Wars against multi-ethnic empires should aim at internal dissolution, not territorial conquest

Evidence

In the struggle between Piedmont and Austria, the strategic objective could not be that of destroying the Austrian army and occupying the enemy’s territory, for this would have been an unattainable and Utopian objective. But it could have been that of dissolving Austria’s internal cohesion, and of assisting the liberals to gain power firmly and change the political structure of the Empire into a federalist one, or at least to create within it a prolonged state of internal struggles which would give a breathing-space to the Italian national forces, and permit them to regroup themselves politically and militarily. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 492

Categorization

• DEFINE: Exemplifies Gramsci’s strategic logic distinguishing attainable political objectives from Utopian military ones — a mechanism carrying forward into analyses of how colonial/imperial power structures are broken down from within rather than by frontal assault.
• XREF: This ‘war of position vs war of maneuver’ strategic thinking (dissolving internal cohesion rather than frontal destruction) is the seed of Gramsci’s famous distinction that later theory borrows; connects to the nation-state toolkit.