‘At a time when the world is becoming more and more dangerous… France’s armed forces must [be in a position to] cope with wider and more demanding conflicts.’⁽¹⁾

Experts, for the most part English-speaking, confronted by the protean nature of modern conflict, have tried to bring some comforting and simplifying order to the proliferation of aggression which has broken out following the parenthesis of the Cold War. To this end, they have developed typologies of conflicts which are mainly constructed around the distinction which is drawn between crisis and war, but also as a function of the inequality, especially technological, between adversaries’ capabilities. This gives rise to the idea of symmetry or asymmetry in the techniques and methods of confrontation. These explanations respond to a desire to standardise in the interests of easier understanding for all. However, by providing conceptual tools indispensable to their aims they also facilitate the expression of two very active schools of thought in defining the important balance that must be maintained in the architecture of armed forces.

The first believes in specialising in lightly equipped forces. These are supposed to respond to crises, which are now thought to be the only form of combat reasonably to be expected and acceptable in our ‘global village’. The fight against terrorism, renamed ‘war’ to allow it to be dramatised, is merely the current top priority. This approach is of course the preferred option of adherents of mercantilism and globalisation. But it is also that of the managers who find in it strong support for their instinct to guard the public purse.