Polemitics: Towards a new conceptualisation of the political nature of war

It is widely accepted that war is a political phenomenon. Yet existing scholarship on war and strategy offers only partial and fragmented accounts of how force and politics interact in wartime, and the field lacks a singular concept capable of capturing their systemic, reciprocal, and constitutive relationship. This paper introduces ‘polemitics’ to denote the dynamic fusion of organised violence and political contestation. In doing so, it seeks to reorient the study of war around its defining political–military nexus and establishes a foundation for a broader research agenda on the political nature of war.