On Small War: Carl von Clausewitz and People’s War

The book introduces a fresh perspective on Carl von Clausewitz’s thoughts on small war. Clausewitz is a central figure in both the academic field of strategic studies and the practice of military education worldwide. Clausewitz was so far mostly interpreted as the paradigmatic thinker of major interstate war. As a result, a number of scholars have argued that his work is no longer relevant to war and strategy in the twenty-first century, which is supposedly the era of small wars. However, the book shows that Clausewitz’s theory of war originated in his analysis of small wars. Yet this does not mean that we can glean ready-made principles for small war from Clausewitz. On the contrary, we have to interpret him against the historical and intellectual backdrop of context, which is fundamentally different from the strategic context of the West today.