Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) and the permanency of Clausewitz's trinitarian theory of war : can RMA change the nature of war?

• Main Author: Sia, Mitchell Chiao Min.
• Other Authors: Loo Fook Weng, Bernard
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Military and naval science::Strategy
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/39395
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Since the 1991 Gulf War, RMA proponents have argued that the current wave of self-conscious RMA has changed the nature of war. The purpose of this dissertation is to study if this is indeed a valid claim by using Clausewitz's Trinitarian theory to explore what war is. On that basis, we can appreciate how and why Trinitarian theory remains the sole permanent and relevant explanatory theory of war. The very essence of war's unchanging nature comprises of three dissimilar elements: the rationality of war's subordination to politik, the nonrational forces of uncertainty, chance, friction and ambiguity in the battle-space, and the irrational interplay of passions and emotion in society.