[see also bibliography, part 1, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8]
As my earlier quotation of Clausewitz suggests, I believe that political expression can be conceived of as a particular species of strategic activity, and that the mental faculties of the successful strategist are comparable to those of the successful politician. Strategy here is broadly conceived as an action or series of actions designed to negotiate a particular situation with the goal of achieving a particular end - in political action, making my values facts. This idea of expression as a means is already part of Merleau-Ponty's conception of the most basic, 'primordial' expressions as oriented, purposive activity guided by desire (itself aroused through perception), and this identification of expression as a key category of political means is made explicit by Gramsci, who insists that political intuition consists in "conceiving the means adequate to particular ends - discovering the interests involved, and arousing the passions of men and directing them towards a particular action" (Gramsci 252). Thus, we are dealing first of all with a kind of concrete, practical reason, "a sense of what will 'work' and what will not" (Berlin 47), and not an abstract theoretical intelligence. This mode of practical, strategic political thought governs more than just the use of the political means of verbal expression; the arsenal of expressive means includes war as well, a connection we will return to throughout this interpretation of political action. Clausewitz himself famously noted the shared logic of war and other political activity, insisting that "war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means" (Clausewitz 605). Strikingly, he goes on to identify war as a specifically expressive means: "is war not just another expression of [the politician's] thoughts, another form of speech or writing? Its grammar, indeed, may be its own, but not its logic" (Clausewitz 605). At the highest levels of politics, where the sum of all rhetorical and military expression must be perceived, considered, and acted upon, the diversity of political means is increasingly subsumed under the same strategic logic, and "there is little or no difference between strategy, policy and statesmanship" (Clausewitz 178).
The milieu of political strategy (rhetorical, military or otherwise) is the realm of human action, and this in itself has important implications. Action and expression inevitably establish relationships and therefore have a natural tendency to leap across boundaries (Arendt 191), with every action linked to countless others by human, expressive lineaments. Inconceivably long and complex chains of reactions emanate in all directions from my action, and these chains, multiplied across the great and plural multitude of human actors, form a unified, shifting "web" of human relationships (Arendt 182) which is the sum of every action that preceded the existence of my intention and is the milieu into which my new expression is introduced. "Action... acts into a medium where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is the cause of new processes" (Arendt 190), and in the same sense, military strategy is decisively affected by the fact that "in war, the will is directed at an inanimate object that reacts" (Clausewitz 149). The boundlessness of action renders it unpredictable and even incomprehensible to some egree, as action and reaction become hopelessly intertwined across even the most seemingly unconnected activities, and a massive, amorphous field for perception is opened that, like the conduct of war for Clausewitz, "branches out in almost all directions and has no definite limits" (Clausewitz 134). Action is multiplied exponentially through this highly reactive medium and its incredible density of connections, as "the smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation" (Arendt 190). Like Merleau-Ponty's conception of language as a "moving equilibrium" or a "synchronicity within a diachronicity," a unified but constantly changing system which "never exists wholly in act but always involves latent or incubating changes" (Merleau-Ponty 87), the milieu of political action is composed of unique individuals that nonetheless form an interlocking whole that is unified in time but perpetually changing with the changing relationships of its parts. My perceptual apparatus is confronted with an impossibly complex and dense field of activity, shimmering and flickering with "constantly changing, multicoloured, evanescent, perpetually overlapping data, too many, too swift, too intermingled to be caught and pinned down and labelled like so many individual butterflies" (Berlin 46).
This metaphor of a physical space in flux, of a shifting field or web of action resonsates strongly with Clausewitz's conception of the relation between warfare and terrain, a "permanent factor" which is "decisive in the highest degree, for it affects the operations of all forces, and at times entirely alters them... Its influence may be flet in the very smallest feature of the ground, but it can also dominate enormous areas" (Clausewitz 109). My political expression acts into a field of shifting relationships that will alter the development of my action in unforeseen ways, just as the army must pass through and interact with a varying geography that constantly affects countless aspects of its operation. Moving through time, my actions are enmeshed in a web t hat is continually rearranging itself in ways that will always escape my perception, yet may be of decisive relevance to the outcome of my action; in the same sense, "a commander must submit his work to a partner, space, which he can never completely reconnnoiter, and which because of the constant movement and change to which he is subject he can never really come to know" (Clausewitz 109). More broadly, Clausewitz describes all strategic action taking place on a terrain cloaked "in a kind of twilight, like fog or moonlight," where "whatever is hidden from full view... has to be guessed at by talent, or simply left to chance" (Clausewitz 140), a rather elegant metaphor for the uncertainty which characterizes all aciton for Merleau-Ponty and Arendt. Berlin also uses a geographic metaphor to describe both the political terrain and its unknowability: