There is a trend here with Lind's work within the field of military theory.

The guy is brilliant, but he comes up with poor naming conventions for his theories. It happened with MW and now 4GW. I understand why he named them this, but only after hours of sitting down with him and eating copius amounts of food. That's the rub.

I disagree with Cavguy to an extent - I think 4GW can be used as a framework for prediction, and it starts with recogizing that the nation-state is failing. Just because there are more nations in the world doesn't mean anything if they are weak, illigitimate and broken.

I spoke to a Naval Academy history class in 06 about 4GW and Afghanistan as I had just returned from that Mecca of Central Asia culture. When doing some research for my brief, I found the Foreign Policy "Failed State" index. I then started scanning it, and looked at the countries we had troop committments to, and it reinforced my beliefs on 4GW.

Now I'm at CGSC, and we get to read theorists like Kaplan and Huntington, who describe a world very similar to what Lind and Co. wrote in 1989, 1994 and for the last 7 years. They have acceptable frameworks - even though Lind is quoted by Huntington, and Van Creveld (who wrote The Transformation of War in 91) is quoted throughout Kaplan's work.

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.