“GENERAL, you’ll have to find a new enemy.” These were the words President Gorbachev said to Colin Powell, then in charge of American troops stationed in Germany, after he started the process of reform for state and party, Perestroika. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the nineties, the US Army coined the acronym VUCA to describe the new world they found themselves in – one where enemies are ill-defined, enemy strategies are ever changing, and the war has no clear end in sight. The letters stand for Volatile, Uncertain, Chaotic/Complex and Ambiguous.
Almost three decades later, the VUCA concept seems applicable to many areas of life beyond the purely military. Politically, the end of the Cold War ended the certainties of the past and created a dynamic and ever shifting geopolitical landscape where not only interests and ideologies are at play but even the personalities of leaders (think Donald Trump). Economically, the world witnessed major crises in 1997, 2008. Globalisation and hyper-connectivity means that not only people, products and services can move quickly across borders, but also terrorism and pathogens.
