weakened by attacking that the balance of force between the opposing sides is in equilibrium. When the assailant exceeds this point, the defender has the advantage and may, through counterattacks, inflict defeats on the now-inferior attacker. The concept of culmination allows us to understand and explain how armies diminish in the aftermath of victory. 

“To go beyond this goal is more than simply a useless expenditure of power, yielding no further result; it is a ruinous one which causes reactions, and these reactions, according to universal experience, have always disproportionate results.”

This observation raises the obvious question as to why, if this is the case, it is nonetheless common for armies to exceed their point of culmination and suffer the consequences of doing so. To this question, Clausewitz provides the following answer:

“Indeed, it may even happen that, in spite of the exhaustion of force, the assailant, supported by the moral forces which chiefly lie in the offensive, finds it less difficult to advance than to stop…”

Here, the “moral” forces Clausewitz refers to include both psychological conditions and political considerations, the intangible elements that may spur a commander to press on into an exposed position. Victory may make an army reckless as it develops contempt for its enemy or the political desirability of offensive operations may lead to wishful thinking. Success can be intoxicating, and the historical record speaks to the prevalence of this kind of “victory disease.”  

This connects to the significance of culmination because it is in contradiction to another principle of war that Clausewitz identified, that of continuity. This principle is that much as inertia applies in physics, in war, motion is also more easily maintained than begun, and it is therefore essential to continue offensive actions for as long as possible, so as to maintain momentum. The greatest significance of victory on the battlefield comes in its exploitation. As much as military history is filled cases of victory disease, it is equally filled with missed opportunities in the aftermath of great battles.

For these reasons and from these cases, the principle of continuity seems sensible and intuitive enough: maintain momentum when you’re winning. But recalling the concept of culmination immediately seems to contradict this. “Culmination” advises that advancing past the point of equilibrium invites disastrous consequences. There is therefore tension between continuity and culmination as one preaches caution and the other boldness. 

This tension is not a consequence of sloppy argumentation on the part of Clausewitz, but rather a reflection of a conflict between priorities in real war. It is both true that great advantages may be gained by preserving the momentum of an attack through continuity and that the power of an attack diminishes over time. The challenge for a commander, then, is that of ascertaining the precise point of culmination so that an offensive can be carried out up to that point and no further. Through this, a commander can hope to gain the advantages of the principle of continuity without being exposed to the consequences of exceeding the point of culmination. 

In practice, this is a nearly impossible task. The confusion, uncertainty, and misinformation that permeate the battlefield, that Clausewitz terms the “fog of war,” mean the point of culmination must be approximated based on incomplete or misleading information in generally trying conditions. This explains the historical prevalence of even excellent generals failing to accurately determine the point of culmination, either falling short, and losing the advantages that might have been gained through continuity, or exceeding the point of culmination, and suffering from becoming overextended. Even with the benefits of historical retrospective, it remains unclear in many cases where the point of culmination was.

According to Clausewitz, identifying the point of culmination is one of the most important and the most difficult tasks for a battlefield commander. The ability to approximate the point of culmination with even general accuracy through the chaos of war is what Clausewitz terms “military genius.” There is little chance of judging the point of culmination from a distance through publicly available information.

“Rightly, to determine this point is, therefore, important in framing a plan of campaign, both for the assailant, that he may not undertake what is beyond his powers and, so to speak, incur debts, and for the defender, that he may perceive and profit by this error if committed by the assailant.”

This is the key point in the importance of fully understanding culmination in war. Culmination is not merely the end of an offensive, but it is a point at which the assailant can continue further, but would be punished in doing so. 

There are two main points which can be usefully discussed, even from a distance, with limited information, regarding culmination. The first of which is whether the behavior of the belligerents indicates that they believe they have met the point of culmination. For example, if a Russian or Ukrainian offensive that is meeting success halts, a potential explanation may be that its commander is wary about exceeding the point of culmination. The second useful context to discuss culmination is in understanding why one side is suffering defeats. For example, a number of Russian defeats early in the war can be attributed to a failure to recognize the point of culmination and the continuation of operations past it, to such a point that the balance of force favored Ukraine, allowing it to inflict defeats on Russia. At the same time, culmination allows us to better understand the dangers facing Ukraine’s upcoming counter-offensive. If Ukraine fails to identify the point of culmination, it may overextend itself, and allow Russia to inflict considerable losses. 

It is likely the Russians culminated long before Wagner’s attack on Bakhmut, with the battle continuing nonetheless due to the “moral factors” identified by Clausewitz. By continuing past the point of culmination, the Russians have incurred “debts” that are likely to come due in the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive. This is a speculative argument, and may well be proven wrong in the coming weeks or months. However, this example assessment directly engages with the question of culmination, something that ISW’s does not.  ISW’s assessment, instead, implies that Wagner Group succeeded in correctly identifying the point of culmination, and has refrained from exceeding it, which is unlikely to be the intended meaning. 

The ISW seems to be using the word “culmination” as a synonym for “exhaustion,” or something similar. With a full understanding of Clausewitz’s concept of culmination, it’s clear why this usage is incorrect. To use “culmination” as a mere synonym for “exhaustion” dodges the real question, which is whether the assailant's forces have incurred the “debts” Clausewitz spoke of and have become vulnerable to the kind of reactions that he describes as “ruinous.” This is a much more important question than asking whether an attack has exhausted its offensive potential.

The concept of culmination is therefore invaluable to understanding the course of war, particularly why and when an army will switch from the offensive to the defensive and vice versa. In its discussion, we develop a clearer view of the relationship between the attack and the defense, particularly the vulnerabilities associated with the former. A commander must risk either prematurely terminating an offensive, and fail to obtain the advantages of continuity, or must risk exceeding the point of culmination, and reap the consequences of fighting beyond one’s own strength. To say an effort is “culminating” leaves the central point unaddressed. Has the effort passed the point of culmination, did it stop short of it, or did it terminate precisely at equilibrium? One of these is true, and each has substantially different implications going forwards. A clear understanding of culmination allows us to analyze and attempt to determine which of these cases the evidence matches.