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already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome
everyone back to the Pekiniana Show. John field House is back.
Speaker 2: Hey doing John doing well? Sir?
Speaker 1: All right, So looks like we're going to dive into
William s Lyn's understanding fourth generation warfare. This is from
another compilation called Riding the Red Horse. I guess help
us out start out talking about lynd and you know
why this was something they came on your radar.
Speaker 2: Cool, So start off. This is from Riding the Red Horse,
edited by Tom Kratman. Cratman just real quick. He's a
former military offer who writes fiction mostly for Baine Books,
which where Pornell wrote most of his stuff. He also
wrote this for Castalia House Box Days Company the Guys
who brought Back There Will be War. This is more
or less the same kind of idea and anthology that combines
fiction with essays with an introduction from the editor. So
will William S Lynn excuse me? Okay? Bill Linn born
forty seven. He's an American paleo conservative. He's the guy
who basically came up with the framework we think of
his generations of war for a second, third, fourth, and
fifth was added by others. Very long story, short again.
He got he was born like right after World War Two.
Too young for Korea, kind of old for Vietnam, so
he never got there. He got a master He went
to Dartmouth and he got a master's from Princeton. Decided
he didn't want to be a PhD. He wanted to
go work and train. So, like all semi autistic people,
he really likes trained. So he tried to get a
job with Amtrak. He wrote to a senator, and a
senator who was Robert Taft, the guy that Ron Paul
talks about a lot. He said basically said, come work
for me instead, and that's how he got into working
in legislative offices and working in think tanks and whatnot.
His work on generations of war largely comes from the
fact that the senator he was working with at the time,
who was not Taft, I forget who it was, was
involved with what was called the Military Reform movement, which
are all the guys associated with John Boyd. Martin Van
Krevel is one of those guys. Bill Linn was moved
in those circles. He was a bunch of other people.
But basically, these are the guys who were working with
theories of command and control about how you lead and
use forces on the battlefield. And I could go into
a long dissertation about that that nobody wants to hear
right now. But basically this was an extension of German
Prussian commands theory into American way of war, and it
came about largely after the end of the Vietnam War,
where we said, you know what we were doing didn't work,
Let's go back to fundamentals and reavout evaluate things. So
that's how Lynn got into that group. And that's despite
the fact that Lynn never worked in the military. He
teaches on, you know, military theory, partly because he was
part of that group surrounded our surrounding Boyd who also
built upon his theories. So yeah, he's that guy. If
anybody knows him, it's probably from either the American Conservative
magazine or forever. He used to come on Scott Horton's
podcast all the time because despite being a military theorist,
he's somebody who definitely he comes again. The whole Boyd
school is heavily influenced by Sun Sue, and one of
the fundamental things that people have to understand that Sun
Sue wanted to make understood is that war is basically
almost always the wrong choice. Doesn't mean war is not
always the wrong choice. Sometimes it's necessary, and as Santayana said,
only the dead of seeing the end of war, So
war is always going to be here. It's always got
to be dealt with, which doesn't change the fact that
war is generally a bad choice, which is why he's
involved with groups like anti war dot com. He's the
guy who invented the term cultural Marxism. He wrote a
bunch of stuff for American Conservative Magazine. Really likes electric railways,
electric trains, and I mean like real logistics electric trains.
Used to write stuff for lou Rockwell, you know, despite
all those you know, being a military theorist, extremely anti war,
he's kind of famous for being a monarchist, and I
mean like an honest, you know, no irony American monarchist,
which is, you know, interesting. What else can I go into?
But that's the big things that we're dealing with here.
And part of why I recommended this war work is
again because you were looking for, you know, short pieces
in between your other episodes dealing with war and security policy,
and I said, recommend this one because number one, it's
only like fifteen pages long. Number two is we use
a lot of the terminology here, but most people don't
know what it means. So maya thought was, let's just
go ahead to read this and talk through it.
Speaker 1: Awesome, all right, So it looks like the editor's introduction
is really short. So even though you just gave an introduction,
I'll I'll give the editors introduction to all right, so cool,
here we go. This is Understanding Fourth Generation War by
William Slynd Bill. And has some friends and his enemies,
his fans and his foes. That's what comes with being
someone who rocks the boat. An accolade of the late
Colonel John Boyd. Bill is the author of the Maneuver
Warfare Handbook, along with more articles, columns, and papers than
I can fit here, writing for the Marine Corps Gazette,
Defense and the National Interest, and the American Conservative. He
was also part of Colorado Senator Gary Hart's military reform movement.
You can agree with Bill's conceptual framework or disagree me.
I disagree with some points and positions while agreeing with others,
I probably agree with more than I disagree. That's just me, though,
and men of good conscience can, after all, differ. There's
one thing, though, that I don't think you can disagree with. Brothers, sisters.
The bloody boats needs rocking. Bill's contribution here is Understanding
Fourth Generation War, A brief tour of the technological, technical, tactical,
and attitudinal. Is that attitudinal? I haven't read that word
in so long.
Speaker 2: It's just yeah, I think so speaks up on you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, attitudinal changes in warfare from the sixteen forty
eight Treaty of Westphalia to the current day. It's worth
reading in its own right and should spark in your
you the desire to read his on war as well
as the upcoming Fourth Generation Warfare handbook co written with
Marine Lieutenant Colonel Gregory A. Is that deals.
Speaker 2: Just like Peter Deal or Peter Deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just as any on the end, both coming to
you from Castilia House. As for Fourth Generational Warfare itself,
can we beat it? Bill doesn't really directly get into
that with the present piece, but yes we can. The
problem is that the only way to beat it that
we already know how to do involves that involves things
that bring to mind Ladice, Magburg, Carthage and Corinth. Fourth
Generational Warfare presents problems to us that would not have
troubled a Caesar, Acipio or a Genghis Khan for a moment.
Now we can become the civilization of a Now can
we become the civilization of a Caesar or a Scipio.
The blood is in our veins and the meme in
our hearts and minds. However, for anyone who prefers to
live in a civilization that is not maintained by building
mountains of skulls, presuming that's possible, which is an open question.
At this point, we really ought to be concerned with
meeting and defeating fourth generational warfare through means other than
sheer genocide. I'd suggest too, that the people with the
greatest interest in are finding a way to defeat fourth
generational warfare short of genocide, should be, in fact, the
practitioners a fourth generational warfare, the very people whose entire
gene pools we may have to extinguish if we don't
find that solution. But I don't think they're either objective
enough or bright enough to figure that out. So it
looks like we're going to have to do it our
own way, do it on our own.
Speaker 2: I say, as you can tell, Krapman sort of has
my worldview when it comes to a human organization.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is when you think of the term realist,
that's that's pretty a pretty realist way of looking at
the world.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And before we get going the Treaty of Westphalia,
is was it thirty years war anyways or one hundred years?
I think it's thirty Years War. Anyways, the treaty at
the end of that created the modern nation state system
as opposed to you know, feudal states or whatever we
had before that, and that's used as a line of
demarcation a lot of military theory. And just so everybody's wondering,
why do we start with first generation war in the
seventeenth century. That's just because we're only looking at modern
west in war and the rest of the world when
it came into the Western sphere. We're not going back
to the creation of the world as a.
Speaker 1: War, okay, all right, starting the peace. Rather than commenting
on the specifics of the war with Iraq, I thought
it might be a good time to lay out a
framework for understanding that and other conflicts. I call this
framework four Generations of Modern War. I developed the framework
the framework of the first regenerations during the nineteen eighties.
When I was laboring to introduce maneuver warfare to the
US Marine Corps. The Marines kept asking what will the
fourth generation be like. The result was an article I
co authored for the Marine Corps Gazette in nineteen eighty
nine entitled the Changing Face of War into the Fourth Generation.
Our troops reportedly found copies of the article in the
caves at Tora Bora, the al Qaeda hide out in Afghanistan.
Heading modern warfare, the four generations began with the Peace
of Westphalia in Si sixteen forty eight, the treaty that
ended the Thirty Years War. With that treaty, the state
established a monopoly on war. Previously, many different entities had
fought wars, families, tribes, religions, cities, business enterprises, using many
different means, not just armies and navies. Now, state militaries
find it difficult to imagine war in any in any
way other than fighting state armed forces similar to themselves,
even though two of those even though two of those means,
bribery and assassination, are again in vogue. The first generation,
the first generation of modern war war of line and
column tactics, where battles were formal and the battlefield was orderly,
ran roughly from sixteen forty eight to eighteen sixty. The
relevance of the first generation springs from the fact that
the battlefield of order created a military culture of order.
Most of the things that distinguished military from civilian uniforms,
saluting careful gradations of rank, were products of the first
generation were intended to reinforce the culture of order. The
problem is that around the middle of the nineteenth century,
the battle of order began to break down. Mass armies
soldiers who actually wanted to fight. An eighteenth century soldier's
main objective was to was to desert. Rifled muskets, then
breech loaders and machine guns made the old line and
column tactics, at first obsolete, then suicidal. The problem since
then has been a growing contradiction between military culture and
the increasing disorderliness of the battlefield. The culture of order
that was once consistent with the environment which had operated
has become more and more at odds with it. The
second generation second in Generation War was one answer to
the contradiction between the culture of order and the military
environment developed by the French army during and after World
War One. Second Generation War so sought a solution in
mass firepower, most of which was indirect artillery fire. The
goal was attrition, and the doctrine was summed up by
the French. As the artillery conquers the infantry occupies centrally
control firepower was carefully synchronized using detailed, specific plans and orders.
For the infantry, tanks, and artillery in a conducted battle
where the commander was in effect the conductor of an orchestra.
Second generation war came as a great relief to soldiers,
or at least their officers, because it preserved the culture
of order. The focus was inward on rules, processes, and procedures.
Obedience was more important than initiative. In fact, initiative was
not wanted because it endangered synchronization. Discipline was top down
and imposed. Second Generation war is relevant today because the
US Army and us USMC learned second generation war from
the French during and after World War One, and it
remains the American way of war as we are seeing
in Afghanistan in Iraq. To Americans, war means putting steel
on target. Aviation has replaced artillery as a source of
most firepower. But otherwise, and despite the Marine Corps formal doctrine,
which is third generation maneuver warfare, the US military today
is as French as wine, as white wine and cheese.
At the Marine Corps Desert Warfare Training Center in California,
the only thing missing is to trycolor and a picture
of General Maurice Gamlin in the headquarters I pronounce that
right as a game Gamblin like Gamelin. I think Gamelin AKA.
The same is true at the Army, at the Army's
Armors School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where one instructor began
his class by saying, I don't know why I have
to teach you all this old French crap.
Speaker 2: I do, Yeah, Before we get any further. One of
the things that Lynn tries to make clear is even
though we have technology that advances, that leads to the
development of new conceptual generations of how to fight wars,
very often many organizations continue to use the old organizational
managerial practices, and essentially second generational warfare is the managerial
class running warfare. That's probably the biggest thing to take
away from it.
Speaker 1: I wonder, how does you know when Thomas says that
the modern military is designed to fight the Cold War,
do you agree with that and how would that apply?
Speaker 2: Well? I think essentially, because like you said, essentially we
preserve so much of the French central management approach to war.
I mean that's exactly a case. I mean, that's largely
a legacy and for the most part, yeah, excuse me, yeah,
I do believe that in some ways, the global war
and terror that we had from nine to eleven until
you know, the pull out of there was seen by
lots in the established military establishment military as sort of
a detour from the quote serious work of fighting wars
with tanks and bombers and whatnot. And that's part of
why as soon as we've prepared to get out of Afghanistan,
you saw everything coming out of the Pentagon talking about
possible war with China and possible war with Russia. It's
not just that if you have a tool, you want
to use that tool. It's that we're desperately looking for
places where we can use a tool that isn't necessarily
appropriate anymore, If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Understood, all right. The third generation third generation war, also
a product of World War One, was developed by the
German Army and as commonly known as blitzkrig or maneuver warfare.
Third generation war is based not on firepower and attrition,
but speed, surprise, and mental as well as physical dislocation. Tactically,
in the attack, the third generation military seeks to get
into the enemy's rear areas and collapse him from the
rear forward instead of close with and destroy. The motto
is bypass and collapse. In the defense, it attempts to
draw the enemy in then cut him off. War ceases
to be a shoving contest where forces attempt to hold
or advance a line. Third generation war is nonlinear. Tactics
change in third generation war, as does military culture. The
third generation military focuses outward on the situation, the enemy
and the results the situation requires, not inward on process
and method. During nineteenth century wargames, German junior officers routinely
received problems that could only be solved by disobeying orders.
Orders themselves specified the result to be achieved, but never
the method. Initiative was more important than obedience. Mistakes were
tolerated as long as they came from too much in
should have rather than too little, and it all depended
on self discipline, not imposed discipline. The Kaiser here and
the van Macht could put on great parades, but in
reality they had broken with the culture of order.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a big part of what Thomas
talks about, you know, innovations of the Wehrmacht, especially the
whole approach to how they trained them off in SS
was about that the German word is off trog stot
take tactic, which literally translates to mission tactics or mission orders,
And essentially it's the idea of a commander. At all levels,
you're supposed to dictate what your objective is, are your
intent rather that as a commander, this is what I'm
trying to achieve. So I'm going to give you a
task and purpose I'm going give with tasks is your mission?
Your purpose? Why I'm doing this, But I want you
to know behind that the underlying intent of why I'm
doing And I do that because as the battlefield changes,
because again the battlefield or is chaos, I want you,
as a subordinate to be able to adapt to those
changes and to continue to pursue my intent long after
the point that my orders are no longer relevant to
what's going on at that moment.
Speaker 1: Understood, the Fourth Generation, characteristics such as decentralization and initiative
carry over from the third to the fourth generation, but
in other respects, the fourth generation marks the most radical
change since the Peace of Westphalia. In Fourth generation war,
the state loses its monopoly on war all over the world.
State militaries find themselves fighting non state opponents such as
al Qaeda, Hamas Hezbela and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia almost everywhere the state is losing. Fourth generation war
is also marked by a return to a world of cultures,
not merely states in conflict. We now find ourselves facing
the Christian West old this and most steadfast opponent, Islam.
After about three centuries on the strategic defensive following the
failure of the second Turkish Siege of Vienna in sixteen
eighty three, Islam has resumed the strategic offensive, expanding outward
in every direction. In fourth generation war, invasion by immigration
can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a
state army.
Speaker 2: Which is exactly our shows is exactly how Lane Lynd
and Martin van Krebled are, you know, simpatago, how they
work together.
Speaker 1: Nor is fourth generation war merely something we import, as
we did on nine to eleven. At its core lies
a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that
crisis means many countries will evolve fourth generation war on
their soil. America with a closed political system regardless of
which party wins, the establishment remains in power and nothing
really changes, and a poisonous ideology of multiculturalism is a
prime candidate for the homegrown variety of fourth generation war,
which is by far the most dangerous kind. Where does
the war in Iraq fit into this framework? I suggest
that the war we have seen thus far is merely
a powder train leading to the magazine. The magazine is
fourth generation war by a wide variety of Islamic non
state actors directed at America and Americans and local governments
friendly to America everywhere. The longer America occupies Iraq, the
greater the chance the magazine will explode if it does,
God help us all. For almost two years, a small
group has been meeting at my house to discuss how
to fight fourth generation war. The group is made up
mostly of Marines, but it includes one Army officer, one
National Guard captain, and one foreign officer. We felt somebody
should be working on the most difficult questions facing the
US armed forces, and no one else seemed to be.
Group members recently decided it was time to go public
with a few of the ideas. It has come up
with no magic solutions to offer, only some thoughts. We
recognize from the outset that the whole task might be hopeless.
State militaries might not be able to come to grips
with fourth generation enemies no matter what they do, but
for what they are worth, here are some of our thoughts.
It seems like, if you were to try and nail
down anything so far, it seems like immigration is the
path they've chosen.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, very much so. And it sort of also
illustrates the fact that, you know, these issues persist. There
was a tendency for us to think that, you know,
as we're pulling out of Afghanistan, that we weren't really
at war anymore, and we are at war in so
many ways, whether we we whether the people at war
with us explicitly say that or not.
Speaker 1: You know, something that I've been contemplating a lot recently
is Augustine's just war theory. And you know, his theory
was it's okay for a Christian to go to war
if it's to bring about peace. And I think one
of the biggest problems is, besides infiltration by outside forces
of most of the Christian sex in the West, is
the fact that most Christians don't even see that we're.
Speaker 2: At war exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Points to ponder if America had some
third generation ground forces capable of maneuver warfare, we might
be able to fight battles of encirclement. The inability to
fight battles of encirclement is what led to the failure
of Operation a Nakonda in Afghanistan, where Al Kada stood
fought us and got away suffering few casualties. To fight
such battles, we need some true light infantry that can
move farther and faster on its feet than the enemy can,
has a full tactical repertoire, not just bumping into the
enemy and calling for fire, and can fight with its
own weapons instead of depending on supporting arms. We estimate
that the Marine Corps infantry today has a sustained march
rate of ten to fifteen kilometers per day. German World
War two line not light infantry could sustain forty kilometers.
Fourth generation opponents will not sign up to the Geneva Conventions,
but some might be open to a chivalric code governing
how war with them would be fought. This is worth exploring.
How US forces conduct themselves after the battle might be
as important in fourth generation war as how they fight
the battle. What the Marine Corps calls cultural intelligence is
of vital importance in forth generation war, and it must
go down to the lowest rank in Iraq. The Marines
seem to be grasping too, seem to be grasping this
much better than the US army. What kind of people
do we need in the special ops forces? We think
minds are more important than muscles, but it is not clear.
But it is not all special operations forces understand this.
One key to success is integrating groups as much as
possible with the local people. Unfortunately, the US doctrine of
force protection works against integration and generally hurts us badly.
A quote from the minutes of one of our meetings says,
there are two ways to deal with the issue of
force penetration. One way is the way we are currently
doing it, which is to separate ourselves from the population
and to intimidate them with our firepower. A more viable
alternative might be to take the opposite approach and integrate
with the community. That way, you find out more of
what is going on, and the population protects you. The
British approach of getting the helmets off as soon as
possible may actually be saving loves. What wins at the
tactical and physical levels might lose at the operational, strategic, mental,
and moral levels where fourth generation war is decided. Martin
van Kreveld argues that one reason the British have not
lost in Northern Ireland is that the British Army has
taken more casualties than it has inflicted. That is something
the second generation US military has great trouble grasping because
it defines success in terms of comparative attrition rates. We
must recognize that in fourth generation war, we are the weaker,
not the stronger party, despite all our firepower and technology.
What can the US military learn from police officers? US Army,
Reserve and National Guard units include lots of cops. Are
we taking advantage of what they know? One key to
success in fourth generation war might be losing to win.
Part of the reason the wars in Afghanistan and Iraqi
not succeeding is that our initial invasion destroyed the state,
creating a happy hunting ground for fourth generation forces in
a world where the state is in decline. If you
destroy a stage, it is difficult to recreate it. Another
quote from the Minutes say, while war against another state
may be necessary, one should seek to presus of that state.
Even as one defeats it, grant the opposing armies the
honors of war. Tell them what a fine job they did.
Make their defeats civilized, so they can survive the war
institutionally intact, and then work for your side.
Speaker 2: Now, when you read that, it almost become or it
becomes very obvious why historically, from most of the twentieth century,
the US went out of its way to have so
many monuments and overt honors for the former Confederacy, and
now suddenly we're destroying all those things.
Speaker 1: Well, it also reminds me that we are. Our occupying
force is one who doesn't seek any of these things
at all. They just seek to kill. They seek to
kill everyone, And basically that's what we that's where we're at.
If we haven't killed everyone, killed all of our enemies
and not then you'll look at them with honor, look
at them, look at them as you know you fought
a good fight.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Now now we can trade, Now, we can trade chips,
Now we can do something. But no, because this force there,
because their whole ideology has basically overtaken us, we have
to destroy everything. And if we don't destroy everything, we
don't see that we've won exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean this historic issue with empires. Are you know
there's a reason why you allow honors even as you
defeat and control the enemy. I mean Rome famously turned
huge parts of the periphery conquered peoples into their legions
over time. America did that completely with the South. That's
exactly what happened is essentially, you know, a coastal ruling
elite outsource the process of fighting their wars, you know,
to the people they conquered in the interior, in the
south Land, and now they're intentionally trying to destroy them.
And as you said, the people occupying us, the managerial
class is a hostile, occupying enemy force that seeks our destruction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when every when every enemy you come
up against isamlek and they cannot be reasoned with. They
are you know, they're insane. They're Adolf Hitler. If Adolf
Hitler and Bashar Asad are the same person to be
treated the same way, well what do we do. We're
never going to have honor. They'll never be honor in
war again.
Speaker 2: Exactly. You know, they simultaneously think every enemy is Hitler
that must be utterly destroyed. While also believing we live
in a world that's beyond violence, all right.
Speaker 1: Continuing this would be similar to eighteenth century notions of
civilized war and contribute greatly to propping up a fragile state.
Humiliating the defeated enemy troops, especially in front of their
own population, is always a serious mistake, but one that
Americans are prone to make. The football mentality we have
developed since World War Two works against us in many ways.
The twenty first century will offer a war between the
forces of fourth generation war and those are the brave
New World. Fourth generation forces understand this, while the international
elites to seek the brave New World do not. The
minutes read Osama bin Laden, though reportedly very wealthy, lives
in a cave. Yes, it is for security, but it
is also leadership by example. It may make it harder
to a separate but physically and psychologically fourth generation war
leaders fourth generation war leaders from their troops. It also
makes it harder to discredit those leaders with their followers.
Speaker 2: There's a reason why when we look at just all
of our historic I would say archetypes of leadership in
the West, you know, people in times of great upheaval,
and especially you just think about the whole archetype of
leaders in the Old West or in Britain, think of
the whole art theory and tradition. These are people who
we use titles like king and duke and whatnot. So
they were honest, our nobles understood they were different class.
But at the same time they had to suffer with
their people and they you know, the right of leadership
was earned every day through their suffering and through their leadership,
which is not something the managerial class has at all.
Speaker 1: Well, and let's not forget it's only been one hundred
years since the United States fought a war where a
quarter of the class of Harvard was lost. Yeah, and
you know scores of wasp elite children went to war
and lost their lives. Yeah and yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I was saying, like one of the things is the
Reserve Act, the one that created the modern National Guard,
created r OTC. And you know there's a carve out
this is ROTC Cadets can't be mobilized and sent abroad
to fight. And it's like, why is that carve out
there now that wasn't in there in the original one.
It's because Norwich University, their entire core cadets was mobilized
and sent to the border to fight Pancho via Via.
And that's a one off example. But we lived in
a world we're literally university students who were you know,
very much of an upper class at that time could
just be mobilized to fight a war even you know,
at a time there wasn't a draft. And that's how
much the world has changed since then.
Speaker 1: This contrast dramatically with the brave New World elites, who
are physically and psychologically separated from their followers by a
huge gap. Even the generals and most conventional armies are
to a great extent separated from their men. The brave
New World elites are in many respects occupying the moral
low ground. But don't know it. I think I've heard this.
I think even Colonel McGregor has said this, that basically
the general class is just managers, is just another branch
of managers. Yeah. And the access occupation of the Balkans
during World War Two, the Italians were in many ways
more effective than the Germans. The key to their success
is that they did not want to fight on Cyprus.
To you, and Commander rated the Argentine Battalion as more
effective than the British or the Austrians because the Argentines
did not want to fight. What lessons can us forces
draw from this? We've been so brainwashed that this sounds
like cowardice, that like, you know, the average person would
read this and it sounds like cowardice to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean again, there's a time and a place,
right and when you're waging a counterinsurgency, when you're occupying
a force, you know, a desire to go out there
and get in fights is generally not a good thing.
If you talk to any cop who talks about have
to work with new guys on the beat on a
Friday night, a Saturday night, you know, wherever there's bars,
and you're going to occasionally have to get into fights
with guys. The last thing is you want is the
young billy badass who wants to get in a fight
all the time, because you're just going to create new
requirements to fight.
Speaker 1: How would the mafia do an occupation when we have
a coalition? What if we let each country do what
is what it does best. For example, having the Russians
handle operational art, the US firepower and logistics, and the
Italians the occupation how could the US Department of Defense
this concept of transformation be redefined to come to grips
with fourth generation war. If you read the current transformation
planning guidance put out by the Department, you will find
nothing on fourth generation war, indeed nothing that relates to
all at all to either of the two wars we
are now fighting. It is oriented toward fighting state armed
forces that fight us symmetrically.
Speaker 2: Again, it wants to refight the Cold War, which even
during the Cold War wanted to refight World War Two.
We have perenally an army that wanted to do whatever
we did that won last time, but really does not
want to do the fights that we actually have to
engage in now.
Speaker 1: We asked will Saddam's capture market turning point in the
war in Iraq? The conclusion, don't count on it. That
reminds me of now taking out the head of hes
Blah and then taking out his his replacement, and they
think they're winning. They think that because they did that,
they're winning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And obviously, take eliminating command and control at any
level is what you want to do against your enemies.
But there's always the question how resilient is Hesbalah and
the fact that we're seeing forces repel Israeli forces in
parts of southern Lebanon. We don't know to what degree
that's happening, because you know, the Israelis sure Is are
not telling us anything, you know, concrete, but it really
looks like hes Blah is continuing to function at lower
levels and reforming its layers of chain of command after
they're being killed off. So it looks like they're doing
a very good job at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, few resistance fighters have been fighting for Saddam personally.
Saddam's capture might lead to a fracturing of the Bath Party,
which would move us further toward a fourth generation situation
where no one can recreate the state. It might also
tell the she IDEs that they no longer need America
to protect them from Saddam, giving them more options in
their struggle for free elections. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right. They dismantled, well, they actually disbanded the
regular army and all the other security forces, so everybody
person who could went home, took weapons and hid them,
and lots of those guys who again, the Bath Party
was extremely secular. I've been to the old Republican Guard headquarters.
I've been to their bar, you know, and I could
see all the old you know, long since empty bottles
of whiskey in it. So you know, these guys were
not Islamists, but you invaded their country. You took away
all their status, you took away any organization that meant
in anything. And these guys went home with their guns,
and as soon as people started firing the occupation, the
actual professionals happily showed up and provided their training and
disciplined to those people.
Speaker 1: However, if the US Army used to capture of Saddam
to announce the end of tactics that enraged ordinary Iraqis
and drive them toward active resistance, it might buy us
a bit of de escalation. But I do not think
we will be that smart. So you think this is
what around two thousand and five, two thousand and six,
because the redirection was in the redirection was in two
thousand and six, right or two thousand yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, was it two thousand and three? Is no? Or four? Anyways,
when we captured Saddam? So yeah, about that timeframe. So yeah,
this hasn't been updated since then, but it's still good
as a peace Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, absolutely getting it. When it comes to
fourth generation war, it seems no one in the US
military gets it. Recently, a faculty member at the National
Defense University wrote to Marine Corps General James Mattis, Commander,
first Marine Division, asking for isn't it insane how he's
just become another manager? Yeah, he meant, well, but yeah,
start over again. Recently, a faculty member at the National
Defense University wrote to Marine Corps General James Maddis, Commander,
first Marine Division, asking for his views on the importance
of reading military history. Matis responded with an eloquent defense
of making time to read history when this should go
up on the wall at all military schools. Thanks to
my reading, I have never been caught flat footed by
any situation. It doesn't give me all the answers, but
it lights what is often a dark path ahead. Still,
even such a capable and well read commander as Madis,
seems to miss the point about fourth generation war. He said, Ultimately,
a real understanding of history means that we face nothing
new under the sun for the fourth generation of war.
Intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war
is fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new and so on.
I must respectfully say, not really.
Speaker 2: This This gets sort of the issue that you know,
Krappman pushed back in the introduction, and that's part of
the issue too. How much is there new under sun?
Very little? But it doesn't mean that we faced those
situations in the recent past. So again, conceptual frameworks. You know,
nobody doing fourth generation warfare called it fourth generational warfare.
The Vietnamese certainly didn't. But you know, we impose those
concepts in order to understand the world. And that's I
think what Lynd is getting at. It's, yeah, you know,
we're dealing with things that are very ancient, but the
fact that we don't see that there's been a shift
from one thing to another. By ignoring that, you know,
we're ignoring the nuance and that lack of understanding is
going to hurt us.
Speaker 1: Well, that is not quite what fourth generation intellectuals are saying.
On the contrary, we have pointed out over and over
that the Fourth Generation is not a novel but a return,
specifically a return to the way war work before the
rise of the state. Now as then, many different entities
not just governments of states will wage war, and they
will wage war for many different reasons, not just the
extension of politics. By other means, they will use many
different tools to fight war, not restricting themselves to what
we recognize as military forces. When I asked to recommend
a book, a good book describing what a fourth generation
world would look like, I usually suggest Barbara Tukman's A
Distant Mirror the Calamitous fourteenth Century. We also are not
saying the fourth generation tactics are new. On the contrary,
many of the tactics of the fourth generation. Many of
the tactics fourth Generation opponents use are standard guerrilla tactics.
Other tactics, including much of what we call terrorism, are
classic Arab light infantry warfare carried out with modern technology
at the operational and strategic, not just tactical levels. Much
of what we are facing in Iraq today is not
yet fourth generation war, but a war of national liberation
fought by people whose goal is to restore a Bathist state.
But as his goal fades and those forces splinter, fourth
Generation war will come more and more to the four
What will characterize it are not vast changes in how
the enemy fights, but rather in who fights and what
they fight for. The change in who fights makes it
difficult to tell friend from foe.
Speaker 2: A friend of mine used to be an intelligent analyst
for the army before he became an officer, and he
points out that this timeframe, right Islamic state existed. It
was one of the dozens of different groups that were
involved in Iraq at that time, and it wasn't even
seen as particularly relevant because these are the guys talked
about restoring a caliphate when you know these guys couldn't
restore the equivalent of I don't know a city councilor yet.
But the point is, you know, that's it. You know,
things fractured and suddenly we're dealing not just with guys
who are trying to undo the last invasion, they're trying
to recreate the entire world. And we have a myopia,
as especially the Western administrative class, has this myopia that
can't see new emerging threats because we're so convinced number
one in progress in number two that you know, things
that have been this way for the last five minutes
are those two things are the only things that can
ever be.
Speaker 1: Continuing. A good example is the advent of female suicide
bombers to US troops now start forrescing every Muslim moment
they encounter. The change in what our enemies fight for
makes impossible the political compromises that are necessary to ending
any war. We find that when it comes to making peace,
we have no one to talk to and know nothing
to talk about. The end of a war like that
in Iraq becomes inevitable. The local state we attack vanishes,
leaving behind either a stateless region, as in Somalia, or
a facade of a state, as an Afghanistan, within which
more on state actors rise and fight. Mattis is correct
that none of this is new. It is only new
to state armed forces designed to fight other state armed forces.
So in taking out like the head of Hesbelah or
is just just an assumption that that person is not
running Hesbela. So you know, if you were to negotiate
a treaty, if you were to negotiate a peace, you're
not going to be negotiating with them anyway. Or is
this just them saying there is not going to be
any peace until you all are dead and buried.
Speaker 2: Well, it's there's definitely elements that think that, right, we
definitely know within design of state there are people who
want that, though I don't think they're the majority, and
they're not necessarily close to power, just because that's a
very irrational perspective. Though as I say that, I think
that's more or less the exact perspective of the American
rule and class towards us. The big issue I find
is anytime that people start at people in the American
you know, mainstream start talking about assassination as the magical
cure ale, like people were talking about Putin for the
first year and a half in the war in Russia,
or you know, it's like they seem to have this
idea that assassinating a leader is like an Indians game
where they knocked out the mothership and then all the
enemy aliens just collapsed and fell to the ground, you know,
as if you take out one central piece and then
everything collapses. And that might be the case in some cases,
but generally, if you're dealing with an effective, spontaneous insurgency
or a group that you know, acts in a very
decentralized manner, there's no reason for them to do that
because they can keep on fighting, at least at the
local tactical level. So yeah, I think a lot of
that is just this myopia to think that everybody is
suddenly going to shut down when the command and control
note is gonna get sent out or get knocked out,
I guess.
Speaker 1: So when they when they found Saddam in the hole
and they and they handed them over and they hung them,
I mean, that's that's the point where it's like, Okay,
we've done what we've come here to do we leave.
That would have been, yeah, we make we make friends,
We you know, try to figure out who's going to
take over for him and if that person is going
to be friendly or not. A lot I mean, I
don't know, I don't know. I mean, it's their culture
and the way they run things is so there's so
many inner battles between them, between forces there, it's like
what do you to stay? There just doesn't make sense
because you you're you. You may think you're picking the
right guy, and you're picking the wrong guy, and sometimes
it seems like they picked the wrong guy on purpose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's part of the issue. Number one. By
destroying first decapitating the state, I mean, by the time
Saddam was captured, he didn't have any effective control of anything.
You know, he had very limited ability to communicate with anybody,
and he definitely wasn't controlling forces at any level. So
you know, from an operational standpoint, knocking him out, what
does that do, Tomkimander? Control nothing because you've already shattered
it and people only organizing on the local level. And
again it gets back to the issue, like you said,
you want to leave. You don't want to occupy forever.
You don't want to bleed yourself to get You don't
want to bleed yourself to death, imperpetuity occupying somebody else's country.
So yeah, at some point you need this country to
have an administration that is, you know, in terms of
foreign policy, not aggressive towards your side, and hopefully maintain
security and protects his populous there. So it's not going
to get overthrown. But the first few years we basically
did everything we could to stop that. For instance, depathification, right,
we talk about debatification. How horrible was We sent the
army home, you know, and they weren't there to do security.
But it went through so many different layers of society
that generally any person who has any kind of technical
skill in Iraq at that time was probably a member
of the Bath Party. I was in Iraq two thousand
and six, two thousand and seven. The newer Iraqi Army
would periodically have ways of debathification where they would decide
this guy, being an active BATH member, had to be
kicked out at that point. But I understand that basically
meant that not just most experienced officers, but most of
your senior NCOs, all of your technical people like skilled
army mechanics and stuff, would be fired, to the point
that basically we would lose as we were building the
new Iraqi Army, any person with any competency in leadership ability.
So again, it's like what we're seeing internally, this need
to impose the global American empire everywhere, you know, become
self defeating, and what is the solution to it? Well,
I'd say step one, let's not in Maine, Iraq. And
number two, let's not pretend that everybody in the world
you know, has the exact same values as us. You know,
I don't know, It's like, how would I fix this,
It's so far beyond fixing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's basically where we're at so
two more sentences and we're done here. The fact that
no state military has recently succeeded in defeating a non
state enemy reminds us that Cleo, the patroon goddess of history,
has a sense of humor. She teaches us that not
all problems have solutions. For those wishings learn more about
the intellectual framework I call the four generations of modern war.
Some useful resources are available, chief of which is to
four GW. Ken in a list of seven books, which,
if read in the given order, will take the reader
from the first generation into the fourth. So, yeah, he's
got a bibliography here, and they actually have commentary on
each one. Yeah, do we want to want to read
this or just let people find it?
Speaker 2: And uh got to don't have to read Vadim, but
we could talk through it if you like.
Speaker 1: Okay. So the first book is called The Enlightened Soldier
Sharenhorst and the Militarish Gestelschaft in Berlin eighteen oh one
to eighteen oh five by Charles E. White gaesell Schaft. Sorry,
it just means society, okay. Basically he was a reformer
of the Prussian Prussian Army who after a disastrous defeat
of eighteen oh six. His reforms look like they helped
to develop their generational war led to third generational warfare
of World War One.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole idea of decentralization in German tradition, that's
where they trace it.
Speaker 1: Okay. Next one is the Seeds of Disaster. The Development
of French Army Doctrine nineteen nineteen to nineteen thirty nine
by Robert A. Dodie, a dry book. Do you know
this book?
Speaker 2: No? But I mean, basically it's the whole issue of
how America adopted French doctrine and even though we claim
we don't, you know, we're still the whole zero defects
mentality that the US Army has basically comes from this movement.
Speaker 1: Stormtroop tactics innovation in the German Army in nineteen fourteen
nineteen eighteen by Bruce Goodmuanson Development of third generational Warfare. Basically,
I guess this details the development of the Blitzkrig method.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again we tend to think of special operations
and you know blitz creeb as it's being two conceptually
different things. But I would say the whole Boyd military
reformer idea. We basically look at these as both examples
of maneuver warfare in different ways in which you can
use speed and mobility or infiltration tactics in order to
accomplish what you're trying to do third generation warfare. And
this is a good example if you're in the military
history of how you could start adapting you know, those
kind of tactics despite the fact you don't have, you know,
the best tanks and whatnot of the era.
Speaker 1: Command or Control Command, Training and Tactics in the British
and German Armies eighteen eighty eight through nineteen eighteen by
Martin Samuels. Just comparison a second generation British Army with
the Kaiserhaer illustrates the differences between second and third generations.
Fifth book is The Breaking Points Sedan and the Fall
of Is that pronounced Sadan?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 1: Orre's a sheaden Schaden?
Speaker 2: Maybe?
Speaker 1: And the Fall of Front Yeah and the Fall of
France nineteen forty by again Robert Dowdy. Nineteen forty campaign
the second and third generations clashed head on and the
second went down to defeat in six weeks, although the
French had more and better tanks than the German.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's again it's the invasion of France, how
they got through the Maginea line, how they defeated the
French army. And again they had more and better equipment,
so you'd think more and better tanks would matter a
lot in Blitzkrieg, and the Germans still won. And this
is how they did it.
Speaker 1: The last two books looked like Van Kreveld Fighting Power
German and US Army Performance thirty nine through forty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Fighting Power, I'm sorry to catch you out. So
that's basically what came out of the first book he
did after his PhD dissertation. He actually talks a lot
about in his memoirs because he had a sabbatical to
go to Germany's study and he talked about basically being
writers blocked about what he could write about those two armies,
and sitting in an archive, he laid down the official
US Army history of the war, you know, side by
side with the Wehrmach's official history that was done was
done after the war, and just looking through, you know,
page by page, flipping through that and he said, the
fundamental difference, excuse me, was that the American Army. We
talk about decentralization, we talk about individuality, but it tends
to be a very man in gerial, very centrally planned,
very you know, centrally managed army even to the day.
But you know, so much so world War Two. Why
the Germans, despite the fact that we think of the
stereotypic Nazis being very rigid and regimented, was very decentralized
and very concerned with you know, intent and allowing junior
commanders to lead and being able to lead. And he said,
the most interesting thing, the biggest example of the difference
between those is basically every chapter the US Army would
be these most detailed charts, you know, in meticulous details,
with numbers on everything. You know, the kind of things
we do in Microsoft Exel, but you know, a half
century before Excel was around. Whereas the Germans, Yeah, they
would have the numbers in the appendices, but they didn't
really care a lot about those numbers other than making
key narrative points, and they would use basically paragraph formats
to explain everything. So again that's one of the things
I always harp on that because I always think that's
so important. Yes, numbers matter, but the ability to explain reality,
the ability to make people understand reality, the ability to
make your support and it's understand objectives is more important
than detailed data.
Speaker 1: And then the last book is The Transformation of War
by Van Krebble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the book I always say you got
to go read, and it's basically about he did two books,
this and Rising to the Klind of State. This one's
about how again warfare is being transit or is transitioning
to nonstate actors. You know, this rise of hes Boil
was at the time, so Gorilla's insurgencies fighting this war.
And then transformation is what does that mean for you know,
politics as a whole. And that's the one that the
Misis Institute did a conference on.
Speaker 1: Awesome. All right, well, do you have any closing comments
on this one? If not, get out of here.
Speaker 2: No. Like I said, I recommend it just because you know,
we all so many people talk about Generations Award. This
is the source material on it, and we all, including myself,
of a tendency to talk about things without knowing the fundamentals.
So that's why I recommend it, sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems very concise and it also seems like
one of those things that if they can pique enough
interest that people can go to that bibliography if they
want to and start, you know, start going even deeper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and everything Linn did because he he is he's
got an academic background, but he tends to write thing
sort of hybrid style, things written for you know, normal people,
but with the citation of an academic document. And he
writes most things that are designed to fit in the
standard magazine article size so that it actually can be communicated.
So if you ever go to his blog, he blogs
at traditional right dot com, he's got stuff like this
going back decades. And he's just he's great, he's direct,
he's to the point, he's easy to engage with. He
actually answers his email when he actually chooses to get online.
And if you know somebody, you knows somebody and they
can give you his phone number, he'll even talk to
you on the phone.
Speaker 1: Great, that's awesome, that's old school. Yeah, that's uh, that's
probably why, probably why Horton had him on so many times.
Just reach out, hose yep, all right, I appreciate it,
thanks man, un till the next time, Yes, sir,