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Clausewitz and Jomini

Clausewitz 's On War has become a respected reference for strategy, dealing with political, as well as military, leadership, his most famous assertion being:

Clausewitz saw war first and foremost as a political act, and thus maintained that the purpose of all strategy was to achieve the political goal that the state was seeking to accomplish. As such, Clausewitz famously argued that war was the "continuation of politics by other means", and as such, suggested that the amount of force used by a warring state would and should be proportional to whatever political aim that the state sought to achieve via war. Clausewitz further dismissed "geometry" as an insignificant factor in strategy, believing instead that ideally all wars should follow the Napoleonic concept of victory through a decisive battle of annihilation and destruction of the opposing force, at any cost. However, he also recognized that his ideal of how war should be fought was not always practical in reality and that limited warfare could influence policy by wearing down the opposition through a " strategy of attrition ".

In contrast to Clausewitz, Antoine-Henri Jomini (1779-1869) dealt mainly with operational strategy, planning and intelligence, the conduct of a campaign, and " generalship " rather than "statesmanship". He proposed that victory could be achieved by occupying the enemy's territory rather than destroying a opposing army.

As such, geometric considerations were prominent in Jomini's theory of strategy. Jomini's two basic principles of strategy were to concentrate against fractions of the enemy force at a time and to strike at the most decisive objective.

Clausewitz and Jomini remain required reading for today's military professional officer.