T. Lindsay Moore's article "Fourth Epochal War" questions the utility of military concepts of "exhaustion" and/or "wars of density," which he defines as antiquated concepts of warfare unable to adapt to the realities of the new battlefield. Moore draws upon the lessons of history to demonstrate his point. Arguing by analogy, Moore suggests that "current weapons of efficiency," like the main battle tank, for example, on the post-modern battlefield, peppered with non-state terrorist networks, inter alia, is analogous to the medieval knights of old who were riddled with arrows at Crécy in 1346 by English long bow archers who not only were more mobile than the heavy knights, but refused to fight on the French knight's chivalrous level. The medieval knight's chivalrous code of combat and main armaments failed to defeat the new enemy just as the United States could fail to defeat the new enemies of the twenty-first century (criminal-soldiers, terrorists, warlords, and drug dealers) if the U.S. does not learn from the past and adopt new tactics, operations, and strategies that address the new strategic environment, which is very different from our current nation-state-based, force-on-force, traditional strategic model.
One of the overarching themes of "Non-State Threats and Future Wars" is that networked organizational structures are more apt do deal with post-modern security threats than are the traditional bureaucratic hierarchies of nation-states. The authors writing specifically on this subject understand that the nation-state and its concomitant bureaucratic hierarchies will remain the dominant form for political and social organization for many decades to come. However, the authors suggest that the two organizational forms can co-exist: they believe that some sort of decentralized network that spans military, intelligence, law enforcement and emergency services can and must be grafted upon related traditional hierarchies to quickly move through Colonel Boyd's famous O-O-D-A (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) loop, which is crucial in a security environment loaded with non-state actors.
The days when military and law enforcement operations were mutually exclusive are over. Military and national intelligence agencies can no longer hoard their respective intelligence and must act in accord with law enforcement to combat terrorism that will most likely take place in our backyard. The wars of the future will not always be fought by the military "over there." Military and intelligence officers should read this book because it paints a template for future conflict in an "out-of-the-box" context. And a little out-of-the-box thinking can and usually does go a long way.
One of the overarching themes of Non-State Threats and Future Wars is that networked organizational structures are more apt do deal with post-modern security threats than are the traditional bureaucratic hierarchies of nation-states. The authors writing specifically on this subject understand that the nation-state and its concomitant bureaucratic hierarchies will remain the dominant form for political and social organization for many decades to come. However, the authors suggest that the two organizational forms can co-exist: they believe that some sort of decentralized network that spans military, intelligence, law enforcement and emergency services can and must be grafted upon related traditional hierarchies to quickly move through Colonel Boyd's famous O-O-D-A (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) loop, which is crucial in a security environment loaded with non-state actors.
