4 Generation Warfare Project
4th generation warfare project
Introduction
Fourth generation warfare is generally stated as the conflict that distorting the lines between four major factors and these are war and politics, soldiers and civilians. From the perspective of the researchers it has been stated that, 4th generation war has becomes decentralized form. There are various elements that are generally comes under the 4th generation warfare and these includes terrorism tactics, internet or media manipulation warfare. That means 4th generation warfare generally combining all these four factors of politics, soldiers, politics and civilians.
UAE strategies to defend against 4th generation attack
The major issues and challenges that are faced by the UAE nation is act terrorism. According to the government of UAE it has been stated that, the government is very concern about the act of terrorism and attacking people through social media posts, various supports to terrorism group, financing to the terrorism group etc. The nation is always concern about the national peace and freedom. The nation has adopted various strategies in order to defend against a 4th generation attack. There are majorly three strategic phases that are followed by the government of UAE and these include Learn, Think and Act. However, it has been noticed that there are three major strategic level and these includes strategic level, operational level and tactical level (Wilcox& Bate, 2015).
Learn: through this phase, Ministry of Defense of UAE nation usually understands the concept and characteristics from experience or history. It is very important for the Ministry of Defense to understand the predictable consequences that might happen in the nation due to act of terrorism or social media attacking or any other issues (Jung, 2017). Therefore, the government of UAE has discovered the pattern to defend the spreading of illegal act that is against the act of humanism and people. The government is continuously learning about the experience of national conflict of past history of terrorism act that occurs in different parts of the world. Moreover, the government of UAE has to define the threats and would analyses whether the threat is state or non-state actors, Moreover, the government would analyses whether the actor poses threat to the country survival or the vita national interest. Moreover, the government would properly analyses the interest of the threatened. For an example, a terrorism group has various demands and their interest. These interests are the major threat for the UAE nation and this is the major reason due to which war take place. However, the government of the nation understands the threat at the first stage (Bērziņš, 2015).
Think:In this phase, the government of the nation or Ministry of Defense formulates the path and looking forward to taking the plan in the next stage. The ministry of defense has adopted various strategies to understand the tactics of terrorism and various social media attack. The government has implemented various strategies based on past-experience. However, there are various tools that the government UAE could use to defend 4th generation attack. These tools are military intelligence, military forces, and information system and law enforcement. These various toolscan be used to defend the 4th generation warfare. However, the government is always engaged to understand the range of threats or the characteristics of threat and based on these threats the government implement these strategies (Zhang &Grdina, 2015)
Act: Ministry of Defense of UAE nation is always engaged to implement these tools to protect the nation from all these sorts of threats. This is the third strategy of the nation or ministry of defense. For an example, the government has implemented various intelligence strategy, information technology and military to protect the nation from all sorts of threat or act of terrorism. Moreover, the nation has implemented various laws enforcement to protect the nation from all sorts’ cyber bullying or cyber warfare within the nation. From the source of information it has been stated that, UAE government is very much concern about the act of terrorism, and cyber warfare. These are the two major 4th generation warfare that the nation is aware (Caliskan, 2019).
Issue at the strategic, operational and tactical level
Three major issues can be identified in the strategic, operational and tactical level. From the source of information it has been stated that, the nation sometimes lack of resources to achieve their objective. For an example, UAE nation cannot use their own strategy to understand the movement of the terrorist and thus they need collaboration with the other nation and intelligence team for better implementation of strategy. Therefore, lack of collaboration between the nation and intelligence collaboration are the major issues that the ministry of defense is facing based on 4th generation welfare. However, these are considered as issues based on strategic management. Moreover, it sometimes happens that, the nation cannot use the national resources properly due to lack of expertise employees or personnel. However, it has also been stated lack of coordination among the military agencies and IT intelligence. Therefore, the ministry of defense cannot operate their strategies according to the plan and thus the nation faces challenges during the implementation of the strategies. However, it is also fact that, due to lack of accurate information, the ministry of defense can not take the decision properly and this is one of the major issues that might happened during the operational level. From the source of information it has been highlighted that tactical level considered various planning and thinking of reallocation of various resources such as military forces, national intelligence agencies etc. Therefore, due to change in the strategic planning or operational planning the allocation of these resources also change. However, it has also been stated that tactical risk are the present threat that stay for short period (Caliskan, 2019)
Conclusion
From the above explanation, it could be stated that UAE nation is much concern about 4th generation warfare. Therefore, the nation has good collaboration between the nations to protect the people from all sorts of 4th generation warfare such as act of terrorism or cyber attacking etc.
Policy Brief
In order to deal with the biggest 4th generation warfare issue that is terrorism UAE will have to develop policies to disrupt illicit funding. UAE must develop policies that would allow close monitoring and strong enforcement within the nation. UAE must develop a strong financing system; central financial system that would prevent illicit funding for the extremist groups that exists within the borders of the nation.
One of the major nations that have called open war against terrorism is the United States. UAE can develop Financial Counterterrorism Task Force that would create improved cooperation, coordination and information sharing with the United States to close terrorist financing networks so that any funds that flow to the extremists can be denied.
The developed task force must be capable enough to block any funding that goes to the extremist from individual funding and commercial funding such as sales of oil in black market. Besides, it must be capable of prevent access of extremists to international banking system.
UAE Government will have to support strict enforcement of counterterrorist financing laws and financing related laws and regulations. It will help the federal government of the nation to motivate increased amount of monitoring of charitable funding. It is assumed that a large amount of charitable funding goes to the terrorist groups and through this monitoring this funding will be prevented.
Religion is a major factor in UAE. During religious celebrations the citizens of UAE provide funding to a lot of unapproved channels and organizations without knowing whether those organizations are approved by government of whether those organizations are connected to different extremist groups. During any religious event or gathering, the government of UAE must air commercial ads to ensure its citizens do not donate any amount to any unapproved channel or organization. It must include religious centers as most of such organizations fund and support terrorist causes.
Government capacity must also increase in UAE in order to deal with 4th generation warfare. The UAE judicial and financial system must acquire a number of mechanisms that would work to stop and confiscate any extremist assets and also the assets of individuals who are suspected to supporting terrorist groups or communities.
On the other hand, the government of UAE will have to counter extremist propaganda and will have to prevent the exploitation of web and social media. The government must promote tolerance and compassion through Islam. It will help the nation to prevent extremist activities and will help to prevent disruption of messages that lead to radicalization.
The most important fact that would help the government of UAE to deal with 4th generation warfare would be to prevent UAE nationals from joining extremist groups in Syria and Iraq. It is causing increased amount of gathering of terrorist groups in the nation. UAE must work with other Gulf Cooperation Nations in a collaborative manner to improve national stability. UAE must focus on improving its GDP and reducing unemployment rate as it will automatically prevent youth of the country to join any war for extremist groups in UAE or in any other nation.
Reference list
Bērziņš, J. (2015). The evolution of the concept of Russian New Generation Warfare: implications for European security. 2
Caliskan, M. (2019).Hybrid Warfare and Strategic Theory.Horizon Insights, 6.Caliskan, M. (2019). Information structures in the framework of information warfare–ontology approach.
Jung, R. L. (2017). STATE BUREAUCRACY: ENTROPIC ORGANIZATION IN THE AGE OF 4TH GENERATION WARFARE.
MURADOV, I. (2019). THE DONBAS CONFLICT AS A FORM OF HYBRID WARFARE: A NEOCLASSICAL REALIST ANALYSIS (Doctoral dissertation, MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY).
Wilcox, M. B., & Bate, M. J. Proposing a Conflict Map to Guide Warfare.
Zhang, C. K., &Grdina, C. M. (2015)Protection across the Domains: Electronic Warfare in the Armored-Cavalry Squadron.
