The Clausewitz Collection (merged thread)

[Bill Moore]

Tc I have read "Unrestricted Warfare" and concur with your line of thought as far as you expressed it. 4GW can be used to supplement conventional strategies, or used in place of them. I think both the U.S. and USSR employed elements of 4GW against one another, but they were always ready to ramp it up to mutual assured destruction, so in effect the MAD strategy as strange as it sounds had a moderating effect. I think this is where the non-state and state actor employing 4GW differ.

The State actor has centers of gravity that are vulnerable to conventional military attacks, especially by a superior hostile military force. This means State actors will “normally” employ 4GW with a measure of restraint, because they likely do not want to escalate the conflict to the point that they are on the receiving end of conventional military strikes against their security forces and economic infrastructure. Libya was a perfect example of a State employing 4GW that crossed the threshold and was severely punished.

Iran is using 4GW against Israel via a number of surrogate groups. Personally I think Israel is pursuing the wrong strategy to counter it, although there are very few, if any, good options. Maybe the best option is to punish the State sponsoring these attacks? Iran is playing an incredibly dangerous game of brinkmanship with their activities directed against Israel and the U.S., and thumbing their noses at the West with their alleged nuclear program. I won’t discount the complex problems associated with attacking Iran, but allowing a State to play 4GW at an increasingly dangerous level without any response may be more dangerous.

A State actor employing 4GW is worrisome, but they seem to have some constraints, even the extreme ones like Iran. Non State actors on the other hand will employ 4GW tactics/strategy to the extremes possible because they do not have centers of gravity that are vulnerable to conventional military attacks, thus their risk assessment does not persuade them to only push so far then stop. This was validated today with their latest plot uncovered for non-state actors to employ 4GW to murder up to thousands of civilians by blowing up a number of commercial airliners. If a State committed an attack (a crime) like this there would be a very, very severe price to pay, but a non State organization executes an attack like this secure that we can only escalate the conflict so much, and if we escalate carelessly we’ll play into their hands. If we don’t respond we’ll play into their hands. These people won’t hesitate to use WMD against our citizens, and since conventional war fighting theories do not apply against this type of enemy, I would hope MG Scales would be open to additional methods to frame and address the problems we’re facing, which EBO is only an attempt at. It is a far from perfect attempt at doing so, but it does have some merits that should be pursued. None of us can afford the luxury of being myopic in our use of strategies. Very loosely paraphrasing Bruce Lee’s philosophy, he stated that “the usefulness of a cup is its emptiness, so empty your mind of the traditional dogma, so you can learn”. Maybe the paraphrase isn’t even close, but you get my point .