Constant Conflict

[A look behind the philosophy and practice of Americas push for domination of the worlds economy and culture. First published From Parameters, Summer 1997, pp. 4-14: US Army War College]

Courtesy Of: US Army War College
Parameters Quarterly
Summer 1997,
PP. 4-14
(excerpts)
US Army War College Quarterly

"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing."

We have entered an age of constant conflict. Information is at once our core commodity and the most destabilizing factor of our time. Until now, history has been a quest to acquire information; today, the challenge lies in managing information. Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar--professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.

For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish...and short-circutted." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and information is both the motor and signifier of change.

Those humans, in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile themselves to its dynamics, will become violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States.

We are entering a new American Century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.

We live in age of multiple truths. He who warns of the "Clash of Civilizations" is incontestably right; simultaneously, we shall see higher levels of constructive trafficking between civilizations than ever before. The future is bright--and it is also dark...

...One of the bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information masters and information victims.

...How can you counterattack the information others have turned upon you? There is no effective option other than competitive performance. For those individuals and cultures that cannot Join or compete with our information empire, there is only inevitable failure...

...When we speak of a global information revolution, the effect of video images is more immediate and intense than that of computers. Image trumps text in the mass psyche, and computers remain a textual outgrowth, demanding high-order skills: computers demarcate the domain of the privileged.

...We use technology to expand our wealth, power, and opportunities. The rest get high on pop culture. If religion is the opium of the people, video is their crack cocaine....

...There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.

...We are building an information-based military to do that killing. There will be plenty of muscle power required, but much of our military art will consist in knowing more about the enemy than he knows about himself, manipulating data for effectiveness and efficiency, and denying similar advantages to our opponents...

...Our most important technologies will be those that support soldiers and marines on the ground, that facilitate command decisions, and that enable us to kill accurately and survive amid clutter (such as multidimensional urban battlefields)...

...For a generation, and probably much longer, we will face no military peer competitor. our enemies will challenge us by other means. The violent actors we encounter often will be small, hostile parties possessed of unexpected, incisive capabilities or simply of a stunning will to violence (or both)...

...We will not deal with wars of Realpolitik, but with conflicts spawned of collective emotions, sub-state interests, and systematic collapse. Hatred, Jealousy, and greed--Emotions rather than strategy--Will set the terms of the struggles.

...We will survive and win any conflict short of cataclysmic use of weapons of mass destruction. But the constant conflicts or which we selectively intervene will be as miserable as any other form of warfare for the soldiers and marines engaged.

...The bayonet will still be relevant, however, informational superiority incisively employed should both sharpen that bayonet and permit us to defeat some--but never all--of our enemies outside of bayonet range.

...Our informational advantage over every other country and culture will be so enormous that our greatest battlefield challenge will be harnessing its power. Our potential national weakness will be the failure to maintain the moral and raw physical strength to thrust that bayonet into an enemy's heart.

...Our military power is culturally based. They cannot rival us without becoming us. Wise competitors will not attempt to defeat us on our terms; rather, they will seek to shift the playing field away from military confrontations or turn to terrorism and nontraditional forms of assault on our national integrity...Only the foolish will fight fair...

...In the military sphere, it will be impossible to rival or even approach the capabilities of our information-based force because it is so profoundly an outgrowth of our culture...

...There is no "big threat" out there. There's none on the horizon, either. Instead of preparing for the Battle Of Midway, we need to focus on the constant conflicts of richly varying description that will challenge us--and kill us--at home and abroad. There are plenty of threats, but the beloved dinosaurs are dead.

...We will outcreate, outproduce and, when we need to be outfight the rest of the world. We can out-think them, too. But our military must not embark upon the 21st Century clinging to 20th Century models. Our national model for information and our sophistication in handling it will enable us to outlast and outperform ALL hierarchical cultures, information-controlling societies, and rejectionist states...

...Hollywood is "Preparing The Battlefield," and burgers precede bullets. The Flag follows trade. Despite our declaration of defeat in the face of battlefield victory in Mogadishu, the image of US power and the US military around the world is not only a deterrent, but a psychological warfare tool that is constantly at work in the minds of real or potential opponents...

...Our unconscious alliance of culture with killing power is a combat multiplier no government, including our own, could design or afford. We are magic. And we're going to keep it that way.

...The next century will indeed be American, but it will also be troubled. We will find ourselves in constant conlict, much of it violent. The United States Army is going to add a lot of Battle Streamers to its Flag. We will wage information warfare, but we will fight with infantry. And we will always surprise those critics, domestic and foreign, who predict our decline...


Note: Major (P) Ralph Peters is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he is responsible for Future warfare.

To read the complete report, click here:
US Army War College Quarterly