Mr. Bush will be praised for his bright strategic finding on how to handle the non-standard situation stemming from the terror threat. When the USSR has disappeared, the USA automatically became the irrevocably strongest in the military aspect country. It became clear that no other country or a union of countries can defeat it, and the enemies changed tactics: they imposed on the Western world led by the USA the
Fourth Generation Warfare.
Its characteristics can be briefly described as follows:
Quote:For about the last 500 years, the West has defined warfare. For a military to be effective it generally had to follow Western models. Because the West's strength is technology, it may tend to conceive of a fourth generation in technological terms.
However, the West no longer dominates the world. A fourth generation may emerge from non-Western cultural traditions, such as Islamic or Asiatic traditions. The fact that some non-Western areas, such as the Islamic world, are not strong in technology may lead them to develop a fourth generation through ideas rather than technology.
The genesis of an idea-based fourth generation may be visible in terrorism. This is not to say that terrorism is fourth generation warfare, but rather that elements of it may be signs pointing toward a fourth generation.
Some elements in terrorism appear to reflect the previously noted "carryovers" from third generation war fare. The more successful terrorists appear to operate on broad mission orders that carry down to the level of the individual terrorist. The 'battlefield" is highly dispersed and includes the whole of the enemy's society. The terrorist lives almost completely off the land and the enemy. Terrorism is very much a matter of maneuver: the terrorist's firepower is small, and where and when he applies it is critical.
Two additional carryovers must be noted as they may be useful "signposts" pointing toward the fourth generation. The first is a component of collapsing the enemy. It is a shift in focus from the enemy's front to his rear. Terrorism must seek to collapse the enemy from within as it has little capability (at least at present) to inflict widespread destruction. First generation warfare focused tactically and operationally (when operational art was practiced) on the enemy's front, his combat forces. Second generation warfare remained frontal tactically, but at least in Prussian practice it focused operationally on the enemy's rear through the emphasis on encirclement The third generation shifted the tactical as well as the operational focus to the enemy's rear. Terrorism takes this a major step further. It attempts to bypass the enemy's military entirely and strike directly at his homeland at civilian targets. Ideally, the enemy's military is simply irrelevant to the terrorist.
...
and
Quote:Terrorists use a free society's freedom and openness, its greatest strengths, against it. They can move freely within our society while actively working to subvert it. They use our democratic rights not only to penetrate but also to defend themselves. If we treat them within our laws, they gain many protections; if we simply shoot them down, the television news can easily make them appear to be the victims. Terrorists can effectively wage their form of warfare while being protected by the society they are attacking.[/color]
One more feature of tactics used against the Western civilization by its enemies:
Quote:Psychological operations may become the dominant operational and strategic weapon in the form of media/information intervention. Logic bombs and computer viruses, including latent viruses, may be used to disrupt civilian as well as military operations. Fourth generation adversaries will be adept at manipulating the media to alter domestic and world opinion to the point where skillful use of psychological operations will sometimes preclude the commitment of combat forces. A major target will be the enemy population's support of its government and the war. Television news may become a more powerful operational weapon than armored divisions.
Mr. Bush decided to defend interests of his nation despite of objection of three fourths of the world population. He did the very simple thing: if the enemy is strong in the warfare of the fourth generation, then the conventional war is to be imposed on it, this will guarantee the enemy's defeat.
Of course, neither bin-Laden nor Saddam have been yet captured, but
there were no terror attacks on the U.S. territory since 09/11/02. Toppling of Taliban regime in Afghanistan did it: many rulers in the Muslim world realized what may happen if they give direct support to the terrorists, and al-Qaeda has lost both its existing training camps and possibility to establish the new ones; it is quite possible that leaders of Syria or Iran are quite sympathetic to strategic aims of al-Qaeda, but they do not want to share destiny of Mullah Omar...
Military operation against Iraq was justified regardless of possession of WMDs by Saddam: it showed that the USA was able to defeat not only the irregular troops (like these of Taliban), but is able to destroy undesirable dictatorial regime possessing a regular army with relatively modern weapons. This deterred many other rogue regimes to make irrelevant attempts to probe the U.S. strength and decisiveness.
Important changes were made domestically as well. The terrorists abused the advantages of the hosting country: the Patriot act is intended to put end to their impunity. Theoretically, it means revocation of certain individual rights, but a rank-and-file citizens' lives have not changed; terrorists, on the contrary, found themselves helpless against the law enforcement system.
Mr. Bush and his team just changed the rules of the game that was imposed on the civilized world by terrorists ?- they made these rules more favorable to the USA possessing military and technologic superiority over its enemies. And the latter will sooner or later realize all the futility of their attempts to change the existing world order. This will realize that their only possibility to survive is to come in terms with it; and if they still do not ant to, they are free to commit a suicide by means of drowning themselves in any cesspit.
c.i.
