**How Has War Changed\
Since the End of the Cold War?**

**by**

**Colin S. Gray**

**Professor of International Politics and Strategic**

**Studies, University of Reading, England.**

**The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC
2020 project**

**are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion
purposes**

**only and do not represent the views of the US Government.**

**How Has War Changed\
Since the End of the Cold War?**[^1]

**by**

**Colin S. Gray**

**Professor of International Politics and Strategic**

**Studies, University of Reading, England.**

**May 2004**

**Paper prepared for the Conference on the "Changing Nature of Warfare,"
in support of the "Global Trends 2020" Project of the U.S. National
Intelligence Council**

The question in this paper's title is answered directly in the main
section of the analysis below. However, as a necessary precursor to that
analysis, four caveats or warnings are signaled which bear upon the
degree of confidence that should, and should not, be placed in strategic
futurology. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, 'prediction is
difficult, especially about the future.'

**Four Caveats**

As location is the key to property values, so context is, at least
should be, the most important variable in the understanding of war. The
necessity to take due account of the central significance of the several
contexts of war is the first of our four caveats. The analysis of recent
changes in war presented in the next section of the essay need to be
informed by the warnings provided here.

For the West, at least, twelve of the past fifteen years can fairly be
described as an inter-war period. That brief no-name era, usually
referred to neutrally as the Post-Cold War period, came to an explosive
end on September 11^th^, 2001. The shake-down years after more than four
decades of Cold War were bound to be confusing and disorienting. The
information revolution in warfare that had been brewing slowly for
decades, but which picked up speed in the 1990s, paled into near
insignificance compared with the political revolution that brought down
the Evil Empire almost without bloodshed. As always, politics rules. The
dominant contextual fact about war for the United States over the past
fifteen years has, of course, been geopolitical. The abrupt demise of
the Soviet rival, meaning the sudden absence of a balancing power,
outstrips in significance any and all other features of the inter-war
period of the 1990s. Furthermore, that geopolitical fact continues today
and is as certain to continue for many years, as it is also certain to
pass into history in its turn. It would be difficult to exaggerate the
importance of the United States being left as the last of the great
powers still standing as such at the beginning of the twenty-first
century.

![](media/image1.wmf){width="5.011111111111111in"
height="3.2777777777777777in"}

War has several contexts\--most prominently the political, social,
cultural, and technological. When we discuss how war has changed, it is
vital not to fall into the error of treating it as if it were an
autonomous phenomenon. Concern that that is happening is the first of
four caveats worth noting regarding the character of the current process
of U.S. military transformation. Some of the "grammar" of war assuredly
has changed since 1989, to put the matter in Clausewitzian terms, but
not the primacy of the logic of policy.[^2] There is a perennial
temptation to misread recent and contemporary trends in warfare as
signals of some momentous, radical shift. As often as not, the character
of warfare in a period is shaped, even driven, much more by the
political, social, and strategic contexts, than it is by changes
integral to military science.

The sense of the second caveat is best conveyed by a familiar ironic
lament: 'just when we found the answer, they changed the question.'
There is some danger that the United States may be committed to a
process of military transformation that is keyed to an inappropriately
narrow vision of future war. Moreover, it is a vision that may lack
empathy for development of a Plan B, should Plan A deliver less than
decisive success. In 1914, Imperial Germany was prepared solely for a
swift war of rapid movement; it had to learn about linear siege warfare
on the grand scale in real time. In 1941-42, Nazi Germany expected, and
was equipped to effect, a swift and decisive war of movement. When that
'Plan A' was thwarted, as in 1914 there was no 'Plan B.' Arguably,
German military planners had prepared their semi-modern forces to wage
the wrong kind of war. The tactical excellence of the Germans enabled
them repeatedly to adjust to the unanticipated demands of attritional
combat, though ultimately their resource deficiencies proved fatal. The
dramatic German examples are cited simply in order to emphasize the
prevalence and potency of the factor of surprise. Not for nothing did
Clausewitz insist that '\[w\]ar is the realm of uncertainty', as well as
'the realm of chance.'[^3] Are we confident that the process of
information-led military transformation will produce military capability
able to answer the questions that future policy and strategy will throw
its way?

The third caveat that should give pause to those inclined to indulge in
confident prognoses is the notorious unreliability of trend analysis.
Even the most accurate identification and analysis of recent and current
trends cannot offer a reliable guide to the future. Trends come in
bunches, they interact both with each other and with their contexts, and
it is their consequences, rather than they themselves, which make the
future. Trend spotting in the 1900s did not point unerringly to the
Great War of the 1910s. The 1920s did not flag the perils of the 1930s.
More recently, in the 1970s not many among us anticipated the apparent
nonlinearity of the collapse of the Soviet imperium in the late 1980s.
Defense planning geared to fit a world shaped by the trends identified
today is almost certain to rest on shaky assumptions. To repeat, it is
the consequences of current trends that matter. Understanding those
consequences is an art, not a science, and its most vital need by way of
technical support is a crystal ball. If crystal balls are unavailable,
the only resource is guesswork. When that guesswork is historically
educated and dressed up in scenario form its prospective value is
maximized, always bearing in mind the fact of our irreducible ignorance.
There should be no need to remind people that no fancy methodology as an
aid to defense planning can overcome the laws of physics. The future has
not happened. Beware of those who are addicted to the use of the
thoroughly misleading concept, the foreseeable future. The future is not
foreseeable, period.

Finally, our fourth caveat about predictions concerning future war is
the record of past achievement in that regard. There is no reason to
believe that the theorists and officials of today are any more gifted in
the prophecy department than were their predecessors. Bluntly stated,
the historical record of tolerably accurate strategic futurology is
anything but impressive. There is usually someone who sees the future
with uncanny perceptiveness, but, alas, at the time it is impossible to
know his or her identity.

The following are the four caveats suggested in this paper as being
analogous to health warning labels that should be affixed to strategic
predictions constructed from recent experience:

1.  [War should not be approached in ways that would divorce it from its
    political, social, and cultural contexts.]{.underline}

2.  [Defense establishments are apt to develop impressive military
    solutions to problems that they prefer to solve, rather than those
    that a cunning or lucky foe might pose.]{.underline}

3.  [Trend spotting and analysis is not a very helpful guide to the
    future.]{.underline} The strategic future is driven by the
    consequences of the trends we see: trends which interact and can
    trigger nonlinear developments.

4.  [Surprises happen!]{.underline} Some are agreeable; some are not. It
    is unlikely that we will prove any more farseeing than were our
    predecessors. Beware of the working of the law of unintended
    consequences. Because war is a duel, there are intelligent
    adversaries out there who will strive to deny us a mode of warfare
    that privileges the undoubted strengths of our transforming military
    power.

**Warfare, 1989-2004: What has Changed?**

The full title of this discussion should read, 'what has changed [and
what has not?]{.underline}' In order to keep this discussion
disciplined, I will answer the question by way of making eight points.
These are selected for their breadth of coverage of recent and current
changes in warfare; the empirically verifiable, the distinctly arguable,
and the falsely proclaimed.

> ![](media/image2.wmf){width="5.011111111111111in"
> height="3.763888888888889in"}

1.  **The unchanging nature of war**

Whatever about warfare is changing, it is not, and cannot be, its very
nature. If war's nature were to alter, it would become something else.
This logical and empirical point is important, because careless
reference to the allegedly changing nature of war fuels expectations of
dramatic, systemic developments that are certain to be disappointed. The
nature of war in the twenty-first century is the same as it was in the
twentieth, the nineteenth, and indeed, in the fifth century BC. In all
of its more important, truly defining features, the nature of war is
eternal. No matter how profound a military transformation may be, and
strategic history records many such, it must work with a subject that it
cannot redefine.[^4]

Fortunately, we are reasonably well educated on this matter, at least we
should be if we have read Clausewitz, Sun-tzu and Thucydides. The great
Prussian tells us that "\[a\]ll wars are things of the
[same]{.underline} nature".[^5] Also, he advises that war has two
natures, "objective" and "subjective".[^6] The former is permanent,
while the latter is subject to frequent change. The character of war is
always liable to change, as its several contexts alter, but its nature
is fixed. Clausewitz explains that "war, though conditioned by the
particular characteristics of states and their armed forces, must
contain some more general -- indeed a universal element with which every
theorist ought above all to be concerned".[^7] The four elements of the
"climate of war" are alas, all too permanent: they are "danger,
exertion, uncertainty, and chance".[^8] To which we can add such other
gems from the Clausewitzian as friction, his two remarkable
trinities,[^9] and his emphasis on the moral qualities. Given the
technophilia that is so characteristic of the U.S. defense community, it
is useful to recall the Prussian's judgment that "\[v\]ery few of the
new manifestations in war can be ascribed to new inventions or new
departures in ideas. They result mainly from the transformation of
society and new social conditions".[^10] It is true that he was writing
prior, albeit only just prior, to the Industrial Revolution on the
European continent, but his empirical claim stands as a helpful
corrective to the fashionable view that new technologies remake the
strategic world. Above all else, Clausewitz insists that war is an
instrument of policy. What that means is that war should be waged not
for the goal of victory, necessary though that usually is, but rather
for the securing of an advantageous peace. I am moved to coin the
aphorism that 'there is more to war than warfare'.[^11]

In our understandable and necessary focus on what is changing in the
character of war, it is scarcely less necessary to keep steadily in mind
just what it is about war and warfare that has not, and will not,
change. For example, war comes with fog, period! Similarly, to adapt a
popular bumper-sticker phrase, 'friction happens'.

2.  **Third-rate enemies**

The experience of warfare of any kind tells you useful things about your
armed forces. Every profession needs to practice its skills. But it is
well to remember that for the past fifteen years America's foes have
been Panamanians, Iraqis, Somali clansmen, Bosnian Serbs, Serbs again,
hapless Talibans, Iraqis in a return fixture, and, of course, the well
networked fanatics of al-Qa'ida. A tradition of victory is very
important, but it is apt to feed uncritical expectations of victory in
the future. It can mislead people into discounting the contextual
factors critical to success, in favor of the military prowess that we
demonstrated.

It is worth recalling what went wrong, as well as right, in Panama; how
the Gulf War of 1991 was waged and concluded in such a manner that a
second round would be necessary; how the United States was defeated
strategically in Somalia; how uncertain was the success achieved in
Bosnia; how incompetently the war over Kosovo was conducted in 1999; how
the victory of 2001 in Afghanistan has restored the traditional power of
the warlords in the countryside, a power fuelled by the cash crop of the
poppy; and how the on-going unpleasantness in Iraq underlines yet again
the truth in the sayings that war is about peace, and, as cited already,
that there is more to war than warfare. With the arguable exception of
the strategically outstanding al-Qa'ida, since the Berlin Wall came down
all of America's enemies have been belligerents of the third-rate or
less. And as I have just indicated, even against little league players,
strategic success has by no means been achieved elegantly and
definitively. Every exercise of American arms since 1989, with the
exception of the war against al-Qa'ida (discussed below), was an example
of warfare that the country could not lose. Nonetheless, defeat somehow
was contrived in Somalia, as the newly installed Clinton Administration
failed to take a proper grip on the poisoned chalice bequeathed by Bush
the First.

It is more likely than not that most of America's enemies in the near
future will continue to be at least as awkwardly and inconveniently
asymmetrical as they have been over the past fifteen years. However, it
would be grossly imprudent to assume that they will all be led by
politicians as grand strategically incompetent as Saddam Hussein or
Slobodan Milosevic. There is probably a General Aideed lurking out
there, not to mention a General Giap. A no less troubling thought is
recognition of the certainty that America's strategic future will
witness enemies initially of the second rate, and eventually of the
first. It is true that armed forces do not have to score a 'perfect ten'
on some abstract metric of relative excellence. Fortunately, they only
need to be better than the enemy of the day. Nonetheless, if one is
blessed with a long succession of wars against adversaries who are
strikingly inferior in material terms, it is all but impossible to
assess the prowess of your forces and their preferred way of war. One
may choose to recall the old aphorism that 'unless you have fought the
Germans, you don't really know war.' That thought, though hopefully not
its precise national example, holds for the future.

3.  **'New' and not-so-new wars**

The several complex Wars of Yugoslavian Succession, the Wars of Soviet
Succession in the Caucasus region, and the near perpetual warfare across
West and Central Africa---not forgetting the Sudan and Somalia---have
persuaded some commentators that we have entered an era of 'new
wars'.[^12] These wars, allegedly, are post-Clausewitzian, which would
be an impossibility, of course.[^13] We are told that the trend in
warfare is sharply away from interstate conflicts. Instead, the tide is
running for intercommunal and transnational ethnic and religious strife.
These are wars about identity, as well as historic wrongs, myths and
legends; they are not about reasons of state.

The truth of the matter is that war is not changing its character, let
alone miraculously accomplishing the impossible and changing its nature.
There has always been intercommunal strife. It is a global phenomenon
today, but then it always has been. We should not exaggerate its
incidence. When great empires and federations are dissolved, what would
one expect other than a belligerent scramble by communities to seize
their historic opportunity to achieve the sovereign homeland that they
crave? In the political context of the 1990s, the prevalence of
intrastate warfare was entirely to be expected. Such warfare will
continue in the future, though probably with less frequency. To repeat,
such warfare is neither new nor is it bound to be the dominant trend for
the future.

4.  **Where is the balance of power?**

The short answer is that the United States [is]{.underline} the balance
of power. Militarily, though not economically or culturally, America is
the hegemon by default. It is the last great power still standing, at
least for a while. This is strictly a temporary condition. There are two
reasons why would-be and potential rivals currently acquiesce in
America's global activism on behalf of its concept of international
order. The minor reason is that much of what the United States does
serves the interests of others. The major reason is that the greater
among those others have no practical choice at present other than a
reluctant acquiescence. Let there be no illusions. America's
guardianship role, its performance as global sheriff, as I have
described the matter in a recent book, rests solely on its unbalanced
power.[^14] The country is very great in all the dimensions of power,
most pronouncedly in the military. The United States may succeed in
prolonging the lifespan of its military pre-eminence.

But it would be a mistake to believe, with current policy, that
potential rivals can be so discouraged from competing that they will
resign themselves to play supporting roles in the U.S. orchestration of
world security politics. The stakes are just too high. As I have sought
to indicate already, the past fifteen years comprised principally a
postwar, or interwar, period. The political and strategic behavior of
those years reflected the temporary context provided by a world abruptly
deprived of its balance of power architecture. The U.S. superpower found
itself tempted to intervene around the world in wars of discretion,
rather than necessity. Because the 1990s presented the United States
with highly discretionary conflicts, theorists were able to propagate
two plausible fallacies in particular. The first was the partial
nonsense of an alleged American aversion to casualties.[^15] The second
was the myth that we had entered an era of post-heroic warfare.[^16] A
greater sensitivity to American history, as well as some empirical
research on attitudes, past and present, should have promptly shot these
myths down in flames. American society has always been casualty-averse
when either it does not care about the issues in dispute, or it realizes
that Washington is not seriously seeking decisive victory.

5.  **The strategic potency of a transforming military will be
    disappointing.**

'The Big Story' about U.S. defense policy of recent years, a story that
is certain to run on for a long time to come, is of course the drive to
'transform.' The process is unstoppable. It is driven by cultural
impulse, by technological opportunity, and by a narrow, but
understandable and praiseworthy, determination to perform more
efficiently. Whether or not it is inspired by strategic need is another
matter. American strategic and military culture is incapable of offering
much resistance to the seductive promise of a way of war that seeks
maximum leverage from the exploitation of information technologies. This
is a trend that will continue. Indeed, it would be amazing if it did
not, given the long history of American machine mindedness. Foreign
observers, the most acute of whom at present are the Chinese, long have
noticed America's love affair with technology.[^17] From the evidence so
far, it would seem fair comment to observe that the transformation that
is now underway should enable the U.S. armed forces to do better what
they already do well.

It has to follow that military transformation on the current official
model does not address the real problems that beset American strategic
performance. To quote Lt. Colonel Antulio J. Echevarria, currently with
the Army War College, the U.S. military has "more a way of
[battle]{.underline} than an actual way of war".[^18] Unfortunately,
perhaps, war is not only about the ever more precise delivery of
stand-off firepower, and -- if need be -- the swift and hopefully
decisive maneuver of mechanized ground forces. We can predict that
although the transformation push may well succeed and be highly
impressive in its military-technical accomplishments, it is likely to
miss the most vital marks.

There are a number of reasons for this rather harsh judgment.

First, high-tech transformation will have only modest value, because war
is a duel and all of America's foes out to 2020 will be significantly
asymmetrical. The more intelligent among them, as well as the
geographically more fortunate as well as the luckier, will pursue ways
of war that do not privilege U.S. strengths.

Second, the military potential of this transformation, as with all past
transformations, is being undercut by the unstoppable processes of
diffusion which spread technology and ideas.[^19]

Third, the transformation that is being sought appears to be oblivious
to the fact claimed here already, that there is more to war than
warfare. War is about the peace it will shape. It is not obvious that
the current process of military transformation will prove vitally useful
in helping improve America's strategic performance. Specifically, the
country needs to approach the waging of war as political behavior for
political purposes. Sometimes one is moved to the despairing conclusion
that Clausewitz wrote in vain, for all the influence he has had on the
American way of war. The British historian, Jeremy Black, provides food
for thought for those among us who are in danger of becoming over
excited about the military, and just possibly, the strategic, benefits
of transformation. Black writes:

> In its fundamentals, war changes far less frequently and significantly
> than most people appreciate. This is not simply because it involves a
> constant -- the willingness of organized groups to kill and, in
> particular, to risk death -- but also because [the material culture of
> war, which tends to be the focus of attention, is less important than
> its social, cultural and political contexts and enablers.]{.underline}
> These contexts explain the purposes of military action, the nature of
> the relationship between the military and the rest of society, and the
> internal structures and ethos of the military. Having "high-tech," the
> focus of much discussion about the future of war, is not the same as
> winning particular wars, and anyway does not delimit the nature of
> conflict.[^20]

Could it be that U.S. defense policy is pursuing the wrong kind of
transformation? By way of a Parthian shot, consider the recent and
current warfare in Iraq in the light of the centrality of the concept of
'information dominance' to the anticipated success of transformed
forces. Might it be that the successful conduct of war requires not
merely information, but also knowledge and understanding of kinds that
cannot be provided by the engines of transformation?

6.  **Interstate war, down but far from out.**

Logically, the reverse side of the coin which proclaims a trend favoring
political violence internal to states, is the claim that interstate
warfare is becoming, or has become, an historical curiosity. Steven Metz
and Raymond Millen assure us that "most armed conflicts in coming
decades are likely to be internal ones".[^21] That is probably a safe
prediction, though we might choose to be troubled by their prudent
hedging with the qualifier, "most." Their plausible claim would look a
little different in hindsight were it to prove strictly true,
[but]{.underline} with the exceptions of one or two interstate nuclear
conflicts, say between India and Pakistan, and North Korea and the
United States and its allies. The same authors also offer the comforting
judgment that "\[d\]ecisive war between major states is rapidly moving
toward history's dustbin."[^22] It is an attractive claim; it is a shame
that it is wrong. War, let alone "decisive war," between major states
currently is enjoying an off season for one main reason. So extreme is
the imbalance of military power in favor of the United States that
potential rivals rule out policies that might lead to hostilities with
the superpower. It is fashionable to argue that major interstate war is
yesterday's problem---recall that the yesterday in question is barely
fifteen years in the past\--because now there is nothing to fight about
and nothing to be gained by armed conflict. Would that those points were
true; unfortunately they are not. The menace of major, if not
necessarily decisive, interstate war will return to frighten us when
great power rivals feel able to challenge American hegemony. If you read
your Thucydides, and Donald Kagan, you will be reminded of the deadly
and eternal influence of the deadly triad of motives for war, "fear,
honor, and interest."[^23]

7.  **Religiously motivated, catastrophe terrorism.**

Unquestionably, there has been a radical change in the character of the
dominant form of terrorism since the end of Cold War. The roots of this
phenomenon lie in a crisis within the Islamic domain.[^24] However, it
is ironic that the United States contributed hugely, though
inadvertently, of course, to the al-Qa'ida development with its vast
level of support for the holy warriors who defeated the Soviets in
Afghanistan. Strategists should never forget the peril of ambush by the
malign workings of the law of unintended consequences. Al-Qa'ida is
justly regarded today as the defining threat of this era. 9/11 certainly
brought down the curtain on the strategically somewhat aimless interwar
decade of the 1990s. But does the emergence of such terrorism signal an
enduring change in the character of warfare? The answer has to be a
resolute 'no.' No guarantees can be offered, but it is as certain as
anything can be in the inherently uncertain world of international
conflict that al-Qa'ida will lose, and lose decisively. It will be
beaten, but not by the United States and assuredly not by the U.S. armed
forces.

Al-Q'aida will be defeated by fellow Muslims devoted to moderate and
modernizing policies.[^25] Obviously the rest of the world must do what
it can to blunt al Qaeda's spear, if only for the urgent purpose of self
protection. Al-Qa'ida and associated organizations will be a perennial
menace, but they will be beaten decisively as the Islamic world comes to
terms, culturally in its own ways, with the modern, even the postmodern,
world. That process will take two or three decades, at least. All things
are possible, but they are not all equally probable.

By the 2020s and then beyond, the defining threats of the century most
likely will stem from a dangerous combination of the return of active
great-power geopolitical rivalry, and an accelerating global
environmental crisis. Those theorists who would have us believe that in
the information age geography does not matter, will be shown to have
been comprehensively in error. Global warming inevitably will place a
premium upon old fashioned territoriality. To coin a phrase, 'IT grows
no potatoes'. Land, indeed access to material resources, will be at a
premium, as it has been throughout history.

8.  **Two transformations?**

It is plausible, though not necessarily correct, to argue that the
post-Cold War period has witnessed not one, but two transformations.

On the one hand, there has been, or rather is, the process of military
transformation that has emerged out of the erstwhile great Revolution in
Military Affairs debate.

On the other hand, so the claim proceeds, there is an ongoing broad
transformation of war, especially of war's cultural context. Some
scholars argue that there has been a normative change in attitudes
towards war, certainly in attitudes towards the actual conduct of
warfare, and also in attitudes towards the military profession.[^26] If
one were a liberal optimist, which I am not, one might be tempted to
argue that humankind slowly is ceasing to regard warfare as acceptable
behavior. In this view, the Clausewitzian dictum that war is an
instrument of policy, indeed that it is political behavior conducted by
violent means, is becoming obsolete. Evidence for such an alleged trend
could include the apparent global popularity of the principle that wars
of discretion need to be legitimized by the Security Council of the
United Nations. If form follows function, the logic of the claim is that
war is ceasing to fulfill any useful function.

In addition to the claim that war is no longer necessary as a practical
way to solve problems that have resisted other solutions, there is the
assertion that warfare is becoming morally unacceptable. The argument
amounts to an insistence that the acceptability of war, that is to say
of organized violence for political ends, is declining markedly both for
practical reasons of its inutility, and because of a cultural taboo,
hopefully one eventually of global domain.

By far the most influential cause of the possible trend towards the
delegitimization of warfare is the global media. With live video feeds
via satellite to a global market, much of the ugliness of war is brought
into homes almost everywhere. The claim is not that there is a trend of
moral improvement which regards war as all but immoral, save in the most
desperate cases of self-defense, but rather that publics around the
world now can see what is perpetrated in their names. Since war, except
of the cyber variety, necessarily involves killing people and breaking
things, confrontation with some of its brutalities can hardly help but
be shocking to those who lead sheltered lives. The global media thrives
on warfare and treats it as entertainment and as a spectator sport,[^27]
all the while hypocritically leading the charge to condemn every
deviation from the most pristine standard of what constitutes acceptable
military behavior.

It is sensible to conclude both that there has been a notable
debellicization of the West, of Europe outside the Balkans in
particular, but that that trend is vulnerable to contextual change. To
regard war as uncivilized, unacceptable, and even all but unthinkable,
is a luxury permitted by the absence of dire strategic necessity. The
taboo against war, if such it is becoming, will evaporate like morning
mist if, or more likely when, bad times of strategic insecurity return.
In this case at least, culture is shaped by circumstances.

**Conclusion: Clausewitz Still Rules!**

Four arguments will serve to conclude this brief exploration into what
about war is changing and what is not:

[First, the "objective" nature of war, as Clausewitz put it, is not
changing at all.]{.underline} His theory of war will apply to all modes
of armed conflict in the future. Understanding of that theory is vastly
more important than is a grasp of the latest military possibilities
enabled by technological, organizational, and doctrinal change.

[Second, it is essential to appreciate the significance of the several
contexts of war additional to the military.]{.underline} Above all else,
the leading driver towards, and in, war, is the political context.
Military performance in the conduct of warfare frequently is impacted by
the cultural context.

[Third, war is about the peace that will follow,]{.underline} it is not
a self-validating occurrence. A heavy focus on military transformation
tends to obscure the enduring fact that war is about a lot more than
warfare. Preeminently, warfare always should be waged with as much
regard to the character of the subsequent peace as immediate military
necessity allows.

[Fourth and finally, one should never forget that over time all trends
decline and eventually expire.]{.underline} More accurately perhaps,
trends influence each other, and particularly when under the shock
influence of some great surprise, they change their character radically,
indeed in an apparently nonlinear fashion. The challenge to the defense
planner is not to spot the trends of this era, but rather to guess what
their consequences may be. As if that were not challenge enough, history
suggests that a major source of trouble lurks beyond the power of
prediction in Secretary Rumsfeld's concept of the "unknown unknowns."

[^1]: Most of the issues raised in this paper are discussed at length in
    my new book, *Future Warfare* (London: Cassell, forthcoming).

[^2]: Carl von Clausewitz, *On War*, Michael Howard and Peter Paret ed.
    and trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p.605.

[^3]: Ibid., p.101.

[^4]: The outstanding historical study is MacGregor Knox and Williamson
    Murray, eds., *The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050*
    (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

[^5]: Clausewitz, *On War*, p.606 (emphasis in the original).

[^6]: Ibid., p.85.

[^7]: Ibid., p.593.

[^8]: Ibid., p.104.

[^9]: His primary trinity is "composed of primordial violence, hatred
    and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of
    the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit
    is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an
    instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone." His
    claim that those three aspects mainly concern, respectively, the
    people, the commander and his army, and the government, can usefully
    be regarded as a secondary trinity. Ibid., p.89. See Edward J.
    Villacres and Christopher Bassford, "Reclaiming the Clausewitzian
    Trinity," *Parameters*, Vol. 25, No.3 (Autumn 1995), pp.9-19. It is
    vital to distinguish between the two trinities, because the popular
    presentation of the trinitarian thesis as people, army, and
    government, has misled some theorists into believing that there was
    a distinct Clausewitzian era which is now defunct.

[^10]: Clausewitz, *On War*, p.515.

[^11]: Peter Browning explains that "\[w\]arfare is the act of making
    war. War is a relationship between two states or, if a civil war,
    two groups. Warfare is only a part of war, although the essential
    part." *The Changing Nature of Warfare: The Development of Land
    Warfare from 1792 to 1945* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
    2002), p.2.

[^12]: Mary Kaldor, *New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global
    Era* (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), was a significant period
    piece. The founding theoretical text for the thesis that war is
    undergoing far more than just a light makeover, is the brilliant
    book by Martin van Creveld, *The Transformation of War* (New York:
    Free Press, 1991). In the opinion of this theorist van Creveld is
    brilliantly wrong, but there is no denying the quality of his
    argument.

[^13]: For the illustration of error, see Jan Willem Honig, "Strategy in
    a Post-Clausewitzian Setting," in Gert de Nooy, ed., *The
    Clausewitzian Dictum and the Future of Western Military Strategy*
    (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997), pp. 109-21. I take no
    prisoners among the prophets of an allegedly post-Clausewitzian
    future in my essay, "Clausewitz, History, and the Future Strategic
    World", in *Contemporary Essays*, The Occasional No.47 (Shrivenham,
    UK: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 2004), pp. 1-24.

[^14]: Colin S. Gray, *The Sheriff: America's Defense of the New World
    Order* (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2004).
    America's so called "soft power" is important, but it should not be
    exaggerated. For a sheriff the ability to shoot, preferably
    straight, is essential, soft power should follow. A recent
    restatement of the soft power thesis is Joseph S Nye Jr., *The
    Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go
    It Alone* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

[^15]: An authoritative study of American opinion concluded thus: "We
    also found that the belief that the U.S. public is especially
    casualty-shy, widely accepted by policymakers, civilian elites, and
    military officers, is a myth. All populations dislike casualties,
    and democratic societies are particularly able to express this
    dislike. However, our study found evidence that the American public
    will accept casualties if they are necessary to accomplish a
    declared mission, and the mission is being actively pushed by the
    nation's leadership". Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn,
    "Conclusion: The Gap and What It Means for American National
    Security", in Feaver and Kohn, eds., *Soldiers and Civilians: The
    Civil-Military Gap and American National Security* (Cambridge, MA:
    MIT Press, 2001), p.467. The same message is conveyed in Paul
    Cornish, "Myth and Reality: US and UK Approaches to Casualty
    Aversion and Force Protection", [Defence Studies]{.underline}, Vol.
    3, No.2 (Summer 2003), pp.121-28.

[^16]: See Edward N. Luttwak, "Towards Post-Heroic Warfare," *Foreign
    Affairs*, Vol.74, No.3 (May/June 1995), pp. 109-22. As a poet once
    wrote, "happy is the land that needs no heroes". Unfortunately, that
    land is not, and will not be, the United States, no matter how
    enthusiastically the armed forces embrace unmanned combat vehicles,
    and grow a new breed of cyber-warriors to wage bloodless warfare.

[^17]: Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, *Unrestricted Warfare: Assumptions
    on War and Tactics in the Age of Globalization,* FBIS trans.
    (Beijing: PLA Literature Arts Publishing House, February 1999),
    should be required reading in Washington. To quote just one
    worthwhile nugget, the authors tell us that "\[h\]igh technology, as
    spoken of in generalities, cannot become a synonym for future
    warfare, nor is information technology -- which is one of the high
    technologies of the present age and which seems to occupy an
    important position in the makeup of all modern weapons -- sufficient
    to name a war." (On the 2^nd^ p. of ch.1).

[^18]: Antulio J. Echevarria II, *Toward an American Way of War*
    (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College,
    March 2004), p.1.

[^19]: Excellent analyses of diffusion are on offer in the historical
    essays in Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason, eds., *The
    Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas* (Stanford, CA: Stanford
    University Press, 2003). A general thrust of the book is to
    emphasize the great significance of local culture in shaping the
    ways in which, or even whether, foreign technologies and ideas are
    adopted and adapted. Analysts of asymmetrical warfare, take note!

[^20]: Jeremy Black, *War in the New Century* (London: Continuum, 2001),
    p.114 (emphasis added).

[^21]: Steven Metz and Raymond Millen, *Future War/Future Battlespace:
    The Strategic Role of American Landpower* (Carlisle, PA: Strategic
    Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, March 2003), p.13.

[^22]: Ibid., p.7.

[^23]: Robert B. Strassler, ed., *The Landmark Thucydides: A
    Comprehensive Guide to 'The Peloponnesian War,'* Richard Crawley
    trans. (New York: Free Press, 1996), p.43. Donald Kagan, *On the
    Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace* (New York: Doubleday,
    1995), reinforces Thucydides' enduring wisdom on the subject of the
    causes of strife. That is scarcely surprising given that Kagan is
    the world's leading authority on the Peloponnesian War.

[^24]: See Bernard Lewis, *The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy
    Terror* (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003).

[^25]: Al Qaeda's militant ideology is so far from the mainstream of
    Islamic teaching, so unwelcome to the vast majority of Muslims, and
    essentially so hopelessly impractical, that it has little future,
    save as the inspiration for a movement that strategically cannot be
    more than a nuisance.

[^26]: See James C. Kurth, "Clausewitz and the Two Contemporary Military
    Revolutions: RMA and RAM," in Bradford A. Lee and Karl F. Walling,
    eds., *Strategic Logic and Political Rationality: Essays in Honour
    of Michael I Handel* (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp.275-97. By RAM,
    Kurth means a "'revolution in attitudes' toward the military ...
    driven by the values of the new post-modern society." P.275.

[^27]: Colin McInnes, *Spectator-Sport War: The West and Contemporary
    Conflict* (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002).