President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
Scholars of Clausewitz have gone to great pains to distinguish and connect the primary trinity of passion, chance, and reason with the secondary trinity of people, military, and government. In repudiating the Powell Doctrine’s focus on only the secondary trinity, Hew Strachan points out the the triad of people, military, and government are the “application” of the trinity—they are elements of the “state, not of war.” But for Antulio Echevarria, an equally erroneous position would be to ignore the secondary trinity, as he argues Clausewitz was clear in drawing the connection between the intrinsic and the institutional. In taking a position diametrically opposed to van Creveld, Echevarria suggests we risk divorcing Clausewitz from the “practical concerns of the debates of his day.”
In the end, providing an explicit and tangible articulation of risk allows military leaders to best inform strategy development and execution. This not only ensures better alignment of ends, ways, and means that will maximize the probability of accomplishing the desired policy objectives, it also ensures that national blood and treasure will not be needlessly spent through poorly developed strategy.
Clausewitz’s great contribution was to “build a snowmobile.” He took the philosophical epistemology of his era, which gave him a means of refining “truth.” He then directed that system to a study of war and availed himself of a Newtonian system to look at cause, effect and engagement. He further located war as a nexus between multiple independent but fused factions. I hope that this is a useful addition to your conception of CvC’s subjective, objective, and trinity.
