1) It is fought in the media-space as much as on the ground. This is, par example, why Hezbollahs rocketcampaign in 2006 proved effective. Not because of its military effect, but because of its mediaeffect. By luring Israel into a prescripted media-situation, it portrayed a skillful tale of David facing Goliath, with the rockets as its slingstones. This could be said to be first exemplified by the My Lai massacres. With Al Jazeera and the internet, this problem has become much more important.

2) A 4GW conflict is more about economical stamina than it is about battlespace dominance: An actor can have full spectrum dominance in all fields of combat and still bleed out economically. This seems to me to be the one issue of COIN and Iraq everyone is reluctant to speak about, how it is becoming increasingly impossible to make war for years on a freemarket laissez-faire budget.

3) The whole concept of democracy is ill suited for prolonged wars. Every non-state actor fighting a democratic force knows that surviving one or two election cycles greatly improves chances of survival and withdrawal of the dominant force. US responmse to this, to make the president into a sort of Warlord, is… interesting.

PS: “This is the equivalent of discussing politics with strangers at a bar. Socrates never did that, so far as we know, because he was smart and knew that life is too short to waste.”

Umm, wasnt that exactly what the symposiums were all about? ;-)
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Fabius Maximus replies: Thanks for the comments, but I disagree with all of them.

1. Wars have been fought in the media for centuries, so this is not a distinguishing factor of 4GW. John Adams’ defense of the British soldiers following the Boston massacre was a media event, widely followed and applauded in England. Media coverage was decisive in weakening the British will to resist in the American Revolution and keeping Britain out of the Civil War.
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2. “Economic stamina” was the decisive factor in both WWI and WWII, so ditto.
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3. “The whole concept of democracy is ill suited for prolonged wars.” I have seen no empirical support for this widely circulated theory. The sample set is small, as few wars (by anybody) last over 8 years. Two of the longest wars of ancient times were fought by the direct democracy of Athens and Republican Rome (the Peloponnesian and Punic Wars). The US fought in Vietnam for many years (perhaps over 8, depending on you choice of start and end dates), and none of the major Presidential candidates plans to end our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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As described by Plato, Socrates drank and talked with friends, or friends of friends.

It follows, then, that in such conflicts, you have to be willing to take more casualties than you inflict. Body counts, in other words, work in reverse.

Another is that in modern times, governments have options that occupiers, particularly from Western democracies, will find difficult to employ. They can use the “Hama” solution — unrestrained force against a minority in insurrection — and unless it drags on, justify it as being in the larger public good. We may be seeing a little of this in Tibet.

These are important points, and although they have been made elsewhere, TCFOW puts them right out in your face. To the extent they are valid, they explain a lot of our problems in Iraq and provide a warning against assuming that Iraq was just bungled and that there is a formula for doing occupations right.

I hope that proponents of Creveld do go to Amazon, and make their case because the current situation, which has seven negative comments pitted against only four favorable, do not help advance his position. I for one would appreciate some encouragement before spending money and time on his book. Answering these objections should be particularly desired by classicists, considering, after all, that refutation was a fundamental component of classical rhetoric.
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Fabius Maximus: As one who has burned time “debating” on forums like Amazon, I disagree. Not that it might be useful in some theoretical sense, but that it is a waste of time. This is the equivalent of discussing politics with strangers at a bar. Socrates never did that, so far as we know, because he was smart and knew that life is too short to waste.

To Sven, reference the poison gas - I would submit that the rationale to the lack of chemical warfare in WWII was not due to a “universal abhorence” or deterrence, but rather other reasons. The Germans knew that if they used CW, they’d be locked into a WWI trench warfare model, and they could not afford the slow-down. They seriously considered gassing Leningrad but couldn’t commit the railcars that were too busy with sending ammo and food - only reason why it didn’t happen. The Japanese really didn’t need CW, since their conventional arms worked so well, and they did in fact try BW on the Chinese cities (not too successfully). The Italians did use CW in 1935 in Ethiopia, but didn’t have any real incentive to use CW against the Allied invasion in 1943.

On the Allied side, the United States had a president who was very, very much against CW use (even though ironically the US military had the largest CBW stockpile in WWII) and the United Kingdom very much wanted to use CBW against the Germans, but couldn’t afford to piss off the United States and didn’t have the resources to divert to unconventional munitions.
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Fabius Maximus replies: Handel’s analysis of van Creveld’s work is a bit bizarre. If one broadens the definitions sufficiently, such as he does with “Army” to include any armed forces, everything fits in Clausewitz’s framework. Defining “animal rights terrorists” as an army — linked somehow to the people and government — renders the framework into an idle academic exercise. Nice, but useless. While van Creveld’s generates a wealth of practical insights.

1. pp. 48, “trench systems [in WW I] were completed by the laying of millions upon millions of mines…” [anti-personnel mines not developed until the 1930s]

{#3 - 11 snipped}

This sort of comment gives me pause and certainly is the sort f thing that Creveld’s proponents should address headon.
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Fabius Maximus replies: I think you need to find a better source of information than folks posting at Amazon.

1. Every book has errata. For an opinion about the importance of minor errata by an author who was both a man of action and a scholar, look at TE Lawrence’s dismissive reply to his Editor’s corrections for “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”.

2. The ones you cited are mostly false or tendentious. The first is false; mines were used in the US Civil War – long before WWI. Histories of WWI trench warfare describe extensive use of mines. For more see Wikipedia on mines. The second is tendentious. The Bearn was launched in 1920 and commissioned in 1927 (not 1935; see Wikipedia). It was a converted battleship, essentially experimental, and barely functional as a carrier.

3. This list is too far off-topic, so I am snipping the remaining 9 points. Interested readers can go to the Amazon pages to debate these trivialities.

Ancedotal evidence suggests that is exactly what is at work in the developed countries. The Third World never really got the same order of social stability, so in a sense this kind of a sea change might in fact have a less drastic impact (meaning, its effect will be felt in the “First World” much more strongly).

Secondly, the bit about nuclear powers not engaging in conventional war is just wrong: Look at India and Pakistan. In 1999, the Pervez Musharraf started the Kargil War soon after both countries had conducted nuclear tests. Yet the conflict remained strictly limited to Kashmir, and neither country forayed into strategic bombing against major cities or govnerment targets. In fact, the history of India and Paksitan’s conflicts might be indicative of many future conflicts: despite decades of mistrust, poor relations, and repeated “small wars,” neither has, for example, taken any action to poison the Indus River.

As for non-state actors in the international system: it’s a tricky subject to tackle throughout history. States, as we believe them to exist today, are only a few centuries old. And non-state actors have historically been prevalent, from the Berber pirates of the late 18th century to the German mercenaries of the 19th. It really is the massive consolidation of power in the state in the 20th century that is unique; thus, threats to that system, and actors who do not recognize it, are so difficult to come by. We have collectively lost our ability to think outside the state box.
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Fabius Maximus replies: I think you have this backwards. By conventional war, we mean the real thing. Not skirmishes over Kashmir. The ratcheting down of conflict since both I & P got nukes — as seen in the “kargil War” — is evidence, not counter-evidence. Both have become more careful in their sparring, for obvious reasons.