Cyber-Mobilization: The New "Levée en Masse"

Abstract

The means and ends of mass mobilization are changing, bypassing the traditional state-centered approach that was the hallmark of the French Revolution and leaving advanced Western democracies merely to react to the results. Today's dynamic social, economic, and political transitions are as important to war as were the changes at the end of the 18th century that Clausewitz observed. Most important is the 21st century's levee en masse, a mass networked mobilization that emerges from cyber-space with a direct impact on physical reality. Individually accessible, ordinary networked communications such as personal computers, DVDs, videotapes, and cell phones are altering the nature of human social interaction, thus also affecting the shape and outcome of domestic and international conflict. Although still in its early stages, this development will not reverse itself and will increasingly influence the conduct of war. From the global spread of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks, to the rapid evolution of insurgent tactics in Iraq, to the riots in France, and well beyond, the global, non-territorial nature of the information age is having a transformative effect on the broad evolution of conflict, and we are missing it. We are entering the cyber-mobilization era, but our current course consigns us merely to react to its effects. Background: The Levee en Masse in the French Revolution The French Revolution marked the beginning of the age of modern warfare, characterized by the culmination of a fundamental shift from dynastic warfare between kings to mass participation of the populace in national warfare. Although the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 is commonly cited as the point of origin for the sovereign state, the French Revolution marks its true consolidation, with the formal abolition of the Holy Roman Empire as the result of Napoleon's conquests in 1806. (1) The character of war is constantly in flux: the American Revolutionary War was associated with many of the same anti-authoritarian passions that powered the French Revolution. But as George Washington's correspondence reflected, without national institutions to support the army, the problem of mobilizing and directing resources hobbled the American colonists' war effort. The key element in the firm establishment of the modern secular state within the West, and a watershed in the evolution of modern war, was the state's connection with the mass mobilized army. And at the heart of that new army was the levee en masse. The French term levee has two meanings in this context, both and uprising, each of which is important for understanding the nature of the levee en masse and its relationship to the dramatic changes that occurred in warfare at the time. (2) In its first meaning, the levy referred literally to the 23 August 1793 decree by the French National Convention that the entire population was obliged to serve the war effort. As a result, all single men between the ages of 18 and 25 were required to join the army. The French population at the time was the second largest in Europe, bested only by the Russians, and thus it supported a huge military mobilization: by September 1794, the French Republic had 1,169,000 men under arms, out of a total population of about 25 million. (3) For comparison, the current population of France is approximately 61 million, with about 134,000 on active duty. (4) The percentage of population mobilized during the wars of the French Revolution was unprecedented in Europe, in itself a revolutionary achievement. Therefore, the first meaning of the word referred literally to the goal of mass mobilization: the provision of large numbers of soldiers supported by the people. For all of his brilliance as a general, Napoleon could not have accomplished his dramatic transformation of the European landscape without the broad-based participation of the French populace, both its young male conscripts and its civilian labor, and his ability to harness these things for the army. …