Lind can’t have it both ways, arguing that we are seeing the unfolding of a Hegelian ideal and also maintain he’s dealing with population biology. If he would assert both at the same time, he’s making the same mistake that Fabius Maximus did with his “darwinian ratchet.” [1]

Lind’s theory is not falsifiable as we need to wait until the end of the quality shift untli we can even know what 4GW is, and Robb has never bothered to define his terms. The grades in XGW vary in terms of the dispersel of kinetic violence. Whatever words one use to describe them is only valuable as a standard heuristic.

XGW is the best of the variants by default. None of the rest show any sense of being useful, in the policy or social science sense.

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2007/10/24/in-search-of-a-darwinian-ratchet-the-anc-the-plo-and-the-raf.html

One evolutionary analogy is treating bacteria with non-lethal doses of drugs. The bacteria develop resistence to the drug. Similarly effective security services cull the herd of insurgents, so that the most resistent survive and and recruit/train.

This is nothing profound or deep about this.

Perhaps the analogy gets in the way, which I've seen happen before (perhaps I'm not a good analogizer!).

Skip the evolution analogy, which does not seem to work for you. In many insurgencies, against both domestic and foreign foes, we see this. Israel's opponents have learned to more effectively fight, resisting its security forces. Even more strongly we see this in Iraq.

Unfortunately these communication difficulties are common on the leading edge of theory, in any field.

I've had similar thoughts about the weaknesses of this perspective.

[1] http://opposedsystemsdesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/13/evolving-thoughts-on-terrorism/

[2] http://opposedsystemsdesign.blogsome.com/2006/02/12/non-state-groups-have-vulnerabilities-too/

Thanks for the great comment! I opined over at your blog.

Fabius,

Wow! Detailed!

“Perhaps you are taking this too literally! It’s just a metaphor. Not as if I said that insurgents’ gene pools actually change. As TE Lawrence said before using one, “analogy in human things was fudge.””

Evolution is change in variation of frequencies. In the context of 4GW, evolution refers to change in the variation of frequency of insurgent styles. (In other words, that we're not dealing with genetic evolution just doesn't matter.)

To the extent that evolution is darwinian, the change is driven by selection. There is no requirement that the “selection” be in the direction of anything.

Viewing darwinian selection of insurgents as acting to give us more effective enemies is a teleological, egocentric, pre-scientific view of evolution.

As to examples…

a) ANC probably depends on the perspective you take. From the perspective of the Afrikaners, certainly they are facing a soft ethnic cleansing and paying the price for defeat. From the perspective of the developed world, a closed-socialist has transformed into an open-democratic one. From the perspective of the Nationalist government, the ANC was victorious. From the perspective of the West, the ANC was coopted beyond all recognition.

b) Viewing “peoples” as actors in 4GW analysis is mystical and romantic. Why not races? Or mitochondrial colonies? Both are just as (in)capable of purposeful political action as a “people.”

Wars are fought by institutions, whether large-scale and long-lasting (the US government, etc.) or small-scale and transient (al Qaeda in Iraq, etc.). “Peoples” are the seas in which institutions swim, but they have no political will of their own.

c) Certainly the list of ANC, PLO, and RAF is not complete. However, if you're claiming that darwinian evolution selects maximizes for this or that trait, you need some way to show it. It seems you can claim that either the darwinian ratchet always exists or exists most of the time. Clearly, the list of ANC, PLO, and RAF shows that it does not always exist. Therefore, how do you demonstrate that it tends to exist? Or is it merely some fluke, that may exist in this or that minority of cases?

“Some seem to describe someone else’s writings, like “which imagines that we are so important that our enemies very thought and desire is for our harm” Poetry, although I have no idea what it means.”

This is merely aimed at the conviction that darwinian selection wrt warfighting maximizes for success in overcoming ideological foes, which appears to be how you describe the “darwinian ratchet.”

Very thought provoking comment!

1. Perhaps you are taking this too literally! It’s just a metaphor. Not as if I said that insurgents’ gene pools actually change. As TE Lawrence said before using one, “analogy in human things was fudge.”

2. Second, the ratchet is not “the” factor, just “a” factor – one of many 4GW dynamics. It is one of 6 I describe in “Fate of Israel”, and that was not a complete list.

3. You describe the ratchet in 2 ways. Correctly as “giving us more effective enemies.” No so as “maximizing … effective violence against western societies.” 4GW is largely (not exclusively) a struggle for the moral high ground; violence is only one tool in the 4GW toolbox. Nor are 4GW insurgents a threat only to western societies.

4. I find your 3 examples puzzling.

ANC: Their goal was to take power; guerilla war was only one of the means. They won. How does this disprove the ratchet?

PLO: The PLO is not the Palestinian people, nor did my article mention the PLO. Nor did I say that the “PLO was on the verge of statehood” — the 6 factors I described are all long-term in nature. Over the past 30 years the Palestinians have grown stronger, which is my point. Your forecast might be correct, but I don’t understand how your comments apply to what I said.

Red Army Faction: You’re kidding right? The Japanese Communist League – Red Army Factor and the Japanese Red Army were both tiny. The JRA, despite its many successful ops, claimed 40 members. There are 127 million people in Japan. 4GW does not guarantee victory to every tiny group of whackos. Many factors determine if an insurgent group grows to critical mass.

Your conclusions: Some are a burlesque of my views. Like “guarantee us ten-foot-tall enemies.” I've never said that.

The historical record is pretty clear that there is a strong home-court advantage in 4GW, which works strongly against our overseas expeditions. On the other hand, defense is the stronger position in 4GW – which might prove important for us, eventually.

Some seem to describe someone else’s writings, like “which imagines that we are so important that our enemies very thought and desire is for our harm” Poetry, although I have no idea what it means.

Reducing an insurgency to a bacerial-like growth would be a victory for a counter-insurgent force. Bacteria, while seeking rents from the broader organism, are incapable of purposeful political action.

We see the effect of this darwinian evolution in Iraq. An ideologically hostile opponent (al Qaeda in Iraq) is being swamped by a non-ideological rentier class (the Sunni Arab tribes). The former is an enemy. The latter is a problem to be managed.

Israel has seen a similar effect. The PLO has been transformed into a revolutionary organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel into a criminal syndicate that exists to enrich its leadership. An enemy is transformed into a problem.

By referring to evolution, you are not making an analogy. You are making a description. The change in frequencies of insurgent styles in a population is not like evolution, it is evolution. The selection of some frequencies over others is not like darwinian selection, it is darwinian selection.

Anyway, on the Fabius Maximus 'evolutionary ratchet' thing, in brief 'cause I already lost two posts, don't agree with Fab.

1) 'Culling' isn't needed to do this. War games perform the same function. Actual doing performs this function. Attacks may do this, but may not. Luck plays a role. Who flips and provides intel to send a Hellfire may take out a real mover and shaker, or it might leave him alive. The assumption that actions will only leave the 'best', defining best as those who are the most effective and active, alive isn't necessarily true since those could be the ones getting the most attention and most likely to be on the business end of some weapon. It's like saying attrition is irrelevant at some level, and that simply isn't true.

2) The bacteria analogy also fails. Why? Resistant bacteria aren't invulnerable. With staph, something I know a little about, there's a way to deal with it. They possess an organelle that pumps the anti-biotic out. We know of a class of compounds that can disable said pump, which are in all microbials by the way, and having done so can kill them with ridiculously small amounts of anti-biotic in a cocktail(why hasn't this happened yet? The class of compound that does this is a real doozy to synthesize, that's why.). The environment, as you would say, changes. it's the old measure/counter-measure/count-counter-measure dance, which rarely leaves one side vastly superior since the other side reacts and changes tactics to work against the first agents innovations.

3) Fab should probably talk to John over at Argghhh!. He's worked/is working on this problem(instilling good SOP in soldiers) before/as we speak. It isn't just theoretical to him, even though he can speak on the purely theoretical arguments as well.

I'm soooo hating blogspirit right now. I get so many junkmail from your site thanks to your spammers hitting discussions I activated the email me continuances thing for. Sigh.

The differnce between insurgencies and “war games” is that their slow learners die. Most folks who've run large groups have wondered, at some dark point, how better their group would perform if the slows could be shot. This actually happens in insurgencies. Our far far lower casualty rates render this ineffective on our forces. (that's a good thing, on the whole, of course).

Note: when I first proposed this in Fall 2003 — that we fought insurgents who would learn and adapt much faster than us — the experts were still talking about the stupid dead-enders, not worthy foes.

Four years later our “adaptive” enemy is a trendy subject in the literature, and you refer me to the experts to learn all about this. Thank you for the advice, but I'd rather continue to peer ahead thru the fog. What will the experts discover years from now that is visible (if only dimly) today?