The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1121: Understanding 4th Generation War by William S. Lind w/ John Fieldhouse

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

58 MinutesPG-13John Fieldhouse joins Pete once more to read and comment on William S. Lind's article, "Understanding 4th Generation War." Lind discusses the four generations of war, followed by the US's shortcomings in dealing with adversaries that employ 4GW strategies.Riding the Red HorsePete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on Twitter Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Picanuano show. John Field, how's this back? How you doing, John? Doing well, sir. All right. So looks like we're going to dive into William S. Lin's understanding fourth generation warfare. This is from another compilation called Riding the Red Horse.

I guess help us out start out talking about Lind and why this was something that came on your radar. Cool. So start off, this is from Riding the Red Horse edited by Tom Kratman. Cratman, just real quick. He's a former military officer who writes fiction, mostly for Bain books, which is where Pornell wrote most of us stuff. He also wrote this. For Castalia House, Box stays, company,

the guys who brought back, there will be a war. This is more or less the same kind of idea, an anthology that combines fiction with essays, with an introduction from the editor. So William S. Lynn. Excuse me. Okay. Bill Lynn born 47, 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 second, third, fourth, and fifth was added by others. Very long story short, again, he was born, like, right after World War II, too young for Korea, kind of old for Vietnam, so he never got there. He got a master, he went to Dartmouth, 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 trains.

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 basically said, come work for me instead. 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 Kreveld is one of those guys. Bill Lynn 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're doing didn't work.

Let's go back to fundamentals and reevaluate 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 military theory, partly because he's part of that group 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. to come on Scott Horton's podcast all the time because despite being a military theorist,

he's somebody who definitely comes, again, the whole Boyd School is heavily influenced by Sun Su. And one of the fundamental things that people have to understand that Sun Su wanted to make understood is that war is basically almost always the wrong choice. It doesn't mean war is not always the wrong choice. Sometimes it's necessary. and as Santayana said, only the dead have seen 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.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 work is, again, because you were looking for 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 15 pages long.

Number two is we use a lot of the terminology here, but most people don't know what it means. So my thought was, let's just go ahead and read this and talk through it. Awesome. All right. So it looks like the editors, introduction is really short. So even though you just gave an introduction, I'll, I'll give the editor's

introduction to. All right. So here we go. This is Understanding Fourth Generation War by William S. Lynde. Bill Lind 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 in 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 boat 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. It just speaks up on you.

Attitude is an adjective. Yeah, yeah. Attitudinal changes in warfare from the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia to the current day. It's worth reading in its own right and should spark in 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. Zethiel? I didn't assume it's theel. Just like Peter Thiel, or Peter Thiel.

Yeah. just as any on the end. Both coming to you from Castelia 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 things that bring to mind Lydice, Madgeberg, Carthage, and Corinth. Fourth generational warfare presents problems to us that would not have troubled a Caesar,

a Scipio, or a Genghis Khan for a moment. Now can we become the civilization of a... Now can we become the civilization of a Caesar or 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 our finding a way to defeat fourth generational warfare short of genocide should be.

In fact, the practitioners of 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. I say, as you can tell, Cropman, sort of has my worldview when it comes to a human organization. Yeah, that is, when you think of the term realist, that's a pretty realist way of looking at the world. Absolutely. And before we get going, the Treaty of Westphalia is, was the 30 years war anyways, or the 100 years, I think it's 30 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 and a lot of military theory. And just so everybody's wondering, why do we start with first generation war in the 17th century? That's just because we're only looking at modern Western 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 war. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Teramar.

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Great to see you back at Spegg Savers. Okay, could you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep. D-E-A-L-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-L-S. Deals. All right. Yes, our Black Friday deals are eye-catching, but the letter charts over here.

Oh, sorry. At Spec Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals, like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. Okay. All right, starting the piece. 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 the four generations of modern war. I developed the framework of the first regenerations during the 1980s when I was laboring to introduce maneuver warfare to the U.S. 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 1989 entitled, The Changing Face of War, into the Fourth Generation. Our troops reportedly found copies of the article in the caves at Toro, BORA, the al-Qaeda hideout in Afghanistan. Heading. Modern Warfare. The four generations began with the peace of Westphalia in 1648, the treaty that ended the 30

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 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 1648 to 1860. 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 distinguish 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 19th century, the battle of order began to break down. Mass armies, soldiers who actually wanted to fight, in 18th century, soldiers' main objective was to desert, it was a dessert, 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 Generation War was one-a-man-generation, 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 I, Second Generation War 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. Centurally 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 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 U.S. Army and U.S.M.C. learned second-generation war from the French during and after World War I, and it remains the American way of war, as we are seeing in Afghanistan and 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's formal doctrine, which is third-generation maneuver war, The U.S. military today is as French as white wine and cheese.

At the Marine Corps Desert Warfare Training Center in California, the only thing missing is to try color and a picture of General Maurice Gamlin in the headquarters. Did I pronounce that right? Is it Gamelin or is a Gamelin? Like Gamelin, I think. Gamelan, okay. The same is true at the Army at the Army's Armour School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where one instructor began as class by saying, I don't know why I have to teach you all this old French crap, but 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. 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? Well, I think essentially, because like he said, essentially we preserve so much of the French central management approach to war. I mean, that's exactly the case. I mean, that's largely a legacy. And for the most part, yeah. Excuse me. Yeah, I do believe that. ways the global war and terror that we had from 9-11 until 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 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 it's not just that if 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. Understood. All right. The third generation.

Third generation war, also a product of World War I, was developed by the German army and is commonly known as Blitzkrieg 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, a 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 non-linear.

Tactics change in third-generation war, as does military culture. A third-generation military focuses outward on the situation, the enemy, and the results the situation requires, not inward on process and method. During 19th century war games, 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 initiative rather than too little. And it all depended on self-discipline, not imposed discipline. The Kaiser here and the Vermacht could put on great parades, but in reality, they had broken with the culture of order.

Yeah, and this is a big part of what Thomas talks about, you know, innovations of the Vermeck, especially the whole approach to how they trained the Vofn S.S. was about that. That German word is oftrog 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, 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 to give you what 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 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. You catch them in the corner of your eye, distinctive by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range

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Would you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes, our Black Friday deals are eye-catching, but the letter chart's over here.

Oh, sorry. At Spec Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals. Like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. 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, Hezbollah, 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'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 fourth generation, War, invasion by immigration, can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state of, by a state army. Which is exactly, or shows is exactly how Lane, Lind and Martin Van Kreveld are, you know, sympathetic of how they work together. Nor is fourth generation war 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 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 U.S. 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. We have 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. 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 the people at war with us explicitly say that or not. 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 most of the Christian sex in the West is the fact that most Christians don't even see that we're at war. Exactly. 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 Anaconda in Afghanistan, where Al-Qaeda stood, fall. us and got away suffering few casualties. To fight such battles, we need some true light infantry that can move farther and faster on his 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 10 to 15 kilometers per day. German World War II line, not light infantry, could sustain 40 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 U.S. forces conduct themselves after the battle might be as important fourth generation war as how they fight the battle. What the Marine Corps calls cultural intelligence is a vital importance in fourth generation war, and it must go down to the lowest rank. In Iraq, the Marines seem to be grasping this much better than the U.S. Army.

What kind of people do we need in the Special Ops forces? We think mines are more important than muscles, but it is not clear all U.S. Special Operations Forces understand this. One key to success is integrating groups as much as possible with the local people. Unfortunately, the U.S. 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 lives. 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 Kruveld 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 U.S. military has great trouble grasping because it defines success in turn.

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 U.S. military learn from police officers? The U.S. 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 Iraq are 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 state, it is difficult to recreate it. Another quote from the minutes say, while war against another state may be necessary,

one should seek to preserve 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 defeat civilized so they can survive the war institutionally intact, and then work for your side. Now, when you read that, it almost becomes, or it becomes very obvious why historically for most of the 20th century, the U.S. 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. 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. Yeah. 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 know, look at them with honor, look at them, look at them as, you know, you fought a good fight. You know, now, now we can trade. Now we can trade chips. Now we can do something. But no, because this force, they're, 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. I mean, this historic issue with empires are, you know, there's a reason why you allow honors, even as you defeat and control of the enemy. I mean, Rome famously turned huge parts of the periphery, conquered peoples into their legions every time.

America did that completely with the South. That's exactly what happened. It's 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 Southland. 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. Yeah. I mean, when every, when every enemy you come up against is Amalek,

and they cannot be reasoned with, they are, you know, they're insane. They're Adolf Hitler. If Adolf Hitler and Bashar Assad 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. 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. Ready for huge savings?

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All right, continuing. This would be similar to 18th 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 II works against us. In many ways, the 21st 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

that 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. Yeah, and 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 Arthurian tradition.

These are people who we use titles like King and Duke and whatnot. So they were honest, or nobles, we understood they were a 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. And let's not forget, it's only been 100 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, I was saying, like, one of the things is the reserve act, the one that created the, the modern National Guard created ROTC. And, you know, there's a carve out that says 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 Poncho via.

And that's a one-off example. But we lived in a world. were literally university students who were very much of an upper class at that time could just be mobilized to fight a war even at a time there wasn't a draft. And that's how much the world has changed since then. 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 in 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, it's just another branch of managers. Yeah.

In the access occupation of the Balkans during World War II, 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, the UN commander raided the Argentine battalion as more effective than the British or the Austrians because the Argentines did not want to fight. What lessons can U.S. 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. 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, you know, a desire to, go out there and get in fights is generally not a good thing um if you talk to any cop

who talks about having to work with new guys on the beat on a Friday night at 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 how would the mafia do an occupation When we have a coalition, what if we let each country do what it does best? For example, having the Russians handle operational art, the U.S. firepower and logistics, and the Italians, the occupation. How could the U.S. Department of Defense's 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. Again, it wants to refight the Cold War, which even during the Cold War, wanted to refite World War II. We have perininally 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.

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 um you know taking out the head of Hezbollah and then taking out his his replacement and they think they're winning they think that because they did that they're winning yeah and obviously eliminating command of control at any level is what you want to do against your enemies um but there's always the question, how resilient is Hezbollah? 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 are not telling us anything, you know, concrete. But it really looks like Hezbollah is continuing to function at lower levels and reforming its layers of chain

of command after they're being, you know, killed off. So it looks like they're doing a very good job of that. Yeah. Few resistance fighters have been fighting for Saddam personally. Saddam's capture might lead to a fracturing of the Ba'ath party, which would move us further toward a fourth

generation situation where no one can recreate the state. It might also tell the Shiites 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. Yeah, exactly, right? They

dismantle, well, they actually disband the regular army and all the other security forces. So everybody, a person who could, went home, took weapons and hid them. And lots of those guys who, again, the Baoth 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 emptied 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. However, if the U.S. Army used the capture of Saddam to announce the end of tactics that enrage ordinary Iraqis and drive them toward active resistance, it might buy us a bit of de-escalation.

But I did not think we will be that smart. So you think this is what, around 2005, 2006 because the redirection was in the redirection was in 2006 right or 2007 yeah um what was it 2003 is no or four anyways when we captured saddam so yeah about that time frame so yeah this hasn't been updated since then but it's still good as a piece yeah yeah of course absolutely getting it when it comes to fourth generation war it seems no one in the u.s 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. I'll start over again. Recently, a faculty member at the National Defense University wrote to Marine Corps General James Mattis, commander, first marine division, asking for his views on the importance of reading military history. Mattis responded. with an eloquent defense of making time to read history, one that 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 Mattis 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 change, the tactics are wholly new and so on, I must respectfully say, not really. This gets sort of the issue that, you know, Crockman pushed back in the introduction, and that's part of the issue, too. How much is there new under the sun very little? But it doesn't mean that we face those situations in the recent past. So again, conceptual frameworks, you know, nobody doing fourth generation warfare called it fourth generation warfare yeah the vietnamese certainly didn't but you know we impose those concepts in order to understand the world and that's

i think what linda's 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 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 worked 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'm asked to recommend a good book describing what a fourth generation world would look like, I usually suggest Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, the Calamitous 14th century. We also are not saying the fourth generation tactics are new. On the contrary, many of the tactics of the fourth generation opponents use are standard guerrilla tactics. Other tactics, including much of what we call terrorism, are classic Arab Light Infantry War 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 Abathist state. But as this 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. A friend of mine used to be an intelligent analyst for the Army before he became an officer. And he points out that this time frame, 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 reistoring a caliphate when, you know, these guys couldn't reassure. store the equivalent of, I don't know, a city council 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, especially the Western administrative class, has this myopia that can't see new emerging threats because we're so convinced, number one in progress

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Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Thunbiug, Kush Faragea. Continuing, a good example is the advent of female suicide bombers. So U.S. troops now start friscing every Muslim woman 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 no nothing to talk about. The end of a war like that in Iraq becomes inevitable.

The local state we attacked vanishes, leaving behind either a stateless region as in Somalia or a facade of a state as in Afghanistan, within which more non-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, like the head of of Hezbollah? Or is this just, is just an assumption that that person is not running Hezbollah? 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?

Well, there's definitely elements that think that, right? we definitely know within the Zionist 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 in class towards us the big issue I find is any time that people start people in the American you know mainstream start talking about assassination as the magical cure-all like people were talking about Putin for the first year and a half in the war in Russia.

You know, it's like they seem to have this idea that assassinating a leader is like an Inders 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 doing, 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 node is going to get sent out, or get knocked out, I guess. So when they found Saddam in the hole and they, and they handed them over and they hung them. I mean, that's the point where it's like, okay, we've done what we've come here to do. We leave. Well, that would have been a bit. Yeah, we make friends. We make, you know, try to figure out who's going to take over for him. And if that person's going to be friendly or not, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's their culture and the way they run things So there's so many inner battles between forces there.

It's like, what do you, to stay there, it just doesn't make sense because you're, you may think you're picking the right guy and you're picking the wrong guy. And sometimes it seems like they pick the wrong guy on purpose. 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 effect of 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 to him make him to control? Nothing, because you've already shattered it, and people are 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 in perpetuity 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 its populace 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, deep bathification, right? We talk about debatification, how horrible it 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 2006, 2007. The new Iraqi army would periodically have waves 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 and 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 like what is the solution to it?

Well, I'd say step one, let's not invade 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. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's basically where we're out. 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 patron 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 Canon,

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 read this or just let people find it? I mean, we don't have to read for a vatim, but we can talk through it if you'd like. Okay, so the first book is called The Enlightened Soldier, Sharnhorst and the Militarish Gis. Giselshoft in Berlin, 1801 to 1805 by Charles E. White. Giselshoft. Giselshoft. Sorry. It just means society. Okay.

Basically, he was a reformer of the Prussian Army who, after disaster's defeat of 1806, his reforms look like they helped to develop third generational war, led to third generational warfare of World War I. Yeah, the whole idea of decentralization, German tradition, that's where they trace it. Okay. Next one is the seeds of disaster, the development of French army doctrine, 1919 to 1939 by Robert A. Doty. Dry book. Do you know this book? 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 U.S. Army has basically comes from this movement.

Storm troop tactics, innovation in the German army. Army, 1914, 1918 by Bruce Goodmansson. Development of third generation warfare, basically, I guess this details the development of the Blitzkrieg method. Yeah, so again, we tend to think of special operations and, you know, Blitzkrieb as 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 more. mobility or infiltration tactics in order to accomplish what you're trying to do in 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. Command or control. Command training and tactics in the British and German armies 1888 through 1918 by Martin Samuels. So just comparison of second generation British Army with the Kaiser hair illustrates the differences between second and third generations. Fifth book is the breaking points, Sedan and the fall of, is that pronounced Sudan? I think.

Or is it Shaden? Shaden, maybe. Maybe. And the fall of France, 1940 by, again, Robert Dowdy. 1940 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 Germans. Yeah, and that's, again, it's the invasion of France, how they got through the Maginot 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. The last two books look like Van Kreveld, Fighting Power, German and U.S. Army Performance 39 through 45. Yeah, fighting power. I'm sorry to catch you up. 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 U.S. Army history of the war, you know, side by side with the Vermeck's official history that 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 maniangereal, very centrally planned, very, you know, centrally managed army. even to the day, but, you know, so much so in World War II. 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 in 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 U.S. 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 Excel, 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 whole 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 understand objectives is more important than detailed data. And then the last book is the transformation of war by Van Kreveld. Yeah, and that's the book. I always say you've got to go read.

And it's basically about, he did two books, this and rise in the climate estate. This one's about how, again, warfare is transitioning to non-state actors, You know, this rise of Hezbo was at that time. So guerrillas insurgency is fighting this war. And the transformation is what does that mean for, you know, politics as a whole? And that's the one that the Mises Institute did a conference on.

Awesome. All right. Well, you have any closing comments on this one? If not, get out of you. No, like I said, I recommend it just because, you know, we all, so many people talk about generations of war. this is the source material on it. And we all, including myself, have a tendency to talk about things

without knowing the fundamental. So that's why I recommend it, sir. Yeah, it seems very concise. And it also seems like one of those things that they can peak enough interest that people can go to that bibliography if they want to and start going even deeper. Yeah, and Lynn, everything Lynn did,

because 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 a standard magazine article size so that it actually can be communicated. So if you ever go to his blog, he blogs at traditional right.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 know somebody, and they can give you his phone number, he'll even talk to you on the phone. Great. That's awesome. That's old school. Yeah, that's probably why Horton had him on so many times. Just reach out and I was.

Yep. All right. I appreciate it. Thanks, man. Until the next time. Yes, sir.