{"id":27056,"date":"2013-09-07T05:09:20","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T05:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=27056"},"modified":"2013-09-07T05:20:15","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T05:20:15","slug":"octavian-manea-interviews-t-x-hammes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=27056","title":{"rendered":"Octavian Manea interviews T.X. Hammes"},"content":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski<\/strong>, a.k.a. “zen<\/strong>“]<\/p>\n

Octavian Manea<\/strong> and SWJ<\/strong> are on something of a roll lately. Colonel T.X. Hammes (ret.) PhD<\/a><\/strong> is the respected author of the excellent The Sling and the Stone<\/a>. <\/strong>If you have never read it, you should.<\/p>\n

The Fallacies of Big Expeditionary Counterinsurgency: Interview with T.X. Hammes<\/a><\/h3>\n

SWJ: How different is\u00a0Mao\u2019s people\u2019s war<\/a>\u00a0compared with what you call 4GW (Fourth Generation Warfare<\/a>)? Is 4GW an updated, evolved form of people\u2019s wars? In the end, isn\u2019t 4GW focused on people and minds, on influencing people and minds?<\/strong><\/p>\n

TX: Mao is a little bit different because (in China) it was a domestic insurgency and focused on wearing down the nationalists and changing the minds of the warlords who supported them. In the case of 4GW, the focus is overseas. People you can\u2019t reach with force, you must reach with the message. 4GW is an evolved form of insurgency. It is also important to note that Maoism is a type of insurgency that essentially fits a hierarchical society, not a tribal one. It always ends with a conventional campaign to destroy the government\u2019s army as the final step in overthrowing the government. You can\u2019t run a Maoist insurgency in the mountains of Afghanistan, the society won\u2019t tolerate that kind of structure.\u00a0 Nor can you do it in Iraq. 4GW covers both because its objective is not the military defeat.\u00a0 4GW does not focus on the destruction of the enemy\u2019s armed forces, but on changing the minds of the enemy\u2019s political decision makers. 4GW directly attacks the will of enemy decision makers.\u00a0 Once the outside power has been ejected, the conflict can continue until resolution.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

SWJ: Tell us about the center of gravity in a 4GW.<\/strong><\/p>\n

TX: The center of gravity in a 4GW is the will of the policymakers of the other side. 4GW war uses all available networks \u2013 political, economic, social and military \u2013 to convince the enemy\u2019s political decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit. 4GW is not necessarily targeted at the people.\u00a0 If the war is small enough, it can run on for years like El Salvador.\u00a0 In that case, the US commitment was small enough there was no major political cost to US decision makers to continue supporting the El Salvadorian government.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you look at the counterinsurgent side, I am more and more convinced that as a foreign power you can only do indirect counterinsurgency. You can advise and assist.\u00a0 But keep it small – the host nation has to make it work. We, the United States, have done this successfully a number of times. Admittedly, we have not created the perfect nations that the nation-builders want, but that wasn\u2019t the goal. The goal was to achieve US strategic goals. And we achieved our strategic goals in the Philippines, El Salvador, Columbia and Thailand. In a 4GW, the insurgent is not trying to win over the people as a whole. But the counterinsurgent must do so. In a tribal society, you can do what Kilcullen refers to as wholesale COIN – if you persuade the tribal chief everybody flips. In a more democratic society, you have to convince the people. It is more of a retail operation. It is critical to understand the society you are in and tailor your counterinsurgency and insurgency accordingly.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would add, in the 4GW theme of reasoning with the “moral level of war”, that a foreign power supporting a host nation government with FID that faces an insurgency, can probably get away with “punitive raiding” \u00a0of the non-state actors from time to time, particularly in rapid response to some heinous action committed by rebels. A heavy in-country footprint though will change the political calculus for the population – it is too easy to look lie occupiers and stringpullers. Foreign troops are rarely welcome guests for long.<\/p>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“] Octavian Manea and SWJ are on something of a roll lately. Colonel T.X. Hammes (ret.) PhD is the respected author of the excellent The Sling and the Stone. If you have never read it, you should. The Fallacies of Big Expeditionary Counterinsurgency: Interview with T.X. Hammes SWJ: How different is\u00a0Mao\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232,360,310,262,361,350,165,51,78,199,336,39,367,340,270,372,162,10,481,127,530,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-20th-century","category-21st-century","category-3-gen-gangs","category-4gw","category-america","category-army","category-historians","category-history","category-ideas","category-insurgency","category-intellectuals","category-military","category-military-history","category-military-reform","category-national-security","category-non-state-actors","category-small-wars-journal","category-state-failure","category-strategist","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-swj-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27056"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27058,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27056\/revisions\/27058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}