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. So, crime finds a secure place in the ever-wider gaps in the ‘war on terror’; the hybridisation of crime and terrorism progresses; fragile states multiply at the gates of, and sometimes within, the European Union. After discussing the long-term global crisis in strategic thinking itself, the report to the President of the Republic by the commission on strategic problems proposes new avenues to revive French (and doubtless European) strategic thought. The application of decisions taken on this by the President will aim at adapting and harmonising the existing tools (IHEDN, CHEAr, INHES and IERSE) while giving the wider academic world the resources to get the most from its leading researchers. All of which will be brought together by the new Higher Council for Training and Strategic Research (CSFRS).
Surprise, Disorder and Strategy
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.
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