America cannot win a 4GW — a long-term war of ideas — because she will betray herself first. Within a generation of the enslavement of Europe and China to Stalinism, arrogant American liberals combined with comforatble American leftists to do their best to defeat American action in the Vietnam War, and make South-East Asia safe for Communism.
If history repeats itself, or at least rhymes, within a generation of 9/11 active support of al Qaeda inspired movements should be fashionable on college campuses.
The reason that this treasonous behavior is more common among the left and the right is pretty clear: left-of-center politics is centered around the ideas such as “society should speak with more than one voice.” As long as one system is powerful — and America’s system is powerful, because it serves her citizens and her own future needs very well — the leftism distrust of authority will lead many of them to support whatever movement seems most able to destablize the established order.
As a method of defending our country, 4GW is passe.
While America cannot win a 4GW, she can win a 5GW — a war of hidden movements. America won the Cold War because, in spite of losing popular support for the struggle against Communism, she created institutions that kept the war going regardless of the will of the people or most political leaders. The Military-Industrial complex that gave America the ability to fight a world war long after the intellectual elite had despaired over nuclear “victory” was central to success.
To win this Long War against al Qaeda and her friends, we have to fight a 5GW. We have to build a Military-Industrial complex for fighting all Qaeda — what one might call a “Military-Industrial-Systems Administration-Complex” after the work of Thomas P.M. Barnett — long after political will has evaporated. We need an iron triangle of bureaucrats, contractors, and Congressmen to support the war out of reasons that have nothing to do with ideology, or else we will lose this war once the ideological pendulum has swung.
In a recent post, Dr. Barnett points out that there are now more contractors than soldiers in Iraq. This is a good sign, but not good enough. Future wars must be fought by locals, by private contractors, and others who are not motivated by ideology. That’s the way 5th Generation Wars are won. That’s the way the 5GW against al Qaeda will be won.
I’ve written three major posts on the 5th Generation of Modern Warfare
Additionally, there is an excellent blog dedicated to 5GW theory, named Dreaming 5GW after my original post, that I suggest that all check out.
