What would Clausewitz say about the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)? As the Prussian sage and his fellow greats of strategic theory might counsel, America is waging an “unlimited war by contingent” against ISIL. Last year President Barack Obama vowed to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the terror state, yet …

The famous and often reprinted portrait of the West’s most influential military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, was painted by Wilhelm Wach in early 1830s. One of Prussia’s most fashionable artists of the era, Wach portrayed the officer as a serious man with melancholic look and penetrating but sad eyes. Wach’s painting, made either in the …

The debate about the civil–military divide remains a constant topic within our post-modern society. The arguments usually circle around how to help civilian leaders understand military culture, appreciate the challenges faced by military personnel, and improve the public’s understanding of the possibilities and limitations of military operations. But what if military personnel actively participated in …

Editor’s note: We asked contributors to the War on the Rocks Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to tell other readers, in their own words, why they chose to support WOTR. The responses we received have been amazing. Here’s one of them.   If Clausewitz were alive today, he would be writing for War on the Rocks. In …

Donald Stoker, Clausewitz: His Life and Work (Oxford University Press, 2014)   “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 to the 1985 second edition of …

Editor’s note: This is the third in a three-part series. Read Part 1, Defining War for Law and Theory, here, and Part 2, Technology and the Expansion of War, here. Ain’t No Party Like a Clausewitz Party Cuz a Clausewitz Party Don’t Stop Part III: Strategy, Politics, and Keeping “War” Limited   The first two installments of …

Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series. Read Part 1, Defining War for Law and Theory, here. Ain’t No Party Like a Clausewitz Party Cuz a Clausewitz Party Don’t Stop Part II: Technology and the Expansion of War   When we left off in Part I, we’d examined how Clausewitz’s method of critical …

Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series. Ain’t No Party Like a Clausewitz Party Cuz a Clausewitz Party Don’t Stop Part I: Defining War for Law and Theory   Ten years ago, an article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review argued that traditional legal distinctions “between war and peace, emergencies and …

The November announcement of an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 to curb the former’s nuclear program in exchange for some easing of sanctions was met with mixed global reactions.  As the most significant step yet toward deescalating a crisis that has hung over Middle East politics like an ominous cloud pregnant with unpredictable stormy …

Over at Small Wars Journal, NDU Professor William Olson has written an article called. “The Continuing Irrelevance of Clausewitz.”  I can already hear the drumbeats as Clausewitzians gather to brand Olson a heretic, but I think Carl von Clausewitz might approve of the article.  And a better title might have been “Why Clausewitz is relevant, but …

Emile Simpson, War from the Ground Up, Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics (London: Hurst/New York: Columbia University Press, 2013) £25/$32.50, 285 pgs. There is a longstanding tradition in the United Kingdom of misinterpreting the Prussian soldier and theorist Clausewitz.  Liddell Hart’s mischaracterization of Clausewitz as the “Mahdi of Mass” and as the purveyor of absolute …

Forty years ago an intense controversy gripped the intelligence community over estimates of the Soviet strategic threat. Hardliners outside the community had complained that intelligence analysts were routinely underestimating Soviet capabilities and intentions because they relied on social science models that assumed rationality and reduced threat assessment to a bean counting exercise. What they should …

Earlier this year, we taught a short skills institute for graduate students called Understanding the Military. When we asked our students what they most wanted to learn, we were very surprised by the most common answer: how to behave in meetings with military personnel. We’ve attended many meetings where it felt like the military personnel …

John Bew, Realpolitik: A History (Oxford University Press, 2015).   “It is never a waste of time to study the history of words.”         — Lucien Lefebvre “No modern nation has ever constructed a foreign policy that was acceptable to its intellectuals.”         — Irving Kristol   Due to its occasionally …

Kevin Pollpeter and Kenneth W. Allen, eds., The PLA as Organization v2.0 (Vienna, VA: Defense Group Inc., 2015).   One of the great tragedies to befall a new book is to be overtaken by events within weeks of its publication. The greatest tragedy, however, is for an excellent book to be ignored because the novelty of new …