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Carl von Clausewitz defines war as the exercise of force to attain political objectives, unrestrained by any law other than expediency. This philosophical analysis examines the nature of conflict as a force inherent in nations, providing a foundational framework for understanding the military and political history of modern Europe.

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Table of Contents

B. War as an Instrument of Policy

lifted with both hands and the whole power of the body to strike once for all, into a light handy weapon, which is even sometimes nothing more than a rapier to exchange thrusts and feints and parries.

Thus the contradictions in which man, naturally timid, becomes involved by war, may be solved, if we choose to accept this as a solution.

If war belongs to policy, it will naturally take its character from thence. If policy is grand and powerful, so will also be the war, and this may be carried to the point at which war attains to its absolute form.

In this way of viewing the subject, therefore, we need not shut out of sight the absolute form of war, we rather keep it continually in view in the back ground.

Only through this kind of view, war recovers unity; only by it can we see all wars as things of one kind; and it is only through it that the judgment can obtain the true and perfect basis and point of view from which great plans may be

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