JUNE 2009 - THIS MONTH'S WEB EXCLUSIVE

Fifth-Generation Warfare

Are we reinventing the wheel?

by Maj Mark W. Elfers

LtCol Stanton S. Coerr’s article, “Fifth-Generation Warfare: Warfare Versus the Nonstate” (MCG, Jan09), introduces several ideas that describe current and future conflicts. The author states, “[O]ur next conflict could well be small, morally confusing, and idea centered, combining the worst ends of Saigon, Mogadishu, 11 September 2001, and Baghdad.” LtCol Coerr’s first point is that America’s fifth-generation warfare (5GW) irregular opponent may not have a center of gravity (COG). His second is that the state will lose its position as the prime mover and redresser of grievance. The third is that success in 5GW is inversely proportional to the amount of military force used. The following are counterpoints to LtCol Coerr’s thesis.

COGs

The idea that an irregular warfare opponent has no moral or physical COG depends entirely on one’s definition of COG. If an enemy’s moral COG is understood to be a leader who provides long-range vision upon which the organization bases its actions, whose physical presence is not required to motivate the organization, and whose reputation leads to recruitment of new members and tacit support by nonmembers, these organizations have moral COGs.

An irregular warfare organization might be lucky enough to happen upon a leader who has the intellect, the charisma, the energy, the vision, and the industry to become a moral COG as defined above. The word luck is appropriate. It was luck that we had Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt when we needed them. It was luck that our Allies had Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle. Our enemies are lucky to have leaders like Osama bin Laden, Abu Sayyaf, or Mullah Omar; these men are likely candidates as our enemy’s moral COGs. Moral COGs are not required, but when they exist, they can strike a blow against their opponents. The character of irregular warfare does not preclude moral COGs.

An organization’s moral COG has certain capabilities, some of which are stated above. In order to do those things, the COG requires physical security, an overarching message, and perhaps an informational vacuum into which to broadcast his message, for example. In fact, this may be the requirement most vulnerable to coalition action. A well-promulgated countermessage, or messages, may cause the moral COG to lose prominence and thus lose his ability to generate those critical capabilities. All moral COGs have vulnerabilities; we must identify and exploit them.

Similarly, if the enemy’s physical COG is those individuals or groups of individuals that physically attack friendly troops, civilians, or property, then irregular warfare opponents have physical COGs. Thus, individuals or groups of individuals who act violently toward Americans or American property are the enemy’s physical COGs. Without these people, no organization can wage any type of warfare.

This physical COG has certain capabilities. These men can kill Americans, fly airplanes into buildings, detonate bombs in subways, or plant roadside bombs. If a group of individuals exists that would like to act violently toward Americans or American property but is unable to for any reason, it cannot wage irregular warfare. If a group of men would like to strike but cannot, the group would not be a COG.

In this example, the enemy’s COG has several requirements, such as equipment, training, leadership, new recruits, and a freedom of action, to name only a few. One or more of these requirements may be critical; its absence would preclude successful missions. For example, irregular warfare opponents require new recruits to successfully attack American targets. These recruits must be motivated, healthy and physically able, intelligent, and brave. They must believe in the cause enough to leave family and friends and go off to fight. This specific critical requirement might be vulnerable to American action. American—or even global—efforts might convince this new recruit that he should be at home, at school, or at work, essentially anywhere else but at an irregular warfare training camp. Table 1 illustrates this example.

The point of these preceding paragraphs is that any organization that physically strikes out at America and lands effective blows has, by one definition, at least one physical COG. Once that COG is identified and rigorously studied, vulnerabilities may be revealed. These vulnerabilities are the key to taking the enemy apart, rendering him incapable of organized action.1

The State or the States?

LtCol Coerr’s second point is that the:

...accelerating chaos of the Third and Fourth Worlds, shifting international alliances, and the increasing interest of transnational actors in fomenting and supporting chaos will lead to the end of the state as prime mover and redresser of grievance....

He goes on to state that “Islam has no state and is the stronger for it.”

As in any crisis, the size of the response must be proportional to the crisis. If 5GW is conducted on a global battlefield, no one state will be capable of defeating it. However, many states, acting in concert globally, could defeat it. Only a state can conduct the state-to-state diplomacy required to forge an international team focused on solving a single problem. Therefore, the state will retain a role as a globally focused prime mover and partner to global redress of grievance.

Islam is a religion based upon a single text, the Qur’an. This single text is translatable and open to interpretation. As Qur’an translation continues into new languages around the world and populations can read the text for themselves, the global Islamic population will become less centralized and less leadable. The Christian Reformation provides a historical example. Thus, the Muslim population available for recruitment into an organization that espouses a totalitarian view of Islam will eventually shrink.3

Military Power

LtCol Coerr’s final argument is that success in 5GW is inversely proportional to military power used during the conflict. This argument should find overwhelming support throughout the world’s professional militaries. Every successful campaign designed to defeat an irregular warfare opponent melded governance, economics, education, and health care with military action. However, the author states that:

Using our military strength against us, Osama bin Laden destabilized the entire Western world, drove us into spending what could end up as over $3 trillion, turned both the angry world underclass and the educated European elite against the very idea of American power, ground world financial markets to a halt, and ignited a two-front war.
Osama bin Laden did none of these things. Osama bin Laden led an organization that fielded a small team of criminals to the United States that would eventually fly three airplanes into American buildings and one into Pennsylvania farmland. The events listed by LtCol Coerr are results of American policies and decisions made as a good faith effort to provide security for American citizens. Rather than foolishly giving Osama bin Laden credit for these events and thereby increasing his stature, academia should focus on the constitutional authority, duty, and limits of executive and legislataive power—namely declaring war and overseeing its execution.

Conclusion

The nature of warfare remains unchanged. War is a violent, difficult, physical, and psychological struggle between two conflicting organizations. The individual characters of specific campaigns differ. Civilian leaders, guided by a well-defined, long-term national grand strategy, must identify a campaign’s goal. This goal must be measurable, easy to understand, and achievable within the nation’s or the coalition’s resource constraints. Once the campaign goal is defined and subsequently given to the military, military professionals must devote considerable intellectual rigor defining and understanding the problem, the enemy, his COGs, and their corresponding vulnerabilities. Only then can they develop a campaign plan that achieves the assigned campaign goals. A new definition of warfare that ignores these basic, simple truths about war will not improve our ability to wage it.

Wrapping current irregular warfare opponents in a mysterious and incomprehensible cloak of radical Islam is a mistake. When current irregular warfare opponents are broken down to their basic components, one finds highly organized international criminal organizations. They conspire to kill people and to destroy property in order to develop or to secure their own positions of power. They use religion because it polarizes the issue and hides their fundamental criminal nature.4

Once the nation identifies and understands the most basic components of irregular warfare opponents, the nation can shape these elements into a global countermessage. For instance, if the persuadable portion of humanity views irregular warfare opponents as common criminals vice Muslim heroes, or worse as martyrs, latent support for these organizations may slowly disappear. We must change the world’s view of these organizations by classifying them in their most elemental, easy to understand terms. Once we have done so and have translated those terms into a message that resonataes with the global audience, we can—with our international partners—systematically weaken them until they exist only as a regional annoyance and cultural embarrassment. This Nation’s military intellectual capital is best spent focused on understanding the enemy and developing a way to defeat him, not reinventing the wheel.

Notes

1. Strange, Dr. Joseph, and R. Iron, Understanding Centers of Gravity and Critical Vulnerabilities, Part 1 and Part 2, available at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/cog1.doc and www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/cog2.doc, accessed 14 January 2008.

2. American is used here; however, every irregular warfare physical attack unit will be focused against some target that might not necessarily be American, Dr. Strange, e-mail to the author, 22 January 2009.

3. This idea was introduced to the author by Paul Goble in Quantico, 16 December 2008.

4. Every individual campaign plan must start with a detailed COG analysis that specifically identifies the capabilities, requirements, and potential vulnerabilities of that campaign’s particular enemy. Current irregular warfare op-
ponents who use a totalitarian interpretation of Islam to recruit supporters do not necessarily define the future of irregular warfare, Dr. Strange, e-mail to author, 22 January 2009.

Additional Resources

FOURTH-GENERATION WARFARE

Fourth-Generation Warfare: Another Look - December 1994

by William S. Lind, Maj John F. Schmitt, USMCR, and Col Gary I. Wilson, USMCR

Other Responses to "4th Generation" - March 1995

by LtCol Charles A. Krohn, U.S. Army (Ret); Nadir Alan El-Farra; Dr. Robert J. Bunker; and Reginald J. Ghiden

Fourth-Generation War - March 1993

by William Christie

FIFTH-GENERATION WARFARE

Fifth-Generation War - January 2009

By LtCol Stanton S. Coerr, USMCR