Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been waging war against the United States and the West for years. Al Qaeda is characterized as a terrorist organization, based upon the early tactics it used, primarily bombings against U.S. interests overseas. However, since the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban government and evict Al Qaeda, there has been more attention given to Al Qaeda and its adoption of a strategy against the U.S. and West. A senior member of Al Qaeda has professed that they have adopted Fourth Generation Warfare and are using its theory as a model for their global insurgency. This paper seeks to identify whether Al Qaeda actually following the elements of Fourth Generation Warfare and what the U.S. might do to counter AI Qaeda's strategy.

In an era of broad and perhaps profound change, new theories and concepts are to be welcomed rather than shunned. However, before they are fully embraced, they need to be tested rigorously, for the cost of implementing a false theory and developing operational and strategic concepts around it can be greater than remaining wedded to an older, but sounder one. The theory of Fourth Generation War (4GW) is a perfect example. Were we to embrace this theory, a loose collection of ideas that does not hold up to close scrutiny, the price we might pay in a future conflict could be high indeed. In this monograph, Dr. Echevarria II provides a critique of the theory of 4GW, examining its faulty assumptions and the problems in its logic. He argues that the proponents of 4GW undermine their own credibility by subscribing to this bankrupt theory. If their aim is truly to create positive change, then they- and we - would be better off jettisoning the theory and retaining the traditional concept of insurgency, while modifying it to include the greater mobility and access afforded by globalization.

The first book to draw a blueprint for defeating al-Qaeda on ideological rather than military grounds.

Fourth Generation War (4GW) emerged in the late 1980s, but has become popular due to recent twists in the war in Iraq and terrorist attacks worldwide. Despite reinventing itself several times, the theory has several fundamental flaws that need to be exposed before they can cause harm to U.S. operational and strategic thinking. A critique of 4GW is both fortuitous and important because it also provides us an opportunity to attack other unfounded assumptions that could influence U.S. strategy and military doctrine. In brief, the theory holds that warfare has evolved through four generations: 1) the use of massed manpower, 2) firepower, 3) maneuver, and now 4) an evolved form of insurgency that employs all available networks-political, economic, social, military to convince an opponent's decisionmakers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly. The notion of 4GW first appeared in the late 1980s as a vague sort of "out of the box" thinking, and it entertained every popular conjecture about future warfare. However, instead of examining the way terrorists belonging to Hamas or Hezbollah (or now Al Qaeda) actually behave, it misleadingly pushed the storm-trooper ideal as the terrorist of tomorrow. Instead of looking at the probability that such terrorists would improvise with respect to the weapons they used-box cutters, aircraft, and improvised explosive devices-it posited high-tech "wonder" weapons. The theory went through a second incarnation when the notion of nontrinitarian war came into vogue; but it failed to examine that notion critically. The theory also is founded on myths about the so-called Westphalian system and the theory of blitzkrieg. The theory of 4GW reinvented itself once again after September 11, 2001 (9/11), when its proponents claimed that Al Qaeda was waging a 4GW against the United States. Rather than thinking critically about future warfare, the theory's proponents became more concerned with demonstrating that they had predicted the future. While their recommendations are often rooted in common sense, they are undermined by being tethered to an empty theory. What we are really seeing in the war on terror, and the campaign in Iraq and elsewhere, is that the increased "dispersion and democratization of technology, information, and finance" brought about by globalization has given terrorist groups greater mobility and access worldwide. At this point, globalization seems to aid the nonstate actor more than the state, but states still play a central role in the support or defeat of terrorist groups or insurgencies. We would do well to abandon the theory of 4GW altogether, since it sheds very little, if any, light on this phenomenon.

By consulting the work of well-known and obscure al-Qaeda theoreticians, Michael W. S. Ryan finds jihadist terrorism strategy has more in common with the principles of Maoist guerrilla warfare than mainstream Islam. Encouraging strategists and researchers to devote greater attention to jihadi ideas rather than jihadist military operations, Ryan builds an effective framework for analyzing al-Qaeda's plans against America and constructs a compelling counternarrative to the West's supposed "war on Islam." Ryan examines the Salafist roots of al-Qaeda ideology and the contributions of its most famous founders, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a political-military context. He also reads the Arabic-language works of lesser known theoreticians who have played an instrumental role in framing al-Qaeda's so-called war of the oppressed. These authors readily cite the guerrilla strategies of Mao, Che Guevara, and the mastermind of the Vietnam War, General Giap. They also incorporate the arguments of American theorists writing on "fourth-generation warfare." Through these texts, readers experience events as insiders see them, and by concentrating on the activities and pronouncements of al-Qaeda's thought leaders, especially in Yemen, they discern the direct link between al-Qaeda's tactics and trends in anti-U.S. terrorism. Ryan shows al-Qaeda's political-military strategy to be a revolutionary and largely secular departure from the classic Muslim conception of jihad, adding invaluable dimensions to the operational, psychological, and informational strategies already deployed by America's military in the region.

This volume covers a timely debate in contemporary security studies: can armed forces adjust to the rising challenge of insurgency and terrorism, the greatest transformation in warfare since the birth of the international system? Containing essays by leading international security scholars and military professionals, it explores the Fourth-Generation Warfare thesis and its implications for security planning in the twenty-first century. No longer confined to the fringes of armed conflict, guerrilla warfare and terrorism increasingly dominate world-wide military planning. For the first time since the Vietnam War ended, the problems of insurgency have leapt to the top of the international security agenda and virtually all countries are struggling to protect themselves against terrorist threats. Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are bogged down by an insurgency, and are being forced to rely on old warfare tactics rather than modern technologies to destroy their adversaries. These theorists argue that irregular warfare—insurgencies and terrorism—has evolved over time and become progressively more sophisticated and difficult to defeat as it is not centred on high technology and state of the art weaponry. Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict will be of interest to students of international security, strategic studies and terrorism studies.