By Max Cunningham

“Asymmetric Warfare,” as defined by Martin Creveld, boils down to the strong, vs. the militarily weak, in the conventional sense.

A good definition that gives students of evolving 4th generational warfare something to work with. However, some difficulty arises currently, and in understanding our world, with Clausewitz’s much earlier assertion of “war as politics by other means.” Similar difficulties arise with Sun Tzu.

I will explain as follows.

How could someone of that era, much less the founding interests of the United States, have foreseen that in the latter half of the 20th century, into the 21st, that militarism, and (asymmetric) war has for the USA become a means, purpose, and exercise unto itself?

No country has benefited from protracted war.– Sun Tzu

That maybe no longer true in present day America, not withstanding the relatively modest sacrifices and losses in the current conflicts and earlier exercises that in the conventional sense of victory ended in futility.

In the interests of short term economic gains, these losses are apparently acceptable to vested interests and sold to the public under the guise of patriotic interests as merely an unfortunate by-product, or cost of doing this business.

All packaged and wrapped up in the nearest ideal (since the invention of the gambling casino) of a sustainable and self perpetuating business model and a model that would serve, for example, in a Harvard-issued text book.

In that sense the US propensity for asymmetric war is very deliberate and calculated. Some would argue that it is managed, honed, and virtually perfected.

The military, its materials and supporting interests are a sustaining and essential element of the US economy. You could say that since WW2, America has embraced cyclical, limited, and asymmetric war as a way of life.

With the military’s evolving into a principle sustaining interest in the US economy, war and more of it becomes an essential.

When war becomes that profitable, you’re going to see a lot more of it. – Chalmers Johnson /Commentator, Author, Ex-CIA.

Americans collectively live like alcoholics in denial and confrontation of this reality.

The days when the US was regarded as the heroes of WW2, the cold war, and the Hollywood-perpetuated images of the white hat wearing “good guys” are over.

Unfortunately, all that may not be sustainable for very much longer: Consequences, blow back, simply pissing off enough of the ROW, and simple economics may eventually catch up with America.

To the credit of its ingenuity, and luck, thus far America has managed to walk a fine line and balance the use of war and its military as a viable and effective economic tool, and the US civil population is the only enlightened civilization (apart from its close ally Israel) on earth that tolerates this extent of military investment, coming as it does at the expense of other significant priorities.

Unlike the Israelis, however, who have been immersed in the asymmetric and 4th generational warfare environment since their founding, this is still something relatively new in the American experience.

Guided and misplaced faith in unscrupulous vested interests and political agendas, mass marketing psychology, the media, collective ignorance, and most recently acute fear are all important and accumulated factors in the current and apparently worsening difficulty that America finds itself.

Maximilian Cunningham.

Biographical info:

Max Cunningham is a longtime military aviation enthusiast who was more recently inspired and changed entirely in perspective and thinking, by study and devout following of the original USAF Lightweight Fighter Mafia, and later Military Reform Movement, established by the late legendary USAF Col. John Boyd, analyst Pierre Sprey, and USAF (ret.) Col. Everest Riccioni.

Max is a broadcast television systems electronics engineering consultant by profession, lives alternately in Toronto, Canada and Vermont USA.

Max grew up in Montreal, Canada, and was exposed to the Quebec separatist movement and the terrorist FLQ activity of the early 1970s. This exposure at an early age gives him an innate sense and appreciation of 4th generational warfare and its effects on the world we currently live in.