War As a Figuration in the Calculus of Form

Carl von Clausewitz described war as a nexus, a "wondrous trinity" of passion, chance, and reason, embodied in the elements of the population, the army, and the government. Norbert Elias introduced the concept of figuration to describe a network of "interdependencies" that "bind people together." The article uses the sociologically familiar concept of figuration to translate it into a sociological concept of form and to describe Clausewitz's theory of war using approaches from systems theory, network theory, and form calculus. For Clausewitz, the operation that differentiates and reproduces war is defense, so that, starting from defense, one can ask about the form of war. The article describes the three elements of population, army, and government, which as a trinity both differentiate war and integrate it into society, as components of a network that makes a structural contribution to reproducing politics by "other means," namely not only by the threat of violence, but also by the exercise of organized violence to threaten further violence. Insufficient power reproduces itself as an attempt to regain sufficient power.