Absolute war

The concept of absolute war was a philosophical construct developed by the military theorist General Carl von Clausewitz. This concept was featured in the first half of the first chapter of his most famous book, On War. In it, Clausewitz explained that absolute war is a philosophical abstraction—a "logical fantasy"--that is impossible in practice because it is not directed or constrained by political motives or concerns, nor limited by the practical constraints of time or space. He called warfare constrained by these moderating real-world influences real war.

In his explanation of absolute war, Clausewitz defined war as "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will". However, war itself does not contain inherent moral or political aspects. These conditions (for instance, the laws of armed conflict) are placed on war by those who fight it, and exist because the intelligence of the civilized nations involved exercises greater influence on their methods of fighting war than does their instinctive hostility.

Absolute war can be seen to be an act of violence without compromise, in which states fight to war's natural extremes; it is a war without the 'grafted' political and moral moderations. In On War, Clausewitz explains what makes up absolute war:

Clausewitz states that "...it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to bloodshed involved, must obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigour in [the] application [of force]". Therefore, war in its most natural manner would involve each state continually reciprocating each other's use of force (plus some) to maintain a superiority, until both were using violence to its utmost extent. This is the first reciprocal action, and leads to the first extreme of war.

Clausewitz stated that the purpose of war is to make the opponent comply with the will of the nation or state. However, an opponent will obviously not do that unless complying to that will becomes the least oppressive of its available options. Therefore, in order to make the enemy comply with the will of the nation, a state must place its adversary in a position that is more oppressive to it than compliance. Furthermore, that position cannot be temporary, or appear to be temporary. This is because it will be more likely that an enemy will simply 'ride out the storm' in the prospect of being in a better position at a later stage. Any change in this position would be a change for the worse, and so in order to best achieve this position a state must disarm its enemy (forcing it into a position from which it cannot resist).

Furthermore, as war involves two (or more) hostile states, this principle applies to both, and so it becomes the second reciprocal action, whereby both try to impose such a position on the other.

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