Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz is a German-Prussian soldier and military theorist who stresses the "moral" (in modern terms, psychological) and political aspects of war.
His most notable work, Vom Kriege (On War), is unfinished at his death.
Clausewitz espouses a romantic conception of warfare, though he also has at least one foot planted firmly in the more rationalist ideas of the European Enlightenment.
His thinking is often described as Hegelian because of his references to dialectical thinking but, although he probably knows Hegel, Clausewitz's dialectic is quite different and there is little reason to consider him a disciple.
He stresses the dialectical interaction of diverse factors, noting how unexpected developments unfolding under the "fog of war" (i.e., in the face of incomplete, dubious, and often completely erroneous information and high levels of fear, doubt, and excitement) call for rapid decisions by alert commanders.
He sees history as a vital check on erudite abstractions that do not accord with experience.
In contrast to Antoine-Henri Jomini, he argues that war cannot be quantified or reduced to mapwork, geometry, and graphs.
Clausewitz has many aphorisms, of which the most famous is that "War is the continuation of Politik by other means" (Politik being variously translated as "policy" or "politics", terms with very different implications), a description that has won wide acceptance in a number if camps.
