Jean-Jacques Salomon draws the lessons for Futuribles of a recent report submitted to the Pentagon by a group of experts concerning the future strategic fight forces – meaning the capacity to act militarily against an enemy with sufficient foresight and efficiency to thwart the enemy’s capacity to resist anywhere except on the actual battlefield. The strikes aimed at physically eliminating Saddam Hussein in the early hours of the Iraq war in 2003 belong to this way of thinking.
Jean-Jacques Salomon demonstrates how far this effort to take a long-term view is, as so often, shaped by the needs of the moment (e.g. the emphasis on “human” intelligence-gathering) and the dominant military doctrines within the Bush Administration.
This report contains two major innovations. The first concerns a recommendation to proceed with a plan that would allow the United States to strike very quickly any point on Earth from bases within its own territory, which the US Air Force is developing under the FALCON programme (Force Application and Launch from the Continental U.S.). The second innovation concerns the use of small nuclear bombs in order to destroy well-protected underground targets. This last point implicitly raises important questions about the ending of the taboo on using nuclear weapons.
La stratégie du Pentagone en 2050
Cet article fait partie de la revue Futuribles n° 300, sept. 2004
