Debate over The Generations of War.

[shloky]

Names do matter as long as the meaning they take is held constant or agreed upon by those using the names (I think Wilf has argued for this in other threads). And the failure to do this is part of my beef with 4GW guys.

Nah.

Depending on who does the writing, differnt pieces of chum are taken from the bucket that Wilf describes above and are then presented as 4GW.

Nature of the 4GW beast. You want as many concurrent loops as possible, generating as much insight as possible.

Were we to all line up under a 4GW banner (which, arguably, we do, once a year) it would be a very varied group of people that simply share some common intellectual grounding:

To me, there is great overlap with 4GW. The 1989 article is the base for an intellectual discussion drawing in people such as Col Hammes (4/5GW), Frank Hoffman (Hybrid War), Kalev Sepp (Mosiac War), Echeverra (4GW doesn't exist), Barnett (Agrees with Lind but hates him because of hit piece Lind wrote), and many others trying to describe a condition/framework of warfare that is beyond simple counterinsurgency.

And on we go.

That's right, and its OK. Which is why:

Many of the concepts addressed by various 4GW idealists have merit, but their writings should be vigorously debated to determine what is germaine to the so-what of it all. The so-what is what we we need to change doctrinally, force structure wise, over all government approach, ROE, etc. If it 4GW doesn't drive some change in our approach to fighting (or fighting without fighting), then its authors have failed. That doesn't mean they're entirely wrong, just that their writings were unconvincing. Eric and Ken did a good job of addressing this below.