Understanding the next act

Abstract

The practitioner and analyst of Russian unconventional warfare in 1812, Denis Davydov, distinguished three levels of violence: (big) war, small war, and " burning one or two granaries " (Laqueur 1976, p. 46), for which he had no name and which I shall call small violence, or microviolence; even if passenger terminals of metropolitan airports or 747s were, in the near future, to be substituted for granaries. What differentiates microviolence-amere quantity-is that with " small war” you may expect to impose substantial attrition on the enemy at least over the long run, and with " microviolence” not even that.