FMFM 1A "Blog" Education for the Strategic Cpl's

Intersections (from Defense and the National Interest)

"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.”

FMFM1-A The Importance of the Strategic Cpl. and "homemade" Centers of Gravity

CHAPTER I: UNDERSTANDING FOURTH GENERATION WAR---{Text From Defense and the National Interest} (Bold face, Parenthesis links/comment JB)

“The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into something that is alien to its nature.”
Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Before you can fight Fourth Generation war
successfully,
you have to understand it.
Because it is something new
(at least in our time), no one understands
it completely.
It is still evolving,
which means our understanding must continue
to evolve
as well.


This chapter lays out our best current understanding of the
Fourth Generation of Modern War.

Three Levels of War

The three classical levels of war -
- strategic, operational and tactical
-- still exist in
Fourth Generation war.

But all three are affected
and to some extent changed by the
Fourth Generation.

One important change
is that while in the first three generations,
strategy
was the province of generals,
the Fourth Generation gives us the
"strategic corporal."

Especially when video cameras are rolling,
a single enlisted Marine
may take
an action that has
strategic effect.

An example comes from the first phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

U.S. Marines had occupied a
Shiite town in southern Iraq.
A Marine corporal was leading a patrol through the town
when it encountered
a funeral procession coming the other way.

The corporal ordered his men to stand aside and take their helmets off as a sign of respect.

Word of that action quickly spread around town,
and it helped the Marines' effort to be welcomed as liberators.
That in turn had a
strategic impact,
because American strategy required keeping Shiite southern Iraq,
through which American supply lines had to pass,

quiet.

Another change is that all three levels may be local.

A Marine unit may have a "beat," much as police do --
an area where they are responsible for maintaining order
and perhaps delivering other vital services as well.
The unit must harmonize its local, tactical actions
with higher strategic and operational goals,
both of which must be pursued consistently
on the local level.

(When a unit is assigned a "beat," (read link Michael J. Totten's: In wake of the Surge -walking the beat in Baghdad)
it is important that the beat's boundaries reflect real local boundaries,
such as those between tribes and clans,
and not be arbitrary lines drawn on a map at some higher headquarters.)

These changes point to another of the dilemmas
that typify Fourth Generation war:

what succeeds
on the tactical level
can easily be counter-productive at the operational
and, especially, strategic levels.

For example,
by using their overwhelming firepower at the tactical level,

Marines may in some cases
intimidate the local population into fearing them and leaving them alone.

But fear and hate
are closely related,
and if the local population ends up hating us,
that works toward our strategic defeat. (read Michael Yon-"It’s hard to build civic relationships out of body parts.")


That is why in Northern Ireland,
British troops are not allowed
to return fire unless they are actually
taking casualties.

The Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld
argues that one reason the British have not lost in
Northern Ireland is that they have taken more casualties than they have inflicted.

Fourth Generation war poses an especially difficult problem to operational art:
put simply, it is difficult to operationalize.

Often, Fourth Generation opponents' strategic centers of gravity are intangible.

They may be things like proving their manhood
to their comrades and local women,
obeying the commandments of their religion
or demonstrating their tribe’s bravery to other tribes.

Because operational art is the art of focusing tactical actions
on enemy strategic centers of gravity, operational art becomes
difficult or even impossible in such situations.

This was the essence of the Soviet failure
in Afghanistan.
The Soviet Army,
which focused on operational art,
could not operationalize a conflict
where the enemy's strategic center of gravity was
God.

The Soviets were reduced
to fighting at the tactical level only,
where their army was not very capable,
despite its vast technological superiority over the Afghan Mujaheddin.

Fourth Generation war sometimes cuts across all three classical levels of war.

An example
comes from Colonel John Boyd' s definition of grand strategy,
the highest level of war.

He defined grand strategy
as the art of connecting yourself
to as many other independent power centers as possible
while isolating your enemies from as many other power centers as possible.

A Fourth Generation conflict will usually
have many different independent power centers
not only at the grand strategic level but down
all the way to the tactical level.

The game of connection and isolation
will be central to tactics and operational art
as well as to strategy and grand strategy.

It will be important to ensure that what you are doing
at the tactical level does not alienate
independent power centers you need to connect with
at the operational or strategic levels.

Similarly, you will need to be careful not to isolate yourself today from independent power centers
you will need to connect to tomorrow.

Again, while the classical three levels of war carry over into the Fourth Generation, they change.

We do not yet know all the ways in which they will change when Marines face Fourth Generation opponents.

As Marines' experience in Fourth Generation conflicts grows, so must our understanding.

It is vital that we remain open to new lessons and not attempt to fit new ways of war into outdated notions.

FMFM1A:Context-The Use of Order, Disorder and Chaos

The Road to Fourth Generation War--Defense and National Interest

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.
source