Friday, August 27, 2004
Networks and Netwars: the future of Terror,Crime and Militancy
John Arquila and David Ronfeldt (editors)
Rand Corporation
Arquila and Ronfeldt were the first to coin the term "netwar", and to explore a non-hierarchized, decentralized mode of combat.
This book is a collection of essays by various authors around this concept.
Extract from the book's summary :
Netwar is the lower-intensity, societal-level counterpart to our earlier,
mostly military concept of cyberwar. Netwar has a dual nature, like
the two-faced Roman god Janus, in that it is composed of conflicts
waged, on the one hand, by terrorists, criminals, and ethnonationalist
extremists; and by civil-society activists on the other. What distinguishes
netwar as a form of conflict is the networked organizational
structure of its practitioners—with many groups actually being leaderless
—and the suppleness in their ability to come together quickly in
swarming attacks. The concepts of cyberwar and netwar encompass a
new spectrum of conflict that is emerging in the wake of the information
revolution.
This volume studies major instances of netwar that have occurred
over the past several years and finds, among other things, that netwar
works very well. Whether the protagonists are civil-society activists or
"uncivil-society" criminals and terrorists, their netwars have generally
been successful. In part, the success of netwar may be explained by
its very novelty—much as earlier periods of innovation in military affairs
have seen new practices triumphant until an appropriate response
is discovered. But there is more at work here: The network
form of organization has reenlivened old forms of licit and illicit activity,
posing serious challenges to those—mainly the militaries, constabularies,
and governing officials of nation states—whose duty is to
cope with the threats this new generation of largely nonstate actors
poses."
This book, like all the publications of Rand Corporation, may be read online for free at :
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382/
Rand Corporation
Arquila and Ronfeldt were the first to coin the term "netwar", and to explore a non-hierarchized, decentralized mode of combat.
This book is a collection of essays by various authors around this concept.
Extract from the book's summary :
Netwar is the lower-intensity, societal-level counterpart to our earlier,
mostly military concept of cyberwar. Netwar has a dual nature, like
the two-faced Roman god Janus, in that it is composed of conflicts
waged, on the one hand, by terrorists, criminals, and ethnonationalist
extremists; and by civil-society activists on the other. What distinguishes
netwar as a form of conflict is the networked organizational
structure of its practitioners—with many groups actually being leaderless
—and the suppleness in their ability to come together quickly in
swarming attacks. The concepts of cyberwar and netwar encompass a
new spectrum of conflict that is emerging in the wake of the information
revolution.
This volume studies major instances of netwar that have occurred
over the past several years and finds, among other things, that netwar
works very well. Whether the protagonists are civil-society activists or
"uncivil-society" criminals and terrorists, their netwars have generally
been successful. In part, the success of netwar may be explained by
its very novelty—much as earlier periods of innovation in military affairs
have seen new practices triumphant until an appropriate response
is discovered. But there is more at work here: The network
form of organization has reenlivened old forms of licit and illicit activity,
posing serious challenges to those—mainly the militaries, constabularies,
and governing officials of nation states—whose duty is to
cope with the threats this new generation of largely nonstate actors
poses."
This book, like all the publications of Rand Corporation, may be read online for free at :
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382/
