Item: "The sandwich generations-of-war strategy"

	Blog Post published by Thomas P. M. Barnett on October 8, 2006
	Site: Thomas P. M. Barnett
	Permalink to original: "The sandwich generations-of-war strategy"

“[W]orking off my SysAdmin force/Department of Everything Else concepts,” and off a comment left by RevG, Thomas Barnett discusses the importance of the 3GW Leviathan.

The advent of nuclear weapons failed to achieve a new generation of war, although it did focus the development of war into 1) limited warfare and 2) proxy warfare and 4GW. This manner of conducting conflict was “defensible in the go-go 90s, when globalization was going to do all the heavy lifting for us and didn’t need a bodyguard”, but is no longer enough and will not work for “the Long War.”

But just collecting bad guys without altering the conditions by which they arise inside the Gap basically plays into the 4GW strategies of Robb’s global guerrillas, because keeping governments in the Gap sub-optimal is what gives 4GW warriors their chance for rule through chaos (i.e., no weak gov in Lebanon, no Hamas).

“The Leviathan-SysAdmin pairing represents a sandwiching-of-generations strategy.” — The 3GW Leviathan keeps peer competitors in line while the SysAdmin moves in to alter the paradigms within the Gap:

But say we get the SysAdmin up and running, are we entering the realm of 5th Generation Warfare?

I would say yes.

However, with respect to Dan tdaxp’s OODA and xGW framing, Thomas Barnett counters that although a too-upfront and obvious approach to shaping the Gap may seem to be a weakness —

The key phrase from Dan’s analysis that clicked it for me is that once you’re observed doing your thing in 5GW, the gig is up…

— in truth, transparency is the key to success, since it opposes the status quo of authoritarian regimes.

Development-in-a-Box really gets you into 5GW because it alters the observed reality—pre-emptively—in a sort of bribe-the-proles mode that steals the thunder of the 4GW warrior of today in the same way that social welfare nets and trade unions stifled the rise of socialism in Europe…

<snip>

The sort of transparency-on-steroids made possible by rule-set automation and enterprise/agency/national resilience (Steve DeAngelis’ dream and self-made new industry) makes the Core too tough a venue for 4GWers to pull off anything more than occasional pinpricks.

Essentially, then, the 5GW “sandwich” strategy would mean that the 5GW sandwich works after the 3GW Leviathan force has successfully built a space for the SysAdmin to operate, not only holding off potential 3GW opponent peer competitors but also by keeping 4GW opponents from being able to expand beyond the Gap.