Thread: Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) - Back to the Future or Fraud?

COL Hammes' latest article.

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview...n07/Hammes.pdf

Fourth Generation Evolves; Fifth Generation Emerges

Seventeen years ago, a small group of authors introduced the concept of “Four generations of War.” Frankly, the concept did not get much traction for the first dozen years. Then came 9/11. Some of the fourthgeneration warfare (4GW) proponents claimed that the Al-Qaeda attacks were a fulfillment of what they had predicted. However, most military thinkers, for a variety of reasons, continued to dismiss the 4GW concept. In fact, about the only place 4GW was carefully discussed was on an Al-Qaeda website.

In January 2002, one ‘Ubed al-Qurashi quoted extensively from two Marine Corps Gazette articles about 4GW.1 He then stated, “The fourth generation of wars [has] already taken place and revealed the superiority of the theoretically weak side. In many instances, these wars have resulted in the defeat of ethnic states [duwal qawmiyah] at the hands of ethnic groups with no states.”

Essentially, one of Al-Qaeda’s leading strategists stated categorically that the group was using 4GW against the United States—and expected to win. Even this did not stimulate extensive discussion in the West, where the 9-11 attacks were seen as an anomaly, and the apparent rapid victories in Afghanistan and Iraq appeared to vindicate the Pentagon’s vision of high-technology warfare. It was not until the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies began
growing and the continuing campaign against Al-Qaeda faltered that serious
discussion of 4GW commenced in the United States.

Yet today, even within the small community of writers exploring 4GW, there remains a range of opinions on how to define the concept and what its implications are. This is a healthy process and essential to the development
of a sound concept because 4GW, like all previous forms of war, continues to evolve even as discussions continue. That brings me to the purpose of this article: to widen the discussion on what forms 4gW may take and to offer a possible model for the next generation of war: 5GW.

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Fifth-generation warfare will result from the continued shift of political and social loyalties to causes rather than nations. It will be marked by the increasing power of smaller and smaller entities and the explosion of biotechnology. 5GW will truly be a nets-and-jets war: networks will distribute the key information, provide a source for the necessary equipment and material, and constitute a field from which to recruit volunteers; the jets will provide for worldwide, inexpensive, effective dissemination of the weapons. The contagion scenario I described above is among the more devastating possible, but smallpox is only one weapon a super-empowered small group could use to attack society. Tthey may use any number of evolving technologies. The key fact to remember is that changes in the political, economic, social, and technical spheres are making it possible for a small group bound together by a cause to use new technologies to challenge nation-states. We cannot roll back those changes, nor can we prevent the evolution of war. Clearly, we as a Nation, and particularly our military, are not ready to counter the coming attacks. It’s time to start thinking about how we might deal with this next step in warfare.

the counter-answer to this (and this discussion of 4GW and 5GW would also fit nicely into the RMA thread). IIRC linds was the one who first laid out the idea of GW.

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Fifth Generation Warfare?* By William S. Lind

Fifth Generation Warfare?

2/03/04
By William S. Lind

Despite the fact that the framework of the Four Generations of Modern War is relatively new, first appearing in print in 1989, some observers are now talking about a Fifth Generation. Some see the Fifth Generation as a product of new technologies, such as nanotechnology. Others define it as the state’s struggle to maintain its monopoly on war and social organization in the face of Fourth Generation challengers. One correspondent defined it as terrorist acts done by one group in such a manner that they are blamed on another, something traditionally known as “pseudo-operations.”

These ideas are all valuable, and if people try to think beyond or outside the framework of the Four Generations, that is probably a good thing. An intellectual framework must remain open or it descends into an ideology, something poisonous per se (as Russell Kirk wrote, conservatism is the negation of ideology). At the same time, I have to say that these attempts to announce a Fifth Generation seem to go a generation too far.

One reason for the confusion may be a misapprehension of what “generation” means. In the context of the Four Generations of Modern War, “generation” is shorthand for a dialectically qualitative shift. As the originator of the framework, I adopted the word “generation” because I was speaking to and writing for Marines, and “dialectically qualitative shift” has more syllables than the Marine mind can readily grasp (think of the Emperor Joseph II’s response when he first heard Mozart’s music: “Too many notes.”). Most Marines vaguely remember that Hegel pitched for the Yankees in the late 1940’s.

As that old German would be quick to tell us, dialectically qualitative shifts occur very seldom. In my view, there were only three in the field of warfare since the modern era began with the Peace of Westphalia; the Fourth marks the end of the modern period.

One simple test for whether or not something constitutes a generational shift is that, absent a vast disparity in size, an army from a previous generation cannot beat a force from the new generation. The Second Generation French Army of 1940 could not defeat the Third Generation Wehrmacht, even thought the French had more tanks and better tanks than the Germans. The reason I do not think the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon mark a generational shift is that Wellington consistently beat the French, and the British Army he led remained very much an 18th century army.

While attempts to think beyond the Four Generations should generally be welcomed, there are some shoals to avoid. One is technological determinism, the false notion that war’s outcome is usually determined by superiority in equipment. Martin van Creveld’s book Technology and War makes a strong case that technology is seldom the determining factor.

A related danger is technological hucksterism: coming up with Madison Avenue slogans to sell new weapons programs by claiming that they fundamentally change warfare. This kind of carnival sideshow act lies at the heart of the so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs,” and it dominates all discussions of national defense in Washington. Every contractor who hopes to get his snout in the trough claims that his widget “revolutionizes” war. As the framework of the Four Generations spreads, you can be sure that the Merchants of Death will claim that whatever they are trying to sell is an absolute necessity for Fourth (or Fifth) Generation war. It will all be poppycock.

From what I have seen thus far, honest attempts to discover a Fifth Generation suggest that their authors have not fully grasped the vast change embodied in the Fourth Generation. The loss of the state’s monopoly, not only on war but also on social organization and first loyalties, alters everything. We are only in the earliest stages of trying to understand what the Fourth Generation means in full and how it will alter – or, in too many cases, end – our lives.

Attempting to visualize a Fifth Generation from where we are now is like trying to see the outlines of the Middle Ages from the vantage point of the late Roman Empire. There is no telescope that can reach so far. We can see the barbarians on the march. In America and in Europe, we already find them inside the limes and within the legions. But what follows the chaos they bring in their wake, only the gods on Mount Olympus can see. It may be worth remembering that the last time this happened, the gods themselves died.

Hi Guys,

Question: by creating this taxonomy, are we possibly over complicating our task?

I guess this generations of warfare stuff is handy enough for military historical purposes, but for understanding the security tasks at hand and attempting to skry those of tommorrow, is it really that useful?

A much simpler model might be far more useful to planners and policy makers.

For instance: why not just view warfare as a throughput process in which there is the symmetrical and the asymmetrical and neither can escape the other?

Such a rubric would cover all levels from the tactical to the grand strategic amply and free up reams of copy and zillions of neurons that might be better spent aiding the efforts to send the enemy to Hell.

I am not knocking the work of Lind, Hammes, et al., just speculating on the overall utility of the effort.

Regards,

William

Originally Posted by Swift Sword

Hi Guys,

Question: by creating this taxonomy, are we possibly over complicating our task?

I guess this generations of warfare stuff is handy enough for military historical purposes, but for understanding the security tasks at hand and attempting to skry those of tommorrow, is it really that useful?

A much simpler model might be far more useful to planners and policy makers.

For instance: why not just view warfare as a throughput process in which there is the symmetrical and the asymmetrical and neither can escape the other?

Such a rubric would cover all levels from the tactical to the grand strategic amply and free up reams of copy and zillions of neurons that might be better spent aiding the efforts to send the enemy to Hell.

I am not knocking the work of Lind, Hammes, et al., just speculating on the overall utility of the effort.

Regards,

William

William,

Your post is the crux of the criticism of the generational warfare construct. It is more descriptive than prescriptive, and where it is prescriptive, it doesn't add any new prescriptions that didn't already exist. I enjoy reading Hammes because his dog is more in the what to do rather than building the framework IMO.

Originally Posted by Shek

William,

I enjoy reading Hammes because his dog is more in the what to do rather than building the framework IMO.

Sacre Bleu! He has a philosophising hound to assist him?