Abstract of Pekka Jauho's article in RSAWSPJ no 1 2001.
The ways and means of waging war have always been dependent on technological innovations and the technological status of society. Earlier, the strength and the training of troops combined with the use of new and better military equipment and weapons were of decisive importance to the success of operations. Nowadays, in our globally integrated information society, the situation has changed. Success depends increasingly on the adequate functioning of the whole of society, consisting both of civilian and military sectors. Actually, they are so completely interlinked that pure military operations also presuppose an undisturbed functioning of the civilian sector.
Our modern society has taken the form of huge numbers of interacting systems and their subsystems. The most important of these are materials, energy and information systems with a turnover of thousands of billions of dollars.
In the article, these systems and their dynamics are analysed in a semiquantitative way, taking into account their coupling with military problems. The conclusion is that in the modern world it is not possible to consider only the military sector when evaluating the strength of a nation. In addition, the durability of civilian systems in crises must be an integral part of the evaluation.