Fourth-generation warfare (4GW) is conflict characterized by a blurring of the distinction between war and politics and between combatants and civilians, fought increasingly by decentralized non-state or hybrid actors rather than by opposing state armies. The term was first used in 1980 by a team of American analysts including William S. Lind. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Disputed
Core ClaimWar increasingly blurs the line between combatant and civilian and between state and non-state actor, fought by decentralized networks rather than by opposing armies alone. 1 Connections
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Fourth-Generation Warfare
Wikipedialead paragraph
Fourth-generation warfare (4GW) is conflict characterized by a blurring of the distinction between war and politics, and of the distinction between combatants and civilians.
history section
The term was first used in 1980 by a team of United States analysts, including William S. Lind, to describe warfare's return to a decentralized form.
Criticism section
The generational model is an ineffective way to depict changes in warfare. Simple displacement rarely takes place, significant developments typically occur in parallel.
View the Source Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Core Claim
Echevarria argues the generational framework itself is unsound: real developments in war occur in parallel rather than as one generation cleanly displacing the last, so what is labeled fourth-generation warfare is better read as insurgency under a new name than as a genuinely new generation of war; other critics such as Lieutenant General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. call the theory an "elegant irrelevance" whose central claims are contentious and open to widely varying interpretations. This challenges this entity's core-claim, which states fourth-generation warfare as a settled analytical category rather than a genuinely contested one.
A dissenting reading, from Antulio J. Echevarria II (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College), "Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths"Wikipedia: Fourth-Generation Warfare, Wikipedia
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