xGW theory has been under scrutiny in the Twitterverse, and by the usual suspects. Although xGW theory has seemed to progress in the past few years it is still a solution for a problem that we cannot seem to figure out. I have even asked what use is xGW?

Selil offers his drawing skills to find a unified generational warfare theorem. His visualizations are very inspiring — so in fact, that they motivated me to think about my own diagrammatical solution to the xGW problem. Read the rest of this entry »

CGW has an interesting rejoinder to my suggestion for reforming xGW by doing away with the chronologic aspect. Curtis says something very striking in his post:

If xGW is merely [My italics — YH] to be a system of categorization — of label-making — we would be freed to fight however we want without bothering to think much about xGW.

I think this is a important observation, and possibly a key reason for the lukewarm reception xGW/GMW has received in academic military theory circles. It is summed up in the following reaction: “So you have come up with some categories, so what? How does that help us fight a war?” One could argue that knowing is half the battle, but still, that is only half the battle. Curtis argues that xGW should be more than a simple system of categorization and should be used for strategic decision-making. Curtis says:

One force sees its opponent’s activity, assesses itself, and seeks to develop a better method of fighting. For me, this is at heart the greatest strength of xGW.

This reminds me of the kid’s game Paper, Scissors, Rock where Paper > Rock > Scissors > Paper > … and so on. Figuring out the relationship between Zero to Sixth(?) Generation/Grade Warfare might be the next step in the research program.

Take the strategist’s advice to Break Strategy:

So, what should be the ultimate aim [of war]? I like Sun-tzu’s idea, expressed in The Art of War: “The highest form of warfare is to attack strategy itself”. Don’t focus on something as nebulous as breaking “the enemy’s will to win” [See here — YH]. Break tangible things, like the enemy’s objectives, plans, and ideas. Break his strategy.

One has to recognize strategy to break strategy. xGW could provide the necessary tool for the breaking.

Prior to attending RMC I was a strong proponent of xGW. Like so many of the military students I would meet over the next three years, I latched on to the latest and greatest. After a few months worth of study, I gained a wider perspective and became more critical of many aspects of xGW. Dan of tdaxp addresses some of my concerns, specifically causality. His proposal to change “generation” to “grade” is a good idea. Dan says:

Grade also has the benefit of not having the strict timeline implications of “generation” while not doing away entirely with the parts of the timeline of XGW that make sense.

This would be an advantage to reconciling xGW theory with mainstream military thought. Still though, I much prefer the categories of conflict that John Boyd proposed in his Patterns of Conflict (pdf, see slide 113).

These categories provided the basis for Lind’s later work on 4GW. The advantage to Boyd’s categories is the ahistorical aspect — there is no chain of causality. As mentioned by Dan above, this is one of the biggest criticisms of xGW. I maintain that xGW should abandon the timeline altogether.

Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down:

Anonymous have been clashing with the CoS for a while now, attacking servers, defacing websites etc. Now it seems the pulling of this Scientology promotional video featuring Tom Cruise (something they have a history of)has put them over the edge. War has been declared. BUT, this time the war will not be limited to teh internets. This flyer started appearing on the net a couple days back, putting the call to swarm the London Church of Scientology on Feb 10th. Check out Threat Level for more background or watch the report on SkyNews.

So who are Anonymous? I have seen some more MSM sites calling Anonymous an “internet-based group.” That is giving them too much credit. Anonymous is the ubiquitous handle for the users of sites like 4chan.org. They are commonly described as a bunch of 15 year olds with too much time on their hands. In other words, Anonymous is a class of internet subculture rather than a group with any cohesiveness. You find them trolling on Usenet, posting YTMND and eBaumsWorld, and raiding from partyvan. They even have an irc channel irc.711chan.org #xenu (lol)

Not that this kind of thing hasn’t happened before, but this particular incident seems to be getting some play outside l33t circles. Moreover, I’m interested to see if their netwar tactics are able to result in an actual mobilization next month.

So, can a call out to a stateless, dispersed class of Internet jihadis by an anonymous leadership be considered 4GW? Have your say in the comments.

Somewhat related: The scenarios from Strategic Communication.

Looks like the Boyd conference went off without a hitch. Sure would’ve liked to have been there. The following CA blogfriends were there and some have already written reviews. I have linked to the reviews that are up already and will update this post when the rest come through I have linked to the reviews and related materials posted by the participants:

• tdaxp OODA revisited | PISRR revisited
• zenpundit Part 1 | Part 2
• Shloky
• John Robb
• A.E.

Swarm theory on National Geographic. Don’t worry, I already sent this to John Robb a few days ago.

Well, that’s one less book on the pile. I finished John Robb’s Brave New War today. I really liked this book, it was fast-paced, concise, full of examples and most importantly rooted in realism.

The book touches on all the stars: old theorists (Sun Tzu, Liddell-Hart); new theorists (Lind, Barnett, Hammes); journos (Friedman, Rashid, Hersh); even Our Bob makes an appearance (pp. 59). Regardless of all the theoretical strands that appear in the book doesn’t really present a Universal Theory of Everything^TM, binding them in the darkness. Rather, I think Robb makes a very important contribution to the literature in describing underlying trends that will prove to be problematic for all the new high-level theories of globalization and warfare evolution. He emphasizes the real-world background noise, providing an extra dimension of practical context for the Core-Gap/4-5GW/Flat world/knifey-spooney crowd. Brave New War is like the theory of dark matter: it doesn’t explain how stuff works, but why theories don’t work as expected in the real world. Global guerillas and systempunkts are features of the futurescape, variables that new theories of war will have to account for. Brave New War gives a jolly good heads-up for the next iteration of conflict theory and is highly recommended for those brave souls intent on dreaming it up.