Special Forces ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ United States Army) Source- The Eurasia Review Author- Lukas Milevski Much of the strategic studies literature of the past two decades identifies profound novelty in the conduct and challenges of modern war, novelty that ultimately calls into question the nature and even existence of war. War has allegedly now been transformed from a regular, conventional, purportedly symmetric exercise into an irregular, unconventional, asymmetric event, which must be understood anew. Of all the new descriptors for war, “asymmetric” is among the broadest. It has even been suggested that asymmetry does not bear definition: “to define the term defies its very meaning, purpose, and significance.”1 Some, undeterred by such extreme pronouncements, have attempted at least to categorize various existing and potential concepts of asymmetry. Thus, Jan Angstrom has identified four different prisms through which asymmetry may be interpreted: “pow