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September
29, 2001
The Pentagon's
Blueprint
Understanding the "Fourth
Generation of Warfare," And Notes on the Fallout at Home.
By Steve Perry
A New Kind
of War
If you're mystified as to what U.S.
officials envisage when they talk of a long war to be fought
on many fronts by many means, you would do well to read what
the big boys are reading. The Rosetta Stone for discerning the
Bush administration's thinking-or at least the belligerent prejudices
of people like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle-is
a 1989 article that Jeff St. Clair posted for subscribers to
the Counterpunch mail list on Thursday, titled "The Changing
Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation."
Originally published in a journal
called the Marine Corps Gazette, it is a bottomlessly chilling
document. The article traces the history of modern warfare through
three historical phases defined by changes in technology and
tactical notions. At each step along the way, the authors write,
there has been a tendency toward greater diffusion of battlefields
and targets, until at last we have approached the threshold of
"nonlinear" war. The piece is worth reading in
its entirety, but this excerpt will suffice to give a
taste of where we may be headed:
"The fourth generation
battlefield is likely to include the whole of the enemy's society.
Such dispersion, coupled with what seems likely to be increased
importance for actions by very small groups of combatants, will
require even the lowest level to operate flexibly on the basis
of the commander's intent.
"Second is decreasing
dependence on centralized logistics. Dispersion, coupled with
increased value placed on tempo, will require a high degree of
ability to live off the land and the enemy.
"Third is more emphasis
on maneuver. Mass, of men or firepower, will no longer be an
overwhelming factor. In fact, mass may become a disadvantage
as it will be easy to target
"Fourth is a goal of collapsing
the enemy internally rather than physically destroying him. Targets
will include such things as the population's support for the
war and the enemy's culture. Correct identification of enemy
strategic centers of gravity will be highly important.
"In broad terms, fourth
generation warfare seems likely to be widely dispersed and largely
undefined; the distinction between war and peace will be blurred
to the vanishing point. It will be nonlinear, possibly to the
point of having no definable battlefields or fronts. The distinction
between 'civilian' and 'military' may disappear Targets may be
more in the civilian than the military sector."
It all begins to sound familiar,
doesn't it? By these lights there can be no such thing as "collateral
damage," because there's no such thing as innocent bystanders.
This was the mindset of those who mounted the September 11 attacks,
and it's the perspective now being touted by the best minds at
the Pentagon: a war of terror, pure and simple.
And there's this:
"This kind of high-technology
fourth generation warfare may carry in it the seeds of nuclear
destruction. Its effectiveness could rapidly eliminate the ability
of a nuclear-armed opponent to wage war conventionally. Destruction
or disruption of vital industrial capacities, political infrastructure,
and social fabric, coupled with sudden shifts in the balance
of power could easily lead to escalation to nuclear weapons.
This risk may deter fourth generation warfare among nuclear-armed
powers just as it deters major conventional warfare among them
today."
On the other hand, it may not.
Saddam didn't have nukes, after all, and a goodly contingent
of U.S. war planners may just be willing to bet the house that
Osama's friends won't lay their hands on any either. We can only
hope that the fresh wave of reports putting Colin Powell's moderates
back in the ascendant versus Rumsfeld's hawks is indeed correct.
Panic in
the Air and at Sea
Commercial air bookings remain
understandably depressed despite the best efforts of the airlines,
the travel industry, and the White House. Week before last one
man was quoted in wire stories claiming he had been the sole
passenger on an afternoon New York-Boston shuttle, and in the
days following the September 11 bombings the industry reported
at one point that it was flying at an astounding 3 percent of
load capacity. Business has since picked up, but airlines continue
to hemorrhage money. The president has done his part. Speaking
at Chicago's O'Hare Airport this week, Bush exhorted the flying
public to climb back aboard planes; he then assured them that
if any more airliners were hijacked, the Air Force had permission
to shoot them down forthwith. Well, then-dig out those frequently
flier vouchers, hon! (Air Force One, however, is in no apparent
danger: After furiously circulating face-saving reports that
Bush took his circuitous route back to Washington on September
11 owing to "credible evidence" that the president's
plane was in imminent peril of attack, the White House quietly
and belatedly admitted this week that it was all made up.)
The crisis of confidence has
brought forth numerous proposals for improving air security.
Some pilots' representatives have suggested guns in the cockpit.
And on Friday the president of the Association of Flight Attendants
spoke in favor of arming its members with stun guns. "You're
talking about arming pilots and installing bulletproof doors,"
one stew told New York Newsday. "That's fine, but what about
us, while they're all safe and cozy in the cockpit?" Up
in the sky, suddenly, it's the Old West. In that spirit, one
caller to a Minneapolis talk radio station proposed giving guns
to every passenger for the duration of the flight. The host was
unimpressed but the notion has its merits. It would doubtless
improve the quality of service in coach, if nothing else.
Meantime, though, there are
persistent signs that airport security systems remain haphazard
in spite of ceaseless assurances to the contrary. One man was
arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for carrying four box-cutters
onto a commercial flight to prove it could be done, and Friday's
Minneapolis StarTribune reported that security procedures at
Twin Cities International Airport remained inconsistent even
as checkpoint rules were ratcheted up. In a dozen passes through
security stations, reporters were able to pass by with items
that included "a foot-long steel ruler with sharp edges
and points, a spoon handle and small nail scissors." In
the words of an airport spokesperson, "I don't know that
they currently have the ability to check every bag, every phone.
There's always a certain level of risk."
Small wonder no one wants to
fly. Nor are airlines the only ones feeling the pinch. Cruise
lines find themselves in similar straits. Royal Caribbean reported
losses in the neighborhood of $25 million for the week following
the attacks, as did Carnival Cruise Lines. Even allowing for
a certain predictable degree of poor-mouthing on the part of
airlines and cruise lines, the impact of the attacks on the vacation
and tourism business is obviously huge. Likewise the trickle-down
effect on employment in many places. Tourism in south Florida,
for instance, is down 60 percent by some estimates. The most
publicized layoffs-100,000 by the major airlines, 30,000 at Boeing-are
only the tip of the iceberg. And it's hard to imagine that getting
Osama will make it all better in the eyes of a skittish public.
CP
Steve Perry writes frequently for CounterPunch
and is a contributor to the excellent cursor.org
website, which offers incisive coverage of the current crisis.
He lives in Minneapolis, MN.
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