August 19, 2024
If you are still
waiting for someone to officially proclaim the start of World War III (WWIII),
well, you are wrong. We are already in. And there’s someone who is starting to
talk about WWIV.
History,
strategy, psychology
Western
political and security leaders, to a much greater extent than their “eastern”
counterparts such as Russia and the People’s Republic of China, have failed to
realize that the main force on the strategic battlefield in the early 21st
century is the psychological domain, even though they have long explored the
cognitive dimension and invested long years of research. Levels of defense
expenditure are only a small component of strategic success or failure. All
success or failure is generated by the mind, and at no time in recent history
has this been more evident than today, when formal conflict, during and after
the Cold War, has become a minor factor in the shifting global balance of
power.
What goes on in
the minds – and particularly in the “collective mind” – of populations is the
critical factor that determines the success or decline of the strategy. This
factor, the morale (as it is usually called), has always been manipulable, but
today it’s especially so thanks to mass communications, that have made
traditional forms of communication less effective. The ability to create mass
psychosis, including mass hysteria, is now almost instantaneous due to the
capacity for electronic peer-to-peer communication. All it takes is a little
cognitive bias and immediately everything can change.
The masses still
have power, but they are not aware of it. It used to be taught in school that
“knowledge is power”, not any more. But the key still remains the same:
awareness.
Even on the
military battlefield, when the desperate struggle for survival and domination
is literally existential, the psychological element can determine victory or
defeat. Strategists and commanders in the past were taught to keep their
troops’ spirits up, aware that it was not a question of quantity, but of
quality and determination. A soldier who’s not convinced and ready to face
battle, will never make it back alive from the conflict; on the contrary, a
single soldier who is well centered and prepared can rout a large number of
opponents.
This “morale”
dimension also applies on a social level: a society kept poor, unhappy, full of
problems, will be an easy target for manipulations, psy-ops, hybrid conflicts
of various kinds. It all comes down to arranging the optimum conditions for
interacting with the adversary – or the guinea pigs – in the best possible way.
Minimum effort, maximum result.
The preparation
of the hardware is crucial, but the software that manages it is even more
important. Indeed, the mentalities required for formal military action are
hierarchies that, in many ways, are antithetical to the conduct of strategic
psychological operations. Even the combination of conventional military
structures, special forces, and intelligence-based direct action capabilities –
more far-reaching than at any other time in history – are insufficient for this
task. Today, we are faced with the objective need for new profiles: the head of
state must be the chief intelligence officer, but also the nation’s grand
strategist, hence also the architect of the dominant strategy concept.
Leadership takes on a new role, one that is no longer strictly political. A
figure more reminiscent of the dictator of ancient Rome is back in vogue: he
was an army man, often a general, with great political charisma who led the
senate in a delicate phase of emergency and transition to a new political
asset. We can see, for example, that King Charles III of the UK has emerged as
the only British leader who has understood how to use the psycho-political
aspects of prestige to promote Britain’s long-term agenda to a far greater
extent, than the three prime ministers who have served him since his accession
to the throne.
It’s not enough
to have a “strongman” in government, he must also be prepared to keep an eye on
all aspects of the country’s political, economic and strategic life. To do
this, it takes preparation that is not improvised, which is why political
elites are prepared thoroughly much more than in the past century.
The transition
to World War III
One of the most
fascinating features of the contemporary world is the complexity of the systems
in which we live, the understanding of which is gradually expanding as we
become aware that in order to minimize and synthesize one must first consider
the broad horizon within which things happen. This applies to war too.
In fact, it
happens that the rapid and powerful technological development in the military
sphere, where research has an advantage of between 10 and 25 years over
civilian research, has led to a gradual mutation in the way of waging war,
creating an imbalance in the topography of war and forcing the codification of
new categories within which to place not only the new types of weaponry, but
also the way of employing them and the strategies and tactics that derive from
them. It’s therefore necessary to frame these new geometries and enter into the
ideological first and pragmatic later dimensions of what wars are today.
Global warfare,
the concept of which has developed over almost three centuries, is a type of
war that encompasses all its predecessors and declines them simultaneously and
multilaterally, without ever retreating. It is no longer conceivable to wage
war only “one way”, today it’s played out on several chessboards at the same
time there is a pressing rhythm that is no longer that of drums and marches but
that of the speed of light flowing between the circuits of the digital world.
It’s a question of domains of war.
The domains of
war are the dimensions within which war takes place. Today we identify five of
them: land, water, air, extraterrestrial space, infosphere. If for the first
four it’s not difficult to make associations with historical events and
military structures, the fifth is the one that interests us most and within
which it’s appropriate to make an important distinction between wars today
defined as conventional and special wars. A special war is fought on a special
battlefield, with special armaments and special actors. Contemporary hybrid
warfare, one senses, is that which lies between a conventional and a special
war; it has the characteristics of both but moves easily between the two
levels, as well as between the five domains. It is, in this sense, a total war
(modes) in a global context (scenarios).
A hybrid that is
also asymmetrical, i.e. it does not follow those measures we have long been
accustomed to, and it also requires a commitment on the part of the
populations, who are generically part of the war, even if unconsciously. Psy
ops, social engineering, military geo-engineering, video games, predictive
cinematography, cyberwar, infowar, ecowar, the internet that began as an
American military platform and today connects the world, and much more:
everything must seem normal, must be consumable like a well-sold product. It is
a question of marketing, business is business. The constellation of new
categories fits into the context of the inter-operability of domains and
arenas.
The grey zone
stands as a “zone” with blurred boundaries between the public and private
worlds, a semi-occult dimension in which the hidden level of permanent warfare
continues: that operated by intelligence.
Today’s
strategies and social situations are more complex – and apparently less
controllable – than those of the 20th century. The transformation of warfare,
which began with the end of the Second World War, meant that global conflict
was undertaken as indirectly as possible, to avoid possible escalation to
nuclear war. This did not alter the pace of strategic competition, but forced
it into a broader spectrum of activity, redefining “total war”, which
essentially means that the Cold War was the “Third World War”, with conflict
increasingly staged through economics, law and many other facets, mainly based
on influence and domination.
Let us admit the
possibility that we may not have realized that in truth we have never emerged
from a situation of global conflict. Albeit low intensity, albeit
unconventional, war has never ended. Historians declared the end of WWII in
1945 on the basis of a few striking events, but did not bother to define
whether it was really over.
Becoming aware
of WWIV
Arguably, we are
now in World War IV, where what counts more than anything else is the new
domain of influence: prestige.
Prestige is what
gives a large portion of influence and the ability to persuade. It must be
maintained in multiple ways, from the physical image and (effectively
demonstrated) prowess of its armed forces, to the strength of its currency, the
insurmountable appeal of its ideals and forms of government, the projection of
national trust, and the dominance of language and literature. These values are
all in the minds and behaviour of those who hold them and are perceived by
outside observers.
Prestige is
fragile and can evaporate almost instantly with the projection of insufficient
competence, vacillation (indecision), dishonor or the revelation that the
omnipotence or universality of its reach is compromised. The temptation to use
strategic weapons against tactical targets, for instance, simply shows how
these weapons are not considered “definitive”. The U.S. use in Iraq and
Afghanistan, for example, of the B-1 and B-2 strategic bombers, built to
deliver strategic nuclear payloads in the event of a major conflict, has
forever removed the awe and prestige they once had. “Is that all?” was the
response of those who were not killed in B-1 or B-2 air strikes against
tactical targets. It’s the potential of strategic weapons that is coercive, not
their actual use.
Therein lies the
irony. The prestige of almost all “great powers” in 2024 is lower than at any
time since the end of World War II, with the exception of the People’s Republic
of China, which gained prestige after about 1972. We could argue that the strategy
of psychological warfare in the prestige spectrum has transformed from a
strategy of building influence to a strategy of eroding the influence, will and
cohesion of adversaries. The offensive use of psycho-political warfare or
conceptual domination operations has gained importance in the current global
battlefield.
Thus, it’s the
countermeasure to attacks on national moral, cohesion and prestige that is
critical. What remains, as always, is the defense and reinforcement of unifying
ideals and the spurning of confidence: the projection of the apparent ability
to tackle “the impossible”, and to succeed, with apparent ease. What we have
witnessed, especially in the last decade, is an unconscious shift to only
offensive warfare against the cohesion and prestige of adversaries, rather than
the defensive bastions of one’s own psychological strength. Fewer weapons in
the field, more soft power attacks.
The current lack
of attention to strategic psychological defences is exacerbated by the bitter
divisions within societies that remain unaddressed by their governments due to
preoccupation with internal competitions for power, regardless of the impact on
the prestige of the state, its leaders or national unity. The offensive and
defensive aspects of psychological warfare on a national scale do not fall
within the normal framework of military operations and are essentially outside
the “visible” spectrum of kinetic and electronic operations, even though the
need for military morale is well understood in the military environment.
Georges
Clemenceau famously said that “war is too important to be left to the military”
and, indeed, this reinforces the primacy of strategy over kinetic operations.
How do modern leaders, particularly in this era of the “new total war” doctrine
and “total civil war”, equip themselves with a training and support staff that
encompasses the psycho-political realm? This requires not only a deep
sociological understanding of the target societies (including one’s own), but
also a deep and contextual understanding of history and current infrastructural
dependencies, and much more (and this includes supply chain dependencies,
historically emotive inter-state ties, especially linguistic and trust, etc.).
This does not mean, however, that there is no link between direct (military or
paramilitary) and indirect physical actions.
Reality should
not be confused: the “Fourth World War” is well underway, and – just as the
First World War was decided on the “playgrounds of Eton”, it’s being decided in
urban and rural landscapes where the masses of “globalists” and “nationalists”
are lined up and influenced, strengthened or defeated, by the nuances of
concepts and images, professionally deployed on the playgrounds of Harvard and
other star-studded universities, where the cognitive dimension of conflicts is
very clear, but struggles to enter the halls with the buttons.
Such awareness
is much more present in the East, outside the rot of the decaying West. Russia,
for example, but also China and Iran, have for decades been more prepared for
the psychological dimension of conflicts because they are constantly under
attack from the West. This has meant that strategic – and also political,
economic and social – adaptation has been more agile and faster. The
consequence is that the political leadership of these countries is several
years ahead in understanding how to exploit those strengths and weaknesses and
how to act on the collective hardware. It is undeniable that while political
factions in the West are fighting each other in a process of inexorable decline
and failure, the countries of the East are experiencing a phase of rise and
propulsion.
All this would
have been impossible without the projective capacity of the old ruling classes,
who were able to look to the future with foresight, investing in selection,
elitist education, preparation for different scenarios, research and promotion
of technologies and tools to acquire global leadership. Sun Tzu taught “Know
your enemy as you know yourself, if you do so, even in the midst of a hundred
battles, you will not be in danger”. Getting inside the opponent’s mind is the
first step to governing it.
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