Terrorism and 4th Generation Warfare: A View from Outside the Box?

[Infanteer]

Lately, I've been going through a series of articles that come from a certain school of thought which, as opposed to technical-based RMA's, sees paradigmatic shifts in the way we fight as based on ideas.   It is a way of thinking that has deeply interested me in the last few months and challenged preconceptions I have held on many different aspects of our Army.   These thinkers see the current war on extremist terrorism as representative of a "Fourth Generation" (4GW) of warfighting paradigms.   Here are some of the articles I've went through that I'd recommend you take a look at; what is significant is that many are from the Marine Corps Gazette, indicating a vibrant culture of looking and thinking forward exists within the Corps:

The first article is significant in the fact that many of the events we see now were understood by those who viewed the "Fourth generation" of warfare to leave both the bounds of the state as target and the military as the main actor.   The authors, William S. Lind, Colonel Keith Nightengale (USA), Captain John F. Schmitt (USMC), Colonel Joseph W. Sutton (USA), and Lieutenant Colonel Gary I. Wilson (USMCR), put forth the notion that "4GW" signalled a reversion to the fighting prevalent before the state monopolized it in the 18th century, namely factionalized conflict between competing groups of sub-state actors.

http://d-n-i.net/fcs/4th_gen_war_gazette.htm

The second article, by Marine Col Thomas Hammes, answered the question posed by the previous article in that "4GW" has already been defined throughout the insurgency conflicts during the Cold War.   He believes that "4GW" forces, such as religious terrorists or ideological fundamentalists, seek victory over state actors through asymmetrical attacks on the culture and society of their opponents.   For these forces, the center of gravity has shifted from purely military objectives.

http://d-n-i.net/fcs/hammes.htm

A third article which is a little more current to today's events, looks at the fighting in Afghanistan from a "4GW" perspective.   The fighting of irregular, "Fourth Generation" Al Qaeda forces with conventional military troops offers us a real case study on the methods required and potential pitfalls of approaching this conflict in the manner we are.   I know some of you have been actively involved in operations in Afghanistan (including Anaconda), so your input would be interesting.

http://d-n-i.net/fcs/wilson_wilcox_military_responses.htm

These are but three of a fascinating series of articles on this subject that have been collected here:

http://d-n-i.net/second_level/fourth_generation_warfare.htm
http://d-n-i.net/second_level/4gw_continued.htm

This is a site set up by followers of the late Col. John Boyd, USAF, who's ideas on how human interaction is involved with how we fight are still affecting thinking and doctrine of military forces to this day.

Anyways, one question to launch this thread that came to my mind as I was going through these articles was that if terrorism is a form of ""4GW", meaning that it is a form of armed conflict between societies, then perhaps the conventional idea of looking at terrorist acts in a legal framework as criminal acts is innappropriate for approaching our execution of the war.

If one is to apply a "4GW" framework to the war, then Osama bin Ladin is an enemy General, our economic and social infrastructure is a legitimate "4GW" target as it is our social center of gravity (hence 9/11), and hijackings and suicide bombings and media are new assymetrical weapons for attacking our society from inside.  Although this may not make sense in a traditional military pattern of thought, human conflict does not fit nicely into structured and distinct forms (much to the chagrin of the Geneva conventions).

Viewing this conflict as a new paradigm in warfighting demands we alter our military structures in order to meet the demands placed on us by the operations of the enemy (as my sig line says).   Perhaps certain areas of our forces need to be moved into a direction of "4GW-fighters", utilizing vastly different methods of fighting due to the fact that the new enemy does not possess a center-of-gravity that fits traditional military definitions.   The formation of a new "4GW" force would most likely involve the intergration of other aspects of our society in order to attack the support of terrorist forces which may lie out of the conventional spectrum of armed conflict (ie: news media, religious propaganda, citizens within our own country).

Anyways, this is some of the stuff I've been working with lately and I thought I'd throw it out for anyone who's interested to play around with.

Cheers,
Infanteer

 

[bubba]

i like it,this could become a  very interesting and very heated discussion..i really like  your last paragraph.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

You trying to become an officer or something?

 

[pjocsak]

Infanteer, some good points,

But I think that we have to expand the envelope of discussion even further. This topic falls right at the intersection of two current International Relations debates. One group based around (and you'll have to forgive me, I don't have the author's names since I am a super-long-haul flight away from my library at this time) the idea that many of our current conflicts are "fault line conficts". They occur in parts of the world where two distinct cultures come into contact with one another. See The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order for the keynote work on this school of thought. The most glaring example and also the most current is SW Asia where western culture runs head-long into that of asian/muslem. This stream of argumentation seems to most clearly influence the authors of the articles cited in your post.
The second school of thought, and one that is particularly relevant to many of the current "4GW" conflicts we're discussing argues that acts of asymetrical warfare and terrorism that are the rage lately are attempts to export a civil war. I have to admit that I find this idea to be extremely compelling, and I also feel that it has a great deal of bearing on the current discussion. In this school of thought, terrorist groups use international terrorism as a way to draw in states such as the US. The US is such a monolithic force that it's involvement in what are ostensibly a states internal affairs will have a polarising affect. The objective is not to defeat the US (or anybody else, for that matter), but simply to force them to take action and thereby to expand the nature of the conflict.
If this is infact true, I think the debate underway in the USMC has to take into concideration not only issues of tactics, force structure, civil defence, weapons, and of course diplomacy, but also the very concept of non-victories. If the enemy has no dreams of victory, is not planning a war under conventionally accepted definitions of a war, then how do we "beat them". Without an endzone, how do we score a touch down. If their goals are simply to make countries like the US, or the UK, or Canada for that matter do something, than by the very act of doing something are we not letting them win? On the other hand, can we afford not to do anything.
If we look at a lot of the current conflicts in the news today such as Iraq and Afghanistan, they would appear to be text book examples. The large numbers of Saudi citizens involved in the September 11th attacks, the importance of Saudi based financing for Al-Queda, and the extensive and long term involvement of western (American, British, French) involvement in SW Asia paint an interesting and complex picture. Saudi Arabia has for a long time been wrestling with the two aparently contradictory ideas of modernisation and Islam. And this is true for many other SW Asian states. While the two sides may not be shooting each other or blowing each other up in the streets of Riyad, they are fighting cold war style proxy wars in neighbouring countries.
This case study poses some interesting problems for "4GW" planners. How do we solve an internal debate, particularly an internal debate happening within an oil rich state like Saudi Arabia? Or a state that controls the Suez Canal like Egypt?
If these states choose to mobilise and invade a neighbour like Iraq did with Kuwait, then we can justify it under currently accepted ideals of a "Just War". Iraq's "victory" was invading and occupying Kuwait. A concrete military/political objective acted upon by a conventionally understood state met with conventional force by conventionally understood states. As a result a conventionally understood (if incomplete) victory was attainable. What is the terrorists "victory" of September 11th, or the Spanish train bombing. And how do we meet it and accomplish our own victories.

These are just a few thoughts, really just scratching the surface of the debate. I haven't even broached the idea that many of the current bad guys aren't states. While Al-Qaeda may have been housed and supported by the Taliban/Afghanistan, they are not a state in and of itself, so how do you attack it. The same hold true for Hammas, the IRA, ETA, Abu-Sayef, etc. Although many of the latter are not the "4GW" beligerants under discussion since their aims are more clear cut - Self Government.

P.

 

[Infanteer]

A few more points I've been pondering on about 4GW and then I'll address pjocsak's post.

Col John Boyd asserted that war was fought in three fields; tactical (winning battles), operational (winning campaigns), and strategic (winning wars).  As well, these three areas of conflict were fought on three levels; the physical level, the mental level, and the moral level.  The goal is to ensure unity of effort so that your forces fight the enemy on the requisite level.

1)  Failure to do so can result in a strategic defeat.  One of the articles brings up the Tet Offensive as a brilliant example.  Although the Vietnamese did even worse then they thought they would on the tactical level (only Hue held out for any significant amount of time) and on the operational level (The Vietcong was destroyed as a fighting force and the NVA units involved were shattered) they one a clear victory on the strategic level in that support for the war plummeted and Walter Cronkite said that the war was unwinnable.

How did they do this?  The North Vietnamese were very astute in the levels of war.  They clearly saw that the US strategy was to win the war on the physical level, using masses of technologically superior forces to fight an attrition battle with the Vietnamese Communists.  Ho Chi Minh used this to his advantage by using the Tet Offensive to attack on the moral level; the used the Western media against the US.  Images of an enemy that American Generals claimed to have on the verge of defeat launching vigorous counteroffensives throughout South Vietnam only fuelled the anti-war effort and led to Johnson withdrawing from the Presidential race and Nixon getting elected on the platform of "peace with honour".

Clearly then, military thinkers must begin to contemplate the levels of war when planning operations.  Military planners should, as my sigline states, follow Scharnhorst's dictum and "endeavor to regulate one's dispositions according to the enemy's methods."

Point in case with the recent US action in Najaf against Muqtada al-Sadr.  The Americans could easily have stormed the Imam Ali Mosque and cordoned off and "purged" much of Najaf, destroying al-Sadr's army and possibly killing Moqtada himself, but would this have been a unified victory?  Sure, they would have experienced tactical victory (eliminating resistance in Najaf) and operational success (eliminating the threat al-Sadr posed to the US-backed government in Iraq) but I believe (and obviously, so did US planners to some level) that this would have resulted in strategic setback in that it would give the forces opposed to the US a unifying cause and further increased resistance against the US.  A physical level victory in Najaf would have clearly become a moral failure for the Americans.

This leads to the next logical question, do any of you see the possibility for an counter-attack on the moral level against the Americans in Iraq, something akin to Tet which manages to throw American support at home so behind the antiwar effort (and perhaps leading to the failure of Bush to get reelected?!?) and leads to withdrawl?  I think that the chances of this happening are more remote as Iraq is not a unified effort as was Vietnam, but the potential for a contingency such as this is there.

2) Obviously, pulling out of Najaf also led to strategic setbacks as anti-American support was bolstered when Goliath backed down.  This sheds light on the fact that a military response on the physical level is completely inappropriate in some instances of 4GW.  In many cases, the open presence of armed military forces acts against the efforts of a state on the moral level.

This leads to the discussion of 4GW Forces and changes we must make to them to give them the ability to fight on the moral level.  In areas where the open presence of a military force is detrimental to the moral level of conflict, we must deploy a 4GW force, which is based off of our current SOC units (the US Special Forces fit the bill) that will leave a small footprint for opponents to exploit through non traditional means such as global media, anti-war efforts, etc, etc.  Since these forces will be fighting on the moral level, they will require members not only to be proficient in tactics to win military battles, but other areas such as civil development, cultural development, and outright political maneuvering in order to collapse support for 4GW forces in the area. 

Once again, the US SF seems to be a step towards this direction but obviously, further evolution to force structure and doctrine such that areas outside of the traditional military realm are required in order to attack opponents on a level outside of the purely military spectrum of objectives.

Any thoughts?

-------

But I think that we have to expand the envelope of discussion even further. This topic falls right at the intersection of two current International Relations debates.

IR was my specialization in University, so let's see what you got.

One group based around (and you'll have to forgive me, I don't have the author's names since I am a super-long-haul flight away from my library at this time) the idea that many of our current conflicts are "fault line conficts". They occur in parts of the world where two distinct cultures come into contact with one another. See The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order for the keynote work on this school of thought. The most glaring example and also the most current is SW Asia where western culture runs head-long into that of asian/muslem. This stream of argumentation seems to most clearly influence the authors of the articles cited in your post.

The Clash of Civilizations, which stems from Samuel Huntington's article in Foreign Affairs and subsequent book, is a response to Francis Fukuyama's notion that we have reached an "end in history" with the liberal democratic ideal coming out victorious in a century of conflict.  Huntington argues that new conflicts will arise on civilizational faultlines, places where groups of people who identify with different civilizational meta-states will come to conflict over much more root causes then traditional interstate warfare.  Bosnia, Chechnya, and the Sudan are clear examples of civilizational faultlines in action.

However, this theory can only serve as a limited lens in analysing Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW).  While it does well in explaining the macro levels of 4GW conflicts (militant Islam of Al-Qaeda vs Liberal Democratic system led by the US - clearly some form of civilizational conflict) it loses ground when we approach the micro levels that may eventually dominate the scene in world conflict.  Kirkhill's look at the fissures in the Islamic world on the thread titled Syria does a good job in explaining how substate actors, giving their allegiance to substate "civilizational factions" fight eachother just as vigorously as the would fight the United States.

http://army.ca/forums/threads/19326.0.html

The second school of thought, and one that is particularly relevant to many of the current "4GW" conflicts we're discussing argues that acts of asymetrical warfare and terrorism that are the rage lately are attempts to export a civil war. I have to admit that I find this idea to be extremely compelling, and I also feel that it has a great deal of bearing on the current discussion. In this school of thought, terrorist groups use international terrorism as a way to draw in states such as the US. The US is such a monolithic force that it's involvement in what are ostensibly a states internal affairs will have a polarising affect. The objective is not to defeat the US (or anybody else, for that matter), but simply to force them to take action and thereby to expand the nature of the conflict.

I haven't run into this theory yet (perhaps none of my profs really subscribed to it  ???), but it seems awfully "state-centric" (ie: wars within state boundaries attempting to bring in other state level actors).  As such, that might be the fundamental flaw of the argument if one applies it to 4GW; as 4GW holds that the state is losing its authority to other ideological, religious and cultural sub-groups.

As for the notion on not defeating the US, I have a hard time agreeing with that.  The object of any war is really to impose one's will (power) over another.  We've just dressed it up in a pretty structure with foreign policy, the Geneva conventions and all the other trappings of the Westphalian State and assumed that war is directly related to interstate politics.  When Al Qaeda launched its offensive against the West (focusing on the US - and this offensive started long before 9/11) it had clear cut goals; it wished to eliminate American influence in the Dar-al-Islam through expulsion of the American support for Israel and American involvement in the land of the holiest of sites, Saudi Arabia.  Obviously, as a form of Wahabi extremism, these forces have other goals, but clearly defeat and expulsion of US interests is one of them.

If you want to read to very interesting books on the future of the state and how the future of conflict may seem to be playing out, I'd suggest you pop down to your library and pick up two books by Martin Van Crevald:
The Rise and Decline of the State
The Transformation of War

If this is infact true, I think the debate underway in the USMC has to take into concideration not only issues of tactics, force structure, civil defence, weapons, and of course diplomacy, but also the very concept of non-victories. If the enemy has no dreams of victory, is not planning a war under conventionally accepted definitions of a war, then how do we "beat them". Without an endzone, how do we score a touch down. If their goals are simply to make countries like the US, or the UK, or Canada for that matter do something, than by the very act of doing something are we not letting them win? On the other hand, can we afford not to do anything.

I'd suggest you take the time to read some of the articles that I put up, as they address very clearly the questions you have posed, which I developed in some further points above.

The crux of the 4GW is that sub-state forces will attempt to press their will on opponents through a variety of other means.  They, in many cases, will choose not to meet their enemy in a confrontation with his strength (ie: his military forces), but rather will attack his social and cultural structures from within, using the strengths of democratic society (free movement, open press) against them.  Thus, in 4GW, victory does not simply involve military forces, as the opponents aren't playing to that tune; however, it is a form of conflict and thus demands the use of force within the solution.

If we look at a lot of the current conflicts in the news today such as Iraq and Afghanistan, they would appear to be text book examples. The large numbers of Saudi citizens involved in the September 11th attacks, the importance of Saudi based financing for Al-Queda, and the extensive and long term involvement of western (American, British, French) involvement in SW Asia paint an interesting and complex picture. Saudi Arabia has for a long time been wrestling with the two aparently contradictory ideas of modernisation and Islam. And this is true for many other SW Asian states. While the two sides may not be shooting each other or blowing each other up in the streets of Riyad, they are fighting cold war style proxy wars in neighbouring countries.

The Saudi conflict is a microcosm of the divisions in the Islamic world; the modernising tendencies of Crown Prince Abdullah are directly opposed by members giving their allegiance to the Wahabi sect of Islam, under which a contender to the crown of King Fahd, Prince Nayef, draws his support from.  This is not an example of Saudi state conflict being exported to other states, it is sub-state loyalties clashing within a series of states within the Middle East.

As well, I'd suggest you reevaluate your claim that "While the two sides may not be shooting each other or blowing each other up in the streets of Riyadh"; perhaps you haven't been watching the news, but Saudi Arabia is seething with intercine violence, from the issue of Fatwa's to the beheadings of foreigners to outright bombings and shootings.  This is 4GW.

A good overview of the situation in the Saudi Kingdom can be found in the Jan/Feb 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs and is titled The Saudi Paradox by Michael Scott Doran.

This case study poses some interesting problems for "4GW" planners. How do we solve an internal debate, particularly an internal debate happening within an oil rich state like Saudi Arabia? Or a state that controls the Suez Canal like Egypt?
If these states choose to mobilise and invade a neighbour like Iraq did with Kuwait, then we can justify it under currently accepted ideals of a "Just War". Iraq's "victory" was invading and occupying Kuwait. A concrete military/political objective acted upon by a conventionally understood state met with conventional force by conventionally understood states. As a result a conventionally understood (if incomplete) victory was attainable. What is the terrorists "victory" of September 11th, or the Spanish train bombing. And how do we meet it and accomplish our own victories.

These are just a few thoughts, really just scratching the surface of the debate. I haven't even broached the idea that many of the current bad guys aren't states. While Al-Qaeda may have been housed and supported by the Taliban/Afghanistan, they are not a state in and of itself, so how do you attack it. The same hold true for Hammas, the IRA, ETA, Abu-Sayef, etc. Although many of the latter are not the "4GW" belligerents under discussion since their aims are more clear cut - Self Government.

You could start to answer some of these questions if you read the articles.

Anyways, thanks for the reply.

 

[pjocsak]

Infanteer,

Again, many good points. I'll be fairly brief this time since I'm currently in the middle of something. Hopefully I'll have more time for discussion in the near future.

As far as you not having encountered the argument regarding the use of international terrorism as a means to export a civil war, it could possibly have to do with the recent nature of the argument. It has only been developed (as far as I know) in the literature of the post-9/11 world. So, depending on when you attended univeristy, you may not have encountered it. In truth my area of expertise is not international relations, but rather international politics. But the area between them is pretty narrow and the boundaries blurred, so my reading in international relations has been fairly dense. My great downfall has always been my inability to remember authors names. I've been able to compensate for it through the use of index cards, but without them close at hand I'm writing blind, but Huntington I should have remembered. (as a footnote, Huntington wrote a book much earlier in his carreer called The Soldier and the State which is a very interesting read on the development of the modern military officer as a proffesional. It is a bit dated, but it is still a useful resource)

To address a few of your points.

You countered my discussion of Saudi Arabia's role in the current conflicts by pointing to the recent beheadings and bombings in Saudi Arabia. I would counter, in turn, that these were almost exclusively directed at foreign targets. They are still not blowing each other up. As a by product of their attacks on western/foreign assets and people, they have killed many of their own citizens. But, this is a common by product of such acts. The US embassy bombings in Africa, the Khobar Towers bombing, the UN offices in Iraq and many other examples have quite frequently resulted in more casualties among the local population than among the intended targets. In any case, the local population was not the intended target, the foreigners were. The killing of local civilians may have the added benefit of reducing the local support for the foreign presence since the mere presence of a foreigners in their neighbourhood may pose a threat to their well being, but it is incidental to the original intentions of the attack.

As a quick note on the possibility on of a Tet style offensive on Iraq, I don't think it is possible. Iraq is very different than Vietnam. It would not be easy, if at all possible, to amass the resources needed to launch such an edeavour. Unlike Vietnam, their is no geographically contiguous nation which has the ability to either directly supply equipment and amunition, or act as a conduit there of. Iran is no friend of the US, true, but it is also not a China-Laos-Cambodia weapons supplying system either. As well the geography of Iraq   makes it far more difficult to transport that amount of supplies. The Tet offensive was a massive effort which used up virtually all of the strength of the NVA and Viet cong. It required a massive logistics effort to get it off the ground. I don't believe that it would be possible in Iraq. Yes, the US Military presence in Iraq is massive, exposed, and highly visible, making it an ideal target for those with the resources to challenge it. But getting those resourse could prove to be impossible.

However, that being said, the motivation for Tet and similar Iraq offensive would be almost identical. The   moral defeat of the US could kill public support for a war (Although given the Iraq conflict's relationship to the "War on Terrorism I believe the level of public support for this war is far higher than Vietnam was at a similar point in the prosecution of the war, plus no conscription which itself was unpopular) In such a case the US could hastily bring things to a close, negotiate a quick exit strategy and leave the rotting corpse of a demcoratic and pro-western Iraqi government to be picked apart by the enemy. Or, that's how the argument goes, I believe.

The best way to counter this, is as you suggested, to rely less heavily on large numbers of conventional troops, and instead use smaller numbers of SF to do the dirty work. This would reduce the vulnerability to attack of any US assets in the country. A useful historical comparison may not infact be Vietnam, but rather Malaysia during the 1950's. Malaysia was very different from Vietnam in that the British acted quickly to isolate the communist insurgents, and then quickly employed SAS forces acting directly with local forces to attack the insurgents and build a partnership with the local communities. Effective use of SF operators in conjunction with PsyOps was able to stop the situation from escalating. True, the communists in Malaysia were much more easily cut off from any potential supply base then the NVA/Viet Cong, but as I stated above, so are any potential adversaries in Iraq.

However, it should be noted that all of this serves to undercut the arguement that what we're seeing is a new development in the nature of international conflicts-the 4GW. By drawing comparisons to past conflicts and pointing out the large number of similarities between those conflicts (Vietnam and Malaysia) and the current ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, you destroy any idea that what we are now witnessing is novel in any way other than geography or beligerants.

Anyway, now I really must be going. I'll revisist these issues as soon as possible.

Patrick

 

[bubba]

hey infaneer hurry up and break this down into laymen terms for me and cfl.way to much readin bye.there is alot to think about,imagine the tactics that could be used,especially if the rule book is thrown out by western countries.CLOSE WITH AND DESTROYwith an attitude.right or wrong this is the angle im lookin at it. :skull:

 

[pjocsak]

Just a quick note,

There is a fairly simplified discussion on the nature of the "counter-insurgency" campaign in Iraq and it's relationship to Vietnam on the homepage of globalsecurity.org. It's from the Christian Scient Monitor (I believe).

Patrick