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Posted by Kinderplatz Promoted 129 days 11 hours ago 3610 views
editorial
Politics / War
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A brief overview of the Generational Model of warfare proposed in 1989, the consequences of which are playing out today in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the October 1989 edition of the Marine Corps Gazette a group of individuals came together to author an article titled, “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation.” In this article the authors, coming from backgrounds both civilian and military, stated their intention rather clearly when they said, “the peacetime soldier's principal task is to prepare effectively for the next war.” Historically, one of the primary obstacles facing any military is the fact that they are always prepared to fight the last war. The authors of this article, then, began to speculate on what exactly this next war would be. In order to accomplish this they had to look back on what had already been done. The end result was the Generational Theory of warfare.
The First Generation has its official start in the year 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. The result of this peace treaty was the formation of the modern nation-state and its monopoly on the tools and implementation of violence. Elements of this first generation still exist in most militaries today as what was necessary to fighting in that time eventually became absorbed into military culture. 1GW was typified by the tactics of line and column made effective by rigid and rigorous drill training as, “the line maximized firepower, rigid drill was necessary to generate a high rate of fire, etc.” One of the holdovers from this generation which survived into modern times is the culture of order which resulted from constant drill required to maximize the lethality of a fighting force. The hierarchy of rank would be another more obvious example in my opinion, but there are others.
The Second Generation arose as a response to the change in technologies and culture in the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries. The primary proponents of these new tactics were the French who summed up the general idea of the practice in the maxim, “The artillery conquers, the infantry occupies.” This generation also saw the birth of what has come to be termed “shock and awe” today, in that armies would attempt to disrupt the function of the operations of the enemy by putting on a brilliant display sheer power through massive artillery barrages. This generation was essentially putting a premium emphasis on massed firepower over massed manpower. This is one of the reasons the 1st World War was so horrific as there was an overlap in tactics between the generations leaving masses of men vulnerable to the new concept of massed firepower (in fact, throughout the evolution of warfare we see a great deal of overlap between the generations). The concept Donald Rumsfeld expressed in describing his shock and awe campaign, the use of overwhelming firepower to cow the enemy into a state of surrender, in the opening hours of Operation Iraqi Freedom were in fact nothing new, but an idea nearly a century old. Tactically things remained essentially linear in how commanders foresaw the sequence of battle, but there was now a greater reliance on indirect fire than ever before, i.e. the artillery barrage, and with the coming of age of airpower this fact would make itself far more prevalent in the next world war. The authors of the article argue that this generation is still where the United States military is firmly rooted, with minor exceptions, and we can see the truth of this in how Rumsfeld went about describing his “future” vision for both the conflict in Iraq and the future of the US (specifically, the “Revolution in Military Affairs” that wasn’t.
The Third Generation of warfare was developed by the German military towards the end of World War 1 and, doctrinally at least, perfected by the time the 2nd World War broke out in September of 1939. The emphasis in 3GW was on the ability to maneuver, to avoid the overwhelming firepower of the enemy, and to use speed and surprise to overcome any numerical disadvantages. Instead of two fronts meeting, the practitioners of 3GW were looking for points of weakness, schwerpunkt as the Germans called it but you could also apply the terms focal point, concentration principle or center of gravity, from which they could bypass the enemies’ front lines and collapse them from the rear forward. Retroactively this tactic came to be known as Blitzkrieg as it was so effective in dismantling the defenses of a 2GW opponent, and this is what gave the German army its air of invincibility. The perfect example of these tactics in action would be the German invasion of France in which the German army bypassed the Maginot Line by travelling through the Ardennes forest with their mechanized divisions, a feat the French military thought impossible at the time. Despite the French militaries superior numbers and equipment they utilized out-dated tactics reinforced by a rigid command hierarchy. This is another point of distinction between 2nd and 3rd generation militaries: the rigidity of the command hierarchies. In the 2GW model these hierarchies are absolutely rigid, and priority is given to those who follow commands well. In the 3GW model initiative is prized over obedience, as the group most capable of understanding the organic and constantly shifting situation on the ground are the lower ranks, Privates, Corporals and Sergeants. Rather than deliver specific commands to ones soldiers, as in a 2GW military, a good 3GW commander will give what are known as “mission orders,” a description of the end result the commander wants to see, and how a subordinate accomplishes this task is up to them in the field. This allows for far more creativity to take place on the battlefield as well as letting ones soldiers organically adapt to the constant shifting that takes place on the modern battlefield.
Finally we come to the 4th Generation of Warfare and what matters most is not thinking about how 4GW is fought, though this certainly does matter in the overall view of the theory, but who is fighting it and why. The primary characteristic that makes 4GW possible is the breakdown of state legitimacy. The participants are nebulous, non-state forces who clash with the state in a contest of and for legitimacy and fight for reasons other than the continued existence of this state or another. They will fight for their tribe, community, religion, justice etc. Often times members of opposing factions will temporarily come together to fight a common enemy, such as what we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whereas 2GW and 3GW have vertical chains of command, 4GW forces have horizontal or flat ones and this makes decapitation strikes not only difficult, but fruitless. The primary critique against 4GW theory in general is that it is simply a fancy term for insurgency. In my opinion this thought highlights an error of thinking when considering the nature of 4GW, as this thought concerns itself only with the how and not the why, missing the point altogether. The motivations are important because for 361 years war has been the sole domain of the state and has never been truly challenged by an outside force until now and this is what marks the fundamental break from the previous three generations.
Finally I will leave you with this to ponder upon regarding 4GW: there are two examples within the last 40 years of “good” and “bad” 4GW entities or movements with the bad one being Hamas and the good one being the Civil Rights Movement. After this retardedly brief and superficial overview of the topic who can tell me why this is?