Comic Book Warning: An Unlikely Insight into Warfare’s 5^th Generation

Myke Cole

“Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.”

                                      - Jules Verne

Jules Verne’s 19th century fictional ponderings anticipated, among other things, space travel and submarines. H.G Wells wrote about atomic bombs in 1914. Science fiction author Edward Everett Hale’s story dealt with artificial satellites in 1869. Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” imagined a society hooked on drugs like Ridalin and Prozac while the major players of World War II were still beginning to get their footing.

Fiction and particularly science fiction writers are used to thinking about the future in an unrestrained manner that can lead to some incredibly prescient insights.

As we face the challenges of confronting the non-state actors of Fourth Generation Wars (4GW) and try to foresee the challenges of the Fifth Generation (5GW) that is even now evolving, it is precisely such unrestrained thinking and downright prediction that is called for as we attempt to anticipate the enemy.

An eye-opening lesson can be found in the pages of, of all things, a comic book, soon to be adapted to a major motion picture by Warner Brothers studios. The film stars such luminaries as Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving and is produced by the creators of “The Matrix”.

Alan Moore’s “V for Vendetta,”[1] depicts a post-apocalyptic Britain under the thrall of a fascist government the likes of which would make Hitler tremble. Like all good “social” science fiction, the story deals with many issues; freedom of expression, the importance of art and literature and what happens when a society gives into fear en masse.

But what is of interest to students of 4GW is the depiction of “V”, the cloaked protagonist of the story, systematically destabilizing the state by attacking the symbols of authority. Government ministers, leading members of clergy and law enforcement personnel are methodically assassinated in the most public and dramatic manner possible. Simultaneously, state apparatus such as communications towers, monuments and the government’s central computer system are disabled (mostly through the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) until the public, convinced that the state cannot protect itself, much less them, utterly loses faith and revolts.

Written in 1988, “V” proves chillingly prescient in light of the strategies 4GW actors are enacting as they maneuver to defeat large states that they cannot hope to defeat on conventional grounds. Historian and 4GW guru William Lind notes “Police departments in some large American cities would be quick to note that they are already facing Fourth Generation opponents on the streets.”[2] In another article, Lind points out that “it is happening in some American cities. Police officers are being killed — assassinated, really — not because they get in the way of some bank robber but because they are symbols of the state. A Fourth Generation fighter, usually a gang member, simply walks up to a police cruiser and shoots a cop.”[3]

Lind’s estimation of gangland conflict in the US echoes with the experiences of the nascent police and security services in Iraq, hunted and targeted by insurgents who are bent on bringing down the symbols of authority and exposing the inability of the state to stand on its own. Indeed, Professor Max Manwaring makes little distinction between “3^rd generation gangs” and subnational 4GW actors who employ terrorism.[4] Over 1,500 Iraqi Police and National Guardsmen have been targeted and killed by insurgents this year alone[5], even as US casualties decline.

This tactic of 4GW actors, targeting the symbols of state authority, gives the lie to Max Weber’s historic axiom; “a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory"[6]. Martin Van Creveld puts it better, “Once the legal monopoly of armed force, long claimed by the state, is wrested out of its hands, existing distinctions between war and crime will break down. . .”[7] And when this happens, says Lind, we’ve already lost. “Why? Because troops, who are trained for combat, not police work, usually act in ways that alienate the population they are supposed to protect. That in turn further undermines the legitimacy of the state, . . . This dynamic is one of the principal reasons why the legitimacy of Iraq’s American-installed government remains tenuous at best. It continues to depend on troops, many of them foreign, rather than being able to rely on police to create and maintain order.”[8] The second of two sets of coordinated bombings in London in as many weeks didn’t cause a single casualty. But Lind, Weber and Creveld might well argue that it didn’t need to. The damage to the confidence of the British citizenry, indeed of 1^st world citizens the world over, by the ability of 4GW actors to strike with impunity, even when the security services of a country as powerful as Britain were on full alert, was significant.

Creveld’s point dovetails nicely with Weber’s. States ultimately command the loyalty of their citizenry in proportion to their ability to defend them from harm. As the comic book “V” brings home with a bang, the state that cannot project the basic symbol of its authority, seen as vulnerable to weak, rag-tag bands of subnational actors, loses the faith of its population almost instantly. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” V pronounces as he destroys the central government’s core surveillance system with an IED[9], and what the populace “wilt” is anarchy.

As military and intelligence thinkers struggle to come to grips with the new challenges of 4GW, intellectuals like Thomas Hammes are already looking to the future. “Each new generation of war has developed and been disseminated in less time than the previous generation. . . .We have to assume fifth-generation warfare is out there.”[10] In our struggle to stay ahead of our opponents, we must think outside the box, and that means taking note of any source of possible information, including science fiction and comic books. The precedent is already set, with the Pentagon screening films such as The Battle of Algiers,[11] which while based on real events, is a work of fiction. Strategypage.com, a top military community website, maintains a section for the discussion of military science fiction and the lessons for the military that can be gleaned from the thinking of fiction writers.[12] Intelligence services caution newly minted analysts to consider the full spectrum of sources for ideas, encouraging “imaginative thinking techniques” and warning to never discount any ideas “no matter how unconventional they might sound.”[13]

Moore’s “V” gives a glimpse of a subnational enemy who has realized that his power rises and falls in direct proportion to the cohesion of state authority. In realizing this, he understands that the destruction of the state altogether creates the kind of power vacuum where his sort can thrive. “V for Vendetta” warns that perhaps it is not a change of tactics, but of the scope of the enemy objective that defines the fifth generation war evolving around us. It suggests a generation of enemies dedicated to the ultimate destruction of the state in totality, not just as means for seizing power in Iraq or driving US forces from Afghanistan, but for inaugurating a new world order where the cohesive, central power of the state fails in the face of an enemy it cannot define, cordon off and defeat on its own terms, until its citizenry loses patience and withdraws its collective allegiance.

Far-fetched? Possibly. But too much other science fictional thinking has come to bear some historical fruit to dismiss it totally. Some signs are visible. The New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) Counterterrorism squad already functions fairly autonomously, disregarding directives from Washington and moving “. . .into territory normally occupied by the FBI and CIA. And yet few objections were raised. It was if the Feds, reeling from September 11^th, silently acknowledged New York’s right to take extraordinary defensive measures.”[14] NYPD’s local law enforcement branch has lost faith in the central government’s ability to protect the city. “. . .there was a strong feeling that federal agencies had let down New York City, and that the city should no longer count on the Feds for its protection.”[15] An anecdote, but in light of Lind’s warnings, a significant one.

“The state. . .,” warns Van Creveld, “is dying.”[16] Moore’s “V” paints a grim picture of one way its enemies will seek to usher it to its grave. In less than a year, Warner Brothers Studios will carry the same message on movie screens to millions of viewers world wide. Comic book or no, the military and intelligence communities would do well to pay attention.

Myke Cole is a consultant with the CACI Corporation and a student in the International Security graduate program at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. He also edits the school's International Affairs Review.  His essays on this topic appear or are forthcoming in “Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security International,” “Defense and The National Interest,” and “On Point: Counterterrorism Journal”.  He lives in Washington, DC.

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