4th Generation Warfare

This is a Fourth Generation War

 SAMUEL CULPER

Earlier this year, I did a re-read of Bill Lind’s 4th Generation Warfare Handbook (4GW) to better understand the framework of our ongoing Low Intensity Conflict.

For those who are new to the term, Low Intensity Conflict is war below the threshold of conventional war (tanks and bombers) but above routine, peaceful competition. America is not at conventional war, but it’s certainty not at peace with itself. This is the gray area of Low Intensity Conflict.

As history shows, technology and human understanding of warfare evolves, so war itself evolves. Not everyone agrees with the “generational” description of warfare, but let’s look quickly at the framework.

According to the theory, Generations 1-3 of warfare focused on the development of conventional warfighting, generally understood as:

• 1GW: masses of troops meeting on the battlefield in somewhat orderly warfare, such as lines and columns; to
• 2GW: the inclusion of centralized indirect fire and war by attrition; to
• 3GW: the inclusion of combined arms (land, air, and sea) and maneuver doctrine.

War is less and less being fought among conventional militaries and nation-states, and it’s increasingly fought by tribal entities, where both armed and unarmed combatants wage war against an enemy. (Many make the case that this is the original form of warfare, or 0GW, and they’re not wrong.)

Yet, as Lind describes, “All over the world, citizens of states are transferring their primary allegiance away from the state to other entities: to tribes, ethnic groups, religions, gangs, ideologies, and ’causes.'” In 4GW, fighting for one’s “nation” increasingly means fighting for your social tribe, instead of fighting for one’s country.

In 4GW, the military and nation-state has clearly lost the monopoly on warfighting, as 4GW is fought primarily on the Mental (informational) and Moral planes of conflict. The Culture War being fought right now in classrooms, corporations, and media outlets is a great indicator of 4GW, as information operations and high-horse moral pleas have become warfighting techniques to win on the Mental and Moral levels of conflict. (Notice, for instance, the rhetoric re-defining “fundamental American values”.)

Lind makes the case that killing is rarely the preferred way to win a Fourth Generation War, and that winning the Mental and Moral conflict almost always dictates the outcome of the war. In a way, to win in 4GW, you don’t necessarily need to kill your opponent; you need to reshape the information environment and shift the perception of morality so that your opponent (and/or his ideology) becomes unpopular and immoral. Once unpopular and immoral by societal standards, political and social power dries up. At least in theory, that’s how you win at 4GW.

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