The article by Dr. Sandor Fabian (LTC Hungarian Special Forces, ret.), published on July 15, 2025, explores the potential for irregular warfare conducted by China against the US homeland during a conflict, primarily in the Indo-Pacific. It argues that while kinetic battles would occur abroad, China could employ indirect, deniable tactics—such as physical sabotage, proxy-driven protests, unmanned systems (drones), cyberattacks, weaponized immigration, and social media manipulation—to disrupt US decision-making, erode public trust, overwhelm services, and deepen societal divisions.
Fabian emphasizes that these actions would avoid crossing nuclear thresholds while targeting the US's vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure, social polarization, and digital dependence. He calls for a "total defense" approach, investing in counter-irregular warfare capabilities beyond traditional military structures. This analysis examines the article's scenarios through two key frameworks: the military reform ideas of Donald E. Vandergriff, which focus on adaptive leadership and mission command, and the concepts of fourth-generation warfare (4GW), which describe decentralized, asymmetric conflicts blurring traditional boundaries.
Fourth-generation warfare, as conceptualized by William S. Lind, COL (USMC Ret) GI Wilson, Dr. Martin van Creveld and others in the 1980s, represents a shift from state-centric, industrialized warfare to decentralized, culturally driven conflicts where non-state actors—or states employing irregular methods—erode an adversary's will, legitimacy, and societal cohesion without direct, large-scale confrontations. Unlike earlier generations—first (line-and-column tactics), second (attrition through firepower), and third (maneuver and infiltration)—4GW blurs distinctions between war and peace, combatants and civilians, and military and non-military domains.
It often involves violent non-state actors but can be adapted by states in asymmetric scenarios, using tools like insurgency, terrorism, psychological operations, economic disruption, and information warfare to create disorder and force the enemy to overextend resources. Key characteristics include dispersed operations, moral and mental attacks over physical ones, exploitation of cultural vulnerabilities, and the use of media or proxies to delegitimize the state. Fabian's article vividly illustrates a 4GW scenario in a state-vs.-state context, where China, as a peer competitor, could leverage irregular tactics to target the US homeland without provoking nuclear escalation.
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