Abstract
The Effectiveness of Military Power, by Martin VAN CREVELD Twelve years after the publication of The Transformation of War — French edition, Le Futur de la guerre — it is time to re-examine its basic arguments. Two outstanding facts emerge. First, the fact that we are in the midst of a historical shift from interstate conventional conflict towards what différent people call low intensity war, non-trinitarian war, or asymmetric war, has been amply borne out and has, indeed, become the subject of a vast literature. Second, people have not yet corne around to re-examine the other main premise of the book, namely the need to re-examine Clausewitz and to come up with a new theory of war more suitable to the times in which we live. Still, sound practice can only be based on sound theory. At the beginning of the third millenium, we are still trying to wage war on the basis of theories first formulated two hundred years ago under completely different circum-stances, for a completely different kind of war. It is high time that this problem be remedied. Or, else, those who put their heads in the sand will end up by being kicked in the ass.
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