Carl von Clausewitz's tome On War provides a rich, conceptual, logicbased, practical framework for addressing the challenges of military planning in East Asia. It remains relevant into the twenty-first century particularly for a protracted crisis defined by strategic maneuver or in a limited attritional war. US military planners must take great care to provide graduated, partial, and controllable options at the concrete level of campaigns and ultimately engagements and combat, thereby providing decision space to policymakers.