Character of War: How to Understand It?

Abstract

Strategic theory dictates that an understanding of a war’s character is imperative for the achievement of victory in strategic practice. This article identifies and analyses extant approaches to the understanding of war. These approaches include categorization, strategic analysis and historical comparison. A theoretical analysis accompanied by illustrative cases indicates that one can achieve the most in-depth understanding of a war’s character by combining strategic analysis and historical comparison, though the process of achieving such understanding is difficult and time-consuming.