Dr. Chet Richards is having seconds thoughts about “4GW is dead“:
When I proclaimed the death of 4GW in this very blog about a year ago? Of course not. But there are disturbing developments, at least in its decline-of-the-state/road-warrior variant (aka, the Bill Lind definition).
Did you know, for example, that groups espousing an ultra-orthodox salafist interpretation of Islam, those iconic 4GW warriors we call “al-Qa’ida,” now control an area larger than that of the United Kingdom? This zone includes much of western Iraq and eastern Syria. It’s worth reminding ourselves that before March 2003, they controlled exactly none of this (or any other) territory. Patrick Cockburn offers his explanation of how we got ourselves into this mess in “Al-Qa’ida’s second act,” a five-part series in The Independent.
Bill Lind is not alone in seeing this as a general, global trend. Robert Reich finds it happening right here at home. He writes in a blog yesterday, “The New Tribalism and the Decline of the Nation State
….If, on the other hand, you consider 4GW as evolved transnational insurgency, then … maybe. I have to admit, it’s hard to explain the renaissance of al-Qa’ida (in whatever form) otherwise.
When Chet originally reviewed the predictive/empirical shortcomings of 4GW as a model, I weighed in with some examples regarding the conceptual silver lining that came with the dross that I still regard as valid:
Whatever one thinks of 4GW as a whole, the school drew attention to the threat of non-state irregular warfare, failed states and the decline of state vs. state warfare and did so long before it was Pentagon conventional wisdom or trendy Beltway talking head spiels on Sunday morning news programs.
While the state is not in decline everywhere in an absolute sense, it sure is failing in some places and has utterly collapsed elsewhere. Failed, failing and hollowed out states are nexus points for geopolitical problems and feature corruption, black globalization, insurgency, tribalism, terrorism, transnational criminal organizations and zones of humanitarian crisis. Whether we call these situations “irregular”, “hybrid”, “decentralized and polycentric”, “LIC”, “4GW” or everyone’s favorite, “complex” matters less than using force to achieve political aims becomes increasingly difficult as the interested parties and observers multiply. Some of the advice offered by the 4GW school regarding “the moral level of war”, de-escalation and the perils of fighting the weak in such a conflict environment are all to the good for reducing friction.
The emphasis of the 4GW school on the perspective of the irregular fighter and their motivations not always fitting neatly within state-centric realpolitik, Galula-ish “Maoist Model” insurgency, Clausewitzian best strategic practice or the Western intellectual tradition, were likewise ahead of their time and contrary to S.O.P. Even today, the effort to see the world through the eyes of our enemies is at best, anemic. Red teams are feared more than they are loved. Or utilized.
The bitter criticism the 4GW school lodged of the American political elite being allergic to strategic thinking and ignorant of strategy in general was apt; that American strategy since the end of the Cold War has been exceedingly inept in thought and execution is one of the few points on which the most rabid 4GW advocate and diehard Clausewitzian can find themselves in full agreement.
Should Islamist radicals be considered, as Chet suggests, core elements of 4th generation warfare? There’s a kaleidoscopic ideological, theological and political variation among Islamist and jihadi extremists that requires a Gilles Kepel, Tim Furnish, J.M. Berger or Aaron Zelin to parse. Shia radicals in Iran are pillars of the Iranian state but subvert the state in Lebanon through Hezbollah. The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt attempted to take over the Egyptian state through political infiltration while al Qaida aligned groups in Iraq, Syria and the Mahgreb established non-state “emirates” as did the Taliban. Radical jihadi strategist Abu Musab al Suri, the closest example of a 4GW theorist in the jihadi world, disdained the emphasis on Salafi theological purism as a counterproductive distraction from the military struggle while radical Salafi fighters everywhere trampled on local, tribal religious customs as “haram” if not evidence of apostasy and idolatry.
Individually these groups have to be evaluated for their political behavior in their local environment ( anti-state, anti-nation-state, separatist, tribalist or “national” pro-state) but as a net global effect the Islamist jihad as a mass-movement is anti-state, entropic, revolutionary and miserably dystopian.
The “tribal” aspect Chet considers is often artificial (ex. La Familia narco-cartel) rather than real (Pushtuns in Paktia) but as David Ronfeldt’s TIMN theory implies, “tribes” are a core component of human identity and they can be made or improvised where they are not born.
