Phil Jones provides a excellent recap of Global Guerrillas

Wow, Phil's recap of global guerrillas as a 4GW movement is very, very well executed (posted to Tdaxp). It's so good, I don't want to see it squandered in a comments section:

GG *is* 4GW (I don't think Robb wants to call it a different generation) but it isn't just anyone's 4GW theory, it is a specific flavour of analysis.

What seems to be the crucial (distinguishing) elements of Robb's GG theory are :

there are many groups, who don't need to share strategic objectives to share tactical co-operation. (Interestingly, this is how Richard Stallman once described his relationship with the Open Source movement. Different strategic objectives but tactical co-operation.)

the groups don't need explicit connections but can communicate and co-ordinate "stigmergically" ie. tapes broadcast on arabic TV, stories of decapitation in the media inspire other groups to try the same tactic.

the groups are shifting their patterns of attack from symbolic targets or "killing a lot of people" to systems disruption.

I don't think Robb's name "Global Guerilllas" is particularly felicitatious, but I think I see where it's coming from. I suspect "global" is meant to imply that we should see this as a universal phenomenon in that it's popping up everywhere (in US cities and China as well as Baghdad); and that the reach of guerrillas can be global (eg. bombings from Bali to London, taking out a pipeline affects the world oil price.)

The question of whether there are "common" motivations does indeed depend on how narrowly you define a motivation. But I think Robb's intuition is that motivations and strategic objectives are "more diverse than you probably imagine" (particularly if you naively imagine that the Iraq insurgency (for example) is nothing but a few unreconstructed Saddamists and a few Al-Qaeda infiltrators. Or conversely, a heroic anti-imperialist mass movement.)

For a long time it's been hard to get much acknowledgement about the roles that either a) good old fashioned "crime", or b) sectarian gangs, are playing in Iraq. It's not that they're not acknowledged, but that they weren't taken seriously in strategic planning.

Iraq optimists desperately didn't want to see sectarian violence erupting, and (rightly) didn't see that such an outcome was inevitable. So they (wrongly) tried to ignore it.

Robb, with his GG analysis succesfully diagnosed that it was in the interests of Al-Qaeda to *seed* and encourage sectarian violence, and that it could be nurtured to the point when it became self-supporting. Now "sectarian retaliation" is a major motive for much of the killing and social disruption in Iraq. And likely carried out by people who share no common objectives with either Al-Qeada or Baathists.

To the extent Robb's "bazaar" model gives us a way of explaining and understanding that situation, it's way ahead of someone who's still trying to identify the secret mastermind, or the common evil ideology, behind all violence in Iraq.