Quote Originally Posted by Major Strickland
Please excuse my ignorance with 4GW; however, it appears as if several others are asserting that what Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Sayyaf, or Tamil Tigers do is not an extension of politics or political in nature, due to the fact they are not State entities? I would argue that these groups follow an obvious extension of politics as Mao or Clausewitz understood it.
I have ben following this topic for sometime on the web and still not sureI have a solid grasp of 4GW myself. One problem is that it seems to mean different things to different people. Most would probably point to Bill Lind as the "guru" of 4GW and he usually points to a misunderstanding of 4GW even among proponents of it. One common misconception Bill points to is how it is generally confused with insurgency/counterinsurgency but his point is that it is not marked by that - it is a reference to non-state entities being the primary combatants as opposed to state-sponsored militaries. His definition seems to be that 4GW is the end of state monopoly on war. He points to a time prior to the beginning of state monopoly as analogous to today - so it has been around a long time indeed but was almost extinct until more recent times. I think that in one of the links above Mr. Lind suggests Barb Tuchman's book, _Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century_ for a good understanding of what we are returning to.