"What lessons, then, does the case of Clausewitz...offer to a military historian asked to ponder the future of war over the next 170 years? The first is that it would be pointless to imagine that future in terms of even the most advanced military technology of today. Everything that Clausewitz wrote, about the actual conduct of operations became irrelevant within 50 years, because firepower became transformed by breechloading, rifling and the machine-gun, while logistics and communications were transformed by the railway and the electric telegraph... Rather than thus seek to predict how wars will be operationally conducted and with what technology, it is more useful to return for guidance to Clausewitz's fundamental insights into the enduring nature of conflict and the relationship between war and politics. He famously wrote that "war is a continuation of policy by other means", meaning that it is not just a regrettable breakdown of a natural human harmony (as in the liberal view), but a tool of political purpose, and one which should be governed throughout its course by political, not purely military considerations. War, he further observes, is an act of violence intended to compel an opponent to fulfil our will."