The term Fourth Generation Warfare was born in October 1989, when a group of military analysts from the U.S. Army and Marine Corps published a document entitled The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation, in an issue of the Military Review and the Marine Corps Gazette.
In reality, it is nothing more than a euphemism for a type of imperialist warfare, which seeks to apply a new form of aggression with the lowest possible cost in human and material resources.
It is part of U.S. military doctrine and includes guerrilla warfare, the creation of paramilitary groups, state terrorism, covert operations, civil war and propaganda in combination with non-traditional combat strategies, including the use of new communications technologies and social networks.
Three elements are fundamental in this type of conflict: economic warfare, reputational attacks and political subversion, to which could be added, in view of the Latin American experience, lawfare, the use of criminal gangs, paramilitarism and drug trafficking.
Economic warfare seeks to bring people to a state of desperation such that it numbs their capacity to think reasonably, while the promoters of character assassination do their dirty work in social networks.
Reputation or character assassination is a deliberate process, aimed at destroying the credibility and reputation of a person, social group or country, with the objective of isolating it and rendering it defenseless against its aggressors, as well as justifying any atrocities committed by the invaders.
On the other hand, they build leaders of change, through scholarship plans and leadership courses, organize and finance opposition groups, plan destabilizing actions and provide great media support to their political puppets.
An element that has become particularly important in this strategy has been the recruitment, through social networks, of members of the more disadvantaged, thiefs, members of criminal gangs, even minors.
Let us recall that, in November 2019, in Bolivia, violent gangs under the narrative of "popular indignation," public roads in the style of the Venezuelan guarimberos and the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries, burned institutions, made threats, committed murders, torture, and humiliated social and political leaders in public streets.
During those days, Iran also suffered a wave of violence in which the same tactics used in Bolivia were repeated.
Cuba experienced similar scenarios on July 11, 2021, which did not reach the level of those mentioned above, but showed regularities present in them, in the midst of a continued policy of maximum pressure and a strong discrediting campaign.
No less important is paramilitarism, widely used in South America, which, together with drug trafficking, constitutes an important destabilizing factor in the region.
INTERNET AND SOCIAL NETWORKS AS WEAPONS
To carry out this type of struggle, the U.S. government creates Internet task forces.
Once the task forces are organized, they hire netcenters made up of highly qualified specialists who carry out analyses based on big data, process profiles of the subjects of interest, draw up action plans based on previously elaborated models, and direct sectorized messages.
The new technologies guarantee effectiveness, a high level of convening and speed of reaction to the subjects of these actions, which allows them to achieve greater articulation, through the swarm technique.
Another advantage they offer is the possibility of creating digital platforms of different types and with various subversion purposes, as well as replicating content on other platforms and articulating with the traditional media of press, television and radio.
According to the CIA, the viral nature of the Internet has the potential to affect and even change a person's character in a matter of seconds, as well as their long-term future, regardless of who they are or their life experience.
As the teachings of Colonel Halvey, disciple of the soft coup guru Gene Sharp, indicate, the aim is to generate chaos and ungovernability; to make the government, devoid of the basic pillars that sustain it, implode.
Then "there would be no choice" but to request "humanitarian aid" from the U.S. Government, expressed in the military intervention of its army, to "protect" the lives of civilians, restore peace and democracy.
Translated by ESTI
