Vandergriff preface to "President Trump Recognizes Fourth Generation War" by William S. Lind

Preface:

In the annals of military thought, few frameworks have proven as prescient and enduring as William S. Lind’s theory of the Generations of Modern War. Coined in the late 1980s amid the fading echoes of Cold War predictability, this paradigm—first articulated in the pages of the Marine Corps Gazette—dismantled the illusions of linear progression in warfare, revealing instead a series of cultural and doctrinal evolutions: from the rigid lines of First Generation attrition, to the industrialized firepower of Second Generation mass armies, the fluid maneuver of Third Generation operations, and the shadowy, legitimacy-eroding chaos of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW).

Lind’s work, which I have long championed in my own writings on military reform—from Path to Victory to Raising the Bar—strikes at the heart of why our armed forces have repeatedly stumbled in asymmetric conflicts. It is not merely a tactical lens but a cultural diagnosis, insisting that true adaptation demands a profound shift in institutional mindset, away from the bureaucratic rigidity of 2GW and toward the decentralized initiative of 3GW, all while preparing to navigate the non-state threats of 4GW.

What elevates Lind’s latest dispatch, “President Trump Recognizes Fourth Generation War,” to a clarion call is its timeliness in an era where these generations collide not just on distant battlefields but in the very fabric of American society. Here, Lind applauds President Trump’s decisive strikes against narco-traffickers’ vessels and his fortifications against unchecked migration—actions that tacitly acknowledge 4GW’s core reality: war waged by entities unbound by state sovereignty, eroding our national cohesion through poison, infiltration, and cultural subversion.

These are not abstract hypotheticals; they are the tangible incursions of 4GW, where cartels and migrant waves function as de facto combatants, undermining legitimacy not with missiles but with societal decay. Trump’s instincts align with the maneuver warfare ethos we both advocate—one that bypasses attritional slog and collapses the enemy from within—yet they risk faltering without a deeper institutional pivot.

As Lind urges, the next step is doctrinal: an official embrace of the Generations framework to propel the Pentagon from its 2GW fixation on peer-state fantasies (think ill-advised escalations with China) toward 3GW’s agile, mission-command culture, enabling us to outthink and outmaneuver 4GW foes.

Yet, as vital as this military reckoning is, Lind’s piece underscores a broader imperative that extends beyond the Department of Defense to the Trump administration writ large, and indeed to the roiling discourse of U.S. society on social media and podcasts. The term “Generations of War” is no longer confined to reformist circles; it permeates White House strategy sessions and viral episodes alike, a shorthand for recognizing that our enemies—be they jihadists, cartels, or ideological saboteurs—operate in the fourth dimension, contesting not just territory but the soul of the state.

But floating alongside it, often invoked in the same breath, is another Lindian coinage: “Cultural Marxism.” This insidious ideology, as Lind and I have dissected it over decades, represents Marxism’s insidious pivot from economic class war to a cultural siege—translating the Frankfurt School’s corrosive doctrines into the weapons of political correctness, multiculturalism-as-disruption, and identity fragmentation. It is the internal 4GW agent, hollowing out Western legitimacy from within: eroding family structures, traditional values, and institutional trust under guises of equity and inclusion, much as Lind warned in his seminal 1994 Marine Corps Gazette essay and fictionalized in Victoria.

Why must the Trump administration and American society—amplified through the echo chambers of social media—recognize these terms not in isolation, but as inextricably linked?

Because 4GW is, at its essence, a battle for legitimacy, and Cultural Marxism is its domestic vanguard. External 4GW threats like narco-invasions or unassimilated migrations succeed only when they exploit internal fractures—precisely the fissures widened by cultural subversion. A military schooled solely in generations of war, without grasping how Cultural Marxism preconditions the battlespace, will treat symptoms (sinking boats, sealing borders) while ignoring the disease: a society whose loyalty to the state frays under relentless ideological assault.

Conversely, railing against “Cultural Marxists” on podcasts without the Generations framework devolves into cultural grievance theater, blind to how these ideologues wage war through non-kinetic means—immigration as demographic conquest, wokeness as loyalty erosion—that demand 3GW’s adaptive, decentralized response.

Together, the terms form a unified diagnostic: 4GW is the battlefield, Cultural Marxism its enabler, and only a 3GW cultural shift in our military and civic institutions can inoculate us.

The Trump administration, with its populist vigor, stands at a historic inflection. By formalizing the Generations of War as official doctrine—tasking a “Secretary of War” to drive the 2GW-to-3GW transition, as Lind proposes—it could forge armed forces not just to win kinetic scraps but to safeguard legitimacy against hybrid onslaughts.

But this demands societal buy-in: social media warriors and podcast hosts must wield these concepts in tandem, educating the public that defeating cartels abroad requires purging cultural poisons at home. Failure to link them risks a bifurcated America—one half fighting shadows in the desert, the other surrendering its heritage to subversion.

Lind’s article is no mere commentary; it is a roadmap for victory in an era where war is everywhere and legitimacy hangs by a thread. Heed it, and we reclaim not just security, but sovereignty.

Donald E. Vandergriff Major, U.S. Army (Ret.) Author, Raising the Bar: Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War October 2025

Begin Article:

President Trump Recognizes Fourth Generation War

Oct 10

With his order to the U.S. Armed Forces to sink the drug cartels’ boats bringing cocaine to the United States, President Trump has acknowledged the reality of Fourth Generation war, war waged by entities other than states. This is a significant development, because the Pentagon remains focused on war against other states, who do not constitute direct threats to our country. The drug cartels do, because they are poisoning tens of thousands of Americans every year.

President Trump’s actions, controversial among the legal set, are correct, necessary and legally fully justified. If an entity, state or not, were firing missiles at America, would anyone say it was illegal to shoot them down? The cargoes these boats are carrying kill Americans just as surely as would a missile strike. What difference does it make in law that one form of attack goes boom and the other does not?

As I have long argued, 4GW is at root a contest for legitimacy. Do people give their primary loyalty to the state or to something else? From that perspective, it is usually wise for a state to consider attacks by non-state entities crimes rather than war. But when we are talking about drug cartels, the situation is somewhat different. The cartels have little ability to gain legitimacy, nor most of them seek it; they are just about making money.

Some do attain local legitimacy in the places they are based by providing services the state is supposed to offer but does not. However, the area where they can do this is small, and endless wars among cartels mean they cannot deliver even order, safety of people and property, in their home regions.

Providing order is the base for all legitimacy, so the cartels are poorly placed to obtain it. President Trump can continue to make war on the cartels without much concern for legitimacy, and he should, so long as his actions take place on the high seas. Striking cartels facilities on another nation’s home soil would be a different matter.

President Trump also recognized Fourth Generation war in his actions to stop illegal immigration. Invasions by immigrants who will not acculturate is more, not less, dangerous than invasion by a foreign army because the army eventually goes home while the immigrants permanently alter the place where they settle, usually for the worse.

Europe, with its millions of Islamic immigrants, is example A. Fortunately, most illegal immigrants into the U.S. are Christian and they do not want to change this country into the kind of place they just fled. They can be acculturated over time. But they were coming, under the Biden administration, faster than acculturation mechanisms can work. By eliminating illegal immigration, President Trump has largely solved this problem, giving him a 4GW victory.

What the President needs to do next is get his armed forces on board in confronting 4GW. For the most part, they are still focused on war with other states, wars we should not fight (e.g., with China), would not benefit from and could lead to nuclear weapons landing on American cities.

All President Trump needs to do is get his Secretary of War to announce to our armed forces that the Four Generations of Modern War intellectual framework is now official they are expected to move from the Second to the Third Generation while thinking through how to deal with 4GW threats (the latter requires changes in institution culture that come with moving from 2GW to 3GW). If the President can do this, he will be able to count as one of his greatest achievements refocusing our armed services on the future rather than on the past.

William Lind

https://www.traditionalright.com/traditionalright-blog/president-trump-recognizes-fourth-generation-war

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