Conclusion

Summary

The Conclusion reiterates the book’s purpose—to more clearly and faithfully reveal war’s truths to help prevent wars, reduce their damaging effects, and win when there is no other choice. War encompasses humanity, politics, and combat, and its dialectic nature reflects humanity’s duality—peaceful and warlike, good and evil. War theory and strategy are most effective when we value both sides of war’s dialectics, and genius often lies in understanding how and when to move from one extreme to another. War has many forms, but all are related in a continuum where assessments of relative capacity influence force viscosity and posture (attack and defense). Predicting war’s future character is critical to strategy, and this is best done by studying history, trends, current circumstances, and theory. Finally, while thorough, objective analysis confirms the impracticality of permanent peace, the potential for peace increases with the full, truthful knowledge of war and its relationship to humanity provided by sound war theory.