ABSTRACT
Understanding the nature of war was the main ambition of Carl von Clausewitz when he wrote his magnum opus, Vom Kriege.1 Clausewitz developed his ideas on the basis of his first-hand experiences during the Napoleonic wars. In particular, the defeat of his native Prussia at the hands of the French army proved to be a catalyst for him to put his ideas to paper. Clausewitz started by analysing war as a phenomenon that tends towards extremes. Left to its own devices, war tends to become limitless. Clausewitz saw the Napoleonic wars as coming closest to limitless war. This he called absolute or ideal war. In practice, war is always tempered by several factors, the most important of which he identified as politics. Therefore, he postulated famously that war was the continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.2
