Clausewitz Arguments Surrounding The Nature Of War

In recent years, history has shown that many wars took certain common patterns. There are many theories surrounding the nature of war based on the patterns that a war tends to take. Clausewitz in particular, in his book “On War” gives his thoughts on the nature of war some of which can arguably be considered not conclusive enough. However, his thoughts and those of many others have played a great role in helping strategists make decisions. This essay is based on the argument that war tends towards being universal and generalizable than contextual and specific and the implications of my arguments to strategic leaders. For this reason, I will start by defining war according to Clausewitz.
According to Clausewitz, “War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” Thus each opposing side tries through force to compel the other to do his will with an aim to throw his opponent in order to make him incapable of farther resistance. There are two clear motives here, hostile feelings and hostile intentions. His definition is based on the latter, a clear indication of violence a predominant universal element of many wars. This brings me to my first point that war tends to be universal more than contextual. There is no single war that I know of that does not encompass violence. In his argument on violence, …show more content…
One, strategist will tend to lean to certain theories for example those that seeks predictability in war by focusing on several elements of the nature of war. By doing so they eventually seek laws or universal theories that govern military action in order to obtain predictable outcomes based on the way they view war in crafting strategies. The reverse is equally true where some strategists will plan based on the unpredictable, complex nature of war. For this reason, the expected feedback by strategies will be a matter of probability and not