The article presents Carl von Clausewitz's theory of war, its determination of the state concept and its importance for the elaboration of a theory of state formation and state system. The internal theoretical relations between the war concept and the concept of politics are explicated and demonstrated by concrete examples upon how the explore the stateforms of specific statesystems and the life-modes of specific stateforms - and the ways these forms and relations are transformed by their mutually overdeterminating processes of change.