"Perhaps the best way to search out and identify potential disharmonies among levels is to think of two intersecting games of three-dimensional chess."
"A single game of three-dimensional chess is challenging enough, in terms of the possible moves it offers. Now, imagine a single three-level game,
representing the three classical levels of war, with another three-level game slashing through it at an angle."
"The second game represents Boyd’s levels of war, the physical, the mental and the moral."
"The complexity and the demands it makes on decision-makers are daunting. But it is in just such a complex
atmosphere that practitioners of Fourth Generation war must try to identify and avoid disharmonies among levels."
"Another way to think of intersection among levels is to picture Fourth Generation war not as a matrix
but as a shifting “blob.”"
"The blob may shift, so slowly as to be imperceptible or with stunning speed, into
as many different shapes as can be imagined. Each shift represents changes on both the
strategic/operational/tactical and moral/mental/physical axes. Again, the variety of shapes illustrates the
complexities of relationships among levels, along with potential disharmonies that can be exploited.
However you choose to picture intersections among the classical and new levels of war in your own mind,
the basic point remains the same:
all actions, even the smallest, must be considered with great
care and from a variety of perspectives lest they have unintended consequences on other (and possibly higher) levels."
"Fourth Generation war demands not only the strategic corporal, but the moral corporal as
well, enlisted Marines who think about every action they take in terms of its moral effects."
"One short story from the war in Iraq makes the point about intersections. In the town of Haditha, U.S.
Marine Captain Matt Danner had established a strong, positive working relationship with the local
population. According to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle,
A man comes in to say a Marine threw a water bottle from a humvee in a convoy.
It hit his windshield and destroyed it."
“This is exactly the kind of thing we’re trying to avoid,” Danner fumes. “I just can’t
understand this. And it takes so long to get resolution for this guy. What am I
going to do, send him to Mosul without a windshield?
“I gave him 200 bucks. I ought to strap that Marine onto the car and let him be a
wind break.”
