1. International Security and Peace Professor: Kim Jae Chun Autumn 2016
Carl von Clausewitz: Fundamental principles of war and continued relevance
International Security and Peace
Professor: Kim Jae Chun
Autumn 2016
I39030 Nick Trillo

2. The thesis: “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”
I.e. War is governed by intelligent forces, with independent wills. Never unilateral. We can visualize this through the concept of ‘ideal war’: Pure, unrestrained, physical violence.

3. From ideal war to real war…
However ideal war can never actually occur, Clausewitz calls it a ‘logical fantasy’. It is constrained by politics, human nature, the effects of time and space etc.
The purpose of ‘ideal war’ was to set up Clausewitz’s dialectical argument.
In reality we have ‘real war’. Varies wildly depending upon the political objectives of the actors at play:

4. The antithesis:
Clausewitz’s famous dictum:
Military and political spheres can never be separated, and policy considerations must always be made when fighting a war.

5. Friction in war:
Despite rational political calculations, war by its very nature is beyond rational control.
Friction, elements such as the weather, individual fatigue, or human error give a large part of war over to the realm of chance.
Military genius, commanders with experience and a suitable intellect, can mitigate friction to some degree.

6. Synthesis of Thesis and Antithesis: The ‘Paradoxical Trinity’
All three elements of the trinity are inextricably linked with each other. Their interaction produces the nature of war, and this can never be scientifically determined.
1. Primordial violence
2. Chance and probability
3. Instrument of policy, subject to reason

7. Clausewitz in the modern age:
The atomic age and MAD has arguably made Clausewitz's abstraction of an ‘absolute’, or ‘ideal’ war much more realistic.
Wars should be waged with rational political considerations, but is nuclear warfare ever rational?
Yet the very decision to wage nuclear war nor not seems Clausewitzian in itself, for it involves the calculation of rational political gains.

8. Clausewitz and the War on Terror:
Clausewitz himself was explicit of the fact that warfare could change form: ‘War is more than a true chameleon’.
The War on Terror, though conducted through unconventional means, is still fought to ‘compel the enemy to do our will.’
All the elements of the trinity are still at play: Primordial hatred, chance and probability, subject to the reason of policy.