CLAUSEWITZ’S PARADOXICAL TRINITYCarl Phillip Gottfried von Clausewitz was a Prussian general and a military theorist.He laid stress on the psychological and the political aspects of the war. He was known to be arealist in various different senses and drew mainly on the rationalist ideas that belonged to theEuropean Enlightenment (Ankersen 2014). His thinking was often referred as Hegelian dueto the dialectical methods that he applied. He had argued that there are three major forces thatinfluence the events of the war in a collective and interactive manner. The following essayattempts to look into the explanations on the changes in the warfare character from the timesof Fredrick the Great to those of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.According to Clausewitz, war involved the interplay between the three unlikelyelements of passion, probability and the policies. This helped the formation of a paradoxicaltrinity among the three factors. The military theorist considered war to be politics thatinvolved activities other than the customary ways. The theorist explained in his composition,regarding the analysis of the activity of war, the ideas of danger, chance, genius and friction.He also explained the psychological factors that are seen to play in the minds of the troopsand commanders during the conditions of war. In his book, the Prussian general alsoaddressed the points of difference between the limited and the absolute varieties of work(Clausewitz 1976). The paradoxical trinity as mentioned by the Prussian general and major,consisted of three main factors, the first factor being the primal violence, enmity and hatred,all of which may be regarded to be a blind force of nature. The second factor of the trinityincludes the playfield of chance and probability within which the creative spirit may freelyroam (Parker 2005). The third element of the trinity includes the subordination elements.These subordination elements serve to be a policy instrument, thereby making it to be asubject of pure reason. The shorthand for the trinity proposed by Clausewitz is mostlypresented as the trinity of the people, army and the government of a certain nation. ThePrussian general refers to war to be a continuation of the political interaction after addition of2

+13062052269

info@desklib.com