Fighting in the War Room

Arms and Influence attacks netwar theory, specifically Martin J. Muckian's article in Paremeters. Being biased towards 4GW and 5GW theory, I find many parts of his argument convincing, especially his insistence that insurgent groups have used "netwar" methods long before Iraq. Of course, Arms and Influence is looking at this from a classical, Galula-esque counterinsurgency perspective, so he doesn't mention 4GW, and probably doesn't think too highly of it anyway.

I think it's important to emphasize that even if we see many more decentralized groups now, it's clear, as Martin Van Creveld argued, that this is partly a return to some very old methods of combat and organization. And in many non-Western parts of the world, there has been little change in how war has been waged since the beginning of what we would consider organized conflict. Conventional methods of fighting, just like the idea of the modern nation-state itself, is sometimes a purely Western imposition. But I have a bone to pick with this point:

"The fact that the Iraqi insurgency is a bewildering collection of small groups that frequently collaborate with one another is not a sign of a scary new age of "netwar." Instead, it is a tragically botched opportunity, a situation in which the government under siege and its great power patron should have been able to capitalize, during the first years of the occupation, on the small size and relative unpopularity of the insurgents."

It's true that the conditions he outlines in Iraq--a destabilized state without legitimacy, multiple decentralized insurgent networks, intense tribal and ethnic divisions, and a thriving underground "terror market,"--are not new. But they are going to be present in nearly every future 21st century conflict. Traditional insurgencies like the Maoist campaign in Nepal are on the way out. Even though it places too much stock on its own novelty, netwar theory is valuable because it accepts the primacy of the transnational, non-hierarchal non-state actor, and develops a framework to both understand and counter his actions.

Of course, whether we're talking about Thomas P.M Barnett's "Core and Gap" theory, John Boyd, classic Galula/Nagl/Kitson counterinsurgency doctrine, John Robb's Global Guerrilla theory, 4GW or 5GW, or netwar, it's important keep our minds open to the advantages and disadvantages of all theoretical perspectives. This doesn't mean that they're all equally right or wrong, or that we can't advocate one doctrine or several overlapping doctrines. It just means that we can't become rigid in our thinking.