William Lind, founder of Fourth Generation Warfare theory, references Russell Kirk quite often in his writings. Google "Russell Kirk" and "William Lind" and you find these Examples:

"Russell Kirk, the grand old man of the post-war American
conservative movement"

"As Russell Kirk wrote, there is no surer way of making someone your enemy"

"as Russell Kirk wrote, conservatism is the negation of ideology"

"even to Russell Kirk conservatives like myself"

It appears that William Lind is a dedicated follower of Russell Kirk's brand of conservatism. So what influence has Kirk had on the development of 4GW?

Kirk is a follower of the 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke. Burke argued that a society is structured on traditions. It takes a society generations and generations to evolve traditions that will support it. For example, the U.S. Constitution is a continuation of thousands of years of British political and societal traditions. Their motto is, “Constitutions are not invented, they grow.”

Kirk and Burke abhorred societies based upon "abstractions." In other words, a society cannot be based on an abstract theory like communism or “state of nature doctrines.” The French Revolution was heavily criticized by Burke for trying to destroy the old French monarchical society in order to create a new revolutionary republic built on abstract principals.

Conservatives who are ardent followers of this linking tend to believe that once a society’s traditions are destroyed, that society itself is inevitably destroyed. I make the assertion that the emphasis on “traditions” vs. “abstractions” in Kirk’s thinking makes his followers more prone to predict the inevitable destruction of the “nation-state.” I think that 4GW’s absolute assertion that the nation-state is being destroyed by non-state actors directly descends, in part, from the Kirkian emphasis on traditional society vs. revolutionary abstract theories.

The non-state actors represent the newest threat to traditional society. Revolutionary in form, they seek to destroy the state and its traditions through various means and build a new society based on abstract norms.