As expected, William Lind has devoted his final essay on 4GW to trashing Echevarria’s paper. The debate is really sinking into an ad hominem swamp here and so I am going to try to keep my comments brief and constructive.

“Nor does Echevarria’s paper ever discuss the heart of Fourth Generation war, the crisis of legitimacy of the state. In this, he makes the same error Barnett falls into, but at least Barnett is not purporting to write a critique of what the Fourth Generation theorists have said. How can you write a critique of something and ignore its central point, the cause of the state’s loss of its monopoly on war?”

Echevarria does address this point on pages 8 and 9 under the heading “The Myth of Westphalia.” He explicitly challenges 4GW’s narrative of the state’s monopoly on violence and concludes that “the treaty [of Westphalia] most certainly did not… give states a monopoly, legal or otherwise, on the waging of war.” I really don’t know how much clearer a critique could get. For whatever reason, though, Lind did not acknowledge this challenge.

“…the sheer ugliness of Echevarria’s paper raises another suspicion. Was he put to writing a rejection of Fourth Generation war by the U.S. Army, and had to come up with something? If so, it would not be the first time the Army has adopted this tactic: Harry Summer’s book on the Vietnam war and Huba Wass de Czege’s early public opposition to maneuver warfare are previous examples. Nor would it be the first occasion when the Army has rejected an idea on the “not invented here” principle.”

Again we see the 4GW debate revolving around DoD politics and not theory. In Lind’s essay, the various “theories” are props in a conflict over the structure, policies and strategy of the DoD. To challenge the validity of 4GW theory is to challenge the validity of Lind’s critiques of “Versailles on the Potmaic.” I hope that at some point Lind will address the issue of 4GW’s historical validity and, in so doing, elevate the level of this debate.

All I have to say about William Lind’s recent piece is that he clearly has not read either of Thomas Barnett’s books. Note how Lind avoids citing Barnett directly:

“According to a Washington Post review of Blueprint for Action by Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Barnett has a six-step plan…”

Barnett took the time to read Lind’s work and reference it in Blueprint for Action. For whatever reason, Lind did not return the courtesy. Poorly played, Mr. Lind.

John Robb and Mark Salafaski have weighed in with some excellent thoughts regarding the historical validity of 4GW theory. Mark captures what ought to have been the thesis of my previous post in his usual succinct manner when he writes that “The 4GW school has a *very important* premise but I’m not certain their historical case hasn’t been constructed after the fact to fit the assumptions. And there is a spirit of determinism running through the theory that seems to ignore countervailing trends.”

Robb adds this clarity: “State delegitimization only began in earnest with globalization. It’s a byproduct of non-state warfare with states and not the root cause of our current epochal war. The real root cause is the viability of non-state competitors made possible by globalization. This is creative destruction.” Without the democratization of power created by globalization, you cannot have the viable non-state challenges to the state that motivate 4GW theory.

As many of you are probably already aware, Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria wrote a paper back in November regarding Fourth-Generation Warfare and Other Myths. Needless to say, this inspired a response from the DNI crowd, with Lt. Col. John Seyen replying to Dr. Echevarria.

Soon afterwards William Lind posted the first installment of his “4GW: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly” essays. Since Col. Hammes was held up by Lind as an example of the Good, I think we can be sure that Echevarria will be addressed in a later installment.

Sifting through this intellectual scrum clarified an aspect of the whole 4GW debate that has been tickling my subconscious for a long time. It all comes down to Westphalia.

The historical significance of the Treaty of Westphalia is a the center of gravity of the debate over the validity of 4GW theory. Echevarria states that “…the treaty most certainly did not… give states a monopoly, legal or otherwise, on the waging of war.” Sayen, in his reply, asserts that “the treaties key principles… in essence gave states the sole right to wage war.” This is not an issue of confusion; these are two contradictory statements. Each side of the debate holds vasty different assuptions regarding the significance of Westphalia. In order for the debate to proceed intelligently we need some historical context. But before I discuss that, I’ll make a few other observations.

We can avoid much of the angst associated with 4GW if we view it as a movement and not as a theory. The ranks of prominent 4GW thinkers include many of the “acolytes” of the late John Boyd. As such, they share an admirably tenacious desire to resist bureaucratic stupidity and a focus on the underlying challenges faced by our soldiers. Over the past fifteen years, they have identified non-state warfare as a challenge our military faces. The dynamics of state decline influence our national security in a significant way now, and they are dedicated to considering the consequences of these dynamics. But this is not where the controversy lies.

Where the conflict comes is when these 4GW thinkers attempt to create a historical framework for these dynamics of state power and non-state violence. By offering a simplistic model of the past four centuries of warfare, they ignore all of the variations and fluxuations the power of the state faced througout those four centuries and around the globe. In one breath Sayen acknowledges this “[the process of establishing states who possessed a monopoly on violence] did not end in the so-called “Third World” until the late 19th Century.” Yet in the next breath he avows that “…the [Westphalia] treaty’s key principles, which in essence gave states the sole right to wage lawful war, quickly spread throughout Europe and, through European colonization, the rest of the world” (emphasis added). He can acknowledge that “non-state actors have always been with us,” yet he can go on to assert that “non-staters are making a comeback,” implying that they must have be returning from somewhere.

This is, once again, a historical question. I cannot claim to be a historian; I hope that some people who can lay claim to such a title will be able to wiegh in on this issue. To my amateur historian’s eye, though, I do not see the past three and a half centuries as an era of uniform state power. I would question, for example, the degree to which the United States effectively controlled its territory west of the Mississippi River prior to the 20th Century, the degree to which the Spanish regime installed by Napoleon during the Iberian campaign was able to govern the penninsula, and whether the entire Ottomen Empire was able to truly control the entirity of its territory from 1688 on. Across the globe and throughout the past four hundred years, the power of the state has ebbed and flowed. We are currently witnessing an ebb which is particularly striking to us since it is coming on the heels of 80 years during which the power of the state generally grew. This ebb in not unprecedented nor is it unique.

What is unique about the current ebb in the power of the state is the scale upon which these dynamics are being carried out. Non-state actors have begun to use modern networks (cell phones, the Internet, transnational businesses and global transport) to challenge the legitimacy of the state. This is the direct threat we face, and it is a threat that both I believe that both Echevarria and Sayen would agree with this characterization. Compare for yourself:

Echevarria:

“…increased ‘dispersion and
democratization of technology, information, and finance’ brought about by globalization has given terrorist groups greater mobility and access worldwide. At this point, globalization seems to aid the nonstate actor more than the state…”

Seyen:

“…certain technical advances like cell phones and the Internet have made it easier for ‘armies’ of non-state entities, small and lightly equipped though they be, to tie down much larger and better equipped state forces for extended periods of time. While these non-state forces have not yet been able to win conventional battles they can and do wear out the state sponsored armies and police forces that oppose them with sustained campaigns of raids, ambushes and sabotage that the state forces have been unable to stop.”

It is 4GW’s historical narrative of “generations of war,” then, that Echevarria critcizes as a “poor use of history” and lacking in “intellectual rigor.” His citique regards the theory of 4GW, not the motives of 4GW theorists - a point that Seyen overlooks when he implies that Echevarria is simply trying to tear down 4GW because it challenges to the bureaucratic inertia of the US Army. I have no further background on these two men than these brief papers, but nothing in Echevarria’s writing causes me to think that he is in favor of high-cost, low-value pork projects. [In fact, Echevarria says that “…out-of-the-box thinking is to be applauded; militaries do not do enough of it…”]

If we are actually interested in improving our understanding of conflict, we ought to be testing the assumptions of our theories and not resorting to ad hominem attacks on those who challenge us.

In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines’ shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.

Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields “would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome,” according to the study.

But apparently the story isn’ t as simple as “DoD skimped on a simple solution and it cost 31 soldiers their lives.” Both Thomas Barnett and Noah Shachtman point out that the situation is much more complicated. More body armor means more coverage but also means more weight, less speed, and faster dehydration. Barnett uses the example of NFL receivers and defensive backs forgoing knee pads in favor of speed. The prolific (and currently deployed) Phil Carter weighs in at Defensetech with the following:

What troubles me about this story (and the larger debate) is this: It assumes that we can and should put an infinite amount of armor on our troops, and that the trade-offs between armor and effectiveness/weight/speed/maneuverability are illegitimate. This goes to the “force protection uber alles” mentality that we talked about a few months ago. And I also think it reflects a larger ignorance about combat that’s prevalent among many critics and decisionmakers. Risk is inherent in combat. We try to minimize and mitigate the risks to the extent practicable, but ultimately, we have to take risks to win.

Amen.

Any static defense can be subverted by a thinking enemy. To prevail in combat we need to maximize the overall effectiveness of our soldiers and not narrowly maximize the amount of body armor they wear. What they’ve got must work (an important discussion for another post is my concern over the reports of flaws in the USMC’s Interceptor Outer Tactical Vests (OTVs)), but let’s not lose sight of the nature of combat.

Henrik has some good points in his post regarding the logistics needs of stability ops. Good to see some thinking on this subject, because as the the old saying goes: “amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.”