Conventional Warfare - Replacement

Replacement

Conventional warfare, waged by the state, has become something not worthy of a declaration of war. Instead, those capable of fighting underneath the nuclear umbrella (supranational terrorists, corporate mercenaries, ethnic militias, and so on.) have now come to dominate the majority of conflict in the post-modern era. These conflicts cannot be explained under the statist system.

Samuel Huntington has posited that the world in the early 21st century exists as a system of nine distinct "civilizations," instead of many sovereign states. These civilizations are delineated along cultural lines, for example, Western, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu and so on. In this way, cultures that have long been dominated by the West are reasserting themselves and looking to challenge the status quo. Thus, culture has replaced the state as the locus of war. This kind of civilizational war, in our time as in times long past, occurs where these cultures buffet up against one another. Some high-profile examples are the Pakistan/India conflict or the battles in the Sudan. This sort of war has defined the field since World War II.

These cultural forces will not contend with state-based armies in the traditional way. When faced with battalions of tanks, jets, and missiles, the cultural opponent dissolves away into the population. They benefit from the territorially constrained states, being able to move freely from one country to the next, while states must negotiate with other sovereign states. The state's spy networks are also severely limited by cultural factors.