The classic state of war or peace has given way to a latent situation of crisis in which nations and peoples are undergoing tensions that can degenerate into armed conflict. In the same theatre of operations, clashes and actions in favour of peace can coexist. Land forces are today the main instrument through which a nation or coalition can impose its will. Through their permanent contact with the various protagonists, they play a decisive role thanks to their ability to symbolise political commitment, coerce an adversary, control the environment and influence perceptions.

Earthly actions

1. Characteristics of the environment

In symmetrical or asymmetrical wars, when armies with the same goal of victory and using comparable means and methods of combat are fighting each other, manoeuvring is linked to the use of physical space. Terrain is the support and generates elements favourable or unfavourable to one or other of the adversaries. It is also the essential challenge of the manoeuvre, because taking, holding and interdicting certain zones are all phases of the manoeuvre.

In asymmetric conflicts, these links between manoeuvre and space are more complex because of the involvement of the population. Indeed, direct action on the belligerents is only one aspect of the manoeuvre. Only the control of physical and human space allows the success of the decisive phase of stabilization.

Military action then takes place in a geographical area which is essential in all its components, including psychological ones, and which is called the environment.

☛ The environment remains above all physical; its control is essential to master the actions that take place there.

☛ But it is also human, because it is dependent on the culture of the populations that occupy it and use it to subsist. Its mental representation is of considerable importance because it is the basis of political behaviour. It enables us to understand the causes of a conflict, to identify the effects to be achieved and the actions to be taken to bring it to an end. Human space is also linked to notions of power and interest expressed in terms of political, administrative and economic structures. This is why the environment includes other spaces that are also sources of issues:

• the political space, which is not limited to territorial divisions but also includes the relationships between the different state apparatuses, political parties and pressure groups.

• the economic space, which is of interest to military action because its control is essential for stabilising the theatre. This is the area of flows of supplies, energy, armaments and the financing of war activities.

The urban area is the locus of political, social and economic power, since population, infrastructure and secondary and tertiary activities are concentrated there. Controlling cities is therefore a necessary condition for the exercise of power. The urban zone is also the place of moral, cultural or religious power. There are symbolic cities because they are linked to elements of peoples' identity. Finally, some belligerents may consider the population as an asset to be introduced into the combat (especially asymmetrical combat) as a "shield" or stake.

2. The main forms of land action

Land forces have both the capability to conduct forceful actions and the capacity to obey the imperatives of violence control. The latter means adapting to changing situations, combating violence at its lowest level and coping with increasingly protracted conflicts. Land action, both psychological and material, requires the long-term deployment of the Force.

Through their action among the population, land forces ensure three tactical objectives.

• Constraining the adversary: land forces carry out decisive actions designed and executed in a joint framework, combining fire in air-land space, action by contact forces, use of terrain and information operations. They are an indispensable component for winning the decision without necessarily destroying the adversary, and then implementing it on the ground to reduce the level of violence.

• Controlling the physical and human environment means ensuring the safety of the populations and forces deployed in the theatre of operations.Control of the physical and human environment consists of ensuring the safety of the populations and forces deployed in the theatre of operations, limiting the freedom of action of the adversary, ensuring freedom of movement and facilitating decisive action. The domination of the Earth's space requires varied and numerous means as well as coordination with other armies.

• Influencing perceptions: in a context where armed action must be kept to a minimum, it is through presence, communication, advice and assistance that success is partly achieved. The aim is to restore confidence in order to prevent any resurgence of violence, to advise local governments to revive social, economic and civic life, and to establish security while maintaining the support of public opinion.

The evolution of the ground manoeuvre

Changes in the context of operations and their environment, but also new technologies, have led to a modification of land manoeuvring.

1. The constraints of land engagement

Non-linearity and lacunarity are two new conditions for a manoeuvre that takes place both in an enlarged space where the notions of line of contact, back and depth are diminished and in an environment crowded with many protagonists.

❐ Non-linearity

During the Cold War, combat was conceived in a linear way on a front line that allowed to distinguish line of contact and depth, friendly and enemy zones. Now, as recent asymmetrical conflicts have shown, the manoeuvre is essentially aimed at the adversary and is less concerned with controlling the terrain for its own sake.

There are several reasons why the maneuver has evolved towards this non-linearity of the battlefield. The first is the reduction in the number of forces engaged, which limits the possibility of controlling the entire terrain. The second is the new ability to deliver fire at any point in an area, even if it is not occupied by force elements. Finally, the dispersed threat posed by an asymmetric or irregular adversary makes it necessary to design omnidirectional combat.

❐ The lacunarity

Lacunarity is the direct consequence of non-linearity. The military leader must study the conduct of his manoeuvre in a terrestrial space where he will have to assume the temporary presence of "empty zones".

• These areas may be intentionally left empty for operational, political or human reasons.
• Conversely, urban areas, islands of high concentrations of actors and operational and logistical objectives, tend to focus land action.
• However, this lack of focus gives an advantage to the asymmetric adversary; rebellion tends to subsist in areas where the fort is weak and where empty spaces offer refuges to the rebels. It is the control of the environment - including the occupation of space - that makes it possible to exert dissuasive pressure on the rebels in their zones of refuge and to establish stabilisation.

Thus, ground actions are concentrated during the intervention phase in areas scattered over the manoeuvring space before spreading out to ensure the dominance that is essential for stabilisation. It is the progressive occupation by oil stain to use General Gallieni's term6. The circle of occupation extends like an oil stain, increasing the radius of protection and making it possible to push back the pockets of resistance and the

rebels. This makes it possible to reduce the area of territory under the influence of the adversary while protecting his forces and to organize the controlled geographical areas by promoting the return to normal life. This process requires a large number of personnel, which is not compatible with the format of professional Western armies. It therefore requires recourse to local forces, new technologies (drones, robots, etc.) and enhanced joint cooperation to support the action of land forces. The result is the need to grant each tactical level greater autonomy and the provision of complementary support.

2. The contribution of new technologies to manoeuvre

The development of technologies has considerably improved the performance of military assets. It contributes to the adaptation of ground-based action to the new conditions already described, characterised by dispersion and nesting. However, while technology is a means of modifying the conditions of combat, it does not change the nature of warfare, which remains a profoundly human phenomenon. In particular, it does not dispense with the need to deploy large and sustainable forces on the ground.

For the most part, recent progress has mainly concerned access to knowledge and the improvement of the technical performance of certain combat capabilities. They have a major impact on combat procedures, the organisation of command arrangements and systems and information management.

❐ Situational awareness

The improvement of knowledge is first of all about the friendly situation and physical space. This has a significant impact on the perception of one's own device as well as on the possibility and the time needed to arrange it. It is also likely to be of great help to the troops involved in coordinating when they are interlinked.

Awareness of the adverse situation has also improved considerably. The permanence and complementarity of sensors of all types and the speed of information processing facilitate knowledge of material and physical facts. This better appreciation of the adversary makes it possible to shorten the decision loop aimed at applying the desired effects.

The result is a general acceleration of the information, design, decision and action cycle. It contributes to the ascendancy and control of the situation by imposing its rhythm and initiatives on the opponent.

❐ Control of combat actions

The second major factor of improvement concerns the accuracy of fire; this phenomenon is of particular interest to artillery. It particularly influences elementary tactics in an asymmetrical context, one of the characteristics of which is the dispersion of means and the interweaving of troops with the adversary and the population.

The artillery can now reach the target thanks to new ammunition with terminal guidance. This performance reinforces the action of indirect fire at the heart of the manoeuvre and significantly reduces the constraints of logistics, 75% of the tonnage of which is due to the ammunition.

Moreover, and even if it can no longer be presented as a novelty, the ability to fight at night gives the master of the weapon a decisive superiority over a powerless adversary. This point is particularly important in an urban environment7 and in an asymmetrical context because it restricts the freedom of action of the enemy when it was previously maximum. This advantage makes it necessary to favour night-time interventions as well as structural and material adaptations of units to access and maintain this capability.

The confrontation of legitimacies

Communicating about military campaigns in order to show their validity is not new: Caesar reporting his Gallic War, Napoleon himself getting his hands on some of the bulletins of the Grande Armée are famous examples. From the twentieth century onwards, broader conceptions of propaganda and then of psychological warfare developed in order to denounce the adversary. The new strategic context is more complex because military operations no longer aim to defend vital interests and it becomes necessary to preserve their validity in the eyes of public opinion.

At the same time, in the theatre of operations itself, the belligerents or the various actors of violence all claim to have legitimacy, i.e. to act in the name of a people, a political, religious or cultural ideal. The result is a confrontation of legitimacies that frames and motivates confrontation by force of arms.

Since its legitimacy is never definitively acquired, the "Mandated Force" must maintain it permanently.

• In the theatre, the search for adherence aims to make the context conducive to the accomplishment of the mission by obtaining the goodwill, and if possible the support, of the key players, namely the authorities, the media and public opinion. Explanation of objectives, information about the mission, and the rebuttal of erroneous or even hostile messages help to convince the legitimacy of operations.Influencing actions will also be implemented in order to influence the opposing determination. Finally, the fight against propaganda and the indoctrination of populations is an essential mode of action.

• At the tactical level, credibility is the responsibility of all units and is based on their behaviour. Credibility is gained through daily contact with the various protagonists in order to give a favourable perception of the mission and the prospects it opens up.

Operations are increasingly influenced by the environment due to the strong involvement of the population and the necessary mastery of the physical but also human space in all its components: cultural, political and economic.

The global control of the environment then becomes an imperative common to the different forms of land action. It manifests itself during the continuum of operations by the adoption of a manoeuvre that reconciles the lack of continuity of the area of operations in the intervention phase, followed by the strengthening of control of space in the stabilisation phase.

New technologies contribute to this by providing better control of the effects and the physical situation.

Control of the environment presupposes that the Force permanently preserves its legitimacy.

Thes two battles of Fallujah and the media.

On 30 March 2004, four American mercenaries from the Blackwater company were ambushed in the heart of Fallujah, the most dangerous city in Iraq at the time. This is not the first time that contractors have been attacked , but this time their death and especially the mutilation of their bodies were filmed. The images appear almost immediately on every media outlet in the world. What was only a minor episode of a murderous war suddenly becomes an affront to the American people for whom these images inevitably evoke those of the Rangers dragged and mutilated by the crowd in Mogadishu in 1993. This context makes it absolutely necessary for the Bush administration to clean up the affront. The First Marine Division was then engaged in a vast operation of coercion, the opposite of the policy of progressive control that it wanted to apply.

On April 5, the Marines began a methodical siege of Fallujah. Their action was stopped by a team from the Al-Jazeera news channel, which broadcast daily images from the city's hospital and tried to describe the battle as carnage. For their part, Western journalists, most of them American, developed the spectacular theme of a new Hue, the biggest urban battle of the Vietnam War, even if it meant going round and round each of the rare air strikes. All this gives a distorted picture of the situation to public opinion, but also to American political decision-makers, who are more sensitive to the media than to the official images that are slower to reach them. Faced with the risk of a media disaster, the US government ordered a pause in operations on 10 April. Despite the lack of any real commitment, the Marines were forced to lift the siege at the start of May.

When they once again began the conquest of Fallujah in November 2004, the Marines began by seizing the city's hospital to deprive the rebellion of any dramatic image. Al-Jazeera was banned from Iraqi territory and each Marine company took four or five journalists "on board". The plan of operations is to seize the city in just a few days to avoid a blockade similar to the one in April.