The View From Olympus: My List for Santa

The real Saint Nicholas was less famous for giving gifts than he was for coming back from the dead to beat somebody up. That's my kind of saint. It is to that St. Nicholas I sent my Christmas list, viz.

• All American military officers will read the canon, the list of seven books which, if read in the correct order, will take the reader from the first to fourth generation of modern war. Without the roadmap the canon provides, our officer corps will continue to stumble around in the dark, losing one fourth generation war after another.
• The Marine Corps will face the fact that it remains a second generation military. Its formal, written doctrine is third generation, i.e., maneuver warfare. But what the Marine Corps says and what it does are two different things. Its culture remains second generation: inward-focused, centralized, preferring obedience to initiative, and relying on imposed discipline. Such a military can talk about maneuver warfare but it can't do it. The Corps is the only American armed service with the potential to join the third generation. It's time to turn potential into reality.
• The foreign policy establishment will realize that war between states has become obsolete because the losing state will often disintegrate and become another stateless region, a petri dish for 4GW elements. That is more of a threat to us than is any other state. What we and all other states need is an alliance of all states against 4GW forces. At stake in the 21st century is nothing less than the state system itself.
• All women seeking to join the combat arms will insist on serving as comfort women, the one useful role they can play.
• The F-35 program will crash and burn, saving the taxpayer around a trillion dollars and freeing our fighter pilots from having to fly a real dog. The aircraft already ordered can be sold to the Chinese, thereby wrecking their fighter force for a generation.
• The CNO will realize a real littoral combat ship is a converted trawler and start buying some. Shallow waters are the important waters when facing 4GW enemies. We can safely leave blue water warfare to dreadnoughts and zeppelins (I'd like the movie rights, please.).
• Congress will order the Air Force to reopen the production line and buy more A-10s, the only combat aircraft we have that can do something useful.
• The Army will dry up and blow away. It is beyond reforming. All it can do for the country is offer up more defeats. Put the money into the National Guard, which is our land force of the future, useful in peace and in war.
• All police departments will start using the grid. The grid (available in the FMFM-1A here or in The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook) allows police to understand the likely effects of their actions at the mental and moral levels, not just the physical. At a Boyd conference a couple years ago, some cops from Massachusetts told me their department now uses it for all operations. If other police departments were to do so, it would take away much of the ammunition the Left uses in its war on cops.

That's probably enough to keep Santa busy for a while. Since by politically correct standards I have been very naughty this year, I expect to get everything on my list. Anyone who comes back from the dead to beat the crap out of somebody likes political correctness about as much as I do. Merry Christmas!