4th Generation Warfare Handbook (William S. Lind)

A summary of one school of thought about state-against-partisan warfare today. But not really original, and anyway tactical improvements don't help us if our strategic values are all wrong. (The written version of this review can be found here: https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/01/05/4th-generation-warfare-handbook-william-s-lind/)

"2021 will be the twentieth anniversary of our endless, pointless war in Afghanistan, and 2023 the twentieth anniversary of our endless, pointless war in Iraq. This book, the ideas in which predate both those wars, and in fact date back to shortly after we lost the Vietnam War, says that our military should train to fight a new kind of warfare, fourth-generation warfare, in order to win victory. What struck me most about this book is that it’s not all that new. In many ways, it’s earlier work on counter-insurgency translated into American militaryspeak and given bullet points. It’s still a worthwhile short read, but you will get more out of it if you read it along with a far more insightful work—Carl Schmitt’s 1962 Theory of a Partisan." . . .