The sector of military-political thinking that deals with “small wars” is particularly fertile right now – an entire generation of soldiers, scholars and soldier-scholars can thank Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush for giving them something to write about. Obviously not all of it is rubbish – in fact, some of it is excellent – but sometimes it’s easy to suspect that much of the theory is about securing uncertain funding rather than unstable countries. David Axe (whose writing generally falls into the “not rubbish” category) is contributing to a new book on “fifth-generation warfare”:
The “fourth generation” of war entailed irregular combatants fighting for an ideological cause, seeking to remake society according to their ideals. Fifth-generation war, or 5GW, now coalescing, is less clearly ideological but just as sweeping in its goals. 5GW is when a party exploits or encourages an existing or emerging crisis to achieve strategic goals that those most directly involved in the crisis might not even be aware of.
To be honest, that sounds a bit like the Cold War (at least the version I studied at university) than some entirely new phenomenon, but fifth-generation warfare is a widely-accepted concept. The beauty of this particular concept is that – rather excitingly! – it lacks any clear definition. This means that absolutely anybody can write absolutely anything about it – truly a gift horse for the military-academic complex. I wonder what we would see if we looked the gift horse in the mouth – the remote possibility that none of this theory seems to be helping anybody to win any wars?
The Yorkshire Ranter has suspicions regarding similar rumblings about “CyberWarfare 2.0″, suspicions which lead him to conclude that the concept is of more value to the accountant than the academy. I wouldn’t go so far to say that about “fifth-generation warfare” – oh, alright. I would.