Waging War in Network-centric Conditions

This chapter notes that people's relationship to war developed as a function of the consequences of the RMA/Transformation on the way in which war is conducted. The concept of asymmetry underscores the ethnocentrism of the RMA: historically, only the most developed states have ever waged war in a symmetrical/regular way. Irregular war and the procession of ruses, betrayals, misalliances and non‐respect of rules and conventions do not constitute a kind of strategic trickery or militarized deviance. The temporal dimension is essential to the exercise of strategy and this is the case in relation to movement, although less in the geographical sense of displacement than that of the application of armies. Networks play an essential role here because they enhance the two main modes of command historically used by forces, regardless of the level of engagement considered: the command by the plan, and the command by intent, or Auftragstaktik.