WEBVTT - Does War Change? 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:09.680 It could happen. Here is the podcast that this is 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:12.840 about things falling apart and how to, how to, how 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:17.320 to maybe unfollowing apart. I'm Robert Evans. Your your your host, 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:21.920 and your other hosts are Christopher and Garrison and our 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:27.440 producers Sophie. How's everybody doing today? Great? How's every how's 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:34.720 everybody feel about war? Oh? Yeah? Now, if you were 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:37.319 to get us based on your knowledge of history, what 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:40.480 generation of war we're in right now? What would you? What? 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:47.080 What would y'all guess? I feel like war isn't it's 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:50.360 it's it's newer in relation to like human beings. Like 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:54.280 the idea of war, I'm guessing like there's been like battles, 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:56.160 but like the idea of like war, I feel like 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.680 isn't super old compared to how long has been humans 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.800 walking around. So I don't know this is maybe I mean, 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:08.360 I know the answer, but like it's it's like like 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:11.080 that's that's definitely We definitely passed through like at least 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:14.360 a couple of stages and were at least a couple Chris, 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.800 like gotta be at least twelve twelve least you are 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:21.720 way ahead of William s Lynd who spoilers is the 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.360 guy who came up with the concept of fourth generation war, 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:26.840 which is what this episode is about. Right. One of 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:29.679 the things when we talk about things falling apart is 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:35.800 um the unsettling growth of a number of different hybrid conflicts, 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:41.039 Ukraine being the most like blatant modern example, Syria being 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:44.360 the deadliest example in our lifetimes. But like these weird 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:47.680 hybrid conflicts that are a mix of shit happening on 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:50.520 the Internet and like disinformation going out all over the world. 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:52.520 You could even think to like what was happening in 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:54.840 Bolivia a year or so back, and like all those 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.960 weird accounts that were like based around Langley, Virginia claiming 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.960 to support the military coup, And you can look at, 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:03.600 like from the same this disinformation brought out by like 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:06.160 the Russian state that is usually as part of like 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:09.200 a conflict either you know, they have disinfo operations and 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:13.040 Syria disinfo operations around the conflict in Ukraine that are 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:17.320 kind of designed to muddy the issues and to detract 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:21.240 international support and also to like drum up support within 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:23.160 for like in the in the case of Ukraine, you 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:26.320 had like this media blitz against the legitimacy of the 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.880 Ukrainian state in favor of like a more UH like 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.919 traditionally Russian um UH style of government in the East, 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:36.120 and like that led to this breakaway republic that was 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.480 supported by the Russian government and like so these are 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:40.960 like hybrid conflicts is kind of how these are referred to. 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:45.400 And there was a guy named William S. Lynd who 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.760 in nineteen eighty nine wrote a book with a couple 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:52.440 of US military analysts, Like he was an analyst for 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:54.639 the military. He was not serving in the military. The 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:57.600 other guys he wrote this this thing with we're serving 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.919 at the time, and they wrote this this book kind 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.080 of trying to basically what Lynde was doing. He was 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:06.880 very influenced by our loss in Vietnam when I say, 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:11.399 are here, like the loss of the American state in Vietnam, 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.520 And he was trying to determine, like number one, kind 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:16.520 of like find a way to codify and explain the 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:18.919 changes that were happening to warfare in this period. Was 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:21.200 also influenced about what was happening in Afghanistan with the 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:24.360 Russians were experiencing um and find a way to like 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.680 move forward and allow the United states to win wars again, right, 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.400 Like that was William S. Lynd's goal, um, And so 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:33.840 he came up with this concept of four or he 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:35.400 and some other guys came up with what they called 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.960 fourth generation warfare UM, and first generation warfare is like 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.240 Napoleonic Arab warfare. So, like as Garrison was saying, you 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:46.760 may note that he kind of starts his that's pretty late. 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:52.680 That's pretty late we had before. Yeah, that's there's a 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.200 lot of stuff that leads up to like, yeah, if 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:57.840 I was gonna try to categorize different types of warfare, 0:03:58.080 --> 0:03:59.880 that would not be the one I start with. Well, 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:02.240 like the reality of course, as we'll talk about, like 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:04.400 when you start looking at different kinds of warfares, there's 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:07.080 wars that look remarkably like the ship going on in 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:11.600 Afghanistan and Ukraine, that are occurring like several thousand years ago, um, 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.080 like like like in the same places to like, yeah, 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:17.280 it's just like if you wanted to if you wanted 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:19.800 to talk about like kind of the modern style of 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:21.640 wars that we saw on that we've seen really in 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.120 the last like hundred and fifty years, they're not all 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:25.839 that dissimilar. In a lot of ways from like the 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:28.360 kind of conflicts you saw between Rome and Carthage um, 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:32.000 which are these really like big nation state style conflicts 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.600 and and have a lot of similarities. But but William S. 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:37.240 Lynn described the first generation of warfare is beginning after 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.039 the Peace of Westphalia in sixty eight that ended the 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:42.640 Thirty Years War um. And it's the kind of warfare 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.040 where you have these like big, tightly ordered groups of 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:48.400 men marching towards each other and like firing very inaccurate 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:51.680 weapons and mass together. Right. Uh. This is ended by 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:54.799 the era of the machine gun and the semi automatic 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:57.600 rifle um or on the bolt reaction rifle, I should say, 0:04:57.600 --> 0:04:59.960 And that leads us to second generation warfare, which is 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.880 linear fire and movement with heavy reliance on indirect fires. 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:05.400 That's still huge groups of guys charging, but they're not 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.720 marching in close order, they're not like firing in volleys um, 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.920 and they're supported by heavy artillery like World War one 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.839 kind of ship right. Um. Really we start to see 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:16.920 this in eighteen seventy and then World War One is 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:19.000 kind of the height of this kind of warfare, and 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:21.520 over the course of World War One we more merge 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:23.920 in again This is William S. Len's way we emerge 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:27.360 from second generation to third generation warfare, which is where 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:31.479 you've got infiltration tactics to bypass enemy defensive lines and 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:33.760 collapse it, which is kind of the Germans and their 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.240 outrgs tactic and stormtrooper tactics are really kind of uh 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.040 pioneering that you've got the idea of defense in depth 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:42.760 um and so this need to bypass the enemy and 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:45.719 like this leads to blitzkrieg and leads to all sorts 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:48.760 of ship um and then that kind of starts to 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:52.120 collapse and Len's estimation around Vietnam, and you get what's 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:55.960 called fourth generation warfare. Fourth generation. I'm actually just going 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:59.120 to read a quote from a military history wiki that 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:01.560 I thought had any good description of all of this. 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.560 Fourth generation warfare is normally characterized by a violent non 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:08.800 state actor fighting a state. This fighting can be physically done, 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.960 such as by modern examples Hezblah or the liberation Tigers 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:15.760 of Tamil illam Um. In this realm, the v n essay. 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:18.159 These violent nonstate actors use all three levels of fourth 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:21.520 generation warfare. These are the physical actual combat, which is 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:24.599 considered the least important mental the will to fight, belief 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.600 in victory, etcetera. And the moral, which is the most important, 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:32.120 Lynd says, and includes cultural norms, etcetera. Um, So obviously 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:35.520 I think that this is kind of nonsense. There's a 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:37.840 lot of people, So there's a lot of folks, the 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:39.920 people who buy into this, and it's very popular on 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:41.599 the right. Well, we'll look at like what's happening in 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:44.240 Ukraine is a perfect example of fourth generation warfare because 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:47.159 you have Russia flooding the zone using spot Nick and 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:50.039 a bunch of other kind of media organizations to drum 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:53.720 up um discord and like anger between East and West 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:56.920 in Ukraine and support for potential Russian action at the 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.000 same time as you have them backing this dictator um, 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.279 and then you have like the West sort of supporting 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.840 the people protesting against those dictators and like so you've 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.600 got like this this digital conflict, this information conflict that 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:12.160 eventually leads to fighting on the ground. One of the 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.040 areas in which I think Lynda is really off is 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.360 talking about like the physical as the least important, especially 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:20.320 if you're going to consider Ukraine an example of fourth 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:24.680 generation warfare, because if the Russian military had not intervened, 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:27.560 there would not still be a conflict in Ukraine, the 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:30.000 Separatists would not still hold land, and in fact, the 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:32.520 Separatis were on the edge of getting completely wiped out 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.000 by the Ukrainian military because they were a bunch of 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.200 nonstate actors with minimal support and minimal weaponry before the 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:40.960 Russians moved in brigades of active duty combat troops in 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:43.920 armor um, including like gigantic fucking missile launchers which they 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.160 used to shoot down that Malaysian airlines flight like that. 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.240 It's it's just not I I don't think that that. 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:54.520 What what Linda is saying is very um, very well 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:57.200 describes what's actually going on in the world. But it 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:00.120 is important to understand the concept of fourth generay and 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.840 warfare and fifth generation warfare, which we'll talk about in 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.760 a bit um because it is so useful in the 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.520 way in which particularly guys like Steve Bannon um conceive 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.120 of conflict. Because that you will hear the term fourth 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:15.880 generation warfare constantly, and it's also something that has used 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.960 a lot within our military establishment. Now a lot of 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:20.880 people hate it, and within you can find a lot 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:24.640 of papers buy dudes writing like analysts who are working 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.680 for the Defense Department for the army actively like shipping 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:30.760 on lynd and talking about how he's at best is 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:33.600 kind of like reinvented ideas that existed in warfare for 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:35.760 thousands of years, and he's kind of summarized things in 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:40.320 a way that that is needlessly flattening, and like some 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:42.840 people will say, you basically like ripped up like added 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.000 the internet to klauswitz uh and pretended that you'd invented 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:48.200 a new style of conor that you defined a new 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:52.600 style of conflict. Anyway, that's like an introduction to the 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.920 idea of fourth generation warfare, right. And there's a lot 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.360 of things that he gets again like if you're if 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:01.040 you're a history a military has story wong, which Lynde 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:04.360 pretends to be a lot of ship that he gets wrong. Um. 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.120 So one of the things that he says, like one 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.320 of his famous phrases that every military eventually craps in 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:12.960 its own mess kit um, the idea that like every 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:16.200 military that that is great eventually like has a gigantic 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:17.920 funk up because they get too used to doing the 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.600 same thing, which is true um. And he describes it 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.800 as like um, the Prussians did in eighteen oh six, 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:25.920 after which they designed and put into service a much 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:28.960 more improved model mesh Kit mess Kit through the Sharonhorst 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:32.120 military reforms. The French did in eighteen seventy, after which 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:34.040 they took down from the shelf and old model mess 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:36.600 ket the mass draft Army of the First Republic and 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:38.920 put it back into service. The Japanese did it in 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:41.800 five after which they threw their mesket away, swearing they 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.000 would never eat again. And we did it in Korea, 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.280 in Vietnam, and now in four new wars so far 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:48.560 we've only we've had the only military that's just kept 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.760 on eating. And that's a really dumb statement. That's all 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:54.920 really historically and accurate. So, for example, it's true that 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:58.199 like the Prussians had a great military which then got 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:00.640 its butt kicked by Napoleon and they had to completely 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:03.280 redesign it, and by the time eighteen seventy came around, 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:05.960 they were extremely dominant on the battlefield be against the French. 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.320 Number One, he's crediting the military reforms of like tactics 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.400 and strategy and ignoring things like Krupp inventing an entirely 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:16.160 new kind of cannon that was utterly dominant on the battlefield. Um. 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:19.040 He's also ignoring the fact that this Prussian army. Um, 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:21.080 he's saying, like the US is the only army that 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:23.040 does the same thing over and over again and fails 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.120 and keeps on eating. Well, the Prussian Army is the 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:27.160 army the Germans took into battle in World War One 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.800 and two and spoilers, they didn't learn enough from either 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:35.120 of those wars. Um. He also talks about how like 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:37.280 the French had their you know, crapping in the mess 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:39.760 hit moment in eighteen seventy after the Franco Prussian War, 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:41.720 and they changed their army and it was much better. Like, well, 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:44.840 they didn't win World War One, like they were on 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:46.679 the side that one, but if it had been them 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.360 against Germany, they would have gotten fucking steamrolled. Like it 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:52.720 was not going well for them for quite a while, 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.240 and they lost a whole generation of young men. So 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:57.920 maybe and and again this is like what he's saying 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.559 is basically, we because we're using so constantly. The reason 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.439 that we're losing is not because we are picking bad conflicts. 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:07.000 It's not because we're picking to engage in conflicts when 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:08.920 we shouldn't at all be engaging in conflicts. It is 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:13.319 not because we use military force in like a fundamentally 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.400 venal and corrupt way in order to benefit a small 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:21.800 cabal of military industrial corporations. It's because we we don't 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:24.839 have good battle doctrine, and that's why we're not winning 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:29.000 in these conflicts, which ignores everything about the reality of 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:31.679 the conflicts that like he's talking about, Like, the problem 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.400 is not a lack of combat dominance, which is is 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:36.480 what you were seeing with like the Prussians fighting Napoleon. 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:38.480 It's what you were seeing with the French fighting the 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:42.160 Germans in eighteen seventy, right, Like in those cases, the 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:45.880 Prussians had a massive failure of combat dominance against the French, 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:48.480 and the French had a massive failure in combat against 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:52.319 the Germans. Their doctrine was just worse. Um Us soldiers 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.199 are great at getting into gunfights and great at winning 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:58.200 gun fights. The problem is not a lack of combat ability. 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.200 The problem is that they're no way to win the 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.800 conflicts that we're getting into. They are unwinnable wars that 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.880 were never things that like, no amount of change in 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:10.959 doctrine would have made Afghanistan a success because it was 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:15.000 a stupid war. Like it's like if if that were true, 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:19.080 like coin would have worked and co Yeah no, like 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:24.800 Colt yeah yeah, just complete total and utter failure, like 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:29.199 enormous numbers of people dead, enormous numbers of like people 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:32.960 traumatized for generations, and the U S still just lost 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:36.520 both wars, yeah, and and and and if you really 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:39.040 dig into Lynd and others like him, what they're actually 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:40.720 saying when they say that, like we need to reform 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:42.880 like the way the military works with new battle doctorments. 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:45.680 We need to be killing even more people. We just 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:48.000 didn't kill enough in Vietnam, like the five million we 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:50.480 bombed or so that wasn't enough people like that. That's 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:55.000 the reform that he's really talking about. UM. And Lynd 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:57.679 one of those people who like rants about the like 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.480 the the the El Salvadorian option. UM, I'm sure he does. 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:03.680 I don't know exactly what he said about Al Salvador. 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:08.439 He's a fascinating kind of fascist. Um. He is absolutely 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:10.320 a fascist. He was the director of the Center for 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:14.760 Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation UM. He wrote 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:18.880 a or he helped to popularize a Declaration of Cultural 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:24.040 Independence by Cultural Conservatives UM, which is like these there's 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:25.520 a lot of the seeds of the ship that we're 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:28.600 seeing today, right that like American culture institutions are being 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:32.520 collapsed because of like liberal decadence and conservatives. Cultural conservatives 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:37.680 should separate themselves and like set up parallel institutions where 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.079 Bannon comes in. And that's where Bannon comes in. That 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.600 where like fucking Andrew Torba and gab come and they 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.680 all advocate this ship. Yeah, because they're all they all 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:49.560 adhere to that kind of uh yeah, like politics has 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:53.880 culture and there's downstream. Yeah, And there's some weird differences 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.560 with Lynd Like he's a huge mass transit and urban 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.800 rail advocate, which I guess I agree with him. Fine, 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:02.280 once in a while, a bad person does have a 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:04.760 good opinion. He loves he loves him some fucking city 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:07.240 trains and stuff. Um, but he's also he was a 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:10.480 major factor. He was one of the earliest, like prominent 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:13.520 conservatives who was like yelling about cultural Marxism and kind 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.319 of the modern political period. I mean that makes sense 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:18.280 because he was really into it. Sounds like he's real 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.640 into metapolitics. So yeah, that's super in the metapolis. Yeah, 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:23.280 So like all of this stuff makes a whole lot 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:26.280 of sense if you're yeah, if you're if you know what, 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:28.760 if you know what meta politics are, it's also kind 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:32.560 of explains how he developed the different generations of warfare 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:34.920 using it through a framework of metal politics actually really 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:39.040 makes that fit if you believe, like Breitbart famously stated 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:41.640 that like politics is downstream from culture, and if you 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:43.720 also believe what Claus I think it was class Wits 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.280 that said that, like war is politics by other means 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:50.520 than like you can make cultural can cause wars, and like, yeah, 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:52.560 like that's a lot like kind of I think the 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:55.640 thought process behind n Yeah, because this this really defines 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.040 what he means by fourth generation warfare of war being 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.480 handed out typically by the culture, instead of having it 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.440 be abstracted to be like people marching towards each other 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.320 with guns. Because he's, he's, he's, he's putting the he's 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.840 putting the culture kind of back into it. Yeah, and 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.760 he and he's and he's and and obviously culture was 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:16.960 never not a factor, of course, not like every single 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:18.680 war is, but a major factor, like all of this 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:20.560 ship he talks about is being characters to go. Fourth 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.920 generation warfare has been happening in one way or another 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:26.760 for thousands of years. But it's it's not that these 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:30.320 things are done in like temporal succession. It's like because 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:32.040 because like a lot of the stuff that makes up 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:35.080 fourth generation warfare, like the more like guerrilla warfare aspects, 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.920 come way before, people with guns marching towards each other, 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:43.520 Africans doing that to Alexander, the goddamn group for the 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:45.600 Birth of Christ. A lot of a lot of this 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:49.040 fourth gend stuff is actually like kind of more similar 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:52.520 to what original warfare probably would have been. Like yeah, 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:55.280 which I think, yeah, I think to to his credit, 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:57.600 I think he does actually recognize that at some point 0:15:57.600 --> 0:15:59.640 in his writing now and and and the thing about 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:01.160 this is is, well, we can pick at it, and 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:03.520 I think there's a lot that's ridiculous in his attitude. 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:06.440 It's it's close enough to the way that reality works 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:08.960 that if you're going, if you're thinking about conflict in 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.320 this framework, you can be very successful. It's not like 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:14.840 an It's inaccurate in some ways because he's he is 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.840 wrongly describing why certain things work. I think is a 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:20.280 lot of what he's doing. And he's wrong about winning wars. 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.320 I'll say that, um, if if the American military were 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:28.320 to make the fucking lend the Secretary of Defense and 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:31.080 give him total power, like he would keep on losing 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:33.320 wars as hard as we've been losing wars for everyone 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.520 listening to this is lifetime um. But in a cultural sense, 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.600 the kind of culture jamming, which is a term we'll 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:41.080 talk about more in the future, and but the kind 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:44.120 of like the propaganda arms and stuff in order to 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.240 the the the the media warfare in order to either 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:52.520 insight or justify real conflict or or and this is 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:53.840 one of the areas in which they have been really 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:58.720 effective to alter the dimension, to alter how internationally a 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.400 conflict is responded to. One of the big successes of 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:05.199 people like this has been effectively eliminating any kind of 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:10.120 left wing support for liberatory movements in the Middle East, UM, 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:13.359 for liberatory movements or for like just like what's happening 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:18.120 in Ukraine. It's kind of like reflexive. Well, if there's uh, 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:22.000 if there's a movement for liberation among the people of 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.080 a country, it's probably the c I a like like 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:27.920 carrying out some sort of op um. That's Lynda and 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:30.719 his people UM and people influenced by him have been 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:33.679 a big part of pushing that. Um, it's why Steve 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.200 Bannon is in and is so friendly with like some 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.160 guys on like chunks that they call themselves the left 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:44.399 and whatnot. It's because, um, there's there's a lot of uh, 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:46.000 there's a lot of ties there, and that is an 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:50.640 area in which they've been successful because international support really matters. Um, 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.199 you know, it's it's it's uh. And I think like 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:56.520 the death of internationalism is one of the bigger successes 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.960 that like these these thinkers have kind of had. But yeah, 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:03.119 I don't know. That's that's that's that's a chunk of 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:14.679 what I had to say. You guys want to know 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:19.000 more about William S. Lynn because he's I certainly want 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:23.399 to learn more about William William S Lynd cultural conservative, 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:27.119 right big on the traditional Christian values of America. You 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:32.280 want to guess who he considers his ideal leader? Uh 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:35.840 jfk No, the House of Hogan's all learned. He's a 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:46.600 Prussian monarchist. Wait oh yeah, okay, everything I said politics, 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.840 he's certainly int hegel and he thinks that the Prussian 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:53.159 the Prussian monarchy was the best government there ever was 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:55.720 and was like unfairly crushed by the rest of the 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:57.679 world and like should have won World War One and 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.360 everything would like he's he's and so he's he's very 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:05.920 much like a conservative monarchist um and a weird kind 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:08.520 because like, my god, dude, if you're looking at like 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.280 monarchs who were like the Hogan's allern has had like 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:17.119 in the modern era, like the first Kaiser Wilhelm was 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.680 broadly competent, but like it went to ship as soon 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:23.800 as the second and he blames all of World War 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:28.560 One on the fucking Tsars, like it's it's very silly, 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:31.800 Like his ideas of history are like very stupid. I 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.960 have an incredibly silly theory of history based on Hagel, 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.600 which is that like every everything Hagel. Briefly, for the 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:44.119 listeners I know, do not, this is this is you know, 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:46.239 this is this is the thing. Okay, okay, this this 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:48.080 is this is. This is my crank theory of history 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.000 based on Hagel, which is that every about forty years 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:54.760 someone attempts to apply Hagel. Someone like takes charge of 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:57.560 an incredibly large state and tries to use Hagel to 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:01.240 run it, and every single time time they don't understand 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:04.040 the dialectic and it doesn't work. So this for example, 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.400 like if if you can take this as a very 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:08.960 granul level, right you have Mao, Mao has no idea 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:10.960 what a dialectic is. You can you can read Mao's work. 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.359 He has no clue, Like he just doesn't he like 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:15.960 he doesn't he doesn't get it. He thinks that a 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:17.960 dialectic is when one person with a bat hits the 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:19.560 other hits the other side, and then when you destroy 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:21.440 the other side, the dialectic is resolved. Right like that 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:26.480 That's not what it is, right maw Like because of this, 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:30.879 the entire Chinese revolution just implodes. Everyone dies, it returns 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:35.080 to capitalism. Is a complete failure, right you know. And 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:37.040 and like a lot of the Nazis are very much 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:41.040 into Hagel. They have again incredibly similar failures the other group. 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.280 People like Lynda think is part of this is that 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.000 all of the people who planned the Iraq War were 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:49.400 like enormous Sigillian's right, but they've gotten to Hagel through 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:52.760 this weird like they they've been doing this, they've been 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:54.200 doing these kind of insurgency stuff and so but they're 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.199 kind of insurgeny stuff was they read Mao, and you know, 0:20:57.240 --> 0:20:58.960 so that they're so they're they're they're reading Hagel, but 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:01.200