ABSTRACT
A theorist’s fi rst task is to defi ne the subject she or he is theorizing about. Few theorists have taken this job more seriously than Carl von Clausewitz, who devotes Book One of his magnum opus solely to establishing the nature of war (Clausewitz 1976: 75-123). Clausewitz returns to the problem frequently throughout the other seven books that make up his treatise. As Chapter 3 noted, other strategic thinkers have used his work as a foil for their own explorations of this topic ever since. Not only are these debates interesting from a theoretical point of view, they have practical implications. One’s conceptual understanding of war shapes one’s views of such matters as the type of forces one must seek to acquire, the circumstances in which one must use them, the methods one will use in employing them, the way in which one must evaluate potential enemies and the degree to which one must subordinate one’s moral and political concerns to military necessity.
