Book Review: War, Clausewitz and the Trinity

all of whom have impressive chapters in this collection. These range from Bain's 'The pluralist solidarist debate in the English School', to Cochran's 'Normative theory in the English School'. Finally, Yongjin Zhang's concluding chapter deals impressively with the 'Global diffusion of the English School'. The insights he offers are fascinating, especially with reference to the School's impact-as Green summarizes, an inspiration 'for non-Western or "post-Western" IR theorising' (p. 5).

ClausewitzStudies.org, 2022

This 'working paper,' which is under fairly constant revision based on feedback, examines a number of categories of war either explored by Clausewitz or incorrectly attributed to him by later writers and translators. It discusses the difficulties in categorizing warfare, the evolution of Clausewitz's approach to the problem, and a number of related translation issues. Its central argument is that by far the greatest source of confusion about Clausewitz's book Vom Kriege—other than some very serious infelicities in the English translations, especially the Howard/Paret version—is that the text eventually published after his death retained his discussion of "absolute war." This paper argues that Clausewitz had in fact long abandoned that term. “Absolute war” appears exclusively in the first half of the published Book VIII, which appears to have been written much earlier than the second half. Either he had not yet reedited the whole of Book VIII to reflect this fact or the updates had gotten lost in the confusing stack of paperwork he bequeathed to his wife and posthumous editor, Marie von Clausewitz. Scholars almost always conflate the "ideal war vice real war" approach presented in the latest of his manuscript revisions (i.e., the "Note of 1827," Book I, and the second half of Book VIII) with the earlier-written "absolute war" framework. That is, the ideal/real model is treated simply as a second set of terminology describing the same idea—the incompatibilities are merely written-off as confusing complexities in a single conceptual scheme. In fact, however, “ideal war” is a distinctly new and quite different departure. Book I thoroughly reassembles the earlier concept's underlying components into a much more powerful framework. Were we to delete the discussions of "absolute war" from Vom Kriege—which we cannot do, of course, since they are deeply entangled with important discussions of other ideas that Clausewitz retained—we would find the overall work to be much more clear, consistent, coherent, and useful.

ESACE - Working Paper 2, 2019

Intelligence and National Security, 2018

Journal of Strategic Studies, 2018

This paper re-examines the theoretical underpinnings of Strategic Studies, proposing a novel theory and a new framework for analysing war’s fundamental relationship with politics in line with the Clausewitzian tradition. Throughout modern history, Clausewitz’s concept of politics has been misconstrued as referring only to policy whereas in fact, for him, ‘politics’ was a much broader concept, including domestic power struggles. The political logic of war is defined here as the convergence of the interrelating factors of power struggles and policy objectives within a given polity that restrains and enables these political forces. The analysis of the Clausewitzian political logic of war is conducted through the sociological ‘liquid modern’ lens. It is argued that with power increasingly shifting from centralised state-oriented political leadership towards market forces, non-state actors and other political bodies, the effectiveness of war has been reduced. This is evident in the fragmentation of Western political systems and, as a result, suboptimal strategy and the domination of domestic power struggles in political decision-making concerning war.

1995

: In a recent Parameters article, "US Military Doctrine and the Revolution in Military Affairs" (Autumn 1994), Dr. David Jablonsky made frequent reference to the theories of Carl von Clausewitz to illustrate points about strategy and doctrine. Jablonsky's discussion of his central subject demonstrated his usual flair and insight. On one particular point, however, his use of Clausewitz touched an ambiguity that is becoming troublesome to many students of the Prussian philosopher of war. The problem appears in Jablonsky's discussion of "what Clausewitz had referred to as the 'remarkable trinity': the military, the government, and the people." There is a serious discrepancy between this definition of the "remarkable trinity" and the definition given by Clausewitz himself in "On War": Clausewitz defines the components of the trinity as follows: (1) primordial violence, hatred, and enmity; (2) the play of chance and probability; and...

2016

Carl Von Clausewitz is one of the most famous military thinker and the theorist who is frequently referred to, when any historical warfare perspective is required. War as an instrument of policy, Centre of Gravity, and the concept of friction are amongst some of the important theories of Clausewitz that are still adequate for explaining warfare in the modern era

Journal of Big History, 2020

As a social phenomenon, is war subordinate to politics, as Carl von Clausewitz argued in the early nineteenth century, or, instead, is it the product of an instinctive ‘warrior culture’, common to all peoples and times and beyond politics, as John Keegan suggested in the late twentieth? Should we emphasize ‘essential historical elements in the search for a tem-poral continuum in warfare? In this article, we stress the relevance of the ‘perennity of war’ thesis, and the impropriety of a dichotomy between political rationality vs. instinct. The results of the clash between these two strands of thought about the origins of warfare face limitations due to the absence of a temporal ‘play of scales’, so that short-term approaches emerge as incompatible with macro-historical views. We suggest that a deep understanding of the phenomenon of warfare must consider the interaction and the feedback between processes at different time scales.

Journal of Military Ethics, 2003

The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2006

This article analyzes the 1812 Russian campaign using Clausewitz's concept of the trinitarian nature of war. This approach uses a case study to delve deeply into understanding the subtle, philosophical nature of Clausewitz's trinity. The article is serialized into two parts; the first discusses each of the trinity's elements. The second part applies each trinitarian element to the Russian campaign.

Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2006

This article analyzes the 1812 Russian campaign using Clausewitz's concept of the trinitarian nature of war. This approach uses a case study to delve deeply into understanding the subtle, philosophical nature of Clausewitz's trinity. The article is serialized into two parts; the first discusses each of the trinity's elements. The second part applies each trinitarian element to the Russian campaign.