Defence and strategy

Applying Clausewitz to the Fallacies of War Categorisation

Samuel ŽILINČÍK

This research aims to expose the fallacious thinking which enables some of the categories of war to proliferate despite their questionable analytical usefulness. For this purpose, the author uses the method of theoretical analysis. These are the confusion about the nature of war and peace, the emphasis on novelty, and the attempts to capture war as a static phenomenon. The fallacies identified are the prevalence of legalistic lenses over strategic lenses, the false equivalence between military and non-military instruments, the ignorance of the empirical evidence, the ignorance of the dynamic nature of war and the neglect of the adversary as a crucial component of war.