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.
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