War as We Knew It

The author defines paralytic warfare as "...aimed at incapacitating the opponent's war-making system by causing a complete or partial loss of function involving the power of motion or of sensing in any part of his system. Paralysis-based warfare is precision warfare: it relies on a combination of physical and psychological means to incapacitate critical physical and/or sensory sub-systems in order to immobilize the opponent's war-making system short of its destruction. Whereas implicit in the destruction-based model of warfare is a presumption for destruction, parlytic warfare is based on a presumption against destruction.