ABSTRACT
Clausewitz's theory is fundamentally based on a dynamic understanding of war. Peter Paret argued that Clausewitz's general approach is dialectical in character. Clausewitz's treatments of polarity and relationship between attack and defense were, according to Paret, variations on a theme that was very popular at the time. Although polarity involves an antithesis, it constitutes a third entity as a unity. This third entity is the whole, whether it be the magnet determined by the polar relationship, or war, which Clausewitz sees as characterized by the "true logical antithesis" of attack and defense. Clausewitz's dynamic model is characterized by the polarity of the duel and by the difference between attack and defense. In Clausewitz's theory, a standstill within a military activity is a form in which an attack changes into a defense of one's own position. If attack and defense were a simple logical antithesis, this mean that attack would be the same as nondefense and defense the same as nonattack.
