Future Warfare: Men and Machines at War
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12029 |
| Author | Rahul Bhonsle |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
Future Warfare: Men and Machines at War
Rahul Bhonsle
Sasia Security Risks, New Delhi
To explore the panorama of future warfare, a look first
at the causes of wars and who will fight them is essen-
tial. Warfare is an activity where the human propensity
for violence contrasts with the capability for sociopoliti-
cal coagulation in organisations of varied sizes. Over the
years of human history, from the Neanderthal man who
fought with his stone axe to the evolution of a coalition
of nation states growing in organisational complexity,
we have witnessed only more destructive forms of war-
fare. This trend is likely to continue in the future,
although the devastation may be in a different form
than what has been seen hitherto fore.
Future wars will continue to be dictated by politics
and will remain tools to achieve ends determined by a
states leadership. However, the classical Westphalian
state system that has survived four and a half centuries
is undergoing subtle transformations. Be it the formation
of unions of nations such as in Europe or the emergence
of non-state actors with violent power almost equivalent
to that of states, these changes will have an impact on
warfare. Non-state actors such as al-Qaeda are posing a
hydra-headed threat; societal, geographic beyond conti-
nental boundaries and quasi-military. Such groups may
gain greater salience in the years ahead.
The fundamental premise that war is violent conflict
waged between two state entities as defined by their
sovereign control over designated land and people may
change. This is the result of the diffusion of means of
violence, providing non-states with the capability to
operate at the same high-kinetic levels as states with or
without control of territory. Thousands of fatalities in
Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade plus the
continuing war between a coalition and non-state enti-
ties are an indication of this change. Some states are
known to support such groups either actively or through
inaction against their presence on their territory.
At the other end of the spectrum, it will become the
responsibility of all states to secure global commons,
including the maritime, space and cyber domains. This
will also influence warfare, based on the collation and
alliances not of a few states (as per the Axis and Allies
of the Second World War) but of many. Geo-politics and
geo-economics are increasingly inseparable, thus compe-
tition for resources among the global elite states and a
deficit of the same at the lower end may also be a rea-
son for going to war. This would imply a number of pos-
sible scenarios for warfare in the future: state on state,
state vs non-state, a coalition against a state or non-
state, and so on. The subtle nuances of each will dictate
the contours of fighting.
State-on-state warfare will exploit asymmetry of force
and may include proxies –Syria being the most recent
example. Non-state vs state warfare –a paradigm that
has manifested itself in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and
Somalia with portends in other countries such as Libya
or Mali –represent wars that are long and dirty. The psy-
chological dimension of such conflict is also based on
the Clausewitzian trinity of people, state and military.
Thus wars will continue to be conducted with the pur-
pose of imposing will over the adversary when all other
means have failed –or even as the sole means in a dif-
ferent form of conflict, such as the mass terror used by
al-Qaeda.
The medium in which wars will be fought in the
future will thus expand from the classic land, sea/under-
sea and air to space, electronics, information and cyber.
The emergence of new mediums will have an overbear-
ing influence on warfare, expanding the potential of
destruction through these channels individually or
jointly. Physical control of the traditional mediums (land,
sea and air) may not be necessary to conduct wars in
the new dimension of, say, electronic or cyber warfare.
While human losses and bloodshed may be limited, the
shock of a cyber attack crippling the opponents energy
infrastructure, leaving a whole nation without electricity,
may lead to subjugation without firing a single shot.
Thus in some ways warfare may involve not blood-
shed but targeting the minds of thousands of non-com-
batants from locations that could be physically removed
from the battlefield to employ malign software tools.
This denotes a shift from the physical to the cerebral
form of brute force, represented by the distributed
denial of service (DDOS) attacks on computers by ama-
teur hackers today.
Lethal weapons will also be stand-off systems fired
from hundreds of kilometres away, be these in the form
of air-launched or ground-launched missiles, ballistic or
cruise missiles. The growth of such missile forces is lead-
Global Policy (2013) 4:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12029 ©2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 4 . Issue 2 . May 2013 213
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