A STRATEGIC DAGWOOD
Dr. Barnett dramatcally revived last year’s discussion of 5GW with his post today, putting theoretical speculations into a concrete, global, context. Tom’s post was a tour de force and I had to go back and re-read a number of the links, in particular Dan’s excellent exploration of OODA Loop implications, before finishing it:
“The sandwich generations-of-war strategy“
I’m now going to offer commentary on some of Tom’s points. Dan of tdaxp is also providing feedback with a post “5GW and Ruleset Automation ” :
“One reason why I never advocate getting rid of the Leviathan is because it keeps the door closed on Great Power War (essentially Third Generation, or WWII-style warfare).”
This point is underappreciated by strategists who give short shrift to economics.
China and the EU, Japan or Russia or a future emerging New Core power like India all maintain a more limited degree of conventional military power than they otherwise would because the attainment of parity or near-parity with the U.S. in military power is prohibitively expensive and is affected by diminishing returns. Not merely in absolute dollar terms for procuring high tech equipment, but longitudinal GDP costs in investing in the infrastructure, R&D and human resources required to build and maintain that kind of defense establishment. The opportunity costs here are very high. The United States itself never would have done so either had not the U.S.S.R. represented an absolutely existential threat to its security.
And of course, American primacy and global power projecton capabilities damp down, on the margin, the natural incentive for great and middle powers to war against one another. Our intervention would too easily tip the scales regardless, thus making their additional military expenditure beyond a certain useful regional balancing point, a waste.
“Logically, nukes would have generated its own generation of warfare, but because of their overwhelming destructive power, they instead killed great power war (ending its generational evolution at three). As such, limited war rose to the top of the operational pile in the form of insurgencies, and the “victories” of 4GW (I say “victories,” because I’ve yet see one generate a truly out-of-system outcome over the long haul, as yesterday’s 4GW “victors” become today and tomorrow’s “emerging markets”) basically defined the low-end of the cost-benefit ratio for great powers in warfare (I will wage war by proxy, but not directly–and only if the cost doesn’t get too bad).”
Again, there is an important point of economic history in the subtext of Dr. Barnett’s post.
The last genuine opportunity for an alternative economic model to globalization to succeed was in the 1930’s when Fascist and Communist states practiced a radical form of autarky based on Military Keyensianism, state capitalism and managed trade. The defeat of the Axis and the reintegration of western Germany ( the industrial heartland of Europe) and Japan into the Western economy and the end of European empires isolated the less productive Communist economies which eventually gave up the Stalinist ghost (Russia, China) or today rattle a tin cup ( Cuba, North Korea).
“Now, the natural counter is simply to support authoritarian regimes across the Gap as the next best alternative, but that likewise favors the 4GW warrior over the long haul by creating horrible political and economic and social conditions that feed popular support for insurgencies and rebels and jihadists because–hey–how much worse could it get under them?”
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