These facts bring the changing nature of war right into the living
room. By declaring war on the Al Qaeda network of terror — a non-state
globalization phenomenon — America and the nation-state system formally
recognized they were in a new era. The modern nation-state system was
established in 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia ended the wars of
religion known as the 30 Years War and granted the state a monopoly on
the use of organized violence. Since Westphalia, three generations of
war evolved out of the violent clashes of nations: (1) Classical
nation-state war culminating in the Napoleonic Wars, (2) the industrial
wars of attrition (the American Civil War through World War I), and (3)
maneuver warfare (based on infiltration tactics, Blitzkrieg, and
decision cycles) which emerged after World War I.
Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) changes everything. It pits nations
against non-national organizations and networks that includes not only
fundamentalist extremists but ethnic groups, mafias, and narco-traffickers,
etc., as well. Its evolutionary roots may lie in guerrilla warfare, the
Leninist theory of insurrection, and old fashioned terrorism, but it is
rendered more pervasive and effective by the technologies, mobilities
and miniaturized instrumentalities spawned by the age of computers and
mass communication.
It allows the politically weak to circumvent the capacity of the
state to protect itself through the use of conventional military means.
In the words of Dr. Chester Richards, a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel,
“Roughly speaking, fourth generation warfare includes all forms of
conflict where the other guy refuses to stand up and fight fair.” Put
simply, “The distinction between war and peace [is] blurred to the
vanishing point.” No longer are there “definable battlefields or
fronts.” Indeed, “The distinction between ‘civilian’ and ‘military’”
ceases to exist. India has been the object of this evolving scenario of
amorphous violence for more than a decade. Now the United States’ turn
has come.
New and very unpleasant strategies will need to be, indeed are
already being, deployed to deal with a world in which there are no
longer any safe havens no matter how innocent the individual or how
powerful the state. The ubiquity and ambiguity of 4GW will require
dramatic changes in military capabilities (training, doctrine, and
weapons) as well as how established states think about national
security. States already confronted with 4GW illustrate the implications
of this challenge. No matter how many search and destroy missions are
initiated against “terrorist” sites, no matter how many terrorist
operatives are targeted for assassination, terrorist planners and their
weapon of choice suicide bombers ceaselessly emerge from the anonymity
of the crowd, supported both overtly and surreptitiously by rogue
regimes led by kindred political monsters, to reap their vengeance and
havoc upon innocent civilians in coffee houses, shopping centers, bus
stops, public buildings, indeed any and all symbols of established
society.
Fourth generation warfare is a self-organizing art form that, in a
certain sense, enables the self-proclaimed victims of oppression to
transform their alleged oppressors into victims. As we have just seen,
this emergent breed of warriors feeds off the assets of their designated
target. The Trade Center/Pentagon conspirators lived amongst their
intended victims, spent months matriculating at American pilot-training
facilities, driving American rental cars and eating American pizzas in
preparation for their unspeakable crimes. The process of successfully
infiltrating with subtlety and stealth their targeted society and
inflicting terrible carnage on it, heroized the perpetrators in the eyes
of their “constituents.” It played well in Gaza, on the West Bank and in
Baghdad!
The challenge now confronting America, India and the world of nation
states is how to deal with this fundamental alteration in the rules of
war. What they do will test their mettle as never before in history.
Ways will have to be found to decisively subdue a remorseless foe who
believes that unlimited violence unencumbered by pity and compassion as
we understand it, is justified in the name of religiously conceptualized
rage. This must be accomplished without civilized society losing its
soul in the process.
In tactical terms, this means coordinating intelligence on a global
scale. It means rapier thrusts against 4GW bases and cells, slicing up
the networks linking the cells, and taking out the fanatics who supply
the brains and the resources to conduct this kind of indiscriminate
warfare. Because the nation-state no longer holds a monopoly on
destructive force, a most important change in how 4GW is confronted is
to henceforth ordain that the sanctuary of “national sovereignty” is no
longer sacrosanct, can no longer be honored when employed as a facade
for sheltering, endorsing and provisioning non- national 4GW assets and
formations. As in any conflict, the military task must be to disarm the
enemy and neutralize his offensive capability, employing the weapons and
tactics appropriate for the task.
However, the strategic conundrum is that blind retaliatory force will
breed more suicide bombers; it will arm the enemy. A balance must be
struck between the short term need to defeat the enemy on the
battlefield and the long term need to dry up his sources of support.
This will require more than the cultivation of alliances and the active
engagement of one’s own population in the struggle.
To accomplish the latter, America and the West must work to reduce
the sources of the anti-American, anti-Western rage still sweeping the
post-colonial world. It will require policies designed to alleviate the
poverty, the lingering remnants of colonialism, and the violations of
human rights which sustain the ranks of the miserable, the alienated,
and the downtrodden of this world.
They are the human raw material from which Fourth Generation Warfare
recruits its warriors. It is they for whom mortal life is so cheap that
suicide on behalf of the Cause is a triumph instead of a tragedy. Only
when social conditions are attained which make life more worthy of
living for than dying for will 4GW fade into the mists of past history.
