Fourth Generation Warfare and its Impact on the Army

Many Americans associate the fall of Rome with Alaric and the Visigoths and other warrior peoples from the north, but serious students understand that Rome's decline was slow and from within. Ralph Peters writes, "In its confident years, the Roman Empire had been absorptive and tolerant. For centuries, these qualities lent strength and co-opted new subjects-but ultimately core identities and commitments to the Roman idea were fatally diluted. It was those who refused to be absorbed and who rejected toleration...who outlasted the greatest empire the earth knew until our own century." Peters goes on to say in his thought provoking essay, Our New Old Enemies, that Pontius Pilates's refusal to face the difficult choices by wishing away the problem was symbolic of what was wrong in Rome even at its apex of power. A cancer had already invaded a society more content in debating than deciding. Ultimately, the "Romans were chronically late to respond to challenges..." and torn asunder by their declining self-confidence in their own ideals, self-identity, and self-imposed ignorance to the real threat from within. Are there parallels to American history? Some would say so. In 1989, the authors of an article entitled, The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation, offered a glimpse of the future rooted in the past. They postulated an America in crisis conditioned over time to accept tolerance and reject its unifying Western identity in favor of a new order of multiculturalism. Their position initially found little traction until such notables as Martin van Creveld, Samuel Huntington, and Robert Kaplan independently confirmed in the 1990's what the authors of the article had been saying all along. The authors of The Changing Face of War argued that the decline of the West in a world rife with cultural conflicts and the powerful influences of a form of cultural Marxism known as political correctness were combining in America to create conditions for a new generation of warfar