Who coined “0GW”?

Dan,

I used it to describe “Mob Violence” in my “Mel Gibson Mnemonic” for the Generations of War (1GW=The Patriot, 2GW=Gallipoli, etc.).

“0GW” was linked to Braveheart.

Shane,

Thanks for giving me a place to orient my search!

Earliest I can find is Purpleslog from May 3, 2006:

I am leaning toward the idea of 1GW thru 5GW have always existed (and dropping the Pre-Modern war idea, or re-characterizing it as 0GW). The way to think about them is not historical time periods or types of technologies, but general methods and the part of the OODA they center on.

According to the timeline, 5GW itself is first from August 19, 2003, by Robert Steele:

“5th Generation warfare is total war through total engagement, and it demands that the first priority be on both homeland education and infrastructure, followed by very high investments in global peaceful preventive measures (what Joe Nye calls ‘soft power’), with narrowly focused military intervention being a last resort…..”

The earliest Purpleslog reference is in this post from 4/13/2006…

http://purpleslog.wordpress.com/2006/04/13/on-unrestricted-warfare-and-the-generations-of-war-framework/

…where I use 0GW and link to your article on…

http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/05/09/fourth_generation_war_is_not_pre-modern_war.html

…that is on among other things Pre-Modern Warfare.

In a post of mine from a few days later 5/3/2006….

http://purpleslog.wordpress.com/2006/05/03/4gw-nation-building-as-soft-colonizationtime-ranges-in-warconflict-and-memes-wars/

…I write that:

“I am leaning toward the idea of 1GW thru 5GW have always existed (and dropping the Pre-Modern war idea, or re-characterizing it as 0GW). The way to think about them is not historical time periods or types of technologies, but general methods and the part of the OODA they center on.”

Using “0GW” kind of sounds like shorthand I would use in my own note taking. I don’t have a smoking gun post though.

I submitted something with links…but it was held and not released. Was it aught by the spam catcher?

Dan, through the D5GW admin interface I can see comments by both you and me are being held. I can’t release them. I believe you can though as author of the article.

I’m damn near certain that the first I’d read it was in a discussion between you and Curtis.

d5gw’ers, in terms of attribution, why the concern for who coined what when? (I don’t mean that to sound dismissive; I am genuinely interested to understand the thread here.) When it comes down to it, Lind laid out the 1-2-3-4gw cardinality, and tacking 5gw on the far end and 0gw on the near end is just extrapolating (tdaxp-style) Lind, eh?

From my outsider’s perch, here is a xgw matter that rivets me….

I fancy a misfortune that Lind’s gw cardinality frames for us. First, it implies a sort of progressive, integral array and doesn’t really encourage other structures (loops, grids, polygons, sets, etc.) Second, by its nature, cardinality implies temporal order. Lind’s temporal order comes from the apparent chronological emergence of each gw. Just because history revealed each apparent gw to us in some order does not mean that that order is intrinsic to generations as structural phenomena.

I’d like to (and would like to hear you Big Thinkers) cast about for other models and phenomena (natural or otherwise) that can house the generations that Lind happened to install into his cardinal 1-2-3-4 package. I proposed musical overtones and harmonics weeks back, but admittedly haven’t developed that since then. I think set - superset - subset is also promising. I’m only a casual student of all this, but somehow I’m not buying that 4gw is some natural, integral, equidistant progression from 3gw. (e.g. it’s disorder would seem to precede 1gw in some fashion, eh?) I think it well possible that historical serendipity just laid it out that way for us.

So I’m not saying *Lind is wrong* with his 4gw taxonomy. I’m only suggesting the possibility of going too far by assuming *Lind’s got 1-2-3-4gw right*. Extrapolating to 5gw and 0gw tacitly presses that assumption.

Hi moon,

“but somehow I’m not buying that 4gw is some natural, integral, equidistant progression from 3gw. (e.g. it’s disorder would seem to precede 1gw in some fashion, eh?) I think it well possible that historical serendipity just laid it out that way for us.”

I think you’ll find much the same sentiment among each member here. Here’s a related post [1] I put down many, er, moons ago that deals straight up with the “chronological evolution” of the xGW framework.

1. Soob 01/07

Soob, thanks for the remedial. I’m still on the up-take. ;-\

Dan,

The first I recall every really seeing the term of 0GW was in relation to your consideration that the higher the ‘G’ of a war the more dispersed the violence of the conflict. As I recall from that you had postulated that 0GW was a kind of genocidal/tribal warfare.

Moon,

As far as it goes. It is my feeling that the XGW that we discuss here at D5GW has diverged enough from Lind’s Generations of Modern Warfare (GMW) that the two concepts may be considered as seperate frameworks with a common origin. To my understanding Lind’s GMW framework has no place for 0GW except perhaps as pre-Westphalia, or 5GW except as perhaps post-singularity as he considers 4GW to be the pinnacle of ‘modern’ warfare.

As for “0GW”, that’s a tag-on to the xGW theory, a dumping ground for anything not fitting within xGW theory except to the degree that whatever is labeled “0GW” is thought to bear the relationship of “before” xGW. Substitute “not” for “0” and you get “not-GW.”

— a comment I once left under another post.

Lately I’m inclined to add “or ‘after’ xGW” — since some things could shatter the xGW framework, in the sense that massive plagues or other major disasters could cause some global resets which could also perhaps hit the reset button for xGW.