Carl von Clausewitz's On War is widely regarded as the most influential text for the traditions of military-strategic thought and practice that have attended the development of modern State power. Colin Gray declares it the only truly classical theory of war written in the modern era. Clausewitz's statement that war is to be understood as ‘nothing but the continuation of policy with other means’ remains the most influential definition of the concept not only for military-strategic thought but for the major traditions of thinking about international politics in which the study of war continues to be a central preoccupation. While the ontological veracity of the definition of war as a continuation of politics is increasingly debated, theorists of war still tend overwhelmingly to assume Clausewitz's dictum as a recommendation for the management of its instrumentality. Ensuring the subordination of war to the political ends of sovereignty remains the central tenet of neo-Clausewitzian military-strategic thought.

Yet Clausewitz's thought has played as important a formative role in the development of a tradition of thinking about war for which sovereignty is political anathema. That tradition is what I call counter-strategic thought. Counter-strategic thought is a tradition of thinking concerned with intensifying critical understandings of the depths and modalities of relations between war and modern formations of power.