{"id":766,"date":"2015-01-08T10:58:35","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T02:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamincheah.wordpress.com\/?p=766"},"modified":"2015-01-08T10:58:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T02:58:35","slug":"media-and-the-maturation-of-fourth-generation-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/?p=766","title":{"rendered":"Media and the Maturation of Fourth Generation War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold;
\nmere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere,
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned…<\/p>\n

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
\nSlouches towards Bethlehem to be born?<\/p>\n

W. B. Yeats, the Second Coming<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2014 closed on a bloody note, and\u00a0a few days into 2015 the spectre of terror rose\u00a0its head again. In the space of days and weeks the world saw a hostage crisis in Australia<\/a>, another in Belgium<\/a>, executions\u00a0of police officers in America<\/a>, mass abductions in Nigeria<\/a>, and yesterday the assassinations of cartoonists in France<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s not the end of the world, but we can see it from here.<\/p>\n

A state is commonly (albeit not quite completely) defined as a political organisation with a centralised government that maintains a monopoly on\u00a0violence in a given territory. With the advent of new information communication technologies and the growing paradigm of open source warfare,\u00a0that monopoly on violence is being challenged. The logical extension is that the power of the state will fade away, and the traditional world order defined by state actors will be replaced with a multipolar world defined by the expansion and growing importance of non-state actors and empowered individuals. The method of this transition is what is known today as fourth generation warfare.<\/p>\n

First seen\u00a0in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel and Chechnya, 4GW is defined by a blurring of lines between combatants and civilians, war and politics. Today it is mutating even further: the line between terrorism and crime is growing hazy, with\u00a0one feeding into the other as seen in the case of the Mexican cartels and Palestinian smugger\/terrorist groups; the\u00a0deed becomes propaganda and propaganda fuels deeds; and gaining public legitimisation is as important a goal as securing territory.<\/p>\n

War never changes.\u00a0War is violence designed to compel an opponent to fulfil the actor’s will, and violence seems eternal. On the other hand, war has changed. The means and purposes of waging war has changed, as well as the temporal goals and identities of the actors. Anybody can make war with the right tools, motivation and mindset.<\/p>\n

Today, there seem to be three prominent kinds of 4GW actors. The first are transnational terrorist groups, loosely connected over\u00a0the Internet and social networks, that aim to overthrow or replace the state. These groups include Boko Haram\u00a0and the Islamic State. While their goals are ideological, they\u00a0borrow criminal activities and methods to keep themselves going, such as front organisations, smuggling and money laundering.<\/p>\n

The second are transnational criminal organisations that aim to hollow out the state to secure a space to conduct criminal activities. The most prominent\u00a0example are the Mexican cartels. While driven by profit, these groups use terrorist methodology to secure its goals. The cartels are loosely organised, use atrocities to terrorise the people in their territories, and challenge the state by targeting or\u00a0corrupting the military and police.<\/p>\n

The last are lone wolves who attack seemingly at random. These people have a huge array of motivations: workplace dissatisfaction, anger at the police or government, the creation of a caliph, or just plain mental illness. They adopt criminal mindsets, either obtaining weapons illegally or turning off-the-shelf products into weapons. They use terrorist methodology to\u00a0gain maximum publicity, hitting soft targets\u00a0and\u00a0boasting on social media, relying on news cycles to gain their spot in history.<\/p>\n

Central to all three actors is the use of media to conduct propaganda\u00a0of the deed. They perform the deed, and\u00a0they use media of all kinds to transform it into propaganda. They can count on the media to rapidly propagate news of their attacks across the world.\u00a0This leads to three\u00a0distinct media strategies.<\/p>\n

First, 4GW actors will use the 24\/7 news cycle to generate maximum terror. A sufficiently large and resourceful group\u00a0will strike rapidly and retreat just as quickly, creating maximum impact for global publicity. Then they regroup and do it again, and again, and again. Think the Paris or Mumbai shooters on a larger scale. Alternatively, following a terrorist attack,\u00a0fellow travellers or non-connected 4GW actors will use the increased\u00a0focus on insecurity and fear to amplify press coverage of their next attack to create the perception of an unstable world. They may also conduct operations that synergize with each other, deliberately or otherwise.\u00a0The chain of attacks I described above, for example,\u00a0imply just that. These attacks need not be exclusive; in fact, one can happen alongside the other.<\/p>\n

Second, 4GW actors will rely on operational pauses. When there is too much heat for the actors to operate, when competing groups have generated too much white noise and drawn\u00a0too much attention away from their ideology, 4GW actors will retreat and halt operations for a time. They will wait until the news cycle clears and the local environment returns to a calmer state, and then strike again for maximum impact. This is the hallmark of the Islamic Caucuses Emirate, and it would likely be adopted by other groups in the future.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, larger and more powerful 4GW actors will attempt to influence the news cycle. They want the media to portray them as an unstoppable force to be feared and respected, building up their credibility. They will likely make contact with media organisations that\u00a0portray them favourably, or at least\u00a0allow foreign correspondents a glimpse into their life. There was a reason why the Islamic State allowed a German journalist to chronicle them instead of turning him into a hostage. These actors will also target media organisations that portray them in an unfavourable light to intimidate everybody else. Think of the attack on Charlie Hebdo yesterday.<\/p>\n

The newspaper is no longer just a newspaper; it is also a newsmaker. The mass media will become increasingly important targets, either of influence or coercion or both, in the coming days. Non-traditional media outlets and personalities will likely also be targeted: celebrities, blogs, social influencers, ordinary people with extraordinary reach. The days of traditional warfare and state protection are gone; a brave new war is coming,\u00a0and anyone can take up the sword.<\/p>\n

If, through your death or through your tweet, you can\u00a0help a 4GW actor advance the cause, you will be a target. There is really only one answer to this. Stand up and be counted against the barbarians, or make your peace with the chain and the grave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent trend of criminal and terrorist violence across the world points to the maturation of fourth generation warfare. The media will be an important factor in this brave new war, both as actor and target.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,32],"tags":[40,74,86,93,97,210,215,222,235,308,314],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-source-war","category-uncategorized","tag-4gw","tag-blogging","tag-civilisation","tag-counterterrorism","tag-crime","tag-media","tag-military","tag-new-media","tag-philosophy","tag-strategy","tag-terrorism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}