Carl von Clausewitz, a 19th-century Prussian general and military theorist, is best known for his foundational military treatise On War, in which he sought to theorise the nature and conduct of warfare. His legacy remains deeply embedded in Western scholarship, military planning, and public discourse. While many of Clausewitz’s ideas remain conceptually significant, not all of the concepts he developed in the 19th century align with the realities of modern warfare. In particular, the concept of the Centre of Gravity (COG), despite its long-standing role in Western and NATO operational and strategic doctrine, has proven difficult to reconcile with the complexities of contemporary conflict. Modern warfare, particularly the Russia–Ukraine war, highlights both the enduring relevance of Clausewitz’s insights and the limitations of classical military doctrine, underscoring the need to adapt key strategic concepts to contemporary conflicts and Europe’s and NATO’s evolving security environment.
In On War, Clausewitz elaborates on the concept of the COG, a key element in Western military scholarship and planning, as it shapes the identification of critical targets and guides the concentration of combat power. He states that a COG is “always found where the mass is concentrated most densely. It represents the most effective target for a blow; furthermore, the heaviest blow is that struck by the [COG]” and that “the essence of war is fighting, and since the battle is the fight of the main force, the battle must always be considered as the true [COG] of the war”. In other words, for Clausewitz, defeating the enemy’s main army in a decisive battle was the surest way to win a war. NATO has largely incorporated this concept into its operational planning doctrine, Allied Joint Doctrine for the Planning of Operations (AJP-5), while also adapting and broadening the idea to reflect the complexities of modern warfare, new technologies, and multi-domain operations.
Clausewitz, as a Prussian officer, focused primarily on the battlefield and the decisiveness of engagements. NATO doctrine, AJP-5, however, expands the concept to being “the primary source of power that provides an actor its strength, freedom of action, or will to fight.” According to this broader definition, potential Centres of Gravity could include a capital city, the defence-industrial base, strategic leadership, or popular support for the war effort. The history of modern warfare has demonstrated that targeting such elements can weaken an adversary’s capacity and will to fight in many cases. For example, during the Second World War, the Allies targeted public support through controversial strategic bombings of densely populated urban areas in Germany. The extent to which this campaign contributed to the collapse of the Nazi regime remains the subject of ongoing debate, but it illustrates how focusing on COGs can tie up assets that would benefit the war effort somewhere else more efficiently. Therefore, several arguments can be made when evaluating the contemporary relevance of the COG concept.
Warfare in the 19th Century vs. Modern Warfare 
The operational realities and technological limitations of 19th-century warfare are crucial to understanding why Clausewitz arrived at his conclusions about the nature of war. He commanded and fought wars mainly in the land domain, with mass forces clashing in decisive and man-against-man battles. Today, multiple domains exist, including air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace. Additionally, concepts like Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) aim to blur the traditional boundaries between military branches and integrate them into a unified “system of systems.” With MDO, NATO aims to coordinate military action across all domains, making the COG concept face conceptual challenges.
Another important aspect of modern wars and military technology is the creation of a complex battlespace, characterised by advanced surveillance, electronic warfare, and precision strike capabilities. The term “battlefield” has mainly been replaced by “battlespace,” which acknowledges the significance of electronic and space warfare. In Ukraine, the level of reconnaissance and surveillance of the battlespace by sensors, drones, and satellites makes concentrating forces extremely challenging. What can be seen can be hit, and with ever more precision, speed and lethality. This reality of modern warfare is often referred to as the transparent battlespace. In addition, these technologies are becoming widely accessible, and one cannot rely on a capability gap in a peer-to-peer conflict. The battlespace makes distribution, redundancy, mission command, concealment, and deception more essential than ever before.
These operational realities are, therefore, reshaping how Ukrainian and Russian forces conduct offensive operations on the battlefield. Ukraine and Russia are deploying company-sized (approx. 80-120 soldiers) and dismounted infantry formations to attack enemy positions because offensives with large formations (brigades or even battalions) are easily revealed and attacked with lethal precision. As Chief of the General Staff of the Bundeswehr, Carsten Breuer remarked at the Shangri-La Dialogue, “There is no rear area anymore,” meaning that everything and everyone can be a potential target of precision strikes with cruise and ballistic missiles or strike drones.
Additionally, the aforementioned high levels of reconnaissance and surveillance have made concealment and deception central to any offensive strategy. This implies that any staff-level conclusion about the existence of a COG in a given area could be deliberately misleading. It might be part of a deceptive plan designed to induce the opposing side to make false assumptions about the direction of an impending attack. The aim of such a deception is to stretch enemy forces thin, increasing the likelihood of breakthroughs elsewhere. The risk of false positives in intelligence is likely to persist despite claims about a fully transparent battlespace.
Asymmetric conflicts, in particular, demonstrate how difficult it can be to identify and target a clear COG. As experienced in asymmetric warfare over the past two decades, even the elimination of an enemy leadership does not necessarily lead to its defeat or surrender. In Afghanistan, local forces, with the help of the US military, pushed out the Taliban from power, but the war dragged on for another 20 years, ultimately resulting in a chaotic retreat of the West and the Taliban regaining power in the country. In Gaza, the elimination of senior and mid-level leadership of Hamas by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) proved not decisive either. The difficulties in even identifying and decisively destroying enemy leadership in asymmetric wars make the identification of a COG extremely difficult.
Furthermore, the increasing accessibility of technologies that enable long-range strikes and conduct real-time reconnaissance with loitering munitions, drones, and low-budget sensors is challenging Western military dominance. Traditionally, these systems were reserved for a handful of powerful states such as the United States. However, the spread and democratisation of technological capacities enable irregular forces, such as the Houthis, to conduct deep strikes and, in some cases, deny airspace to enemy jets through the employment of anti-aircraft defence systems, which significantly downplay the technological advantage traditionally held by major states.
To summarise, war has changed profoundly since Clausewitz was in charge of leading armies in battles. In conventional wars, technology has made the concentration of forces dangerous and counterproductive, leading to smaller assault formations with high emphasis on concealment and deception. In asymmetric and irregular warfare, a COG is simply non-existent since irregular forces mostly hide in civilian populations and are pushed to act independently, accepting and even provoking collateral damage and orchestrating “forever wars.” Additionally, technology previously reserved for powerful states has become affordable and accessible, making it within reach even of non-state actors such as the Houthis.
Implications for the European Defence
I decided to undergo reservist training (Ausbildung Ungediente) in the Bundeswehr in 2022 and had an interesting conversation with a staff sergeant. He explained that, although the programme was launched in 2019, it gained popularity with the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, as people wanted to be prepared in case Russia decided to attack NATO. Interestingly, he also noted that after witnessing the poor performance of Russian forces during the initial Russian offensive against Kyiv in early 2022 — particularly the notorious 60-kilometre-long column of tanks — many concluded that Russia posed no real threat. Consequently, interest in the programme declined.
This reflects the core of the problem: war, and especially prolonged war, must be understood as a race to outlearn the opponent. Russian forces may have failed spectacularly to capture Kyiv, but should the Kremlin decide to attack NATO, they would not operate under the same assumptions that led to their embarrassment in Kyiv. Events do not easily repeat themselves in war.
Following Ukraine’s successful Kharkiv offensive and the recapture of Kherson in September 2022, many in the West, myself included, believed that the Ukrainian counteroffensive the following year would bring the war to an end on Ukraine’s terms. Nevertheless, debates among Ukraine’s Western allies about providing tanks to enable a summer 2023 offensive dragged on for several months. Russia used this crucial time to mobilise, reinforce gaps in its infantry formations, dig in along the so-called Surovikin defensive line, and withdraw behind the Dnipro River in Kherson. As a result, the Russian military was able to adapt before the decision on additional aid was finalised, undermining Ukraine’s strategic initiative and its initial counteroffensive advantage. What lessons should European policymakers draw from this?
First, planning must take into account that operational innovation will inevitably break doctrinal rules in some form or another. The co-constitutive nature of warfare can render planning and doctrine obsolete the moment the first bullet is fired. Planning how to destroy an enemy’s COG in advance is therefore unlikely to be decisive on its own.
Moreover, risk-averse and static leaders pose significant obstacles to achieving mission objectives. The military must foster risk-taking and open-mindedness in training and feedback at all levels of command to ensure that leaders remain adaptive, innovative, and flexible.
Second, flexibility needs to be cultivated by pushing competencies and capabilities further down the chain of command, enabling tactical and operational leaders to respond quickly to a rapidly changing operational environment. For example, as part of Force Design 2030, the U.S. Marine Corps is already experimenting with delegating command authority to company-level and lower formations by integrating new technologies and capabilities into smaller infantry units. This enables Marines to operate effectively in highly distributed, denied, and austere environments. The tendency towards distribution and redundancy aims to break the “centre” into a network of nodes. Although these U.S. reforms have primarily aimed to improve military preparedness in the Indo-Pacific, the assumptions driving these changes have clear parallels to the conditions under which European militaries may also have to operate. Twenty-first-century combat increasingly aims to deny the enemy any opportunity to strike a centre that would prove decisive.
Thirdly, the adaptive nature of war makes prolonged public debates about important military decisions, such as the delivery of key capabilities to Ukraine, a self-defeating endeavour, as these capabilities risk losing much of their effectiveness by the time they reach the battlespace. Such drawn-out debates over providing Ukraine with critical weapon systems highlight how the old concept of the COG still shapes the perceptions of both the public and political leaders. These debates assume that a clearly defined COG exists and that it can be neutralised by delivering a particular weapon system. However, no single weapon system will prove decisive. The outcome of the war will be determined by the cumulative effect of all actions within the battlespace. Additionally, publicly announcing the potential delivery of a weapon system significantly reduces its impact and should therefore be avoided.
If contemporary warfare challenges the idea of a centre, then future war will most likely erase it. Instead, militaries and institutions must be trained to think adaptively, act flexibly, and plan accordingly. The complexity of warfare today makes institutional and societal learning essential for achieving victory.
