Quote Originally Posted by Hawkwood View Post

The core point in the 4GW argument is that it is the collapse of the moral and legal construct of the state that gives the opponent their strength and that trying to put the state back together militarily won't work, the issues of info and lethality proliferation are second tier issues that support this anomaly.

The 4GW argument that it is our inability to conceptualise the issues rather than our military capabilities needs to be considered deeply rather than rejected because its advocates have the personaility of a wire brush.
As I tried to indicate in my earlier posts on this thread, just war theory has, or should have, a major play in this discussion. States collapse, as you note, due to a loss of moral and legal legitimacy in the hearts and minds of the governed. Any attempt to resurrect failed states using other than the most "pure" (morally and legally speaking) efforts just will not cut it. I made my points about risk because measuring attitudes about risk to one's populace seems to be a good way of measuring the "apppeal" of the leadership of a given state (legitimate or otherwise--even AQ could be considered a state of sorts).
The story we tend to tell ourselves about governments is that we submit to them because they make our lives better somehow. When they cease to be good for us, we try to change them or get rid of them. This is not a new concept, nor does it require some hokey theory about different "generations" of warfare in order to be understood by the hoi polloi.