I got this article from Alex and
ammo.com, He wanted my and my couple of readers opinions in this article. From the look of the article, it took a while for it to write and there was a lot of research done on it. I have recalled many times the quote " The standing army is 1.2 million, but there are 300 million deer hunters out there." This article is also important when eventually the cloud people decide that we "dirt people" are good only for wage slaves and to support the system that only they can benefit for their lust for power.
Asymmetrical Warfare and 4GW: How Militia Groups are America's Domestic Viet Cong
“It
is interesting to hear certain kinds of people insist that the citizen
cannot fight the government. This would have been news to the men of
Lexington and Concord, as well as the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The
citizen most certainly can fight the government, and usually wins when
he tries. Organized national armies are useful primarily for fighting
against other organized national armies. When they try to fight against
the people, they find themselves at a very serious disadvantage. If you
will just look around at the state of the world today, you will see that
the guerilla's has the upper hand. Irregulars usually defeat regulars,
providing they have the will. Such fighting is horrible to contemplate,
but will continue to dominate brute strength.”
When one discusses the real reason for the Second Amendment – the
right of citizens to defend themselves against a potentially tyrannical
government – inevitably someone points out the stark difference in
firepower between a guerilla uprising in the United States and the
United States government itself.
This is not a trivial observation. The U.S. government spends
more on the military
than the governments of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France,
United Kingdom, and Japan combined. Plus, the potential of a tyrannical
government is arguably upon us – with the federal government
spying on its own citizens,
militarizing local police departments with equipment and tactics from the War on Terror, and
repeatedly searching Americans, which desensitizes them to this invasive process.
There is much historical precedent, however, for guerilla uprisings
defeating more powerful enemies. For instance, the Cold War saw both
superpowers brought to their knees by rural farmers – for the Soviets,
their adventure in Afghanistan against the Mujahideen, and for the
United States, the Vietnam War against the Viet Cong.
In both cases, nuclear weapons could have been used against the
guerilla uprising, but were not. Even assuming the use of nuclear
weapons from the position of total desperation, it’s hard to imagine
they would have made much of a difference in the final outcome of either
conflict. Unlike the invading armies, the local resistance enjoyed both
broad-based support as well as knowledge of the local terrain.
Now imagine such a scenario in the United States. You wouldn’t be the first person to do so. From
Red Dawn to
James Wesley, Rawles’ Patriots series, there is a relatively long-standing tradition of American survival literature about the
hoi polloi resisting the tyranny of big government, either before or after a collapse.
For the purposes of this article, consider what a domestic
American terrorist or freedom fighter (after all, the label is in the eye of the beholder) organization based on the
militia movement
would look like in open revolt against the United States government. In
the spirit of levity, we’ll call them the “Hillbilly Viet Cong.” They
would most likely find their largest numbers in Appalachia, but don’t
discount their power in the
American Redoubt, or the more sparsely populated areas of the American Southwest, including rural Texas.
Here we have tens of thousands of Americans armed to the teeth with
combat experience, deep family ties to both the police and the military,
extensive knowledge of the local geography, and, in many cases,
survivalist training. Even where they are not trained, militant and
active, they enjoy broad support among those who own a lot of guns and
grow a lot of food.
On the other side, you have the unwieldy Baby Huey of the rump U.S.
government’s military, with some snarky BuzzFeed editorials serving as
propaganda.
Could the Hillbilly Viet Cong take down the USG? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s difficult to imagine that the USG could take
them down.
Indeed, even with a number of nasty little toys on the side of the
federal government, we live in an age of a technologically levelled
playing field. This is true even when it comes to instruments of
warfare. While the USG has nuclear weapons, it’s worth remembering that a
pound of C4 strapped to a cheap and readily available commercial-grade
drone is going to break a lot of dishes.
This sort of guerilla insurgency has a name: It’s called
fourth-generational warfare (4GW), and you might be surprised to learn
that you already live in this world.
What Are the First Three Generations of Warfare?
To
understand how 4GW is a new and improved form of war, we first need to
explain what the first three generations of warfare were:
First-Generation Warfare
The first generation (1GW) is basically what you would have seen in the movie
300.
The hallmarks of this generation of warfare are armies from two
different state actors leveraging line-and-column tactics and wearing
uniforms to distinguish between themselves.
This generation is not entirely without subterfuge. For example,
counterfeit currency was used to devalue the money supply during the 1GW
Napoleonic Wars. Other examples of 1GW conflicts include the
English Civil War and the
American Revolutionary War.
Second-Generation Warfare
The second generation (2GW) comes with the advent of rifling and
breech-loaded weapons. As students of military history know, the
invention of rifling was one of the reasons that the
United States Civil War
was so bloody. This meant that firearms that were once mostly for show
after 100 feet or so, were now deadly weapons – and tactics did not
immediately evolve.
But evolve they did. Many things we take for granted as being just
part of warfare – such as camouflage, artillery, and reconnaissance –
are defining features of 2GW. The American Civil War is probably the
first 2GW conflict. Others include the
First World War, the
Spanish Civil War and, much more recently, the
Iran-Iraq War. The United States military coined this phrase in 1989.
Third-Generation Warfare
This phase of warfare, also known a 3GW, is the late modern version
of warfare, where speed and stealth play a much bigger role. Weapons and
tactics alone are less important. Instead, military units seek to find
ways to outmaneuver one another before – or even instead of – meeting on
the battlefield.
The era of 3GW was initiated with the
Blitzkrieg,
which marked the decisive end to cavalry and replaced it with tank and
helicopter warfare. Junior officers were given more leeway to give
orders. The
Second World War was the first 3GW conflict, with the
Korean,
Vietnam and both
Iraq Wars becoming further examples of this style of fighting.
What Is Fourth-Generation Warfare?
The
most direct way of discussing 4GW is to say that it describes any war
between a state actor and a non-state actor. This is also known as
asymmetrical warfare,
but it’s not the only difference between 4GW and other, earlier forms
of conflict. Asymmetrical warfare does, to be sure, blur the lines
between combatants and civilians. This is in part what made the Bush-era
“
war on terror” so difficult and complicated: The war was against a set of ideas rather than a nation or even an extra-national army.
There are a number of characteristics that flow from the state actor
vs. non-state actor aspect of 4GW. The first is the use of terrorism as a
regular tactic, almost always on the part of the non-state actor.
Particularly for the state actor, non-combatants become tactical
problems – you simply can’t just carpet bomb and hope everything works
out.
The non-state actors tend to be highly decentralized. One faction can
stop fighting as another 10 crop up in its place. Funding and source of
manpower and material comes from a wide array of sources spread out
over nearly the entire globe. This necessarily makes 4GW long and drawn
out over years or perhaps even decades. The psychological warfare,
propaganda and lawfare aspects are an integral part of the conflict.
The genesis of 4GW lies in the Cold War and the post-colonial era.
Insurgent groups and counter-insurgency groups vied for power, often
times with state actors operating behind the scenes and in the
background. Sometimes the goal was to establish a new state or
reestablish a defunct one. However, many times the only goal was to
delegitimize the existing state and create a power vacuum.
Places such as Laos, Myanmar, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, the Congo,
Cuba, East Timor, Korea, Poland, and Afghanistan were all pieces in the
global chessboard of the Cold War as various insurgency and
counter-insurgency groups backed by the Soviets, the Americans, and/or
the Chinese fought one another or fought against occupying forces.
What Is the Difference Between 4GW and Asymmetrical Warfare?
Put simply, all 4GW is asymmetrical, but not all asymmetrical warfare
is 4GW. It refers to virtually any asymmetry in combat. This can be as
simple as one military having more advanced technology than another –
for example, the English longbow at the
Battle of Crécy
gave the English forces a decisive technological advantage. The Spartan
forces were greatly outnumbered by their Persian adversaries and used
the landscape to compensate.
In one sense, 4GW can be seen as asymmetric warfare come to full
fruition. The less powerful forces must find a way to compensate for
their relative lack of strength. On the other hand, the stronger forces
must paradoxically find ways to compensate for their
abundance of
strength. This is because of the all-important propaganda war, an
integral part of 4GW. State actors often seek deniability during war by
proxy when engaging non-state actors.
John Boyd, Chuck Spinney, and 4GW
Colonel John Boyd
may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military
history. Widely considered to be the greatest U.S. fighter pilot ever,
Boyd developed the F-15 and F-16, revolutionized ground tactics in war,
and covertly designed the coalition battle plans for the
1990-91 Gulf War.
He foresaw 4GW, and he shunned wealth, fame, and power in his pursuit
to get things done, despite the bureaucracy of the Pentagon.
Boyd closely studied Sun-Tzu (
The Art of War) and Carl von Clausewitz (
On War).
This informed his push for greater adaptability and agility of United
States fighting forces. Simple, cheap, effective, dependable, durable
weapons were prized over flashy tricks. Decentralized command, control
and communications were Boyd’s cause – looking for a way to avoid
burying boots on the ground underneath layers of officers with
potentially less field knowledge than they had.
Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney
became the voice of 4GW preparation after Boyd’s passing inside the
Pentagon. He spent more than 20 years campaigning against rigid forms of
thinking and budget bloat. Spinney believes that the 9/11 attacks
should have been a wake-up call for the United States military, and sees
4GW as something beyond mere terrorism, but rather a new form of
warfare. He believes the United States military is stuck in
second-generation warfare thinking and is woefully unequipped for 4GW.
Ultimately, Spinney believes that the United States military’s response
to 9/11 in particular and 4GW in general was not enough.
Where Is 4GW Happening Today?
While many think 4GW is something in the far-off future, it’s
actually happening right now. The most archetypal 4GW is perhaps the
conflict with ISIS – a non-state actor with recruits all over the world
in conflict with several states. Some of the conflict is classically
military, but there is also the propaganda war taking place all over the
Internet. In fact, ISIS was
using the PlayStation network to communicate
because they correctly believed it wasn’t being monitored by
international intelligence services. These attacks on the West were not
limited to the area controlled by ISIS, but extended all around the
world.
Counter-attacking ISIS was a bit like trying to catch water in a net.
Attacking ISIS proper was possible: There was territory. But attacking
the support of ISIS was a whole other problem.
It’s worth noting that the international Islamist movement is not
limited to ISIS. Al-Qaeda and its offshoots still exist. What’s more,
they seem to multiply over time. This is another feature of 4GW. A state
actor can make peace with one faction of a group while other, more
militant factions simply retreat deeper into the metaphorical mountains
to continue the fight – which is precisely the situation that the
Republic of the Philippines has faced in its struggle against the Moros
separatists of the Southern Philippines.
But the Philippines and Syria are all likely far away from where you
live in terms of geography, sociology, demographics and culture. What
does 4GW have to do with London, Paris or even Springfield, MO? Probably
a lot more than you think.
Is 4GW Coming to the Developed World?
Is fourth-generational warfare coming to the developed world? Quite possibly, especially when you consider the spectre of
failed states in the West.
Many Western states are not quite as stable as they are made out to
be. Sweden and France in particular have extensive problems with No Go
Zones. Other parts of Europe want to secede, such as Catalonia in Spain,
and are being
violently suppressed from doing so.
Elsewhere around the world, previously first-world countries like
South Africa are deteriorating
in the span of a generation due to government mismanagement. The United
States, for its part, is in what some have described as a “
Cold Civil War,” with many futurists agreeing that the potential for outward civil war is greater than you’d like to think.
How might such a 4GW scenario play out in the West? There are two
potential scenarios, one for Europe and one for the United States. Each
of these is worth considering.
4GW: The European Model
For our purposes, we’re going to call this the “European Model” of
4GW. This is because this model is based on the political and social
realities of life in Europe today. It is by no means the only place
something like this could unfold, nor is it impossible that 4GW could
unfold in an entirely different way in Europe.
4GW in Europe will likely be an outgrowth of
No Go Zones
and resulting failed states. Geographic areas within European nations
will likely increase in size. And conflict will likely develop between
the
de facto areas of the No Go Zones, as well as more militant
elements of the civilian population. While there is not much of a
militia movement to speak of in Europe, in true 4GW fashion, people will
find ways to improvise weapons out of what they have available to them.
It’s impossible to talk about this phenomenon in Europe without
discussing the ethnic and religious character of the areas, as ethnic
and ethno-religious conflict will likely be the infrastructure for such a
war – especially since many of these areas have legal and social
structures based on Islamic laws and customs.
In a scenario leading to a 4GW conflict in mainland Europe, attacks
on civilians will escalate while the legitimate civilian authority is
increasingly incapable of dealing with it. There will be both an
inability and an unwillingness to maintain legal norms within larger and
larger areas in Europe.
Next would come the formation of militias. The model here is close to what happened in Lebanon during
its civil war.
Militias will form around political, ethnic and religious lines. Some
of these will be the No Go Zones attempting to consolidate their power.
Others will be European civilians seeking to protect themselves and
their neighborhoods from the growing power of the No Go Zones. This, in
turn, will further fuel the breakdown in government control. Members of
the government, both law enforcement and military, will increasingly
pick sides in the conflict, leaving their allegiance to the rump state
behind. In the end, this will make it more difficult for the state to
assert its power.
The remaining government will begin taking measures against free
speech and free association in an attempt to crack down and regain lost
power. But at this point, the battle will mostly already be lost.
Factions of the government will cease cooperating with one another,
making it harder and harder to maintain order. These factions will, to
varying degrees, start lining up behind the militias and parallel legal
structures that have begun cropping up at the street level. This will
also be the time foreign governments will step in and begin supporting
local militias more. An example of this is Serbian-backed militias in
Croatia and Bosnia during the
Yugoslav Wars, or Israeli support of Maronite Christians and Iranian support of Shiite Muslims during the
Lebanese Civil War.
Crime will increase, but not just petty street crime. Insurgent
movements have a long history of using organized crime to fund their
operations and the 4GW conflicts in Europe would be no exception to
this. The drug trade, human trafficking and financially driven
kidnapping are three examples of how militias will fund themselves using
extra-legal means. This will serve as an additional cause to restrict
freedom of movement through both
de jure and
de facto
means within a nation’s borders, another case where the Yugoslav Wars
and Lebanese Civil War are instructive cases. Conversely, refugee
scenarios will develop, which will further complicate the situation.
4GW: The American Model
The
American 4GW Model is somewhat different and is based more on
ideological and political differences than ethnic and cultural ones –
though the ethnic and cultural differences will play a role, as we will
soon see.
In the United States, the federal system of government can play a key
role. For example, while the prospect of a gun ban causing the peasants
to pick up their pitchforks and torches is unlikely, a scenario where
states simply refuse to enforce the law is far closer to the realm of
possibility. Consider that this is already starting under the Trump
Administration – cities and states are
refusing to comply with the President’s directives on federal immigration law.
Flipping the script, it’s worth wondering just how much state and
federal compliance a federal ban on AR-15s, a high tax on ammunition, or
a call for widespread registration would generate.
This could happen one of two ways: Leftist states like California and
Massachusetts balk at a new federal law, or more conservative and
libertarian states like Arizona and New Hampshire refuse compliance.
It’s worth noting that states themselves are not monoliths. California
is largely
still a conservative state outside of Los Angeles and the Bay Area, while
several municipalities in deep blue Massachusetts went for Trump. On the other hand,
Arizona has blue enclaves like Flagstaff and
New Hampshire’s cities vote almost identically to Boston.
The red state / blue state divide is very real, but it also exists
within
states as well as between them. In the event that a cleavage between
the two political and cultural halves of America started, this divide
would become increasingly unstable within the states themselves.
Unlike Europe, the United States has a homegrown militia movement
that is heavily armed and, to varying degrees, ready for battle. When
the AR-15 is talked about as a “weapon of war on our streets,” it is
frequently mentioned in the same breath how an insurrection in the
United States would never stand a chance against the modern weapons of
war wielded by the federal government. This would be news to the Viet
Cong. People who make such statements are unaware of the dynamics of
4GW.
While the political aspects are very real, so are the demographic ones. In particular, there is the spectre of the
Scotch-Irish in Appalachia. These are a people with
hundreds of years
of long skepticism (and often outright hostility) toward the federal
government. It’s also, geographically speaking, a very difficult place
to conquer. Eric Rudolph
evaded the feds for five years in the mountains of North Carolina, despite being on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List.
This segment of American society has a significant connection to both
the police force and the military. Simple suggestions that local
police, SWAT teams or even the military will be quick to crush such a
rebellion are ill-informed on two counts. First, the aforementioned one:
In many cases, the military and police who are being sent out are going
to be friends, family and intimates of the Hillbilly Viet Cong. What’s
more, due to the extensive military experience in this area, many of the
foot soldiers of an anti-government rebellion centered in Appalachia
would not only just be trained, but also battle-tested. Divided
loyalties always play a role in 4GW, and the United States will be no
exception.
The weapons of war are leveled in 4GW. There is air war by drones,
but also the role of computer hacking, kidnapping and other unsavory
activities. The point of 4GW, from the perspective of the underdog, is
less about “winning” in some quick and dramatic fashion, and more about
dragging out the conflict as long as possible, causing the dominant
power to lose through blood loss and death by 1,000 cuts.
Consider the Vietnam Conflict: Between the end of the French
occupation of Vietnam in 1954, through the Fall of Saigon when U.S.
forces abandoned the city to the Viet Cong, the American Vietnam War
lasted approximately 20 years. And that doesn’t count the seven bloody
years of French occupation post-WW2, when French colonial forces lost
approximately 100,000 troops attempting to put down the guerilla
movement in Indochina.
Finally, there’s the U.S. government’s track record in 4GW. The
United States does not have a solid track record of being able to defeat
guerilla insurgencies. From the
Filipino Insurrection
in the late 19th century to the current Afghan insurgency – the United
States military can make inroads against 4GW actors, but it’s never
really able to seal the deal.
4GW in America: The Battle of Athens
There is a history of 4GW in the United States and we don’t need to go very far back to find it. In 1946, there was an
uprising of the citizens of
Athens, TN
(in McMinn County) to reestablish the rule of law. The story
illustrates how American patriots resisting domestic tyranny can succeed
in their struggles.
Citizens of Athens had complained about election fraud since 1940.
The town was filled with battle-hardened veterans from both the European
and Pacific theaters of World War II. This filled them with a militancy
that did not exist before the war. Several citizens of Athens had
complained, but the administration of Franklin Roosevelt did nothing,
perhaps because the town was ruled over by an entrenched Democratic
Party machine.
First, the men ran one of their own, a GI named Knox Henry, for
sheriff. They wanted fair elections, so they petitioned the FBI to
monitor, a request which was denied. The machine, for their part,
imported 200 strong arms to “protect” the polling places from voters. In
one case, a deputy pointed his revolver at a GI, ejecting him from the
polling station and telling him “If you sons of bitches cross this
street I’ll kill you!” Poll watchers were arrested and in one case, a
black poll watcher was shot. Finally, the party machine locked the
ballot boxes up in the county jail.
Despite lacking in numbers, ammunition and arms, the veterans used
the key to the local armories belonging to the State and National Guard.
This evened the score considerably. They went to the jail house and
requested the release of the ballot boxes, but were rebuffed with the
sheriff’s men shooting two of the GIs. A firefight erupted and the GIs
were reinforced by men from neighboring Meigs County and their IEDs.
Eventually, the sheriff and his men surrendered, releasing the ballots.
After obtaining the ballots, the men cleaned and returned the
weapons. The GI candidate was elected sheriff and several others were
elected to key county positions.
This demonstrates 4GW in miniature in the United States. For those
concerned about nuclear retaliation or other heavy guns the USG has,
it’s worth noting that the underdog can always obtain some of these
weapons by hook or by crook.
The Militia Movement and 4GW
No
discussion of 4GW in the United States would be complete without
touching on the militia movement, something specific to the U.S. While
Europe has a history of factions in the military who oppose the
government (the
French Secret Army Organization
is the most famous of these), it does not, to nearly the same extent as
the United States, have men actively training in the woods getting
ready for civilizational collapse or 4GW.
The militia movement began in the early 1980s, when it was known as
the Posse Comitatus movement. It exploded (no pun intended) after the
attack on the Oklahoma City Federal Building
and the showdown at Ruby Ridge. By the mid-1990s, the militia movement
had a presence in all 50 states and was comprised of approximately
60,000 people.
Note that the militia movement is no longer limited to the political right.
Left-wing organizations
have begun openly training with arms since the election of Donald Trump
as President in 2016. In any kind of 4GW scenario in the United States,
it’s likely that these two strains of the militia movement would come
into conflict with each other, as well as the United States government.
And don’t forget about the narcissism of small differences that tends to
plague fringe political movements – the most bitter enemies in a 4GW
conflict in the United States will likely be competing factions of left-
and right-wing political movements.
Skills Required for 4GW
Combat isn’t the only helpful skill for 4GW. If you’re concerned with
4GW and want to get ready for everything to go down, here’s a list of
skills for you to acquire in preparation for 4GW.
- Weapons Versatility: Let’s just get this out of
the way. Combat training with a variety of weapons is important for
4GW. This is because in 4GW, combatants often have to use weapons
commandeered from their enemies. What they capture can vary widely
from what their unit ordinarily uses.
- Survivalism: Knowing how to live off the land
is an indispensable skill for any SHTF scenario, and 4GW is no
exception to this rule. 4GW combatants must know how to hunt, fish,
trap, track, stay hidden, find potable water, and prep game.
- First Aid: Any time there’s combat, there are
casualties. 4GW requires the knowledge of first aid at the very
least. Knowing other medic skills is a welcome addition to the
toolkit as well.
- Physical Fitness: Those involved in 4GW combat
will have to walk long distances, often with a lot of weight
strapped to their back. Being in top physical condition can mean
the difference between life and death.
- Navigation: 4GW combatants need to know the area,
but they also need to know how to find their way around unfamiliar
terrain. That means without electronic equipment, and instead
using items like compasses and maps.
- Demolition: This might also be filed under weapon
versatility. Demolition is a big part of 4GW for depriving the
enemy of a base and cutting off lines of communication and transit.
Many of the above skills are just as helpful when it comes to general
survivalism, so you don’t have to be getting ready for 4GW to make them
worth acquiring. And as with any kind of
SHTF preparation and training, we hope you never have to use what you learn.
