ABSTRACT
In the form of his famous trinity, Clausewitz laid the basis for a comprehensive understanding of war. Rejecting both the stereotypically dogmatic and mechanistic Enlightenment approach and the exaggerated and fatalistic excesses of the Romantic outlook, Clausewitz struck a middling course. Moving beyond the depiction of war as either art or science, Clausewitz maintained that war is part of mans social existence and is most akin to that from which it emerges: politics. The trinity is the fruit of his theoretical labours; the final synthesis arrived at after years of intense study and historical analysis. The flood of studies in recent years claiming there is something decidedly new about contemporary war whether due to the effects of globalisation, the media revolution or new forms of insurgency and terrorism has led many commentators to return to Clausewitz and, ultimately, to the trinity. Nevertheless, war remains, with qualification, true to Clausewitz's original trinitarian conception.
