Professional Military Education

Today’s guest is Lt. Col Thiele (USMC-Ret.). He is the co-author of 4th Generation Warfare Handbook, which he wrote with William (“Bill”) Lind.  In the interview, Lt. Col Thiele explains that while he was working as an instructor at the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Warfighting School (EWS), he met Bill Lind, who introduced him to some of the ideas of 4th Generation Warfare. Together they began to collaborate on the 4th Generation Warfare Handbook.  Lt. Col Thiele mentions that he was motivated by the question, “What does victory look like?” He had this question after returning from deployment to Iraq where he saw that even though the violence was decreasing, the U.S. still seemed far from victory.  In the interview, Lt. Col Thiele focuses on the evolution of warfare through what he describes as three generations. The bulk of the fighting in the previous three generations occurred between state actors. That is nation state fought nation state. However, his theory is that in 4th Generation of Warfare, states wil