4GW is Groundless, and Hereʼs Why

William Pitch January 25, 2017

“War has changed” has become a common refrain in modern pop

culture. Defence analysts and armchair generals alike tell us that the
character of modern war is unlike that of any previous era. Where once
the primary form of warfare was counterforce, with armies fighting
armies, the primary form of modern war is that of armies fighting
insurgencies, or so the theory goes. The idea that modern war is
significantly different from any type of historical war can be found in
places as diverse as scholarly articles and popular films. Two prominent
advocates of this idea have been the strategic theorist William S. Lind,
and the Israeli strategist Martin van Creveld. Both are exponents of 4th
Generation War theory, namely the idea that war has been evolving
through the centuries in successive “generations.” Lind describes these
generations of warfare.[1]

1st Generation: Relies on the line and column as the primary

formation and the smoothbore musket and bayonet as its primary
weapon.
2nd Generation: Still relies on linear fire, but with the genesis of
maneuver emerging and the single-shot bolt-action rifle as the
primary weapon.
3rd Generation: Uses basic infiltration techniques to bypass enemy
defences as well as defence in-depth, with magazine-fed bolt-action
rifles and machine-guns as the primary weapons.
4th Generation: Modern insurgency and counterinsurgency, which
features states facing off against evolved, technologically
sophisticated insurgents who use terrorist attacks to strike directly
at the vulnerable points of modern nations.

An examination of the 4GW theory shows that its authors and exponents
do not seem to believe war as a concept existed prior to the invention of
gunpowder, despite the generations of complex warfare carried out by
ancients.[2] In Fourth Generation War and Other Myths, Dr. Antulio J.
Echevarria II argues 4GW theory is overly technologist, based on a
simplistic view of blitzkrieg theory, and overly focused on predicting the
future.[3] Lind, himself an apostle of the “German technological/strategic
superiority” viewpoint, certainly based his theories in large part on those
of the Wehrmacht Heer during the Second World War.[4]

The validity of the Wehrmachtʼs primacy is now in doubt, meaning that

the main aspects of 4GW are at the very least problematized.[5]
However, what this paper takes issue with is the idea that warfare has
evolved in general. Profound continuities have existed in warfare from the
time humans first picked up heavy sticks, and any attempt to separate it
into neatly delineated iterations or generations risks oversimplification.
By attempting to sort military history, or any history, into neat
generations, we risk overlooking points of continuity that might enhance
our impressions of what “the past” must have been like.

While 4GW theorists admit that nations have fought insurgencies before
the so-called 4GW era, they view modern insurgencies as “evolved
insurgencies” which operate outside the Clausewitzian trinity. As time
goes on, the evolved insurgencies will become increasingly sophisticated
technologically and tactically, using strategic attacks to “judo throw”
modern nations, bringing them down by striking at weak points. Dr.
Echevarria notes that this model failed to predict the raw, unsophisticated
brutality of the Rwandan Genocide, a 4GW conflict that did not fit into
4GW theory. To that I would add the Islamic State. While making
sophisticated use of social media, the Islamic State in its battlefield
tactics and equipment is no more technologically sophisticated than the
Taliban.[6,7]
In fact, Julius Caesarʼs legionnaires in Gaul and Britain encountered
irregular fighters who used tactics that would be familiar to insurgents
and counterinsurgents of today. War has not changed; the tools,
methods, and perceptions of war have. With few exceptions, humans
have been using similar tactics to address counterinsurgency from
ancient times to the present. Counterinsurgency theory suffers a fatal
flaw, as each time the need arises, it seems a hitherto unknown form of
conflict. In ancient Gaul and Britain, in the 19th century Philippines, in
20th and 21st century Afghanistan, the same mistakes were made over
and over again. Each successive generation of warfighters believes they
are fighting a new type of war. As such, the same approach is taken and
the same mistakes are made. This is true from ancient times to the
present day.

During the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar fought one of the first recorded
counterinsurgency conflicts against indigenous Britons.[8] Expecting a
counterforce struggle of the type in which the Roman army specialized,
Caesar organized and deployed his army as if he were fighting another
army of roughly comparable size and training. In one example, a
disparate British tribe, led by the chieftain Cassivellaunus, deployed their
army in the same manner, engaging Caesarʼs forces in the cautious way
favoured by a small but tough band of warriors fighting the largest and
most powerful army in the world. This changed when British forces
attacked a Roman foraging party outside the main Roman encampment.
The foraging party was well-equipped and well-manned—composed of
three entire legions and the whole of Caesarʼs cavalry—and were set
upon by a harassing force of Britons led by Cassivellaunus. The British
forces were completely defeated, and from then on never engaged the
Romans in pitched battle.[9]

The Britons then adopted insurgency techniques that are still familiar
today. For example, when the Roman cavalry sortied out to pillage the
British countryside, they would be ambushed by British chariots hiding in
the woods, forcing the mounted soldiers to keep close to their protecting
infantry.[10] This same technique was used, with success, by Iraqi and
Afghan insurgents against coalition forces in 21st century conflicts.[11]

Bewildered by the constant harassing raids and unable to isolate the

indigenous forces from their hiding spots or supply lines, the mistakes of
the Britons themselves saved Caesarʼs British campaign. Thinking he
could convince the three British kings of Kent to rise against the Romans,
Cassivellaunus attacked the Romans as an organized army, not an
irregular force. During the battle Caesarʼs army smashed the British
forces, taking no losses in the process. Cassivellaunus surrendered, and
Caesar left Britannia and retreated from Gaul, leaving it in the hands of
his regional administrators.[12]

Caesarʼs war against the Britons was the earliest recorded example of an
asymmetrical conflict. While the broad strokes of Caesarʼs campaign
bore little relation to the way modern COIN campaigns are conducted,
Caesarʼs use of cavalry closely corresponds to the way that armour is
used in COIN settings today.[13] In turn, the British response to Caesarʼs
use of cavalry matches up with the methods modern insurgents use to
hamper enemy armour.[14]
While other warriors engaged in operations similar to COIN—suppressing
the population of occupied territories, quelling provincial rebellions—the
study and execution of “small wars” did not emerge as a proper subject
of military scholarship until the late 19th century. It is particularly
interesting to note that the two major European empires of the 19th
century—the French and the British—routinely engaged in such small
wars, colonial wars, and wars of empire worldwide. These small wars
were considered diversions rather than real wars, a stamp on the ticket
for eager expeditionary young officers. One of these young officers was
an Anglo-Irish artilleryman named Charles Edward Callwell. Unlike many
of his brother officers, Callwell took note of the circumstances and
tactics of these small wars, and in 1868 published a monograph, which in
1896 became the book Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice. This
work was the first attempt to address the problem of COIN since Caesar
tried to make sense of the British tactics in his Bellum Britannicum.

A British convoy under attack by mounted Boer guerrillas - South Africa,

1901. (Military History)

While Small Wars was written in 1896, its lessons are strikingly and
sharply relevant to todayʼs world. The chapters contain lessons on such
things as the winning over of an occupied nationʼs civilian populace, the
reasons insurgency is attractive, patrolling skills, and bush and hill
warfare.[15] The writing style is brisk, and speaks of seasoned
experience. While not meant as a strict doctrinal manual, it nevertheless
contains many useful insights and is extremely informative. It begins with
a sort of overview of the various types of irregular fighters, organized and
unorganized, that a colonial soldier could expect to encounter.[16] The
first few types of insurgent are lumped generally together; proper
organization and military skills are less important than traditional tribe or
clan methods of warfare and the infliction of maximum damage upon the
enemy. While fierce, Callwell notes, these can be dealt with without
undue trouble. The chapter changes pace when it comes to the Boers.

Callwell was a veteran of the Second Boer War, a turn-of-the-19th

century conflict between Britain and modern-day South Africa.[17] It is
safe to say that, until that conflict, a guerrilla war on the organization,
scale, and effectiveness of the Boers had not yet been encountered by
the British. The shock of the British encountering the Boers is equivalent
to Caesarʼs first encounter with the British warriors, for sheer shock
value. When an established military force encounters an organized
irregular force, it is forced to come to terms with the fact that its
traditional counterforce tactics no longer apply. The British did not, it
seems, study Julius Caesarʼs British campaign and were forced to learn
the lessons in the same way Caesar did—the hard way.

This, then, is an eternal lesson of any proper COIN operation—the force

must be flexible.[18] A rigidly trained, top-down military practised at
performing complex drill maneuvers under fire—as the British Army was
at the time of the Second Boer War—will consistently fail against an
insurgency because it does not have the operational flexibility to respond
properly.

To properly stabilize a COIN situation, a flexible force equipped with

cultural knowledge must engage and weaponize the civilian populace
against the insurgents. In their heavy-handed use of concentration
camps, population isolation, and trench warfare, the British bashed out a
victory but did not truly win—as evidenced by the Boer support for the
Germans during the First and Second World Wars.[19] Had they studied
Caesarʼs campaigns, they might have learned from his mistakes. Namely,
approaching an indigenous population in a COIN context with brutality
and suspicion might ensure a battle won, but it will just as surely ensure a
lost war.

Yet, when Callwell wrote his treatise on small wars, he did not reference
Caesar at all. Similarly, the US militaryʼs “groundbreaking” manual on
COIN, FM 3-24, never mentions Callwell. This is the fundamental flaw in
4GW theory. By focusing on categorizing military history into neatly
defined generations, it misses the essential points of continuity that exist
within the history of irregular warfare, insurgency, and COIN. On close
examination, the wars our ancestors fought were not so very different
from the so-called evolved insurgencies of 4GW. It is often said that war
never changes. That sentiment, it seems, is more true than we know.

William Pitch is a third-year political science student at the University of

Winnipeg, and a first-year Officer Cadet in the Regular Officer Training
Program of the Canadian Armed Forces. The opinions expressed here in
no way express the official position of the Canadian Armed Forces or any
other government entity.

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Header Image: Caesar's first invasion of Britain: Caesar's boat is pulled to

the shore while his soldiers fight the resisting indigenous warriors.
Lithograph by W. Linnell after E. Armitage. (Wikimedia)

Notes:

[1] William S Lind, “Understanding Fourth Generation War” Antiwar.com

(2004). Retrieved from http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=1702.

[2] Ibid., 17.

[3] Antulio J. Echevarria II, Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths
(Carlisle, PA: US Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2005), 5-6.

[4] Ibid., 14-15.

[5] Ibid., 15.

[6] Barak Barfi, “The Military Doctrine of the Islamic State and the Limits
of Baʼathist Influence” CTC Sentinel 9, no. 4 (2016) 18-24.

[7] Ehsan Mehmood Khan, “A Strategic Perspective on Taliban Warfare”

Small Wars Journal (2010). Retrieved from
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/a-strategic-perspective-on-taliban-
warfare.

[8] Robert Nowlen, “Caesarʼs Expeditions to Britain and Modern

Counterinsurgency Theory” (senior honours thesis, Eastern Michigan
University, 2011), 1.

[9] Nowlen, “Caesarʼs Expeditions," 8-12.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 38-40.

[12] Ibid., 15.

[13] Ibid., 28.

[14] Ibid., 40.

[15] Charles Edward Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice,
3ed (London: Harrison and Sons, 1906), 5-20. Note that the initial
monograph and the first two editions preceded the Boer War; the third
edition, however, incorporated the insights gleaned by Callwell from that
conflict.

[16] Ibid., 27-30.

[17] Ibid., xvii.

[18] Ibid., 270-300.

[19] Martin Schonteich and Henri Boshoff, “Volk”, Faith, and Fatherland:
The Security Threat Posed by the White Right (Institute for Security
Studies Monograph Series, 2003) 13-15.