It’s very hard indeed to think of a single thinker or writer who looms as large over their chosen field of study as Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz, on the odd chance you haven’t heard of him in this ...

Carl von Clausewitz is one of the most profound military thinkers of all time. His famous book On War is our bible and he is a god among military strategists. But we should stop teaching Clausewitz in ...

In the marginalia of his copy of On War, influential fighter pilot-theorist John Boyd laments that Carl von Clausewitz never thought about inducing friction for the adversary: “Overcome friction, ...

London: Chronos Books, 2024. Pp. vi, 228. Notes, index. £13.99/$15.95 pape. ISBN: 1803416211 Till 1826, claims Gat, Clausewitz believed that Napoleon’s all out war represented the true nature of war.

Vegetius, a Roman writer of the fourth century AD, said, “Let him who desires peace prepare for war.” Carl von Clausewitz sharpened the point: “The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must ...

While those may appear to be useful metrics, they create a dangerous illusion—that war can be understood through numbers ...

They’re interesting bookends: Carl von Clausewitz the analytic Prussian, laying bare the workings of human conflict, and Leo Tolstoy, the great writer and anarcho-pacifist, urging resistance to ...

“One of the glories of history is that it can never be definitive; good history is history on which others can build.” So wrote Peter Paret — the dean of American Clausewitz studies — in the preface ...

But can reading an analysis of a limited conflict fought by men in laced coats and powdered wigs really inform our view of war in the twenty-first century? It can, and it should. Why? In any future ...

LAST month we asked our readers to suggest a name for our new blog, covering defence, security and diplomacy. The very first suggestion, from a user called Tzimisces, also proved to be clear favourite ...