Even though he’s been dead for over a century-and-a-half, he remains the most frequently cited, the most controversial, and in many respects the most modern.
Clausewitz’s fame is largely due to the importance and influence of his magnum opus,
On War, unquestionably the most important single work ever written on the theory of warfare and of strategy. His theories are of interest to military strategists, historians, political scientists, business thinkers, and scientists.
After more than a century and a half, Clausewitz’s work remains the most comprehensive, perceptive, and modern contribution to political/military and strategic thought. In whole or in part, it remains required reading in America’s intermediate-level and senior military schools, as well as in many civilian strategic studies programs and, increasingly, in business schools.
He understood that his readers would face a strategic world unpredictably different in many respects from his own. Rather, his theory is essentially descriptive of the nature of human-on-human strategic problems; his purpose is to develop our human capital—i.e., to help the reader develop his or her own strategic judgment in order to deal with the ever-changing strategic environment.