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Sunday, June 26, 20051119811500
Introduction to Modern Warfare for Seth of CCK
"I was wondering this morning...," by Seth, Clean Cut Kid, 26 June 2005, http://www.cleancutkid.com/2005/06/25/more-iraq-lies/.
CCK is an enjoyable South Dakota netroots site, and manages to have an even less functional comments page than tdaxp. So this post was originally written as a reply to a comment by Seth, one of the two CCK bloggers:
Fourth Generation War "4GW" was first defined by William Lind. I thank you for crediting mean with inventing it, but I am no Lind.
Interesting, while Lind is a well known cultural conservative, he has been been critical of the Iraq War since before it began.
Retired USMC Colonel TX Hammes deserves credit for spreading the doctrine within the military. While I am unsure of Hammes' personal views, the fact that the very high ranking military officers have publicly praised it would imply that he gives the War at least qualified support.
4GW is sometimes known as "netwar," because of its reliance on social networks. 4GW is basically a very-long-term violent ideological struggle.
Network-Centric Warfare is sometimes considered the "opposite" of 4GW, because NCW sees extremely fast high-tech blitzkrieg as the key to victory. An NCW may last six weeks, while a 4GW may last six decades, However, both rely on the works of the late USAF Colonel John Boyd, who is best known for his day-long presentation "Patterns of Conflict"
Operation Iraqi Freedom I was an NCW, while Operation Iraqi Freedom II is a 4GW. In the end, America has never lost an NCW. Every war we have lost (Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia) has been a 4GW.
See Seth, if you would bother learning new things instead of mocking theory you could use these facts to help your case. You could say, "The very respected conservative thinker William Lind believes the war is already lost." Or you could say, "Like President Bush in 2000, I believe that America's core competency is NCW and we should not attempt to fight 4GW."
Instead, you decide to recycle stale talking points from 2003, which are much less effective. But I'm hopeful :)
I’m glad that the 4GWS1T92Q-5011 theorem you have invented says the insurgency is almost done.
Words are meaningless without context, and as I mentioned the Vice President's words were in the context of a 4th Generation struggle. The Viet Cong were lethally wounded by the failed Tet Offensive in 1968. The war was successfully "Vietnamized" in 1972. So from the final coherent action of the insurgent enemy to our withdrawal took about 4 years. In a 4GW, that's quick.
(I'll save a detailed discussion on the 1972-1975 nature of South Vietnam, as I don't think its relevant to the present discussion. But if you wish, I can talk about that too.)
So if we found weapons of mass destruction
Misdirection. In your last post you talked about "banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons." Now you mention WMDs. Not all illegal weapons are WMDs, and while Iraq had no WMDs they did possess illegal convention arms. In the link I provided, Bush was referencing illegal conventional arms.
13:45 Posted by Dan tdaxp in Doctrine | Permalink | Comments (6) | Email this | Tags: 4gw, ncw
Comments
While it's probably true that the South Vietnamese could have extended their struggle for some period of time against the Communitsts, what evidence do you have that they could have defeated them, given continued material aid?
I'd argue that we lost the war in South Vietnam when we decided not to insist on meaningful democratic political reform. Without a valid ideological alternative to Communism, that we could present to the Buddhist majority, I just don't see the possibility of victory. For what it's worth, I don't think we're making the same mistake in Iraq.
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Posted by: Fred Schoeneman | Sunday, June 26, 2005
Fred,
Thank you for your comment.
My evidence is history: the South Vietnamese defeated North Vietnam's invasion in 1973 without significant assistance from the United States. South Vietnam had a modernized, high-tech, well disciplined army that had proven itself capable of defeating the North Vietnamese by actually defeating the North Vietnamese.
While it would have been nice, "meaningful democratic political reform" was not needed. The local Communists (the Viet Cong) had already been defeated, and even during the South's collapse they were unable to organize. Remember that it was a North Vietnamese tank, not a local insurgent, who captured the South's Presidential Palace.
The South collapsed after the U.S. Congress slapped a de facto arms embargo on it. Any modern military, as the South discovered to its horror, is impotent without spare parts and ammunition.
Posted by: Dan | Sunday, June 26, 2005
"In the end, America has never lost an NCW. Every war we have lost (Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia) has been a 4GW."
So what countries have won 4GW wars?
"4GW is basically a very-long-term violent ideological struggle."
Was the Cold War 4GW? The American Revolution?
Posted by: phil | Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Phil,
Fantastic questions!
Another aspect of 4GW is that it is "peer-to-peer," like the old Napster or Kazaa. A 4G army is composed of many independent cells united only by their ideas and what friendships they have.
I have read that British won a 4GW war in Malaya in the early 1960s. I do not know enough about this to comment.
Israel appears to have defeated the secular PLO and its sympathizers in the Intifadah 4GW. To do this, it built up an incompetent and self-isolating enemy (Arafat) who disgusted allies, scared friends, alienated undecideds, and energized enemies. Arafat was a Palestinian Carter, but in an undemocratic system, he only left office on his death.
Additionally, Arafat kept destroying peer-to-peer networks whereever he found them, forcing the Palestinians to use a client (them) - server (him) architecture. He wanted to tell them what to do. He was never comfortable with giving his men freedom of action.
"Was the Cold War 4GW?"
If you think of different types of war as being colors -- 4GW as violet, NCW, as purple, etc, the cold war -- the Cold War was a rainbow. The military might call the Cold War a "full spectrum" ("rainbow") war, because it used or threatened to use every color in the rainbow. The Cold War was partly 4GW, like a rainbow is partly purple, but that was not the whole story.
The Communists clearly used 4GW strategies in Vietnam, Nicaragua, and other places. The Mujahideen responded with a 4GW / tribal war (two colors of the rainbow of war) agaisnt Communism in Afghanistan, which we (and China, and Singapore, and Egypt, and Yugoslavia, ...) aided.
"The American Revolution?"
No. Nor was the Revolution a true insurgency, because of the leadership of George Washington. Washington did not want a decade-long struggle. He wanted a relatively short war that would keep life as unchanged as possible. Like Arafat he worked against independent centers of power, but unlike Arafat he knew what he was doing.
A side note, comparing Washington and Lee:
Both Generals wanted a short conventional war, not a decades long struggle. Only one succeeded.
Near the end of the Civil War, Robert Lee tried to build peace. He negotiated amicable terms for his men from General Grant, preventing the dismantling of the Army of the Potomac from being like the CPA's dismantling of the Iraqi Army. Lee was a man as morally great as Washington. But unlike Washington, Lee was unwilling to translate his military power into political power. Washington was able to boss the Second Continental Congress around in a manner than Lee was never able to do with the Confederate government.
So Nathan Forrest's Ku Klux Klan was able to ignore Lee yet appear to be "patriotic" in a way no American force could do while ignoring Washington.
In a worst case scenario, a victory for Loyalists in the Revolution would have resulted in the execution of several dozen men. KKK terrorists killed 700 in just one year in Reconstruction Lousiana.
Posted by: Dan | Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Dan, thanks for responding; you've offered some good things to think about.
Let me throw this out. We are in a 4GW war with Islamic fundementalists. This is a state vs. a non-state actor. And this is not only a war that involves violent action, but it's also a war of ideas. The challenge that we face is in providing an alternative vision to what the jihadists are providing. Now there's been a lot of talk on blogs about the inadequacies of American public diplomacy. The reality is that we don't have time to wait for the politicians and bureaucrats in public diplomacy to get with the program. So what if another level were created, another level made up of non-state actors within the US, that were designed to fight the ideological war (no violence that's the state's monopoly). These organizations would not be subject to the political and bureaucratic labyrinths, but would pursue the ideological war independently. They would be entrepreneurial and able to adapt and respond quickly as circumstances changed. Al Qaeda has adapted itself to take advantage of the characteristics of our free society. What if we marshalled the characteristics of the free society to our benefit? The entrepreneurship, decentralization, the "chaos" of civil society.
Posted by: phil | Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Brilliant comment, phil. Perfect.
Posted by: Dan | Wednesday, June 29, 2005