War, “Like War”, or Something Else?
War, “Like War”, or Something Else?
by Colonel Robert Killebrew
Download the full article: War, “Like War”, or Something Else?
Bob Killebrew, a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, is heading up a major study on the relationships between gangs, the Chavez government, and U.S. national security. What follows is the central question that is evolving from the study — is this war? Or something like war? Opinions are not only welcome — but encouraged; it’s Bob Killebrew at [email protected].
Purveyors of “Fourth Generation War” have suggested that future warfare will have certain characteristics; that it will be decentralized, complex and transnational; it will involve actors from many networks, and that it will involve political, social, military and economic factors.
What, then, do we make of the activities of Venezuela, Iran, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the Mexican drug cartels and the Latino gangs both destabilizing Central America and operating on our streets today? All are acting from different motives, all are highly organized and, in some cases, networked organizations, and all are, for different reasons, threats to the national security of the United States. And all are connected by the supply of illegal drugs to the U.S. and to other countries.
Download the full article: War, “Like War”, or Something Else?
Robert B. Killebrew is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Killebrew is a retired Army colonel who served 30 years in a variety of assignments that included Special Forces, tours in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, XVIII Airborne Corps, high-level war planning assignments and instructor duty at the Army War College.
