James Wesley Rawles: Some Initial Guerilla Warfare Lessons From Ukraine

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world is witnessing true Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). According to standard references such as the Infogalactic Wiki, 4GW has these elements and characteristics:

• Complex and long term
• Employs terrorism as a tactic
• A non-national or transnational base – highly decentralized
• A direct attack on the enemy’s culture, including genocidal acts against civilians.
• All available pressures are used – political, economic, social, and military
• Occurs in low-intensity conflict, involving actors from all networks
• Non-combatants are tactical dilemmas
• Lack of hierarchy
• Small in size, spread out network of communication and financial support
• Use of insurgency tactics such as subversion, terrorism, and guerrilla tactics
• Decentralized forces

A Fourth Generation War is much more than just a traditional naval, land, and air war. It is total war, and high technology war. The information war component of 4GW is primarily propaganda. We’ve seen it used quite heavily on both sides.  Early in the invasion, there was a dearth of news footage. No worries! They just dusted off some military training exercise clips and even a two-year-old clip of a gas station explosion, and Hey, presto!: “War footage”. When reading or watching Ukraine war reporting, just assume that every reporter has an agenda, and that part or all of what you are being told is a lie.

There is also a cyber component to 4GW. It has been reported that a fierce cyberwar has been raging, with western hackers stepping in, to supplement Ukraine’s cyber warriors. Make no mistake: The ongoing cyberwar is not just taking place in Russia and Ukraine. There are targets worldwide.

The financial side of 4GW meant divorcing Russia from credit markets and clearing circles–most importantly the SWIFT payments network. These harsh sanctions soon forced closure of Russian equities markets. Russia is now on the verge of default. If they do default, then they won’t be trusted in international trade and credit for many years. Meanwhile, the Russian Ruble currency was also hit hard on the Forex. In just a few days it dropped from 74.2 Rubles to the Dollar to 130 Rubles to the Dollar. More recently, that has moderated, but the Ruble has not fared well!

Though Russia is the world’s largest country (6,612,074 square miles), its economy is relatively small — about the same size GDP as Australia. Russia has the fifth-largest economy in Europe, and the world’s 11th largest, as measured by nominal GDP. The recent rounds of sanctions have hurt Russia badly, and they will surely continue to harm their economy.

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