Beyond the Unconventional. The Pentagon has decided on a name for the kind of war we have to be prepared to fight in decades to come. Unconventional? No. A couple of generations ago, the clash of national armies following the rules of the Hague and Geneva Conventions was called conventional war, as against a more terrifying unconventional war, which meant “nuclear” for a time; then that meaning changed to denote “special operations.” Any terminology now rooted in convention would be confusing. Asymmetrical? The meaning of that adjective is “unbalanced,” which carries the wrong connotation; besides, the term has been taken...