What Will Be the Character of the Next War?

The world is undergoing a fundamental transformation as knowledge generation replaces industrial capacity in the way wealth and power are generated. Nations achieve the object of war by pursuing a strategy which lays somewhere along a spectrum of possibilities between attrition and relational-maneuver. Attrition employs forces directly against enemy strengths in order to cumulative Relational-maneuver, on the other hand, deliberately avoids enemy strengths, aiming instead to apply some selective strength to an enemy weakness. The paradigms of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu are compared to the context of their times and the two most associated approaches to war. Sun Tzus weaker force perspective employs operational art to generate force multiplying effects. Clausewitzs annihilation perspective is focused on dominating the tactical battlefield. Americans have pursued an attrition paradigm for the past century due in large part to industrial success. Current circumstances suggest a conscious effort will be required to break out of the attrition paradigm but there is little alternative if we are to remain effective in future wars in the information age.