The Best Strategy Is Always To

This maxim from On War captures Clausewitz's principle of mass — the concentration of superior force at the decisive point. In an era when commanders were tempted to disperse forces across wide fronts, Clausewitz argued that numerical and material strength, concentrated at the right place and time, was the surest foundation of strategy. The principle was taken directly to heart by Napoleon Bonaparte, whose campaigns Clausewitz had studied exhaustively, and it remains a foundational concept in military doctrine today.