From Bill Lind's latest ("On war #251: War or not war?):
Between February 8 and February 14, four American schools suffered attacks by lone gunmen. The most recent, at Northern Illinois University on February 14, saw five killed (plus the gunman) and 16 wounded. Similar attacks have occurred elsewhere, including shopping malls.Is this war? I don’t think so. Some proponents of “Fifth Generation war,” which they define as actions by “superempowered individuals,” may disagree. But these incidents lack an ingredient I think necessary to war’s definition, namely purpose. In Fourth Generation War, the purpose of warlike acts reaches beyond the state and politics, but actions, including massacres of civilians, are still purposeful. They serve an agenda that reaches beyond individual emotions, an agenda others can and do share and fight for. In contrast, the mental and emotional states that motivate lone gunmen are knowable to them alone.
Who has defined 5GW as actions by "superempowered individuals"? What is Bill Lind talking about?
Me.
If Lind gets you to agree to that definition, then he superempowers himself as the ethereal 5G Warrior. ;-\
There is a whole contingent of thought (Hammes and Manwaring, as well as Shlok, as he notes) that argue for SEIs as 5GW. I don't blame Lind for wrapping around this particular interpretation of 5GW--although ironically the "Dreaming 5GW school" does seem to be cited as people to support Lind's culture war thesis.
Shlok,
I thought you believed that it is "too early to start labeling and cutting out ideas. 5GW is an incoherent amalgam of a variety of perspectives."
Moon,
I prefer Aherring's definition.
A.E.,
I'm not arguing that SEIs cannot be involved by 5GW, but the view that they are ontologically coterminous appears to be a Lindian simplification.
tdaxp, acknowledged. But how is the Soze-Cristo greatest trick incompatible with the Arherring Kinder, Gentler Definition? This is a loose thought, but let's roll with it: the more Lind refutes the emergence of 5GW, the more the 5GW Dreamers employ Lindian xGW in an effort to validate said emergence. Has not 5G Warrior Lind then manipulated the Dreaming 5GW School into fighting for the goals of both sides of the conflict? Lind gets free advocacy for xGW, and can argue ex post that the struggle for emergence of 5GW was itself a self-similar 5G event, and that Lind was the Soze-Cristo puppet master.
'
I just realized that you're probably referring to the SEI action definition, not my Lind as closet 5G Warrior fable. But I'll leave my reply in for gits and shiggles.
If the SEI is the definitive element of 5GW (as opposed to an inclusive element) does this mean that Richard Reid is a 5G Warrior? And if anyone would question Reid as an SEI, the next time your standing in line at the airport with your shoes in your hand ask yourself that question again. I think we see the role of SEI in both 5 and 4GW.
I completely disagree with the notion that SEIs have any sort of role as an element of 5GW theory.
Bottom Line is this:
Super-empowered individuals are practioners and 5GW is a doctrine. The two are not the same thing and one does not require the other to exist. [1]
SEIs or Super-Empowered Angry Men (Friedman makes a clear distinction between these two empowered groups) may choose to follow any doctrine they desire; 4GW, Global Guerillaism, terrorism, capitalism, philanthropy, ect. I frankly find it unlikely that Super-Empowered Angry Men (or those most likely to carry a gun into a school and randomly open fire) would choose to follow a doctrine with the long time-lines and subtle/indirect manipulations of 5GW. SEIs perhaps would, but that is only one option of many that is open to them.
[1] http://www.dreaming5gw.com/2007/08/superempowered_individuals_and.php
I agree with Arherring. My own article on SEIS for DNI looked at them as sort of the culmination of 4GW on the individual level.
Not opposed to brainstorming, just against cutting out thinking.
What indicators we have on 5GW point towards SEIs.
http://shloky.com/?p=762 has my def. Not sure we can build anything else into the model until the trendlines develop further.
http://shloky.com/?p=337 just some thinking on 5,6,7GW based on tech and your analysis of OODA.
Shlok,
The easiest way to cut out thinking is through mushy definitions
I appreciate you responding here, as you never answered my direct questions regarding your definition, that I posted on your blog half a year ago.
All others,
While the generations of warfare model is a valuable analytical tool, Lind's recent commentary is not so valuable.
Dan,
In response to the title of the article and the central question of the issue; Hammes defines 5GW that way in The Sling and the Stone and Fourth Generation Warfare Evolves, Fifth Emerges.
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/MayJun07/Hammes.pdf
Arherring,
Could you excerpt the relevent part of the definition? He mentions SEIs a few times, but that's hardly the same thing as defining 5GW as actions by SEIs. (One might as well criticize Lind for defining 3GW as actions by Panzers!)
The closest Hammes gets to a definition is:
"Fifth-generation warfare will result from the continued shift of political and social loyalties to causes rather than nations. It will be marked by the increasing power of smaller and smaller entities and the explosion of biotechnology. 5GW will truly be a nets-and-jets war: networks will distribute the key information, provide a source for the necessary equipment and material, and constitute a field from which to recruit volunteers; the jets will provide for worldwide, inexpensive, effective dissemination of the weapons."
Which sounds quite reasonable.
From Sling and the Stone: pg. 290.
"As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the anthrax and ricin attacks on Capitol Hill may be early examples of fifth-generation warfare. Although similar to fourth-generation attacks, they seem to have been conducted by an individual or, at most, a very small group. It is much too early to tell if these were fifth-generation attacks, but super-empowered individuals or groups would be in keeping with several emerging global trends - the rise of biotechnology, the increased power of knowledge workers, and the changing nature of loyalties"
From Fourth Generation Warfare Evolves, Fifth Emerges: pg. 21
"In sum, political, economic, and social trends point to the emergence of super-empowered individuals or small groups bound together by love for a cause rather than a nation. Employing emerging technology, they are able to generate destructive power that used to require the resources of a nation-state."
It isn't so much that the term 'super-empowered individual' is included in any definition of his but rather when he speaks of nets-and-jets, he means those who use super-empowerment to leverage incredibly destructive attacks like biowarfare and target them by appealing to the self-righteous self-destructiveness of networked ideological warriors and the global reach of commecial jet airliners.
Arherring,
Indeed, as 3GW can mean those who use Panzers, or as I wrote before:
"One might as well criticize Lind for defining 3GW as actions by Panzers!"
Lind's purported definition is both too inclusive (appearing to lump any SEI action under 5GW) and too exclusive (appearing to limit 5GW to those actions that involve 5GWs). It's a strawman, and typical of his rhetorical style.
A couple things.
It seems to me that in conflating SEIs (individuals) into SEAMs (angry men), Lind misses the broader point about 5GW, as discussed in this forum and in the context of identity. If 5GW is really about misdirection and the manipulation of identity so that actors do not who the enemy is (to paraphrase from Dan's 'Go Deep' post), then these lone gunman or lone wolves are actually the unwitting agents of other actors who use SEIs/SEAMs to achieve their own goals. We identify SEIs/SEAMs as a threat rather than some shadowy 5GW actor, who operates more like PSlog's puppet master:
"The Puppet Master 5GW is the small empowered group behind the scenes.
They use/discard/co-opt/create 4GW-ish orgs to further their own 5GW goals...
Targeted assassination may be used as a special skill of the small group) but it will be of the the type that appears to be Actor A attacked by Actor B (not the 5GW group), or of natural causes/accidents.
Usually, the Puppet Master 5GW will not employ direct kinetic tactics however."
http://purpleslog.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/possible-5gw-archetype-the-puppet-master-5gw/
This is the only way the long gunman/wolf scenario can be incorporated into 5GW thinking. These are really 4GW attacks whereby these SEIs/SEAMs are exploiting the fact that others in their social environment assume them to be rational, but even that classification stretches conceptual boundaries. To say this is 5GW assumes that someone is controlling or instigating these attacks from behind the scenes, which is not at all plausible given the social isolation that often causes SEIs/SEAMs to go nuts. This is Lind trying to be relevant now that xGW has moved beyond his initial expectations, and he still doesn't get what 5GW truly is.
Perhaps only because I'm a beginner, I see some value in Lind's resistance to maturation of xGW in that it registers a back reference from 5GW Dreamers to Lind's framework. In information technology vernacular, the recursive double-pointer. (Esoteric and non-practical, but philosophically illuminating nonetheless.)
Some 5GW folks and friends (in another thread last week) mentioned the Hegelian dialectic. The relationship more easily reminds me of part of the 2nd verse of the Tao Te Ching (Mitchell translation):
"Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other."
Straw man attacks on imminent 5GW paradoxically argue *for* imminent emergence from 4GW. Any publicity is good publicity, and what better publicity than that from an original xGW theoretician? Claims of irrelevance of Lind (and his resistance to project beyond 4GW) paradoxically reinforce xGW as the base for 5GW. You legitimize and tether yourself to that you resist.
"When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king."
Tao Te Ching 16 (Mitchell again)
Thank you for enduring the pithy Taoist references. I think it better to continue to exploit Lind's framework and let his protestations continue to ring empty.
I agree with Stephen. What makes 5GW different from 4GW is:
1. It attacks the opposing belligerents perceptions (or Observation in OODA terms)
2. It transcends all other generations as each can be implemented to exact a 5GW event.
Arherring's Hezbollah example illustrates this quite nicely.
Certainly the SEI can be instrumental but the idea that the concept is a basis for rather than a tool of 5GW is a bit hard to digest.
Check this out [1]
Author is John Goekler, date is March 15, but more importantly, forum is "counterpunch' -- an online lefty rag that William Lind writes for.
I suspect that a Lindite read his weird definition, read the criticism of it, and decided validate the definition in an article.
[1] http://www.counterpunch.org/goekler03152008.html
Heh. I suspect he chose to write a lofty bit about 4GW and 5GW as a preamble to blather on about how the US has lost the war.
There's nothing at all that suggests that the Mahdi army is all that far from Mao's guerilla doctrine. Unless "shadowy" is a definitive adjective that lends a group it's "5GWness."
Does Lind, with his rather staunch aversion to "multi-culturalism" really write for this site?
Lind despises the modern Republican Party in general and the Iraq War in particular -- the extreme of one side is always the best friend to the moderates of the other.