Posted on 11/11/2003 8:38:27 AM PST by Boxsford
William S. Lind: Indicators
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This week's tragic shooting down of an Army Chinook helicopter near Fallujah, with the loss of 16 soldiers, may or may not point to a significant new development in the Iraq war. Helicopters proved highly vulnerable in Vietnam and in the Soviet war in Afghanistan as well, and there is no shortage of SA-7 missiles in Iraq, as U.S. forces there have long known. Moreover, there is a fairly simple technique helicopters can use to minimize their vulnerability to the SA-7 and similar shoulder-fired missiles: fly high. In Afghanistan, Soviet infantry referred to their helicopter pilots as "the Cosmonauts" because of their desire for altitude. Of course, altitude also works against us in that it prevents the people in helicopters from seeing what is happening on the ground. But when your aircraft is a big piñata, high is the way to fly.
Three events last week may actually provide more in the way of indicators as to where the Iraq war is headed. The first two were successful attacks on American M-1 Abrams tanks by Iraqi resistance forces. In the first attack, the M-1 was taken out by what appears to have been a tandem-warhead light anti-tank weapon, which no one knew the resistance possessed. Fortunately, in that attack no Americans were seriously hurt, though the tank was disabled. The second attack resulted in the complete destruction of an M-1, with the turret blown off the chassis of the tank by a large improvised mine. Sadly, two American tank crewmen were killed and one badly wounded. The technique is the same as that used by the Palestinians to destroy several Israeli Merkava tanks, so it should not have come as a surprise to us.
More significant than the destruction of two American tanks is the fact that Iraqi guerrillas are attacking tanks. This is an indicator that the guerilla war is developing significantly more rapidly than reports in Washington suggest. With the second stage of the Iraq war just six months old, one would expect the guerillas to be attacking only weak, vulnerable targets, such as supply columns. The fact that they are going after the most difficult of all ground targets, heavy tanks, is surprising. It means they lack neither confidence nor skill.
A third indicator comes from a widely-reported incident where an American battalion commander threatened an Iraqi under interrogation with his pistol and now faces criminal assault charges for doing so. The charges themselves are absurd, since the Iraqi was not injured and the information he provided prevented American soldiers from being ambushed. Here, the indicator comes from the identity of the Iraqi. Who was he? An Iraqi policeman.
The Bush administration's strategy for the war in Iraq, to the degree floundering can be called a strategy, is "Iraqification:" developing Iraqi armed security forces such as police, border guards, civil defense guards and a "New Iraqi Army," and dumping the insurgency in their laps. Last week's incident shows the major flaw in that strategy: it assumes that the Iraqis in those forces will really be working for us.
Guerillas and, even more, Fourth Generation elements deal with state security forces primarily by taking them from within. They will also attack members of the state forces and their families, as part of punishing collaborators. But taking them from within is even more effective, because when we think the members of the state forces we create are working for us, we let them in positions where they can do real damage. Only too late do we discover where their real loyalty lies.
Naively, we seem to believe that if we are paying someone, they will give us their honest best. Some will. But especially in old, cynical societies such as that in Mesopotamia, people see nothing wrong with serving two or more masters, and getting a paycheck from each. They have no real loyalty beyond their family and, perhaps, their clan or tribe. Everyone else is trying to use them, and they are trying to use everyone else. That is just how the place works.
As we create more and more Iraqi armed units, and try desperately to hand the war over to them, don't be surprised if they refuse to play our game. They will tell us what we want to hear to get paid, and then do what benefits them. Often, that will just be seeing and hearing nothing as the resistance forces go about their business. Sometimes, it will be shooting Americans in the back. It doesn't take many such shootings before we have to treat the Iraqi forces we have ourselves created with distrust, pushing even those who want to work with us into our enemies' arms.
One other indicator: a friend recently noted to me that the rapidly improving techniques we see from the Iraqi guerrillas bear a striking resemblance to those used by the Chechen guerrillas against the Russians. Might it be that we are not the only ones to have a coalition in Iraq?
If you're still interested in what Lind has to say, here's a column dedicated to promoting his theory: The Four Generations of Modern Warfare.
What distinguishes 4GW from earlier generations is that typically at least one side is something other than a military force organized and operating under the control of a national government, and one that often transcends national boundaries.
First generation warfare reflects tactics of the era of the smoothbore musket, the tactics of line and column. These tactics were developed partially in response to technological factors — the line maximized firepower, rigid drill was necessary to generate a high rate of fire, etc.— and partially in response to social conditions and ideas, e.g., the columns of the French revolutionary armies reflected both the élan of the revolution and the low training levels of conscripted troops. Although rendered obsolete with the replacement of the smoothbore by the rifled musket, vestiges of first generation tactics survive today, especially in a frequently encountered desire for linearity on the battlefield. Operational art in the first generation did not exist as a concept although it was practiced by individual commanders, most prominently Napoleon.
Second generation warfare was a response to the rifled musket, breechloaders, barbed wire, the machinegun, and indirect fire. Tactics were based on fire and movement, and they remained essentially linear. The defense still attempted to prevent all penetrations, and in the attack a laterally dispersed line advanced by rushes in small groups. Perhaps the principal change from first generation tactics was heavy reliance on indirect fire; second generation tactics were summed up in the French maxim, "the artillery conquers, the infantry occupies." Massed firepower replaced massed manpower. Second generation tactics remained the basis of U.S. doctrine until the 1980s, and they are still practiced by most American units in the field.
While ideas played a role in the development of second generation tactics (particularly the idea of lateral dispersion), technology was the principal driver of change. Technology manifested itself both qualitatively, in such things as heavier artillery and bombing aircraft, and quantitatively, in the ability of an industrialized economy to fight a battle of materiel (Materialschlacht).
The second generation saw the formal recognition and adoption of the operational art, initially by the Prussian army. Again, both ideas and technology drove the change. The ideas sprang largely from Prussian studies of Napoleon's campaigns. Technological factors included von Moltke's realization that modern tactical firepower mandated battles of encirclement and the desire to exploit the capabilities of the railway and the telegraph.
Third generation warfare was also a response to the increase in battlefield firepower. However, the driving force was primarily ideas. Aware they could not prevail in a contest of materiel because of their weaker industrial base in World War I, the Germans developed radically new tactics. Based on maneuver rather than attrition, third generation tactics were the first truly nonlinear tactics. The attack relied on infiltration to bypass and collapse the enemy's combat forces rather than seeking to close with and destroy them. The defense was in depth and often invited penetration, which set the enemy up for a counterattack.
While the basic concepts of third generation tactics were in place by the end of 1918, the addition of a new technological element-tanks-brought about a major shift at the operational level in World War II. That shift was blitzkrieg. In the blitzkrieg, the basis of the operational art shifted from place (as in Liddell-Hart's indirect approach) to time. This shift was explicitly recognized only recently in the work of retired Air Force Col John Boyd and his "OODA (observation- orientation- decision- action) theory."
Thus we see two major catalysts for change in previous generational shifts: technology and ideas. What perspective do we gain from these earlier shifts as we look toward a potential fourth generation of warfare?
The First Generation of Modern War runs roughly from 1648 to 1860. This was war of line and column tactics, where battles were formal and the battlefield was orderly. The relevance of the First Generation springs from the fact that the battlefield of order created a military culture of order.
((Didn't the American Revolution change the face of war? Lind should credit American rebels with the ambush rather than use line and column tactics. etc. ))
The problem is that, around the middle of the 19th century, the battlefield of order began to break down. Mass armies, soldiers who actually wanted to fight (an 18th century's soldier's main objective was to desert), rifled muskets, then breech loaders and machine guns, made the old line and column tactics first obsolete, then suicidal.
The problem ever since has been a growing contradiction between the military culture and the increasing disorderliness of the battlefield.
((I'd agree with this. Didn't we start to see this happen during Vietnam?))
Second Generation warfare was one answer to this contradiction. Developed by the French Army during and after World War I, it 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-controlled 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 warfare is relevant to us today because the United States Army and Marine Corps learned Second Generation warfare from the French during and after World War I. It remains the American war of war, as we are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq: to Americans, war means "putting steel on target." Aviation has replaced artillery as the source of most firepower, but otherwise, (and despite the Marine's formal doctrine, which is Third Generation maneuver warfare) the American military today is as French as white wine and brie. At the Marine Corps' desert warfare training center at 29 Palms, California, the only thing missing is the tricolor and a picture of General Gamelin in the headquarters. The same is true at the Army's Armor School at Fort Knox, where one instructor recently began his class by saying, "I don't know why I have to teach you all this old French crap, but I do."
Third Generation warfare, like Second, was a product of World War I. It was developed by the German Army, and is commonly known as Blitzkrieg or maneuver warfare.
Third Generation warfare is based not on firepower and attrition but speed, surprise, and mental as well as physical dislocation. Tactically, in the attack a Third Generation military seeks to get into the enemy's rear 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 warfare is non-linear.
Not only do tactics change in the Third Generation, so does the military culture. A Third Generation military focuses outward, on the situation, the enemy, and the result the situation requires, not inward on process and method (in war games in the 19th Century, German junior officers were routinely given problems that could only be solved by disobeying orders). Orders themselves specify the result to be achieved, but never the method ("Auftragstaktik"). Initiative is more important than obedience (mistakes are tolerated, so long as they come from too much initiative rather than too little), and it all depends on self-discipline, not imposed discipline. The Kaiserheer and the Wehrmacht could put on great parades, but in reality they had broken with the culture of order.
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 1648. 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 Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the FARC. 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's oldest and most steadfast opponent, Islam. After about three centuries on the strategic defensive, following the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, Islam has resumed the strategic offensive, expanding outward in every direction. In Third Generation war, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army.
Nor is Fourth Generation warfare merely something we import, as we did on 9/11. 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 home-grown variety of Fourth Generation war -- which is by far the most dangerous kind. (not sure what this means)
Where does the war in Iraq fit in 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 that the magazine will explode. If it does, God help us all.
William S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.
An excellent question from your post: What perspective do we gain from these earlier shifts as we look toward a potential fourth generation of warfare?
Got an answer?
Fourth generation war is war between cultures. It defies the old boundaries of nation state. It is war between special interest groups, races, and religions. It is war that seeks to avoid our military power and neutralize it by dividing us from within. . . . A fourth generation enemy seeks to destroy cultures, societies, businesses, nation states, or military organizations most effectively by dividing them internally.
. . . nothing can more quickly undo the fabric of the United States than citizens who are ignorant of its principles . . .
In short, it is important that Marines Freepers know what their country is about. It is not possible to be a useful citizen under our concept of government and not have studied the founding fathers much less to be a useful Marine Freeper, i.e., a protector of the Republic. Our founding fathers believed that citizen soldiers were the only kind of soldiers who could be trusted with the defense of freedom. The opposite they viewed as mercenaries and threats to the freedom we had won.
If this country is at risk of being undermined by fourth generation enemies, it is because we have too long allowed people to be citizens without requiring them to learn the precepts of our government. If Americans understood the fundamentals presented here about our constitutional concept we would be a stronger country. Certainly we would be more resilient in the face of fourth generation war.
We know where our allegiance lies. It matters not who the President is. We swore our allegiance to the same Constitution that George Washington did. The reality of fourth generation conflict means it is no longer enough for Marines Freepers to "reflect" the society they defend. They must lead it, not politically but culturally. For it is the culture we are defending.
The American concept of government, after all, does not work for everyone. It was designed for a special society, a society that cares a great deal about its future. Surely Marines Freepers fit that definition as much or more than anyone.
Guerrilla warfare has always existed. Always has and always will.
The problem ever since has been a growing contradiction between the military culture and the increasing disorderliness of the battlefield. ((I'd agree with this. Didn't we start to see this happen during Vietnam?))
Nothing new. Was Vietnam any more "disorderly" than the Philippines War? Or the Indian wars?
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 home-grown variety of Fourth Generation war -- which is by far the most dangerous kind. (not sure what this means)
He's referring to the inevitable breakdown of our society if multiculturalism takes hold. The way I see is that America was created by white people who wanted to stop the abuse by other whites (life was pretty ugly in the 1400's for everyone). Then it was expanded to include blacks and other races. This is the main concept of America - we live under laws, not men. Multiculturalism destroys this concept by pitting groups of people against each other - tribalism - where the tribe is more important than the law.
I doubt that I can improve upon Lind and COL Wyly.
I have studied military history since the 5th Grade. Us humans have been killing each other in more or less organized groups for a long time. War predates civilization. Technology and tactics evolve rapidly. Humans evolve much more slowly. Clubs evolve into PR-24 batons, Pennslyvania Long Rifles evolve into bolt action sniper rifles, trebuchets evolve into self-propelled howitzers, chariots evolve into tanks, but the mission is still the same: make the other poor dumb bastard die for his country, or whatever it his he is fighting for. That's the big change. For centuries nation-states made war, employing uniformed soldiers under some semblance of control by a chain of command that could be held accountable. Asymmetrical warfare is not new; small wars are not new; suicide commandoes, berzerkers, juramentados are not new; guerrilla warriors were the first warriors; what is new is the technology that these 4GW warriors can use on us. Never before in history has a tiny but well-financed and suicidally fanatic group had the technological capability to destroy a major metropolitan area. That has a lot of people thinking that the threat Western Civilization now faces is so radically different from any threat encountered previously that the lessons of history have lost much of their value.
Invading hordes used to put cities to the torch and their populations to the sword, but it took a pretty good size horde a coupla days to do that, and the rest of the country wasn't watching it on CNN. Now one al Qaeda taxi driver with an ex-Soviet suitcase nuke can do the same job in 30 seconds, and all but the remotest aborigines will have seen the video inside of a week. Weapons of mass destruction and 24-hour satellite television news didn't exist until fairly recently; the combination of the two can be used to destroy Western Civilization's will to resist.
But the Turks have been at the gates of Vienna before.
Most conservatives *say* multiculturalism is wrong and there are some pat answers why but you really give an excellent reason: This is the main concept of America - we live under laws, not men. Multiculturalism destroys this concept by pitting groups of people against each other - tribalism - where the tribe is more important than the law.
You ,imho, are two of the sharpest tools in the freeper shed!!
Oh, if this dull tool in the shed could pick your brains with one more question. I know that I should go look it up myself but since you might already know.....
The barbarians, they somehow beat out a seemingly organized society. How? And, how were the barbarians finally beaten and couldn't we apply that same tactic today?
I'm beginning to see a bigger picture.
I don't think mainstream America realizes this.
Lind was an amazing guest on Fox the other night. It's not often that cable news (or any television news) allows a guest to spend the time to lay history out before our eyes, with their words, and try to paint a bigger picture than what is happening in the moment.
What has surprised me, by the media (and I suppose it really shouldn't), is their surprise that our troops might, could and does die. It's a war! duh! But, when every single death is reported (and I don't belittle their sacrifices) in daily reports it colors the war in a vastly different picture. The focus changes and instead of the higher good that is being created the deaths become the focus and the bigger picture is lost. oh, I'm probably not making much sense. I was deeply influenced by this Lind fellow and his generation war theories.
heh, aren't you like out at some convention drinking heavily or something like that? You sounded too coherent in your post for what you are supposed to be doing. Ain't you havin' any fun? ;)
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