A corollary of the establishment of a multipolar world will be a necessary global power-sharing that needs to be planned for now. Each future centre of power will need to guarantee its own survival whilst under intense pressure to adopt the values, norms, thought processes and behaviour of the most powerful. Within the context of global power strategies, the centres will define specific strategies, including military strategy that is based on the use of weapons. But history clearly shows us that whereas the outcome of battles is determined by weapons that kill, and one then refers to the use of military power, in future, warfare will be played out in terms of strategic might with weapons that act upon minds. One will then refer to influence.

Past confrontations have left unwanted reminders of mutual assured destruction in the subconscious. The conquest of territory, which denoted an increase in power up until the end of the twentieth century, is no longer the modern response to that strategic aspiration. The development of information sciences and transport has moved the conquest of minds rather than the conquest of territory to centre stage: the notions of Lebensraum, hinterland, colonial empires, of glacis and other outdated strategies appear overtaken by the conquest of cultural space. These days, civilisations appear less focused on the static notion of territory in the acquisition of power: rather, they attempt to penetrate the very fabric of other societies in order to change them. There is thus a struggle of cultural interpenetration in which power makes use of charm, and therefore influence, in order to dominate.

This battle has already been joined between entities that have left their land of origin: Europe, America, the Muslim world and others before them. It was also the case with the communist world in the twentieth century, which was contained with weapons but was in the end defeated by aspirations that penetrated its society. Soon it will be the turn of those vigorous and fascinating oriental civilisations that will use their own techniques to penetrate the very depth of our societies. They will force our strategists to redefine the notions of barricades and of corridors, of redeployment, of depths of field and lines of contact, and of all sorts of operational principles that will enable this influence, borne by millions of invading intelligences, to be contained! Faced with such a threat, one that will be strategic because it will affect the survival of society’s way of life, what sort of superiority will military might provide?