On making war possible: Soldiers, strategy, and military grand narrative

The purpose of this article is to expose the existence of a recurring military grand narrative in the modern state-centric world. This narrative rests on techniques for codifying military discipline that appeared after the Middle Ages. It was then framed and diffused intertextually in classical military treatises thanks to the rediscovery of certain developments and concepts in the fields of geometry and perspective. According to the rules of this narrative, military actions are mostly described by mentioning the location and movements of (friendly or enemy) units deployed on a given terrain. This produced a geographical representation of war that is still largely relied upon by soldiers in contemporary armies (it will especially be found in current computerized systems available in contemporary military headquarters). The consequences of this narrative are manifold: (1) it participated in and assisted the reification and dehumanization of individuals as soldiers; (2) it acts as a rhetorical tool that rationalizes and naturalizes warfare; (3) and it strongly contributes to definitions of what war is in the modern state-centric world. In this way, it makes war possible.