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UNTO THE FIFTH GENERATION OF WAR

” …each new generation required developments across the spectrum of society. Technological change alone has never been sifficient to produce a major change in how man wages war. It requires a complete societal change- political, economic social and technological – to create the conditions necessary for major changes in war “

– Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone.

William Lind, one of the fathers of 4GW theory has welcomed yet cautioned against attempts to ascertain with too much precision any outlines of a 5th Generation Warfare that might be evolving within the dynamic of 4GW conflicts we see in Iraq, Afghanistan and in transnational terrorism. Yet according to theorists and practitioners of 4GW like Colonel Hammes, that form of warfare, although just now coming in to its own has already been present for some seventy years ! Undoubtedly then 5GW is also here with us, waiting for the next Mao or Rommel to fit the disparate puzzle pieces into a coherent pattern.

4GW advocates disdain an overemphasis on particular technological breakthrough, criticizing in particular the Network-centric Warfare theory developed by Admiral Arthur Cebrowski . Or at least the celebration of high-tech warfare capabilities by some of Cebrowski’s followers in the Pentagon ( for a critique of both schools shaping of current policy, see ” The Pentagon’s Internal war Over what Iraq Means” by Dr. Barnett ). Therefore, I will generally accept some major premises of 4GW theory as articulated by Hammes in speculating about the parameters of 5GW, specifically:

1. Generational changes in warfare requires complete societal change.

2. Practitioners of warfare drove the evolution of warfare by seeking solutions to practical problems

3. Each succeeding generation reaches deeper in to enemy territory to defeat him.

The first question we should ask are what changes are driving society, nationally and globally ? Very briefly at the planetary level we have Globalization – an acceleration of the rate and degree of complexity of all forms of exchange ( in PNM theory Barnett’s “ Four Flows“); Post-Westphalianization – the rise of International, Transnational, Subnational and Non-state Actor challengers to the sovereign primacy of the Nation-State; and finally, State-Failure or severe State dysfunction where the ability of a State to constrain and police anarchic, nihilistic and disconnective forces is overwhelmed by post-Westphalian challengers, economic collapse and natural disasters.

Additionally, in the scientific and economic realm, the drivers of future societal changes in the next twenty to fifty years would most likely come from the following fields – Artificial Intelligence, Genomics, Alternative Fuels, Quantum Computing, Human Brain Research, Complexity and Chaos Theory, Nanotechnology and String Theory. it is impossible to assume the implications of any one of these fields over such a long timeline, much less all these fields in combination but what is a safe assumption is that the magnitude of changes that are coming will be very significant and result in substantial economic, social and political transformations.

In sum the global trends I have listed have in my view some fairly direct logical implications for warfare, already visible even today:

Superempowerment: The range of effect for each individual soldier ( or terrorist) will be vastly increased even as the economic costs are driven down by market forces and proliferation of dual-use technology to the civilian consumer.

Fluidity: Globalization makes possible virtual armies that are networks of networks that are both resilient and adaptable in a Darwinian sense.

Multidimensional Battlespace: War occurs in the context of everything else – physical space, cyberspace, the logosphere, financial, legal and societal networks – shaping the battlespace itself to the disadvantage of actual and potential opponents will become crucial aspects of strategy and not merely moving more effectively within it.

Autonomous Surrogates: Active regular military forces are seconded by a variety of substitutes to carry some aspect of the warfighting load – PMC’s, NGO’s, Paramilitary and Subnational networks, International Peacekeeping missions and increasingly, robotic agents.

Todays Predator drones and other prototype UAV are going to evolve and inevitably merge with Ai technology so that we will have, shades of science fiction, autonomous war machines that will have basic programing but also the capacity to learn, make independent decisions, cooperate with one another and adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield.

These however are simply aspects of the emerging warfare and not the strategic purpose behind such a shift that make one generation of warfare different from its predecessor. The rise of 5GW will represent the solution to defeating 4GW forces in the field and here we come to a very troubling moral possibility.

4GW forces like al Qaida erase the distinction between Combatant and non-combatant and target an enemy’s will to resist, often moving submerged witin society itself as a clandestine network structure. Such forces have proven exceptionally difficult to defeat for traditional militaries and as Colonel Hammes pointed out in The Sling and the Stone, 4GW strategy has allowed inferior forces to defeat even the superpowers.

A strong possibility exists that given successive generations of warfare tend to drive ” deeper” into enemy territory, that 5GW will mean systemic liquidation of enemy networks and their sympathizers, essentially a total war on a society or subsection of a society. There is no where ” deeper” for 5GW to go but here. At the high tech end 5GW would be precisely targeted to winnow out ” the bad guys” in a souped-up version of Operation Phoenix but at the low-tech end we could see campaigns that would be indiscriminate, democidally-oriented death squad campaigns that shred 4GW networks by the same actuarially merciless logic that led the Allies to firebomb German and Japanese cities in WWII.

This is a terrible prospect but there is evidence that 5GW tactics of this kind have defeated 4GW Communist revolution in Guatemala and El Salvador, stymied FARC and ELN in Colombia, beat back Islamists in Algeria and the Kurdish PKK in Turkey. Contravening data would include the Hutu militia genocide in Rwanda designed to eviscerate the ethnic supporters of the Tutsi rebels but instead led to the rebels toppling the Hutu regime and spreading disorder to neighboring states.

My efforts here to outline 5GW are purely speculative. A second potential form of 5GW might be Thomas P.M. Barnett’s ” System Administration” based Global Transaction Strategy to export security and connectivity to the Gap, short-circuiting the political appeal of 4GW movements before they grow out of all control. Or we may see both forms used in tandem and even likelier, some new dynamic currently impossible for us to forsee at all.

What is certain is that 4GW movements like the Iraqi insurgency and al Qaida will drive the evolution of warfare to 5GW as nation-states struggle to find solutions to the strategic problem presented by 4GW enemies and the societal disintegration they bring in their wake.

RECOMMENDED READING

Dan of tdaxp has a very-well reasoned post ” Every Man a Panzer, Every Woman a Soldat” that comprises the third part of his 4GW and Christianity series ( here is Part I. and Part II) where he integrates PNM concepts of Leviathan and System Administration and gender roles in warfare. The graphics quality is also exceptionally high. Strongly recommended.

Marc Schulman of the American Future has set off an interesting and lively discussion in his comments section with his post “Thank You Tom Friedman“. Marc has been a blogging house of fire of late so check out his more recent postings as well.

Callimachus of Done with Mirrors is now contributing to a new group blog, Donklephant, freshly added to the blogroll. Check it out.

On the issue of General Zhu, Jeff of Caerdroia weighs in with ” Taiwan” and also links to Qando. Simon at Simon World has not analyzed the story but directs his readers to Jing at Those Who Dare.

Dave at the Glittering Eye defends Juan Cole from blogospheric ” dogpiling“. I’m going to second Dave on this issue. I’ve had my differences with Juan Cole over the years and I think Cole’s passionate loathing of the Bush administration frequently affects his analysis – especially when connected to neoconservatism- but Dave’s points about Cole are valid ones.

Moreover, in my email contacts with Professor Cole I have always found him to be a gentleman as well as an astute scholar about Mideastern culture and Islam. I can honestly say that I have learned a number of things from reading his blog and H-Net posts that I would not have known otherwise. Our debates on H-Diplo were always productive, civil and very interesting intellectual exchanges. If bloggers don’t like what Cole is writing then they should attack his arguments and not go after him on a personal level.

CHINA’S KHRUSHCHEV MOMENT, WRIT SMALL

A while back, Nadezhda of Chez Nadezhda and LAT asked me an excellent question regarding China and Taiwan that I have procrastinated on answering. Partly to give the matter some thought and partly because real-world obligations were pressing as they always do. Nadezhda’s question in response to an earlier post of mine was as follows:

“I’d be interested in your thoughts on where you see Taiwan’s spending should be boosted, and what implications that would have for US strategy and crisis management.”

Unfortunately, this issue was pressed to the fore in grim fashion the other day by General Zhu Chenghu, a politically connected strategist and fast-rising star in the People’s Liberation Army best known for his previous threat in 1996, uttered as a mere Colonel, to nuke Los Angeles. General Zhu was utilized by the senior Chinese leadership to enact a Khrushchev -like performance of rattling nuclear sabers at the United States over its support for Taiwan:

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons…If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond…We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese “

Dave at The Glittering Eye offered an important observation on the article in FT.com:

“The original Financial Times article is here and includes this:

‘Gen Zhu was speaking at a function for foreign journalists organised, in part, by the Chinese government. He added that China’s definition of its territory included warships and aircraft.’

Or, in other words, he’s warning of a nuclear first-strike by China for targeting Chinese military assets wherever they are and whatever they’re engaged in. Not for striking. And not as a response to a use of nuclear weaponry by the United States.

This is extremely troubling on a number of grounds. This threshold is extremely low. Targeting goes on all the time. Do you remember the U. S. plane forced down by the Chinese in 2001? If the United States followed the rubric being suggested by General Zhu, we would already have completely destroyed China with nuclear weapons (and, yes, that is within our capabilities).”

Do we have a Chinese Curtis LeMay on our hands or is China attempting say something else ?

We have a triangular relationship going on here that is potentially dangerous because each party has incompatible strategic objectives expressed in maximalist and minimalist possibilities.

CHINA: Has the maximalist objective of eventually coercing Taiwan into reunification with the Mainland on Beijing’s terms. There is flexibility in the timetable and even on the terms but this outcome is considered absolutely non-negotiable by Beijing.

China’s minimalist objective, also non-negotiable, is that Taiwan must refrain from formally declaring independence.

TAIWAN: Has the maximalist objective of forcing China to accept Taiwan as an independent, equal, sovereign, state. Again, no hard and fast timetable here and the door is open at least a crack toward reunification on favorable terms, but Taipei’s eye is on independence.

Taiwan’s minimalist objective is preserving their de facto independence from China’s control. This is non-negotiable and it constantly prods Taiwanese leaders to demonstrate their freedom by periodically sticking their finger in Beijing’s eye.

THE UNITED STATES: Has the maximalist objective of preserving the status quo on Taiwan as based on the original Shanghai communique cobbled together Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai – barring the two other partises making some kind of peaceful reuinon on terms generally favoring Taiwan.

The minimalist objective of the U.S. is to prevent the outbreak of war between China and Taiwan.

The only non-negotiable aspect of the American position- if you can call it that- is that an unprovoked attack by China on Taiwan is unacceptable and the U.S. has statutory defense obligations. What we would consider ” unprovoked” or the precise nature of those ” obligations” are is up for grabs.

The problem here for American policy makers is that they are holding the weakest cards of the three by their own strategic choice to play nursemaid to two irreconciliable powers. If the guarantee to Taiwan was an unambiguous nuclear umbrella – as it is with Japan, South Korea or NATO – the situation might have remained stable. But American ambiguity on this crucial point is encouraging the gamblers in both Beijing and Taipei to play both ends against the middle to our disadvantage.

To reprise my comments at the Glittering Eye today, the Chinese government has been signalling, for at least a decade, that their bright red line for war is a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan and that they will absolutely go to war regardless of the costs.
Having stoked the fires of nationalism to make-up for the decline of Marxism in public esteem in order to legitimize their rule, the CCP leadership sees such a declaration by Taiwan as:

a) A threat to China’s territorial integrity and a likely inspiration for Tibet and Xinjiang to follow suit.

b) Something that could spur massive urban unrest and bring down the Communist Party if they fail to be perceived by the populace as taking strong action to prevent it or to punish Taipei.

That China would commit this kind of national suicide in any other context is belied by their blustery but ultimately ineffectual reaction to our bombing of their embassy in Belgrade ( which contrary to official reports I believe to have been fully intentional on our part and well-deserved for hostile Chinese SIGINT assistance to Serbia during the air war). I find China going nuclear over the Spratley’s or a downed plane to be a specious scenario.

On the other hand, regarding Taiwan, the leaders of the CCP are much more serious and this should be taken into account by American policymakers. Whether Beijing would escalate to the extent threatened by General Zhu is debatable but what is not debatable is that the Chinese are desperate to indicate to the United States and Taipei that independence is regarded by China as a critical national defense interest.

To return to the original question posed by Nadezhda, to pursue their strategic objectives, Taiwan needs a defense establishment capable of deterring an amphibious invasion and formidible enough in its retaliatory powers to make a massive missile and air attack a high-cost affair for Beijing without even considering American intervention. This would require across the board investments in ballistic missiles, submarines, warplanes and if they can get away with it – nuclear weapons ( note: this would not be in America’s interest – I’m simply explaining what capabilities Taiwan requires) Defensive tech like Aegis is nice but somewhat pointless given the sheer magnitude of what China can throw at Taiwan – the only significant variable here in Chinese calculations are what costs Taiwan can impose on China in return.

The Bush administration for its part needs to reevaluate our strategic objectives in regard to China and Taiwan. Far too much decision-making power has been voluntarily ceded to circumstances that can be created by others – thus encouraging China and Taiwan to be less responsible than if both parties were reacting only bilaterally to each other’s moves. We need a clarification of our defense relationship with the Taiwanese so that neither China nor Taiwan miscalculates.

THE REAL NEWS ABOUT KARL ROVE

I feel compelled to comment on the Rove-Wilson-Plame-Novak-Miller ad infinitum saga because it struck me that there is an angle no one has mentioned, or at least no one I have read lately. That is to say thirty, twenty or even ten years ago, Karl Rove would have been left for political dead by now, his corpse would be cold and he’d have become an unperson, forgotten even by Jay Leno in his nightly monologue.

The once dreaded power of the Left’s Iron Triangle – the implicit partnership of Congressional Democrats, the liberal MSM and top tier bureaucrats in the Cabinet to destroy Republicans- is a spent force.

Karl Rove is a brilliant bare-knuckle political operator and no saint but the likeliest legal outcome of this charade is that he did not, at least technically speaking, break the law by ” outing” a CIA clandestine officer engaged in covert operations, which Ms. Plame was not in any event. Given the unlikelihood of Judith Miller doing hard time for Mr. Rove, he’s obviously not ” the” source, though I can imagine he walked right up to any legal line in speaking to reporters. That’s how hardball is played in Washington and hardball is what the incredibly arrogant Joseph Wilson chose to play when the senior staff at Foggy Bottom and at Langely cooked up this gambit in order to torpedo the President’s foreign policy and, if they were really lucky, the President along with it.

In some countries, when the unelected insiders engage in secret machinations to oust their elected leaders it is called a coup.

Too strong a word ? Admiral Stansfield Turner, the Left’s favorite CIA director and no fan of the Bush administration, felt compelled to speak out in support of housecleaning at Langely:

“The CIA has got to be kept out of partisan politics,” said Stansfield Turner, who was CIA director under President Carter. “And it appears that they were leaking information to influence the election. Porter Goss has now got a difficult problem.”

The coup failed because the old oligopoly on public discourse of three major TV networks and two newspapers is broken. Would-be drumbeats orchestrated by elite powerbrokers through their media friends now dissolve into a cacophony of fact-checking, fisking, ridicule and a devastating counterattack if any chicanery is exposed. Chicanery that once would never have been detected, much less thwarted.

At one time the ” appearance of impropriety” or if none existed, outright slander ( provided Ted Kennedy was sober enough to reach a microphone) was enough to sink a Republican officeholder or nominee regardless if there was any substance to the charge. Remember Ray Donovan ? Of course not, he was Reagan’s Secretary of Labor who was investigated out of office and into the poorhouse. He was cleared of wrongdoing once he had been destroyed. How about that nominee for SCOTUS who may have smoked a joint – he disappeared into the memory hole so fast I doubt anyone reading this blog can remember his name.

Of course this death by media culture boomeranged on the Democrats in a big way in the 1990’s when President Clinton who was a walking, talking, scandal-machine came into office. The GOP, which had ample real things to complain about in terms of Clinton’s policies, threw everything at the Clintons but the kitchen sink, including quite a few things that sounded clinically insane to anyone not drunk on personal hatred for the man. The Republican Party was saved from self-destruction only because the Clintons inevitably kept getting caught doing something shady that re-ignited controversy. Between old Bill, Hillary, Newt and that assistant principal looking special prosecutor, the country burned out its capacity for political indignation for a generation.

I’m highly doubtful Rove did anything illegal but if Karl Rove really and truly broke the law he should go. What the Left lacks, for the first time in forty years, is the power to make him.

FOLLOW-UP

Marc Shulman posed a tough question for me in the comment section of the post below, which I have tried to answer. Additionally, Jeff at Caerdroia has also posted a long analytical piece on America’s strategic choices in the war to end Jihadi terrorism that bears reflection:

“To begin, how do you identify the potential terrorists? If you look at the known information on the London terrorists, and the 9/11 terrorists, and the numerous other terrorists that have operated outside of predominantly-Muslim countries, you find that they are by and large middle-class, educated, not particularly rigidly observant, young Muslim men, entranced by the ideology of particularly rigidly observant and intolerant old Muslim men. There happen to be a large fraction of the immigrants to Western nations (particularly Europe) who are middle-class, educated, not particularly rigidly observant young Muslim men who are not entranced by the ideology of particularly rigidly observant and intolerant old Muslim men. So how do you separate out people whose only distinguishing characteristic is what they believe and whom they follow?”

Read the whole thing.