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.

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.

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