No problem.

I think you're going to like The Clash of Civilisations. I've read maybe 15% of that book, and already it's very clear that Samuel Huntington had some truly exceptional insights back then. His predictions of a multipolar world, of the relative decline of Western power, and of the rise of Islam as a political philosophy rather than a religion, were and remain spot-on.

Sadly that book is a looooooong way down my reading list right now, but I'll get to it, eventually…

Thanks for taking the time to devote and entire post to my questions. I appreciate it. I knew Mr. Lind discussed the answer to my question in his columns. I read On War in the Spring and it was a lot to take in. Such a book will demand multiple readings to fully grasp everything. This was an exceedingly illuminating post.

It's funny because I remember taking an International Relations class back in community college back in 2008 and the class seemed to have a particular disdain for Samuel Huntington's book, The Clash of Civilizations. I had just graduated high school so I didn't care so much about that. However, having read Lind's columns, I've decided to put Huntington's book on my reading list. From what I hear, he practically predicted our current crises with Islamic invasion and 4GW war.

So the tension in Europe may erupt into 4GW

Already has, as far as I am concerned. The only bit that hasn't happened, yet, is an armed rising of the native white population of Europe against its invaders. But I'd say that's coming, and sooner rather than later.

Close, but not exactly. Guerilla warfare has, historically, still come down to a matter of states. In the case of the American colonists, guerilla warfare was used to advance the interests of an American nation. Similarly, the Viet Cong were fighting for the establishment of a Communist state in South Vietnam.

William S. Lind defines 4GW as follows:

In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the FARC. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.

Fourth Generation war is also marked by a return to a world of cultures, not merely states, in conflict. We now find ourselves facing the Christian West's oldest and most steadfast opponent, Islam. After about three centuries on the strategic defensive, following the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, Islam has resumed the strategic offensive, expanding outward in every direction. In Third Generation war, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army.

Nor is Fourth Generation warfare merely something we import, as we did on 9/11. At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation war on their soil. America, with a closed political system (regardless of which party wins, the Establishment remains in power and nothing really changes) and a poisonous ideology of "multiculturalism," is a prime candidate for the home-grown variety of Fourth Generation war – which is by far the most dangerous kind.

Modern guerilla warfare is a subset of 4GW, as long as it is fought by non-state actors against state-led ones. Groups like Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah are not fighting for a clearly identified state; they are fighting instead for the ideology of Islam, which specifies as a high-level goal the establishment of dar al-Islam as the supreme governing principle of Mankind.