Riding the Red Horse Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gamelin in the headquarters. The same is true at the Army’s Armor School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where one instructor began his class by saying, “I don’t know why I have to teach you all this old French crap, but I do.”
     
    The Third Generation.
     
    Third Generation war, also a product of World War I, was developed by the German Army and is commonly known as
blitzkrieg
, or maneuver warfare. Third Generation war is based not on firepower and attrition but speed, surprise, and mental as well as physical dislocation. Tactically, in the attack, a Third Generation military seeks to get into the enemy’s rear areas and collapse him from the rear forward. Instead of “close with and destroy,” the motto is “bypass and collapse.” In the defense, it attempts to draw the enemy in, then cut him off. War ceases to be a shoving contest, where forces attempt to hold or advance a line. Third Generation war is nonlinear.
    Tactics change in Third Generation war, as does military culture. A Third Generation military focuses outward, on the situation, the enemy, and the result the situation requires, not inward on process and method. During 19th-century wargames, German junior officers routinely received problems that could only be solved by disobeying orders. Orders themselves specified the result to be achieved, but never the method. (
Auftragstaktik
). Initiative was more important than obedience. Mistakes were tolerated as long as they came from too much initiative rather than too little. And, it all depended on self-discipline, not imposed discipline. The Kaiserheer and the Wehrmacht could put on great parades, but in reality, they had broken with the culture of order.
     
    The Fourth Generation
     
    Characteristics such as decentralization and initiative carry over from the Third to the Fourth Generation, but in other respects the Fourth Generation marks the most radical change since the Peace of Westphalia. In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting nonstate opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.
    Fourth Generation war is also marked by a return to a world of cultures, not merely states, in conflict. We now find ourselves facing the Christian West’s oldest and most steadfast opponent, Islam. After about three centuries on the strategic defensive, following the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, Islam has resumed the strategic offensive expanding outward in every direction. In Fourth Generation war, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army.
    Nor is Fourth Generation war merely something we import, as we did on 9/11. At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation war on their soil. America, with a closed political system (regardless of which party wins, the Establishment remains in power and nothing really changes) and a poisonous ideology of multiculturalism, is a prime candidate for the homegrown variety of Fourth Generation war, which is by far the most dangerous kind.
    Where does the war in Iraq fit into this framework? I suggest that the war we have seen thus far is merely a powder train leading to the magazine. The magazine is Fourth Generation war by a wide variety of Islamic nonstate actors, directed at America and Americans and local governments friendly to America everywhere. The longer America occupies Iraq, the greater the chance the magazine will explode. If it does, God help us all.
    For almost two years, a small group has been meeting at my house to discuss how to fight the Fourth Generation war. The group is made up mostly of Marines, but it includes one Army officer, one National Guard captain, and one foreign officer. We felt somebody should be working on the most difficult question