The new age of multipolar, 5D war against the West has begun

Powerful geopolitical forces are combining through networks of state and non-state actors, criminals, terrorists and drug cartels.

Undersecretary of State James E. Webb and George Kennan at the White House to brief President Harry Truman.

Powerful geopolitical forces are combining against the West through networks of state and non-state actors, criminals, terrorists, and drug cartels, while inspiring sympathisers at home to instigate a perpetual multipolar conflict in which Australia is a target.

The aim is to break the US-led Western resolve by targeting belief in ourselves. Driving hot shards of dissent into our own population, now less sure of themselves and more divided than ever before. The Iranian-funded Hamas attack on Israel and its multifaceted, hybrid nature is an illustration as good as any of the fifth dimensional warfare now deployed against the West.

Its five dimensions begin with big power politics, such as Iran, China and Russia, each shaped by centuries of crushing dissent with iron rod morality. These powers are networking with decentralised, adaptable terrorist and criminal organisations; the second dimension. China supplying Mexican drug cartel with the active ingredients flooding middle America with fentanyl is an insidious example. Russia’s use of the mercenary Wagner Group is another. The third is connectivity. Barbarity can metastases in a global instant to terrify, enrage and inspire. Cheap kit is making expensive conventional military platforms irrelevant. In Ukraine large armed forces can no longer manoeuvre on the battlefield without being stalked by a $50 drone. This threat will be accelerated when Hamas, or the next iteration of ISIS, start using artificial intelligence.

The fourth dimension is the ability to generate enormous entropy within our own communities. When even well-educated, privileged Australians can find excuses for the atrocities committed by Hamas, moral manoeuvrability has been achieved: the ability to turn the victim into the terrorist and the terrorist into the victim. And when the victim retaliates those supporting the terrorists, can say, “see they were right”.

The fifth dimension is the borderless nature of the modern world. Physical, technological, cultural, language, economic and sovereign borders are being erased. The Hamas attack on Israel is the most recent example of fifth dimensional warfare. The aim is to produce a crisis within the Western camp.

The enemy’s cunning will be not be in triggering a world war. The problem for Western leaders is they only view war through the prism of missiles, submarines and guns. When in fact we have been under relentless assault for years across these five dimensions. Conventional warfare will still be used, yet only where states calculate we will not directly intervene with boots or military strikes such as Ukraine. And it does not mean a big war involving Australia will not happen.

While Australia argues over how it acquires large pieces of kit such as submarines, frigates, aircraft and whether to have land-based missile systems, the first wave of assault in any terrain the nation might fight, could come from swarms of non-military means with lethal effect. Armed fishing fleets, cheap underwater drones, or worse slowly strangling our ability to critically challenge. As if peeking into the future through a periscope of time, as legendary American cold war diplomat George Kennan warned, “the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping”. Kennan anticipated the fourth dimension.

Deterring wars and being in a position to win those forced upon one, are two sides of the same coin: both requiring continuous investment in defence and a constant and unbending resolution to resist aggression. Now across multiple dimensions. Today there are no Churchills, Eisenhowers, Thatchers or Reagans — they would not be tolerated. Yet now more than ever, we need to channel how they combined power and belief to protect all we hold dear.

Jason Thomas is the director of Frontier Assessments