Contours of Conflict in the 21st Century

THE METAFORE PROTOCOLThe studies that we included are drawn from a wide variety of sources,including governmental sources (military doctrines, security strategies,defense reviews), academia (books and articles), publications of researchinstitutes, public intellectuals, industry representatives, religious leaders,philosophers, etc. In essence, the project seeks to include as wide a rangeof ´serious´ perspectives as possible on the medium to long term futureof conflict, defined as 10-20 years in the future.These future studies were systematically coded in a software program insearch for parameters (the main aspects of conflict that might be subjectto change in the future) and drivers (the main driving factors behind thesepossible changes). The insights that are culled from this meta-analysisallow us to present different views on these various aspects acrossall sources (the ‘big picture’), but also within each language domain(or subset thereof), over time, and between governmental and nongovernmentalsources. The HCSS team then analyzed these data in searchof dominant views but also of trends (recently increasingly or decreasinglypopular explanations), of interesting counterfutures, and of so-called holes(possible elements the foresight community might have missed).The following section describes the Metafore protocol, as it was used inthis particular study, in more detail. Readers who want to jump directly tothe findings themselves are invited to go directly to chapter 3, page 37.The entire protocol, as it was developed and refined in a number of HCSSstudies over the past few years, consists of a number of different stepswhich we now call the Metafore C 6+2 protocol (see Figure 1).The protocol consists of 6 consecutive steps, all of which receive constantguidance from a (fairly decentralized) command and control (C2) 4system:• Conceptualize: the HCSS team determines the boundaries of the study(definition and delineation of what to include and not to include in thestudy);4 For our take on ‘command and control’, see Stephan De Spiegeleire and Peter Essens, 'C2 That!Command and Control over Post-Industrial Armed Forces' (presented at the 15th InternationalCommand and Control Research and Technology Symposium, Santa Monica CA, 2010).18Contours of Conflict in the 21 st Century