'The Temptation of Power'

In his latest and special book "The temptation of Power," published by Fayard, Ghassan Salame take us to a trip to the limitless world of conflicts and disputes in six chapters and a conclusion. The literary translation of the book's title is "The Temptation of Mars." He uses the reference of Mars as a symbol and the mythical god of power, and war in Greek and Roman mythology.

This reminded me of "La Revue des Champs de Mars" which we had to read during our Master at the Institute of Political Science. The magazine is a scientific one that dedicated to key politicians and international relation experts. It was released in Toulouse, France.

Regarding the subtitle of the book, it is "The War and Peace in the 21st Century" and refers to the iconic French philosopher and thinker Raymond Aron's "Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations." This book I consider it a significant edition that all our students in universities should read in the fields of wars and peace.

Ghassan Salame is an experienced diplomat who carried responsibilities within the framework of the United Nations. Before having a UN-framed career, he was a university professor who had experience in teaching, writing, and discussing student dissertations. His popularity started in France in 1996 with headlining of a book with a group of authors, entitled: "Democracy Without Democrats: Politics of Openness in the Arab-Islamic World."

He managed to strengthen and enhancing at the university and his time in Paris helped him to be in contact with with international intellectual figures and create a diverse network of relationships.

Lately, he was appointed a member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco.

This background and career led him to produce a unique perspective in his book because it combines between the academic background of the author and his experience.

In the writer's point of view, there is a violation of the rules of using weapons, during the period the book studies. Following up this case shows that there was a great deal of respect for international treaties and laws in the first phase of the past third of the century, and a disregard for them starting in 2003 with the War in Iraq.

After that, he found out that there are multiple sources and centres of power, which means the presence of various parties, but they are not balanced. There are countries that have begun to be key players, such as China, India, or other countries, but the United States still above them all. The US, theoretically, the biggest and top major force, but it is no longer the only one.

If we want to understand this issue well and from a critical angle, we can realize that there are five generations of war after deeply studying the wars and conflicts through of history. The various generations of wars reflect the development of humanity and how states, the international system, alliances are built.

About the first generation of wars, we can date them from 1803 to 1815, this era depended on human power, such as the Napoleonic War, where the armies were determined by the number of their troops. The Napoleonic Wars are used to define the series of wars that took place in Europe during the reign Napoleon Bonaparte.

These wars were a partial extension of the revolutionary wars sparked by the French Revolution, which continued during the First French Empire. It began with the renewed declaration of war between Britain and France, after mutual accusations of violating the agreements stipulated in the Treaty of Amiens, and ended on July 18, 1815 after Napoleon's final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and the signing of the Second Treaty of Paris.

Regarding the second generation of wars, it is the result of the industrial revolution and the emergence of what some strategists call cannon and fire wars. The World War I is the best example of this.

Then we have the third generation wars, which are characterized by blitzkrieg, like the Germany’s victory over France in 1940.

Later, Guerrilla warfare embarked within the Cold War, like the Vietnamese rebellion, which is a feature of the fourth generation of wars. They are also unconventional wars. As for the fifth generation, it is represented by contemporary wars, which are hybrid wars that combine components of conventional and unconventional wars. Perhaps its most important manifestation lies in electronic warfare.

I write these words to say that the world knows a parallelism with the lack of power and the weakness of power.

The current factors of conflicts have started to change radically from what we are accustomed to and from what the great traditional or classical generation of strategists viewed, such as the ancient Chinese Sun Tzu or the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitt, who described war to a duel on the largest scale and compared it to a struggle between two combatants, concluding through this that “War is an act of violence aim to coerce the opponent to impose a certain will. Violence is the mean, but the goal is to impose the will on the opponent, meaning that the goal of any military action is to defeat the enemy or disarm him. So we see him mocking the theory of war without shedding blood, saying: “Do not talk to us about leaders who win without shedding blood.”

Today, all strategists see that the contemporary international environment has changed and has become more ambiguous, complex, and mysterious. Moreover, the weakness and violation of power are the two characteristics that we can use to describe this decisive stage in human history.

Power, in its classical, traditional meaning, has lost more than one meaning with The increase in actors in the international scene.

Some powerful parties, such as US, no longer have the same economic, military, protectionist, and even cultural deterrence. In addition, bipolarity or unipolarity no longer has the same meaning with the rise of the economies of Asian countries that controls the millions of patents, in addition to the spread of financial crisis, global commercial competition, the rise in crime, the globalization of services, and the growing role of individuals in international relations.