2014/08/19 by Vivek Sharma · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Military History and Strategy #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Nuclear Issues and Defense
paper · doi:10.1080/09557571.2013.872600
openalex publication_date 2014/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/02
This article presents a new theory of war that is grounded in the insights of Clausewitz on the social nature of conflict. Clausewitz had argued that war is a political process; he therefore distinguished between ‘war’—understood in political terms—and warfare—understood as fighting. He then created a typology covering a spectrum of war ranging from total to limited, the political stakes of a conflict determining where it would fall on the spectrum. I develop and modify this basic framework by arguing that the social organization of the actors has a determining role in predicting the stakes of war. I then show how this framework helps us understand some key problems in the political science literature on war and conflict. I attempt to show two main things: (1) that there are different types of wars (and that these differences are not necessarily related to the standing of the actors, i.e. the presence or absence of sovereignty); and (2) that how war and warfare are related is more complicated than previously understood and that this has implications for the political science literature on order, conflict and violence.