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 ...

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 ...

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.

Okay, I exaggerate. Nichols and Schwandt aren’t quite Shakespearean heirs to the Southampton rebellion, but I disagree with their call to limit/end military instruction on the theories of Carl Von ...

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 ...

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, ...

A half century ago, two computers at UCLA and Stanford were linked together into the first computer network. It was called ARPANET, after the military research lab that funded it. In the years since ...

“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 ...

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 ...

Last week we kicked off the winter term in the Naval War College’s Intermediate Level Course, dubbed Strategy & War. We spend the first week of seminars with the giants of strategic theory, namely ...