The landscape of contemporary war is that of a hurricane
projecting and dispersing, dissipating and disintegrating
through fusion and fission as it goes along.'
[P. Virilio]
The geo-strategic weather map is looking increasingly volatile.
Pockets of turbulence realign to form planetary frontal
systems, and localized pressure threatens exponential
escalations of violence. But why do the turbular contours of
meteorological cartography fit the state we're in? Old map
concepts seem either too rigid or give no illustration of the
current dynamics of mutation. If Paul Virilio is correct in
describing state history as the 'the ordered creation of chaos
through the realization of a theory of war as the geometric
basis of all reality ', then it is a fitting time to explore the
concept of 'asymmetry' in conflict , in causation and in
planetary composition.
Since the Gulf War, the US has been gradually waking up to
the drawbacks of its military dominance. In the mid 1990s the
US National Defense Panel stated that enemies were 'unlikely
to confront us conventionally with mass armor formations, air
superiority forces, and deep water navel fleets of their own, all
areas of overwhelming US strength today. Instead. . .they will
look for ways to match their strengths against our
weaknesses.' But in 2000, the US war machine, in an effort of
projective geo-strategic weather dreamcasting called Joint
Vision 2020, revealed its long term objectives as 'full
spectrum dominance'. This, by implication, set up the only
feasible military opponent to Empire's orbital cartel (and its
monopoly of violence) as a decentralized insurgency network,
targeting 'weak spots' and 'pressure points' in order to
threaten this 'spectral ubiquity'. For any such 'unspecified
enemy', an asymmetric approach requires an appreciation of
the opponents vulnerabilities and employs innovative,
nontraditional tactics, weapons or technologies applied at all
levels of warfare - strategic, operational or tactical. 'It is
difficult to move strong things by pushing directly, so you
should injure the corners.'[M. Musashi]
Joint Vision 2020 as a tract of military futurology recognized
that the 'potential of such asymmetric approaches is perhaps
the most serious danger the United States faces in the
immediate future. . .the asymmetric methods and objectives of
an adversary are often far more important than the relative
technological imbalance, and the psychological impact of an
attack might far outweigh the actual physical damage
inflicted.' It turns out that the US never quite woke up, and its
dreams of security have now smeared into a living cinescopic
nightmare. What makes an asymmetric conflict in the early
21st century timely is firstly, its embeddedness in a cybernetic
environment which, through wild positive feedback spirals in
the vortical ecology of fear, amplifies the classical guerilla
potential - the war of the flea - of the 'asymmetry of causation'
[small causes can have massive effects], and secondly, the
'asymmetry of composition' [one Empire, a multitude of
opponents] of a world system in down swing phase transition.
As we leave behind the predictable shores of geo-strategic
equilibrium and the phase solidity of the Cold War with the
certainties of its stabilizing bi-polarization, September 11
functions as rotational pivot around which we may all begin to
spin. As the storm clouds gather over this interzone of liquid
instability, only one thing is certain. A new order of disorder is
emerging.