In Thomas Barnett's Blueprint For Action, he started with what the US could have done to saviour the quagmire in Iraq. He suggested a "huge, multinational" SysAdmin force is needed to create "peace" after Saddam was toppled.
Dr Barnett demonstrated great strategic vision and insight. He understood 4GW cannot be dealt with by brute force. I would agree with most of his suggestion and reasoning. However, one important aspect of 4GW, and the corresponding strategy against an opponent waging 4GW, needs to be laid out more explicitly (*).
As Sun Zi stated 2500 years ago, and Clausewitz re-iterated more concisely 200 years ago, "War is merely a continuation of politics". In fact, war is an extension of politics, economics and a lot more. Conversely, to win a war is to achieve a political (and military) objective, and the means should not be restricted to military. It should include all other possible leverages, political, economical, diplomatical, etc.
4GW is no exception. Unfortunately, the majority of the pundits and experts in 4GW do not understand this. They do not understand that there is a single fundamental factor in any 4GW -- the "source" of 4GW.
The "source"
Mao's 16 character doctrine on guerilla warfare is probably quite well known, and is regarded as the foundation of guerilla warfare.
- “敌进我退，敌驻我扰，敌疲我打，敌退我追”
- When enemy advances we retreat, when enemy stays we disturb, when enemy is tired we attack, when enemy retreats we pursue.
The "source" of 4GW is not the 16 word doctrine. It is about Mao's concept of "People's War"(人民战争). People's War is often confused by many (especially Westerners) with "Human Sea War" (人海战术) where China used fearless foot soldiers in large number to compensate for the inferior weapon technology during the Korean War (As a matter of fact, a rarely mentioned reason for the high Chinese casualty in the early stage of Korean War was its stubborn belief in People's War and refusal to plunder for food and clothes). What helped Mao to defeat Chiang Kaishek was People's War, not Human-sea War, as Chiang's KMT army outnumbered Mao's by a factor of 3-4. Chiang gave up the populace with its corrupted and incompetent governance.
- The ignorance (or intentionally ignoring) that people supported the communist guerilla is in part a denial of the failure of the regimes they sucessfully toppled. From Chiang Kai-Shek to Batista we see corrupted and brutal dictatorial oppression. The Cold War ideological prejudice prevented western scholars from admitting the fact that these communist guerilla could only have surivived if they have deep 'strategic' support from the populace. It is essential to understand this if one wants to understand 4GW.
Al Qaeda, PLO, Iraqi insurgents, all draw support from its base of populace, both in terms of material supply and committed voluntary soldier enrolment. Hezbollah may only have limited populace support in certain sub-population in Lebanon. Israel's brutal mis-step now seems to have given Hezbollah the whole of Lebanon (see survey via ESWN). This is why I said Israel made some fatal mistake in my previous post.
- If we look at each historic case of 4GW, every single one of them, if successful or sustained, have the common characteristic of having a very strong source
- Mao's guerilla warfare had its source from the peasant who were exploited by landlord and corrupted government (so are Maoist guerillas in Nepal and other countries);
- PLO's source is the Palestinians in refugee camps; Hama's source Palestinians in occupied territories, who are officially Israel citizen (now separated by apartheid fences - though we really cannot blame Israel for the fences/walls)
- bin Laden's source is the pan-Islamic fundamentalist who believe the West (and infidel) has a conspiracy to exploit them, strengthened by the percieved double-standardness in dealing with Palestine, Iraq in 1980-2000, Iran's Pahlevi, Saudi's dictators, etc.
In view of the situation of Lebanon. I would say Israel's recent action is a total fiasco.
- It does not achieve its objective, whatever it is. I now come to believe it never has made one (update - Zenpundit 's discussion on Israel strategy is a must read). It just passively and reactively revenge furiously on Hezbollah and the Lebanese people who it believed supported Hezbollah
- If the objective is to turn 2/3 of the Lebanese who have been neutral toward Hezbollah into against Hezbollah. We expect (and is now proved) that killing their people indiscriminately is not a good idea
- If the objective is to secure northern Israel/Palestine from the rocket (btw, most of the alleged 12,000 rockets have range less than 20km) attacks, clearing 20km north of the border will do the job, and is easy to accomplish (or has it been made more difficult now?)
- If the objective is to uproot Hezbollah (and Syria, and Iran), then let's go back to the "source" problem. And ask our friends in Israel and US, are they ready to kill everybody in Lebanon, Syria and Iran? Do they have a proven model that toppling the governments in a controversal war will do the job, eg, based on the Iraqi experience? (FDNF quoted some sailors pontificating about "the more dead Muslims, the better." Even if we take the ethnics of wild beasts, could you reduce the number of "Muslim" faster than they reproduce?)
A correct strategy for Israel should be to seek peace with the Lebanese people, and to alienate Hezbollah, to deprive it of its source, by crook (force) or by hook (bribe), or both. (Of course it should also seek peace with the Palestinian, even though it is a non-trivial task) Arrogance based on a strong position just does not help Israel's long term peace. Perhaps it needs to learn its lesson from some major defeat, just as its non-negotiating opponents have learned the hard way .
P.S. For my response to Qana see my response to Haditha. In short, it is the sad result, made inevtiable by prolonged war with ill-conceived (or non-existence of) strategy.
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Note (*):
I believe the reason Dr Barnett emphasized SysAdmin, while skipping the "source" is largely due to his target audience in the pentagon. He needs to show the pentaon he is providing a solution where his audience is still playing a major role, even though he might know clearly that the most important action is no longer military, but economic and political.
One reason I do not agree with Dr Barnett that the size of SysAdmin force matter is the comparison between Iraq and Afghanistan. Let's look at 2 sets of figures
- Afghanistan: population 30M, area 647,500 km2, GDP/cap (PPP) $1310
- Iraq: population 29M, area 437,100 km2, GDP/cap (PPP) $3500
Again, I believe Dr Barnett does understand the "source" problem, because when he mentioned that US needs to pulling in the Russian and Chinese into the SysAdmin, he emphasized the need of a story to tell the world and Iraqi people, "that it is the wolrd, not selfishly US". US can afford to send 0.5M soldiers to Iraq for SysAdmin if it really wants to (see Chet Richards). But it won't help to divert the "source" of the insurgence.
