Fourth-Generation Warfare
By Callimachus | Related entries in Ideas, Military, The War On TerrorismThe hydra-like insurgency in Iraq has drawn attention to the political conundrum faced by state authorities when facing unconventional opponents. Whether they come in the form of traditional guerillas, transnational terrorist networks and even looser ” leaderless resistance” movements that attract superempowered individuals, State actors often face the damned if you do, damned if you don’t cycle of reaction and retaliation. Drifting into a seemingly permanent loss of initiative, the state allows the non-state actors to ” write the script” in the political and moral dimensions of the conflict, creating strategic losses even out of tactical and operational victories.
This has led some military theorists of the 4GW school to make particularly gloomy forecasts in regard to not only Iraq, but toward all “state-building” interventions and even the long-term stability of the states of the Core. 4GW and “Open-Source ” warfare of Global Guerillaism are inarguably very effective and these methods of warfare, when a State reacts conventionally and with political ineptitude, place the very legitimacy of the state itself is in jeopardy.
Some excellent and thought-provoking synthesis over at Zenpundit.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 and is filed under Ideas, Military, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:04 am
Hi Callimachus,
Thanks for the link !
While 4GW and other theories of war would seem an esoteric subject, they have great importance because they are deeply influencing an internal debate inside the Pentagon over:
a) the war in Iraq
b) the future structure, size, capabilities, procurement and doctrine of all the armed services.
It’s taking on the aspects of a fundamental clash within the USG
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:39 am
“Whether they come in the form of traditional guerillas, transnational terrorist networks and even looser â€Â? leaderless resistanceâ€Â? movements that attract superempowered individuals, State actors often face the damned if you do, damned if you don’t cycle of reaction and retaliation. ”
The term 4GW is useful as a lable but also a little misleading, because it implies that this is a new phenomenon. It is as old as the hills.
The Chinese had a social policy tool called “baojia”. If there was so much unrest in an area that it became impossible to distinguish or find the prepetrators, the authorities would carry out general reprisals, whole families and villages. The European version during the Reformation was the famous Jesuit expression “Kill them all, etc.” In China this could even apply at higher levels, where suspect families in the official ranks might be wiped out.
So the obvious question isabout the damnned if you do, damned if you don’t aspect of these kind of activity. What happens eventually after so much disorder is that the genral public no longer condemns harsh reprisals, they condemn a failure to carry out harsh repisals. This seems actually to be where some of the dissatisfaction comes from among Iraqis. I suppose it’s a lot easier for Shiites to condemn soft treatment when it’s a question of Sunnis.
November 5th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
I agree with Jim: states (and other political organizations) have always had, and will always face, non-state challengers. Of course, these non-state challengers come in a great variety of forms and employ a great variety of means, from kinds of resistance such as footdragging to sabotage to outright insurgency or people’s war.
I agree that the kinds of conflicts that have been placed in the category of 4GW are important, and that we need to find creative ways to make our armed forces more flexible in order to fight them. However, as an intellectual matter, it might be more fruitful to study historical and existing states as the products of the continous interaction and mutual monitoring that takes place between states and their challengers. We might also learn something about how “successful” states have dealt with insurgent movements and armed forces, and how this has shaped the way these states look today.