War's Changing Character and Varying Nature: A Closer Look at Clausewitz's Trinity
Journal: Military Strategy Magazine
Year: 2017

This article offers an alternative way of understanding Clausewitz’s wondrous trinity. Instead of seeing it as mainly a composite of hostility, chance, and purpose (or irrational, nonrational, and rational) forces, this article suggests Clausewitz purposefully combined the forces and the institutions (people, military, and government) because the trinity is meant to serve as an analytical framework for understanding the nature, or type, of war at hand. Theory’s task then is to use the trinity to