Défense nationale et sécurité collective recently published a remarkable article on the crucial subject of ‘strategic surprise’,⁽¹⁾ a topic frankly neglected for some time by our national military thinking, although it has had much to say about nuclear deterrence. This concept of strategic surprise is all the more important in that it opens perspectives enabling us to understand, and hence confront, the current world disorder and tomorrow’s even worse prospects.

Following the Afghan, Iraqi and Georgian conflicts, the chaos overtaking India and ravaging Pakistan, and in the middle of the subprime crisis—this cocktail of derivative and deregulated financial products based purely on greed—everything which has seemed to be solidly based since the fall of the Berlin Wall nearly 20 years ago is in the process of being swept away.

Physical, cultural, social and economic frontiers are losing their significance. Beyond the reach of laws and controls, crime, the prime activity functioning according to the rules of the purest liberalism, has become globalised. In its latest report, Europol has highlighted the ever-increasing infiltration of transnational organised crime into European social life.