A Must Read Essay

Anyone who's seriously interested in the nature of the War with Radical Islamism needs to read a new essay by Tony Korn published on the web site of the journal Policy Review. While the piece is a bit jargon-heavy, and I disagree with Korn on the issue of the Balkans, it provides a really good overview of our jihadist adversaries and their strategic approach, and lays out what we need to do to defeat them:

Four years after the September 11 events, while many of the initial assumptions of the global war on terrorism (GWOT) have undergone an agonizing reappraisal, a new Washington consensus about the nature of the challenge facing the West and the moderate Muslim world has yet to emerge. Can the notoriously dysfunctional interagency process ever be fixed by organizational tinkering alone, without the elaboration of a common conceptual ground? However lively it may be at times, the Beltway’s ongoing “Operation Infinite Conversation” is no substitute for strategizing.


World War IV As Fourth-Generation Warfare