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We are no longer fighting a defined adversary in a defined battlespace for a defined period of time. Instead the 5th generation mission space is a continuous global battle of narratives that will play out over both virtual and physical space and encompass a range of violent and non-violent actions and effects.
And so to war...The slow escalation through the phases towards the open commitment of military forces in phase 5 will be achieved with subtly and ambiguity to such an existent that it will be difficult to know at which point the phase of conflict has changed. It will be extremely difficult to set ‘Red Lines’ and threshold for when to act. We may well find ourselves way past the point of intervention without having realized we were even in a contest, akin to the fable of the boiling frog. In this event the adversaries setting of the narrative will have achieved, at least partially, the desired outcome, without the commitment of forces to the lethal fight. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, This is the supreme art of 5th Generation War.
However, in 5GW, the state of war will never be declared as the adversary will seek to impose its values on another through the cognitive effect. The next conflict, be it between a state, a non-state or a combination of the two, will certainly be an economic and a social contest, whether or not it becomes a lethal military fight: it will be a contest over the cognitive mission space.