What artillery and air power are in Third Generation war, cash is in the Fourth Generation: your most useful supporting arm. [FMFM-1A, Fourth Generation Warfare, 12 August 2009, p. 68.]
It’s an old idea:
In England, the rotten-borough system flourished, and the nabobs outbid all other purchasers. Franklin deplored the American war for a peculiar reason: “Why did they [the Continental Congress] not let me go on? If they had given me a fourth of the money they have spent on the war, we should have had our independence without spending a drop of blood. I would have bought all the Parliament, the whole government of Britain.” [Will and Arial Durant, Rousseau and Revolution, p. 733.]
All the 4GW manuals are available at DNIPOGO, http://dnipogo.org/strategy-and-force-employment/fourth-generation-warfare-manuals/
Slightly East of New 
I recently read “Fall of the Roman Empire”
http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Roman-Empire-Barbarians-ebook/dp/B000SEI0JQ/
and currently finishing “Chiang Kai-Shek: China’s Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost”
http://www.amazon.com/Chiang-Kai-Shek-Chinas-Generalissimo-ebook/dp/B002EL3PMI/
and both have more bribes & tributes than actual battles. For slight other drift there was recent reference about after 1945 somebody realizing that they could have used submarines to blockade Japan and would have avoided the horrific island-hopping battles. On the other side is Spinney’s scenario about the need for continuous conflict & perpetual war as paradigm to continue the flow of funds for MICC.
lhh0 — Thanks.
I first thought about this when it was announced that our costs for the Iraq war had reached something like $300 billion. A few years later, of course, we did, but by then we’d run the bill up into the trillions.