Natural conditions to wage armed fighting ensure harmony between human energetic and information potentials. These conditions were matched with classical principles to conduct armed fights founded in the ancient times. Art of war was then based on using most of all non material combat force components to gain information advantage to take control over armed forces material factors. The situation radically changed at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries when appeared massive armies equipped with more effective and more powerful means of fighting. The era of material over information domination began. Many factors show that at the dawn of the 21st century we are facing another breakthrough in art of war. A significantly quick development of information potential taking place now causes the return to classical balance between energetic and information factors. Therefore, according to the author, one must get interested in pre-Clausewitz theories of armed fighting. The second part of the article is a paper delivered at the international conference on European security perspectives held in Warsaw in September 2000. Characterising the basic problems of Polish strategic potential at the dawn of the 21st century, the author concludes that its state does not differ significantly from other European countries'. Our Western partners, however, are in a better position, as they do not have to transform radically both their state systems and their armed forces. Though the directions of changes are similar everywhere: decreasing the quantity, increasing the quality. Unfortunately in Poland we have not coped with the problems for the last ten years. The reason of this is not only the difficulty to eliminate the habits shaped by past mass wars doctrines but also the lack of long-term, strategic thinking and planning.
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