Abstract

Given the rapidly unfolding and significant social, economic and geopolitical impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, it has become a wider national security matter as well, requiring a coordinated response from other sectors beyond public health. In this respect, what would a wider, more encompassing, national security response to COVID-19 entail? The current struggle against COVID-19 has been called a “war”. If so, can we learn anything from the insights of the 19th century Prussian philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz, who famously conceptualised war as comprising a “remarkable trinity” of “primordial passions”; the “play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam”; and the “element of subordination, as an instrument of policy”? This article will show what a coordinated “trinitarian” response to the outbreak involving the public health community, the public and the government must entail.