Donald Vandergriff
In the annals of military thought, few frameworks have proven as prescient and enduring as William S. Lind’s theory of the Generations of Modern War. Coined in the late 1980s amid the fading echoes of Cold War predictability, this paradigm—first articulated in the pages of the Marine Corps Gazette—dismantled the illusions of linear progression in warfare, revealing instead a series of cultural and doctrinal evolutions: from the rigid lines of First Generation attrition, to the industrialized firepower of Second Generation mass armies, the fluid maneuver of Third Generation operations, and the shadowy, legitimacy-eroding chaos of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW).
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Lind’s work, which I have long championed in my own writings on military reform—from Path to Victory to Raising the Bar—strikes at the heart of why our armed forces have repeatedly stumbled in asymmetric conflicts. It is not merely a tactical lens but a cultural diagnosis, insisting that true adaptation demands a profound shift in institutional mindset, away from the bureaucratic rigidity of 2GW and toward the decentralized initiative of 3GW, all while preparing to navigate the non-state threats of 4GW.
What elevates Lind’s latest dispatch, “President Trump Recognizes Fourth Generation War,” to a clarion call is its timeliness in an era where these generations collide not just on distant battlefields but in the very fabric of American society. Here, Lind applauds President Trump’s decisive strikes against narco-traffickers’ vessels and his fortifications against unchecked migration—actions that tacitly acknowledge 4GW’s core reality: war waged by entities unbound by state sovereignty, eroding our national cohesion through poison, infiltration, and cultural subversion.
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