International Security and Peace
Professor: Kim Jae Chun
Autumn 2016
I39030 Nick Trillo
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.
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:
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.
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.
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
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.
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.