Fourth Generation Warfare and Its Impact on the Army
Abstract
In 1989, the authors of an article entitled, "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation," offered a glimpse of the future rooted in the past. They postulated an America in crisis conditioned over time to accept tolerance and reject its unifying Western identity in favor of a new order of multiculturalism. Their position initially found little traction until such notables as Martin van Creveld, Samuel Huntington, and Robert Kaplan independently confirmed in the 1990's what the authors of the article had been saying all along. The authors of The Changing Face of War argued that the decline of the West in a world rife with cultural conflicts and the powerful influences of a form of cultural Marxism known as political correctness were combining in America to create conditions for a new generation of warfare. Their vision included a form of warfare that bypassed the military altogether to strike directly at the culture itself. They believed that the abandonment of Western, Judeo-Christian culture in lieu of a multicultural state where individuality was prized above national unity risked internal divide and eventual collapse of society. This fragmentation left the national military wanting in both strategy and structure. The resulting decay would generate the conditions necessary to facilitate the aggressions of the modern day Visigoths. This paper looks at some of the issues in this proposal and asks whether the Army is doing enough to address these serious threats. It reviews the scholarly theories presented by a number of notable futurists in an effort to measure the influences of such forces on the American State, its institutions, and its traditional philosophy of war. In the end, the author concludes that America is indeed in transition with an Army unable to grasp that the greatest threat to its existence is the loss of its culture.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 08, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA381853
Entities
People
- Robert B. Polk
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College