Clausewitz and The Changing Character of War

The key assumption of this new book is that Clausewitz's methodological approach is an attempt to resolve and find practical solutions to dilemmas, based on his own military experience.

This dialectical approach becomes clear in the contrast Clausewitz draws between primordial violence, which is related to hatred and enmity, and the subordination of war to politics, for which reason war belongs to "pure reason". The solution proposed by Clausewitz to the dialectic of war and violent action is the paradoxical 'trinity' (violence-battle-community), which is an attempt to summarize his various war experiences, at Jena, Moscow and Waterloo, and to integrate them into a general theory of war.

In this book, Dr Herberg-Rothe expands the idea of the paradoxical 'trinity' in order to develop a general theory of war, and to update Clausewitz for today. By putting the dialectical elements of Clausewitz at the heart of his study, Herberg-Rothe shows clearly that Clausewitz's On War remains a valuable text with which to understand the range of wars which now confront the world in the 21st century.

This book will be of great interest to students of military history, strategy and philosophy.