ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the three separate primary elements that comprise the trinity; it is possible to consider how the trinity operates as a whole. It also seeks to understand how the primary tendencies relate, in theoretical terms, to the secondary trinity and wars multiple contexts at the tertiary level. In each, unilateral perspectives are embedded in, and crucially dependent in terms of their meaning, on a multilateral reality. In Clausewitz's work the two perspectives almost at times elide because he sees them as being so indissolubly interconnected. Although Clausewitz never employed the terms secondary or subjective in relation to the trinity they are useful ways of considering the level at which the primary trinity is embodied or expressed in real-world actors or subjects. As Paret states, Clausewitz believed that war was an activity in which each aspect influences and is influenced by others, and this interrelationship extended to the social and political matrix of war.