The concept
of Fourth Generation War
comes from a description of war’s evolution
since the Peace of Westphalia.
The First Generation is war between states,
where battles were fought in orderly lines and columns.
Most of the things that define the difference between
“military” and “civilian”;
such as saluting,uniforms, careful gradations of ranks, etc.,
are products of the
First Generation
and exist to reinforce
a military culture of order.
The technical development of muskets,
machineguns and barbed wire made
line and column tactics suicidal.
Second Generation warfare
was developed by the French Army
during World War I to reestablish order on a disorderly battlefield
This firepower/attrition warfare
relied on centrally-controlled
indirect artillery fire, carefully synchronized
with infantry, cavalry and aviation,
to destroy the enemy
by killing his soldiers and blowing up his equipment.
The French summarized
Second Generation war
with the phrase,
"The artillery conquers, the infantry occupies.”
Third Generation War,
also called Maneuver Warfare,
has its roots in the German Army in the First World War.
Instead of trying to restore order through
endless staff work and centralization,
the German Army used chaos
by relying on speed and tempo.
Decentralization and focusing on the enemy
rather than terrain and valuing
initiative higher than obedience
are central characteristics of
maneuver warfare.
Mistakes are tolerated and self discipline,
rather than imposed discipline,
is encouraged.
A well trained officer corps,
educated in the spirit of the commander
is another central requirement for maneuver warfare.
Fourth Generation War
is not,
like its predecessors,
a new method of war.
Rather the state monopoly on violence is being lost.
This is a larger and more far-reaching change
in war than those which created the
Second and Third Generations.
The Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld
calls this kind of war “non-Trinitarian warfare,”
because it does not fit within Clausewitz’s trinity
of government, army and people
where each of those elements is related but distinct.
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