From Defense and the National Interest
Introduction
War is Changing
War always changes.
Our enemies learn and adapt,
and we must do the same
or lose.
But today,
war is changing faster
and on a larger scale than
at any time in the last 350 years.
Not only are we, as Marines,
facing rapid change in how war is fought,
we are facing radical changes in who fights and what
they are fighting for.
All over the world, state militaries,
including our own,
find themselves fighting
non-state opponents.
This kind of war, which we call
Fourth Generation war,
is a very difficult challenge.
Almost always, state militaries
have vast superiority
over their non-state opponents in
most of what we call
"combat power:"
technology, weapons, techniques, training, etc.
Despite these superiorities,
more often than not,
state militaries
end up
losing.
America's greatest military theorist,
Air Force Colonel John Boyd, used to say,
“When I was a young officer, I was taught that if you have
air superiority,
land superiority
and sea superiority,
you win.
Well, in Vietnam we had
air superiority,
land superiority
and sea superiority, but
we lost.
So I realized
there is something more to it.”
This FMFM is about that
"something more."
In order to fight Fourth Generation war and win,
Marines
need to understand what
that "something more" is.
That in turn requires an
intellectual framework --
a construct
that helps us make
sense of facts and events,
both current and historical.
The intellectual framework
put forward in this FMFM is called
"The Four Generations of Modern War."
It was first laid out in an article in the Marine Corps Gazette in October, 1989.1 In this framework,
modern war
began with the
Peace of Westphalia
in 1648
which ended
the Thirty Years War.
Why?
Because with that treaty,
the state --
which was itself relatively new --
established a monopoly
on war.
After 1648,
first in Europe and then world-wide,
war became something waged
by states against other states,
using state armies and navies
(and later air forces).
To us,
the assumption that war
is something waged by states
is so automatic
that we have difficulty thinking of war in any other way.
We sometimes
(misleadingly) call war against
non-state opponents
"Operations Other Than War" (OOTW) or
“Stability and Support Operations” (SASO).
In fact, before the Peace of Westphalia,
many different entities waged wars.
Families waged wars,
as did clans
and tribes.
Ethnic groups and races waged war.
Religions and cultures waged war.
So did
business enterprises
and gangs.
These wars were often many-sided,
not two-sided, and alliances shifted
constantly.
Not only did many different entities wage war, they used many different means. Few possessed
anything we would recognize
as a formal army, navy or Marine Corps
(Marines were often present, as the fighting men on galleys).
Often, when war came,
whoever was fighting would hire mercenaries,
both on
land and at sea.
In other cases, such as tribal war, the "army" was any male old enough, but not too old,
to carry a weapon.
In addition to campaigns and battles,
war was waged by bribery,
assassination,
treachery, betrayal,
even dynastic marriage.
The lines between “civilian” and “military”, and between
crime and war, were hazy or non-existent.
Many societies knew little internal order or peace;
bands of men with weapons,
when not hired out for wars,
simply took whatever they wanted from anyone
too weak
to resist them.
Here,
the past is prologue.
Much of what Marines now face in Fourth Generation wars
is simply
war
as it was fought
before the rise of the state
and the Peace of Westphalia.
Once again,
clans, tribes, ethnic groups,
cultures, religions and gangs
are fighting
wars,
in more and more parts of the world.
They fight
using many different means,
not just engagements and battles.
Once again, conflicts are often
many-sided,
not just two-sided.
Marines who find themselves caught up
in such conflicts quickly discover
they are difficult to understand
and harder
still to prevail in.
