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C H A P T E R 3 Duel and Reciprocity “A REMARKABLE TRINITY” Benoît Chantre: The discovery of the duel and the escalation to extremes has enabled you to anticipate what is at stake in our discussion: our ability to delay or even prevent catastrophe. Clausewitz himself seems to have been trying to do so. After having described the law of the trend to extremes, he tried to suggest a political definition of war. This is the only way we can make sense of the ending of Chapter 1 of his treatise, which closes with a definition of war as a blend of passions, calculation, and intelligence, “a remarkable trinity.”1 This third and final definition is meant to be a synthesis and complete conception of war. However, we have the feeling that Clausewitz discovered something else along the way. René Girard: Clausewitz was trying to persuade us that we were still in the era of classical conflicts between states. This is the result he was hoping for as he tried to hide the duel behind a rational definition of war. Thus, the ruler would “control” the strategist, who would in turn “control” public sentiment . Let’s not forget that Clausewitz taught at the Military Academy, and that his unusual career, which included service in the Tsar’s armies, required him to be prudent. In some ways, his attempt to rationalize resembles the way that primitive societies used to hide their violence behind myth. Ideology has replaced mythology, but the mechanisms are similar. Once he has described the trend to extremes, Clausewitz thus has difficulty convincing 53 54 Duel and Reciprocity us that politics can still control war. History is accelerating beyond our control. We have to accept that its course will increasingly escape rational management. BC: In section 28 of Chapter 1, Book 1, Clausewitz set out the “result for the theory” that he had described, and it is in fact a third and final definition of war, after the “duel” and two types of war (“absolute and real war”).2 The definition is the “remarkable trinity” that is most apt, according to him, to shed light on the various forms that war can take, from the “trend to extremes” to “armed observation”: War is more than a true chameleon that slightly adapts its characteristics to the given case. As a total phenomenon its dominant tendencies always make war a remarkable trinity—composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone. The first of these three aspects mainly concerns the people; the second the commander and his army; the third the government. The passions that are to be kindled in war must already be inherent in the people; the scope which the play of courage and talent will enjoy in the realm of probability and chance depends on the particular character of the commander and the army; but the political aims are the business of government alone. . . . Our task therefore is to develop a theory that maintains a balance between these three tendencies, like an object suspended between three magnets.3 The “remarkable trinity” is, along with what Clausewitzians call “the Formula” (“war is merely the continuation of policy by other means”),4 a decisive key to his thought. It is as if war were only part of politics. Clausewitz said that “its grammar, indeed, may be its own; but not its logic.”5 According to him, it will always be “contained” in both senses of the term. However, our reading of the text challenges the notion of policy having primacy over war, and instead promotes the idea of there being only one reality to consider here: reciprocal action. Clausewitz would like to have us believe that the clash between two states sometimes takes on a warlike aspect, such as when it provokes armed conflict, but sometimes a political aspect, such as when the clash is suspended by backing down to armed observation. We, by contrast , can see that reciprocal action simultaneously provokes and suspends Chapter Three 55 the escalation to extremes, and that offense and defense are two forms of the escalation, understood as suspended polarity. RG: To back down to armed observation thus means...

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