Clausewitz and Military Ethics

Clausewitz's work On War has had and still has an extraordinary importance in the western strategic military thinking. Many thoughts have been generated about the war phenomenon whose origin come from this military and German thinker. Nonetheless, reflections and analysis associated to military ethics and coming from his work are much less widespread. In this paper it is expected to show that although Clausewitz did not include on his analysis the ethical considerations and reflections on warfare, important elements which contribute to the Western tradition in the legitimation of the use of force (ius ad bellum) and the way to conduct the battlefield operations according to the customs and rules of war (ius in bello), can be found inside his work.