Clausewitz's chameleon: military theory and the future of war. (Defence).(peace)

Only the dead have seen the end of war

--Plato

AS THE WORLD enters the twenty-first century, it appears that we are in the midst of revolutionary trends in the character of international security, with the forces of information technology and globalisation seemingly transforming the theory and practice of war. In retrospect, it is now possible to see the decade between the collapse of Soviet communism in August 1991 and the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in September 2001 as an era of the unexpected. No one in the West expected, still less predicted, the fall of the Soviet Union; the Asian financial crisis; the Indian and Pakistani nuclear detonations, and, of course, the events of September 11.

Over the past decade, armed conflict has not remained within the traditional parameters of conventional warfare between rival states. From Somalia through Bosnia to Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan, the face of war has assumed bewildering expressions. Under new global security conditions, the post-modern has collided with the pre-modern, the cosmopolitan has confronted the parochial, while the Westphalian state system has been challenged by new sub-state and trans-state forces. Conventional high-tech Western armed forces have had to come to terms with a world of failed states populated by ethnic paramilitaries, of rogue regimes equipped with ballistic missiles and poison gas, and of radical extremists embracing a philosophy of mass-casualty terrorism.

For Western policy-makers and military professionals these are deeply perplexing times; war seems more dynamic and chameleon-like than ever before. There are pressing questions: What is the future of war in conditions of great flux? Can traditional ideas of military power continue to dominate in an age of both globalisation and fragmentation? What is the meaning of Western military supremacy in an era when--as demonstrated by the events of September 11--democratic civilisation is highly vulnerable to unexpected and unorthodox threats?

WAR IN THE 1990S

IN THE 1990S there appeared to be a major transition in international relations away from a mainly state-centred system towards one marked by greater forms of interdependence and interconnectedness. This process of interconnectedness was propelled by the dual impact of globalisation and its handmaiden, the information revolution. Together, these two forces appeared to have altered the context within which modern states operated, bringing about an apparent redistribution of power between states, markets and civil society.