President Trump Recognizes Fourth Generation War
With his order to the U.S. Armed Forces to sink the drug cartels’ boats bringing cocaine to the United States, President Trump has acknowledged the reality of Fourth Generation war, war waged by entities other than states. This is a significant development, because the Pentagon remains focused on war against other states, who do not constitute direct threats to our country. The drug cartels do, because they are poisoning tens of thousands of Americans every year.
President Trump's actions, controversial among the legal set, are correct, necessary and legally fully justified. If an entity, state or not, were firing missiles at America, would anyone say it was illegal to shoot them down? The cargoes these boats are carrying kill Americans just as surely as would a missile strike. What difference does it make in law that one form of attack goes boom and the other does not?
As I have long argued, 4GW is at root a contest for legitimacy. Do people give their primary loyalty to the state or to something else? From that perspective, it is usually wise for a state to consider attacks by non-state entities crimes rather than war. But when we are talking about drug cartels, the situation is somewhat different. The cartels have little ability to gain legitimacy, nor most of them seek it; they are just about making money.
Some do attain local legitimacy in the places they are based by providing services the state is supposed to offer but does not. However, the area where they can do this is small, and endless wars among cartels mean they cannot deliver even order, safety of people and property, in their home regions.
Providing order is the base for all legitimacy, so the cartels are poorly placed to obtain it. President Trump can continue to make war on the cartels without much concern for legitimacy, and he should, so long as his actions take place on the high seas. Striking cartels facilities on another nation's home soil would be a different matter.
President Trump also recognized Fourth Generation war in his actions to stop illegal immigration. Invasions by immigrants who will not acculturate is more, not less, dangerous than invasion by a foreign army because the army eventually goes home while the immigrants permanently alter the place where they settle, usually for the worse.
Europe, with its millions of Islamic immigrants, is example A. Fortunately, most illegal immigrants into the U.S. are Christian and they do not want to change this country into the kind of place they just fled. They can be acculturated over time. But they were coming, under the Biden administration, faster than acculturation mechanisms can work. By eliminating illegal immigration, President Trump has largely solved this problem, giving him a 4GW victory.
What the President needs to do next is get his armed forces on board in confronting 4GW. For the most part, they are still focused on war with other states, wars we should not fight (e.g., with China), would not benefit from and could lead to nuclear weapons landing on American cities. All President Trump needs to do is get his Secretary of War to announce to our armed forces that the Four Generations of Modern War intellectual framework is now official they are expected to move from the Second to the Third Generation while thinking through how to deal with 4GW threats (the latter requires changes in institution culture that come with moving from 2GW to 3GW). If the President can do this, he will be able to count as one of his greatest achievements refocusing our armed services on the future rather than on the past.