The Pentagonian Test: Expanding Clausewitz’s Theory
In this new piece by special guest author, Dr Frank Hoffman, the Clausewitzian trinity is examined through the lens of the modern world, including the role of economics and technology.
This year, I invited a group of experts who examine topics such as military strategy, drone warfare, the war in Ukraine, military transformation, and the security situation in the Pacific to write guest articles for publication here at Futura Doctrina.
The first piece, written by Dr Frank Hoffman, covered the important topic of AI and critical thinking. It was published in February, and can be read here. The second, from Dr Oleksandra Molloy, an Australian-Ukrainian expert on uncrewed systems and drone operations, is available here. Dr Hoffman also published a terrific article about the collapse of the ‘end of war’ thesis here.
Today, Dr Hoffman returns. In this article he explores the future of war in the 21st century and whether the Clausewitzian trinity, developed in the early 19th century, is a sufficient theory now to explain war and human conflict. It is a terrific piece that I am sure you will find insightful. I hope it might start a fascinating debate about the relevance of Clausewitz in the modern era.
It may be heresy, but our poor Prussian philosopher left out aspects of war that are very important if not essential.
The “Trinity” is one of Clausewitz’s most enduring and revered concepts, although it is discussed only in a single page among the eight books comprising On War. While this concept captures the most powerful dynamics of war and contributes to a greater understanding of war throughout human history, omitting consideration of the physical means of preparing for and conducting war, and assuming away the relevance of economic capacity, seems narrow-minded in our modern era. A more comprehensive understanding of war requires that we add consideration of the elements of technology and economics to the canonical Trinity.[1]
The Trinity
This analytical tool is central to Carl von Clausewitz study of war’s most fundamental relationships. He defined the Trinity as the interaction of three sets of forces: irrational forces (passion and enmity); non-rational forces (”the play of chance and probability”) that produce friction; and purely rational forces (war’s subordination to policy and reason).[2] These interactive elements influence the violence that lies at the center of the Trinity and Clausewitz’s conception of war.[3] He associated each of these elements with actors or components of the state (policy, military, and people). But the primary trinity is based on the basic three elements, and their association with actors is secondary.[4]
This is often presented graphically as a hierarchy or fixed relationships in an isosceles triangle. Even avowed disciples of Clausewitz will mistakenly refer to the trinity as a triangle.[5] This is antithetical to Clausewitz’s more interactive and nonlinear description of war and the dynamic relationship of the three elements. Clausewitz claimed that war would involve continuous interaction between the elements and cannot be seen as a fixed relationship.[6] The interaction represented by his use of magnets to depict their reciprocity, shapes the violence that makes war so unique. Clausewitz insisted that:
These three tendencies are like three different codes of law, deep-rooted in their subject and yet variable in their relationship to one another. A theory that ignores any one of them or seeks to fix an arbitrary relationship between them would conflict with reality to such an extent that for this reason alone it would be totally useless.[7]
Thus, any conception that argues for a fixed relationship of these elements is inconsistent with our long departed but pragmatic Prussian soldier. As Chris Bassford explains it, the trinity is the central concept in On War despite its brief exposition.[8] Without a doubt, he captured the essence of warfare in these tendencies and produced a model that has enduring value.
At the center of Clausewitz’s theory are “moral factors”—the psychological elements that often decide battles. He claimed that he considered physical and psychological factors equally weighted in his approach,[9] and that “the two interact throughout: they are inseparable.”[10] (emphasis added) Despite that, Clausewitz centered his model entirely on the moral and psychological elements of passion, genius, probability and rational inputs into war. He chose not to include any material or physical elements.
Yet, he also wrote: “War is a trial of moral and physical forces by means of the latter… The spirit and will of men are the true sharpened blade, while physical strength is merely the wooden hilt.”[11] It is clear that moral/psychological forces have primacy in his theory, and that he thought they exerted a decisive influence on the elements involved in war.[12]
Clausewitz’s presentation is simple but historically stunted as he lived in an age where industrialization of scale had not occurred and where technology was not a significant player. Clausewitz goes so far as to assert that weapons and equipment are not essential to fighting, using wrestling as an example of fighting without any tools of war.[13] Moreover, some scholars credit Clausewitz for his stress on human factors and applaud ignoring technology as an agent of change.[14]
Our Prussian philosopher’s theory has been accused of being battle centric, more relevant to warfare than to war. It is evident that our Prussian instructor is more concerned with the conduct of war itself.[15] His opus refers to battle (Schlacht) some 600 times. Clausewitz himself saw combat nearly 20 times between 1793 and 1815, including Jena, Borodino, and Wavre.[16]
Yet there are parts of On War, where the dynamics and dialectical relationships between policy and strategy are discussed that are not battle centric but inherently strategic. The Trinity is one of those ideas. While he correctly values human and moral factors, the exclusion of material factors limits his theory. Adding two elements or tendencies to capture physical factors like economics and technology would offset that limitation and bring the theory closer to representing the dynamic interactions that impact war in the real world.
A theory of war that ignores the dynamic relationships of the financing of war, economic production of war materials, and technology’s contribution to the means of war is just as useless as overlooking any of the critical tendencies in Clausewitz’s original formulation.
The sub-elements of the two proposed additions are reflected in Table 1.
In modifying Handel’s argument, I have added Technology and Economics.I have also tried to suggest where the interactions of all five of these “magnets” interact.This produces a new model as reflected in Figure 1 below, a Pentagonian rather than a Trinitarian framework.
Technology
Clausewitz’s model is a product of his times and his personal experiences. He lived in an age where science was just expanding and industrialization had not occurred.[17] Clausewitz was a reflective man of his age, and his work evidences a range of disciplines including explorations in science. He had borne witness to the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleonic Warfare. He had seen the dramatic shift in social and political forces which animated the formation of large armies that swept across the Continent. Yet, his was an age of stasis when it came to most military relevant technologies.[18] Political and social forces were the principal drivers in his era, not technology.[19]
