Just as second- and third-generation warfare intermingle, they are both interpenetrated by what some call fourth-generation warfare. This primarily involves land forces (although targets can be naval vessels and air assets) — irregular or guerilla warfare carried out by groups motivated by ideology, revenge, lust for power, ethnicity, religion or some other unifying bond. Such irregulars often are associated with or supported by regular military forces, but in the late 20th century this was less often the case. In fact there are countervailing trends. There are more small groups or very loosely knit organizations which employ terror by threatening to or actually attacking civilian populations and infrastructure — the so-called asymmetric style of warfare. Some receive support, safe harbor, or encouragement from nations while others seem to operate with little support. [pp. 37-38]

	Understand that military force is not the only, or necessarily the best, means of achieving national goals — excessive or inappropriate use of force breeds resentment and plants the seeds of future conflict.
	Attract allies to one's own side, and subtract them from an opponent's side.
	Focus on two major and complementary elements: create "harmony" and cohesion on one's own side, and foster chaos and paralysis on the other side
	Surround the opponent with sustained ambiguity, deception, surprise, isolation, and menace; pursue multiple approaches and attacks, then switch between them and develop new thrusts faster than the opponent can cope; alternate unpredictably between the expected and unexpected, the orthodox and unorthodox, distracting moves and decisive moves, or in Sun Tzu's terminology, cheng and ch'i.
	Understand that success in conflict depends most upon people, then ideas, and least upon hardware.
	Fix fraying leadership and cohesion in the military, in part by ending constant personnel rotation among units, halting the system of premature discharging of mid-level officers, and training and empowering officers to exercise more initiative.
	End a fixation on complex hardware, which is not only unreliable and expensive, but also creates complex bureaucracies to build, deploy, operate, supply, and fix it — bureaucracies that are unsuited to exercising the most important components of third- and fourth-generation warfare strategy: agility, quickness, flexibility, responsiveness, creativity, initiative.
	Structure and equip U.S. forces so that they: are agile and flexible; provide commanders with multiple options; can switch between different thrusts quickly; continuously reshape themselves through experimentation and training; and most importantly, are well led. [pp. 72-3]

The experience of units in SSC interventions in Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda-Congo, and Kosovo suggests that creating separate quasi-military units may not be the best course. The very unpredictability of SSCs, which can turn from traditional peacekeeping to peace maintenance and even peace enforcement, argue for forces that are trained to operate across most of the spectrum of conflict. The Marine Corps' "three-block war" unit training regimen that includes scenarios for mid-intensity war-fighting, peacekeeping, and humanitarian relief support seems to be appropriate for the majority of situations that U.S. ground forces actually will face in the foreseeable future. While the Army's transformation into a medium-weight force will facilitate its participation in these missions, it will retain for the mid-term elements of heavy striking power in armored/mechanized units. [p. 66]

The United States is already the world leader in collection and communication of raw data and information. The area that needs attention is moving from data to "knowledge" and then to "understanding." [p.106]

However likely or unlikely a terrorist attack, it is not clear that the military component of national security is well equipped to do much about it. National missile defense is the foremost military option, but it has never been satisfactorily explained why an opponent would choose the expensive, technically difficult, and suicidal method of delivering a weapon of mass destruction via missile rather than via truck, boat, or plane. Some scenarios in which it would be useful to have a working missile defense can always be described, but the program becomes a matter of priorities. The strategy proposed here puts other military needs — not least of which is fully funding personnel, training, and spare parts to ensure that today's forces are fully ready — at a higher priority than a missile defense system of high cost, of unknowable reliability in actual use, and that will likely be politically costly in relations with allies and with Russia and China. [p. 69]

The Defense Department has worked hard to make the services "joint," in terms of common — or at least compatible — communications, headquarters, equipment, and doctrine. A parallel opportunity may exist for integration of allied forces in SSCs along the lines of what the Defense Department has done for the U.S. services — expanding the concept of "jointness" to include foreign military services. If U.S. and a broad range of other nations' forces train units to be integrated into multinational command structures, a force package with a variety of types of units and nationalities could be assembled quickly for specific operations. Clearly, for this to work, much would need to be done in training, doctrine, and equipping to make allied forces more "interoperable" with U.S. forces. Decades of experience in NATO with this issue should provide a solid base to develop improved joint capability in the age of sophisticated electronics. [pp. 66-7]

Make U.S. forces more "expeditionary." Adust forward deployment by reducing Cold War heavy, permanently-deployed forces and increasing short-term deployments, exercises, training, military-to-military contacts, and engagement with foreign militaries. [pp. 42-3]

This paper takes the view that short-term, rotational deployments, plus increased military-to-military contacts and training can serve many of the same goals as large permanent forces in an extensive base infrastructure, and that irregular, as opposed to rote, exercises can establish effective military-to-military relationships. It holds that a more flexible and agile form of forward deployment can reduce the political and other costs of the old version.

Precipitous withdrawal is neither called for nor being called for by allies — yet. Any contemplated reductions should be coordinated with allies before actions are initiated, and usually phased withdrawals — unless other demands are made by host nations — should be the rule. Bringing selected forces back to the United States, coupled with regular combined force exercises and aperiodic deployments of military units, will allow the United States to more centrally position forces to respond to emerging contingencies without being seen as isolationist. [p. 51]

By Marcus Corbin
CDI Senior Analyst
mcorbin@cdi.org