A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force commitment. An engagement with only limited commitment between the forces and without decisive results is sometimes called a skirmish.
Carl Philipp Gottfriedvon Clausewitz was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral", in modern terms meaning psychological, and political aspects of waging war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege, though unfinished at his death, is considered a seminal treatise on military strategy and science.
Vom Kriege is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832. It is one of the most important treatises on political-military analysis and strategy ever written, and remains both controversial and influential on strategic thinking.
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek word strategos, the term strategy, when first used during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", or "the art of arrangement" of troops. and deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy.
In modern use, the order of battle of an armed force participating in a military operation or campaign shows the hierarchical organization, command structure, strength, disposition of personnel, and equipment of units and formations of the armed force. Various abbreviations are in use, including OOB, O/B, or OB, while ORBAT remains the most common in the United Kingdom. An order of battle is distinct from a table of organisation, which is the intended composition of a given unit or formation according to the military doctrine of its armed force. Historically, an order of battle was the order in which troops were positioned relative to the position of the army commander or the chronological order in which ships were deployed in naval situations.
Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan was an English military historian, lecturer, author and journalist. He wrote many published works on the nature of combat between prehistory and the 21st century, covering land, air, maritime, intelligence warfare and the psychology of battle.
Antoine-Henri Jomini Swiss military officer who served as a general in French and later in Russian service, and one of the most celebrated writers on the Napoleonic art of war. Jomini was largely self-taught in military strategy, and his ideas are a staple at military academies, the United States Military Academy at West Point being a prominent example; his theories were thought to have affected many officers who later served in the American Civil War. He may have coined the term logistics in his Summary of the Art of War (1838).
Sir Julian Stafford Corbett was a prominent British naval historian and geostrategist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose works helped shape the Royal Navy's reforms of that era. One of his most famous works is Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, which remains a classic among students of naval warfare. Corbett was a good friend and ally of naval reformer Admiral John "Jacky" Fisher, the First Sea Lord. He was chosen to write the official history of British Naval operations during World War I.
Principles of war are rules and guidelines that represent truths in the practice of war and military operations.
Annihilation is a military strategy in which an attacking army seeks to entirely destroy the military capacity of the opposing army. This strategy can be executed in a single planned pivotal battle, called a "battle of annihilation". A successful battle of annihilation is accomplished through the use of tactical surprise, application of overwhelming force at a key point, or other tactics performed immediately before or during the battle.
A logical extreme is a useful, though sometimes fallacious, rhetorical device for the disputation of propositions. Quite simply, a logical extreme is the relevant statement of an extreme or even preposterous position that is nonetheless consistent with the proposition in question. Thus, in so far as the logically extreme position is both relevant and untenable, it has succeeded in calling the proposition into question, at least in its stated form. An example is in Basil Liddell Hart's essay Armed Forces and the Art of War: Armies in The New Cambridge Modern History:
The worst effect of Clausewitz's views came through his metaphysical exposition of the idea of 'absolute' warfare. By taking the logical extreme as the theoretical ideal, he conveyed the impression, to superficial readers, that the road to success was through the unlimited application of force. [...] Moreover, Clausewitz contributed to the subsequent decay of generalship when in an oft-quoted passage he wrote--'Philanthropists may easily imagine that there is a skilful method of disarming and overcoming the enemy without great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War....It is an error which must be extirpated.' [...] Unfortunately Clausewitz's corrective arguments would henceforth be cited by countless blunderers to excuse, and even to justify, their futile squandering of life in bull-headed assaults.
The philosophy of war is the area of philosophy devoted to examining issues such as the causes of war, the relationship between war and human nature, and the ethics of war. Certain aspects of the philosophy of war overlap with the philosophy of history, political philosophy, international relations and the philosophy of law.
Center of gravity (COG) is a military term that refers to the source of strength or balance for a military force. Centers of gravity exist for all belligerents and at all operational levels of war. The concept was first developed by Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian military theorist, in his work On War.
Panagiotis Kondylis was a Greek philosopher, intellectual historian, translator and publications manager who principally wrote in German, in addition to translating most of his work into Greek. He can be placed in a tradition of thought best exemplified by Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli and Max Weber.
Christopher Bassford is an American military historian, best known for his works on the Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz.
The culminating point in military strategy is the point at which a military force is no longer able to perform its operations.
War from the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics is a 2012 book on war and military strategy written by Emile Simpson, a former British Army officer. The book analyzes the War in Afghanistan (2001–present) in terms of Carl von Clausewitz's theory of war, arguing that modern counter-insurgencies have more in common with domestic political struggles than the traditional state-on-state conflicts described by Clausewitz. The book was favorably reviewed by Michael Howard, a prominent military historian, among others.
A war of annihilation or war of extermination is a type of war in which the goal is the complete annihilation of a state, a people or an ethnic minority through genocide or through the destruction of their livelihood. The goal can be outward-directed or inward, against elements of one's own population. The goal is not like other types of warfare, the recognition of limited political goals, such as recognition of a legal status, control of disputed territory, or the total military defeat of an enemy state.
