United Press International,
WASHINGTON: Not surprisingly, the spread of the intellectual framework I call the Four Generations of Modern War has brought forth a host of reinterpreters and critics. Some have added valuable insights, while others have just muddied the waters. In the next On War columns, I will take a look at the work of three commentators who represent three different categories: the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good are represented by Col. Tom Hammes, U.S. Marine Corps retired, author of 'The Sling and the Stone'. I have known Tom Hammes for many years, and he was a major contributor to the Marine Corps' intellectual renaissance of the 1980s and early '90s. 'The Sling and the Stone' offers some excellent descriptions of Fourth Generation war, and it also contributes a very important insight to Fourth Generation theory, namely that speed in the OODA (Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action) Loop may be less important than accuracy of observation and orientation. Exactly how the OODA Loop works in Fourth Generation conflicts remains an open question; it is possible that Fourth Generation forces can out-cycle state armed forces not by being faster, but by moving so slowly that they are unobservable.
However, there are also some key points where 'The Sling and the Stone' misunderstands Fourth Generation war. One is found in the book's assertion that 4GW is just insurgency. This is much too narrow a definition, and it risks misleading us if we take it to mean that we need only re-discover old counter-insurgency techniques in order to prevail against Fourth Generation opponents. At the core of 4GW is a crisis of legitimacy of the state, and counter-insurgency cannot address that crisis; indeed, when the counter-insurgency is led by foreign troops, it only makes the local state's crisis of legitimacy worse.
As the Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld has said, what changes in Fourth Generation war is not merely how war is fought, but who fights and what they fight for. 'The Sling and the Stone' does not seem to grasp that these are larger changes than the shift from conventional war to insurgency.
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