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Rupert Smith (General Sir Rupert Smith, actually) has written an important book.

His thesis is that our institutions – both civilian and military – have yet to adapt to the reality of the shift from industrial war to war among the people

Read it, and you’ll understand the past and the present and see the future.

The new enemy does not have a formed or formal army. He may have operatives throughout a land, but he cannot operate at the theatre level. Because he depends on the people, because the people will feel the effect of his attacks, we must see all his operations as ‘local’: there is no manoeuvre of forces, no design for battle and no immediate connectivity with an operation elsewhere. Each engagement is particular unto itself and in its setting, but connected together through a nervous system by an overarching political idea. The nervous system is unlike that of a conventional armed force. Conventional forces evolved their nervous or command system as part of the developments of industrial war, and most were well established before the radio came into service. The conventional system is in essence hierarchical: information flows up from the bottom, being aggregated at specific points in the chain of command, and orders and instructions flow down, being disaggregated into detailed tasks at each point in the chain. In this way the whole force is concentrated on achieving its singular military strategic objective, with every individual action and achievement contributing coherently towards that end. But the system is vulnerable to the loss of a point of command – in which case the chain is broken. Modern communications have been applied to this basic model, but the model is still the foundation.

Guerrilla, and in particular terrorist, nervous systems do not work in this way, mainly because of their dependence on the people and their lack of strategic military objectives. As a result they tend to have characteristics specific to the locale in which they are operating. To use a botanical analogy, their nervous system is ‘rhizomatlc’. Rhizomatic plants can propagate themselves through their roots; nettles, brambles and most grasses do this. They can increase by spreading fertilized seed, or vegetatively through their root systems, even when the root is severed from the parent body. This allows the plant to survive a bad season or seasons and the disturbance of the soil A ‘rhizomatlc’ command system operates with an apparently hierarchical system above ground, visible in the operational and political arenas, and with another system centred in the roots underground: the true system.

It is a horizontal system, with many discrete groups. It develops to suit its surroundings and purpose in a process of natural selection, and with no predetermined operational structure; its foundation is that of the social structure of its locale. The groups will vary in size, but those that survive and prosper are usually small and organized in discrete cells whose members will not necessarily know their relationship with, or the membership of, other cells. The cells operate by getting others to do the dirty work as much as they can, either directly, as a badge of entry or belonging, or indirectly through some front organization. In all cases the need for security is paramount. A cell will do a minimum of three things: direct and sometimes lead military action, collect and hold resources such as money and weapons, and direct and sometimes conduct political action, which can range from funding schools to electioneering. Different people usually carry out the different functions.

Read the rest of the excerpt, listen to his lecture at the RSA , read the transcript and buy the book