The problem posed today by Western wars is that of ‘war among the civilian population’,⁽¹⁾ against essentially asymmetric enemies, as in Afghanistan or Iraq following the rapid fall of the Taliban and Ba’athist states. The main reason for this is the imbalance of power between players that are perceived as symmetrical, i.e. states.

In the decade that followed the collapse of the USSR, and hence the short-term geopolitical eclipse of Russia, the imbalance between the military might of the United States on the one hand and medium-sized nations such as former Yugoslavia or Ba’athist Iraq on the other could not be offset by substantial support. The United States instigated the wars it could control while Russia remained weak and China was not yet strong enough to disrupt the balance of power in the world. This situation of superiority fooled many experts: they thought that the world of interstate conflicts was now behind us and would be replaced by a world of ‘failed states’ policed by contingents of which much was expected by Western governments, even extending as far as the installation of democracy in cultures that had never experienced it. Other factors no doubt explain why our strategic literature is infested by this idea of the end of interstate conflict:

• the still-fresh memory of the Cold War that, thanks to nuclear deterrence, traded high-intensity interstate industrial wars for low-intensity conflicts, through the intermediary of pro-Western or pro-Marxist guerrillas;
• a classic analytical error, the idea that new concepts necessarily kill off old ones, despite recognition that asymmetric conflicts are newer than symmetrical wars, as both forms could be found in antiquity: what were the Parthians up to against Rome if they weren’t trying to sap its will by refusing a symmetrical confrontation?
• finally, the possibility of interstate warfare is often rejected, as one ascribes to it the same motives as in the past, in other words territorial predation and the desire to redraw frontiers. It is highly unlikely that, within the next 30 years, Muslim states would take the risk of attacking Western nations with a view to occupying them physically and installing settlers and collaborative governments. This, then, is not our assertion. Even if Islamist governments came to power in many Muslim nations, bearing in mind Sunni-Shia and ethnic rivalry (Arabs, Persians, Turks), the Muslims would still have enough ‘reciprocal occupation’ to undertake before uniting as a caliphate and setting off to conquer the West’s lands, as was the case in the Middle Ages (until the counter-offensive of the Crusades that gave the West a breathing space and the chance to save Constantinople until 1453).