Wednesday, January 18, 2006
COUNTERINSURGENCY IS DOABLE SERIES & THE 4GW WAR OF WORDS [Updated]
Kingdaddy of Arms and Influence, who produced the high quality "Counterinsurgency is Hard" series that I featured here has begun a second, impressive, COIN series, " Counterinsurgency is Doable -Part I." and " Part II". Check it out
Also, at Opposed System Design we have insightful commentary on the war of words between the men of DNI and their critics in " 4GW, Pro or Con". An excerpt:
"We can avoid much of the angst associated with 4GW if we view it as a movement and not as a theory. The ranks of prominent 4GW thinkers include many of the “acolytes” of the late John Boyd. As such, they share an admirably tenacious desire to resist bureaucratic stupidity and a focus on the underlying challenges faced by our soldiers. Over the past fifteen years, they have identified non-state warfare as a challenge our military faces. The dynamics of state decline influence our national security in a significant way now, and they are dedicated to considering the consequences of these dynamics. But this is not where the controversy lies.
Where the conflict comes is when these 4GW thinkers attempt to create a historical framework for these dynamics of state power and non-state violence. By offering a simplistic model of the past four centuries of warfare, they ignore all of the variations and fluxuations the power of the state faced througout those four centuries and around the globe. In one breath Sayen acknowledges this “[the process of establishing states who possessed a monopoly on violence] did not end in the so-called “Third World” until the late 19th Century.” Yet in the next breath he avows that “…the [Westphalia] treaty’s key principles, which in essence gave states the sole right to wage lawful war, quickly spread throughout Europe and, through European colonization, the rest of the world” (emphasis added). He can acknowledge that “non-state actors have always been with us,” yet he can go on to assert that “non-staters are making a comeback,” implying that they must have be returning from somewhere."
"Wiggins" the Wohlstetterian blogger at OSD has challenged me to throw my hat into the ring on the question of the validity of the 4GW school's historical case for their theory, which as Lind himself recently wrote, has to do with the van Creveldian premise " ...At the core of 4GW is a crisis of legitimacy of the state".
Challenge accepted.
UPDATE:
Military theorist John Robb at Global Guerillas weighs in:
"My take: the state vs. state generational framework of the 4GW theory has run its course. It is extremely useful as a method of describing the state's use of proxies to fight other states. It accurately describes the rise of the use of proxy guerrilla wars by cold war opponents and proxy terrorism by developing nations as a means to achieve objectives without conventional/nuclear conflict. We've gone beyond the proxy model and therefore beyond the 4GW generational framework. "
Read John's post in full.
I'm taking this debate with the seriousness it deserves and I will lay out a comprehensive critique in the near future. ¶ 7:59 PM
Kingdaddy of Arms and Influence, who produced the high quality "Counterinsurgency is Hard" series that I featured here has begun a second, impressive, COIN series, " Counterinsurgency is Doable -Part I." and " Part II". Check it out
Also, at Opposed System Design we have insightful commentary on the war of words between the men of DNI and their critics in " 4GW, Pro or Con". An excerpt:
"We can avoid much of the angst associated with 4GW if we view it as a movement and not as a theory. The ranks of prominent 4GW thinkers include many of the “acolytes” of the late John Boyd. As such, they share an admirably tenacious desire to resist bureaucratic stupidity and a focus on the underlying challenges faced by our soldiers. Over the past fifteen years, they have identified non-state warfare as a challenge our military faces. The dynamics of state decline influence our national security in a significant way now, and they are dedicated to considering the consequences of these dynamics. But this is not where the controversy lies.
Where the conflict comes is when these 4GW thinkers attempt to create a historical framework for these dynamics of state power and non-state violence. By offering a simplistic model of the past four centuries of warfare, they ignore all of the variations and fluxuations the power of the state faced througout those four centuries and around the globe. In one breath Sayen acknowledges this “[the process of establishing states who possessed a monopoly on violence] did not end in the so-called “Third World” until the late 19th Century.” Yet in the next breath he avows that “…the [Westphalia] treaty’s key principles, which in essence gave states the sole right to wage lawful war, quickly spread throughout Europe and, through European colonization, the rest of the world” (emphasis added). He can acknowledge that “non-state actors have always been with us,” yet he can go on to assert that “non-staters are making a comeback,” implying that they must have be returning from somewhere."
"Wiggins" the Wohlstetterian blogger at OSD has challenged me to throw my hat into the ring on the question of the validity of the 4GW school's historical case for their theory, which as Lind himself recently wrote, has to do with the van Creveldian premise " ...At the core of 4GW is a crisis of legitimacy of the state".
Challenge accepted.
UPDATE:
Military theorist John Robb at Global Guerillas weighs in:
"My take: the state vs. state generational framework of the 4GW theory has run its course. It is extremely useful as a method of describing the state's use of proxies to fight other states. It accurately describes the rise of the use of proxy guerrilla wars by cold war opponents and proxy terrorism by developing nations as a means to achieve objectives without conventional/nuclear conflict. We've gone beyond the proxy model and therefore beyond the 4GW generational framework. "
Read John's post in full.
I'm taking this debate with the seriousness it deserves and I will lay out a comprehensive critique in the near future. ¶ 7:59 PM
Comments:
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If it's a crisis of legitimacy of the state, it may be a self-inflicted one.
The grand educational project of the past 130 years has been the destruction of identity. Liberal education is designed to create relatvists, to inroduce critical thinking, and to break free of the past.
In other words, create a need for belonging where none existed before.
So now instead of widespread if petty sub-national groups, we have a highly-cognitive elite, a middle morrass of nothingness, and among far too many a need to belong.
The (slow) rise of competitive primary and secondary education in the United States, coupled with an affinity for Confucian methods in China, may show a rejection of liberal education methods.
Ultimately the morality of liberating or traditionalizing education may be besides the point. If liberal education sows fields for a 4GW harvest, it will be abandoned to defend the State.
The grand educational project of the past 130 years has been the destruction of identity. Liberal education is designed to create relatvists, to inroduce critical thinking, and to break free of the past.
In other words, create a need for belonging where none existed before.
So now instead of widespread if petty sub-national groups, we have a highly-cognitive elite, a middle morrass of nothingness, and among far too many a need to belong.
The (slow) rise of competitive primary and secondary education in the United States, coupled with an affinity for Confucian methods in China, may show a rejection of liberal education methods.
Ultimately the morality of liberating or traditionalizing education may be besides the point. If liberal education sows fields for a 4GW harvest, it will be abandoned to defend the State.
alright dan. i've had just about enough of your liberal education anipathy. either do as your told or sit down.
just kidding. in all seriousness i think we are at a disagreement, as over at robb's blog, on what these terms really mean.
let me propose a hypothesis. liberal education doesn't exist in the US and has not so existed in almost one hundred years.
my definition of liberal education is the classic one. the trivium and quadrivium. a true generalist framework which, if it does anything (which is debatable), it allows the recreation of identity upon completion.
here i quote the late mortimer j adler:
"Our educational problem is how to produce free men, not hordes of uncultivated, trained technicians. Only the best liberal schooling can accomplish this. It must include all the humanities as well as mathematics and the sciences. It must exclude all merely vocational and technical training."
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just kidding. in all seriousness i think we are at a disagreement, as over at robb's blog, on what these terms really mean.
let me propose a hypothesis. liberal education doesn't exist in the US and has not so existed in almost one hundred years.
my definition of liberal education is the classic one. the trivium and quadrivium. a true generalist framework which, if it does anything (which is debatable), it allows the recreation of identity upon completion.
here i quote the late mortimer j adler:
"Our educational problem is how to produce free men, not hordes of uncultivated, trained technicians. Only the best liberal schooling can accomplish this. It must include all the humanities as well as mathematics and the sciences. It must exclude all merely vocational and technical training."
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