The Sling and the Stone

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The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century

Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, USMC

Warfare has changed almost beyond recognition in the years that I have been alive (25 as of writing), from the brief Falklands Conflict and the feared Third World War with the Soviet Union, to the limited and long-term failure of the Gulf War, to the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq, and the following insurgency against American and allied forces, that may now be on the verge of being resolved. In The Sling and the Stone, a reference to David’s battle with Goliath, Colonel Hammes attempts to illuminate the new face of warfare, and suggest means by which it can be fought more effectively.

The central tenet of Hammes’s arguments is that we are now entering a fourth generation of warfare (4GW), in which massed tank battles and air combat will be replaced by insurgencies and grassroots campaigns against allied forces, on a global scale. The attacks of 9/11 were just one aspect of the coming face of war; lacking both an air force and a means of striking directly at the enemy, the terrorists brilliantly improvised both, taking advantage of weaknesses within the United States’ security environment to launch a strike that, it should be noted, was a success. 4GW, far from being a minor threat, has had major effects on superpowers; Algeria crippled the French, Vietnam cost the US its innocence and Afghanistan certainly played a large role in destroying the USSR.

The core of 4GW is to cripple public support for the war in the target nation. Hammes explains that the odds of AQ, insurgents in Iraq, or Afghanistan Taliban forces actually defeating the United States directly is unlikely, but their game is not to actually defeat the US militarily, but in the court of public opinion. Far from being simple tribesmen, AQ and other groups have attempted to find practical solutions, in stark contrast to what happened in Desert Storm. There, an enemy played to US strengths; now, an enemy can be expected to find ways to circumvent and attack the United States right where it hurts. Unlike many in the higher Pentagon ranks, the terrorists have adjusted to the new realities.

"At the strategic level, the combination of our perceived technological superiority and our bureaucratic organization sets us up for a major failure against a more agile, intellectually prepared enemy."

This is no idle hyperbole; Hammes presents dozens of different examples, from the comparison of the pathetic performance of "secret" imagery taking days or weeks to order up, versus, "good enough" commercial imagery that can be gotten in hours, to the media control shown by AQ and other underground forces. The US should be worried about its media image, but has no effective way of controlling how it is presented to the world at large. The 4GW combatants use the media effectively to wear down the political resolve of their enemies. This entails showing bloody civilian casualties as any result of US offensive. This is also done by orchestrating spectacularly shocking beheadings of innocent civilians whose only crime was collaborating with the US.

Hammes traces the development of the new way of war from its origins – Mao’s China – through various successful practitioners such as the Vietnamese, Sandinistas, Somalis, and Palestinians (first Intifada), and some of the failures, Al-Aqsa Intifada and to some extent AQ. It is obvious to anyone with a background in such matters that in the case of a civil war, the side that appealed more to the peasants and lower classes won, while the blundering ineptitude of various central governments only added to the recruits of the insurgents. In Palestine, the PLA was not directly involved in the first Intifada (contrary to their later attempts to portray it as Arafat’s brainchild) and indeed it was largely peaceful, swinging world opinion behind the Intifada. In contrast, the second Intifada, AQ and to some extent Iraq (although the jury was still out when this book was published), failed to get world opinion behind it, not least because the insurgents underestimated the scope of their problem. For Palestine, reasonable moderate spokesmen were replaced by bearded terrorists demanding the destruction of Israel, a tactical misstep as even the most weak-kneed government will fight to the death rather than compromise, when the compromise would be certain disaster. Tactics such as indiscriminate suicide bombings and random terror only bred fury in Israel, and a conviction that whatever means were necessary should be used, in order to safeguard their lives.

For governments involved in other countries, Hammes has a worrying concept, one that seems almost alien to Washington, Europe, and others. The path of 4GW warfare is generational; our victories in Basra and Baghdad may mean nothing in the greater scheme of conflict. If a village in Afghanistan provides help to us, and then we withdraw, the local Taliban may come and slaughter the village, pour encourager les autres. Victory may mean convincing people that we are there to stay, but we are already dogged by a bad record started during Vietnam and continued by Bush41 and Clinton. The defeat in Somalia convinced thousands that the US would, in general terms…"when the going gets tough, the US gets going." It is a little difficult to intimidate our enemies with such a track record. It is, as yet, too early to say if the five-year-old Iraq War has altered this perception.

The overall problem, Hammes notes, is that time is on the side of the enemy. They are prepared to fight for years, if they have to; it is worthwhile noting that the Sandinistas remained fairly coherent despite several poundings from the government they were trying to defeat, while the network of social contacts in Palestine fell apart following the semi-victory of the first Intifada. The US was geared up to fight an apocalyptic war with the USSR, and then a series of smaller peacekeeping missions; the enemy, in the meantime, was preparing to avoid US countermeasures and remain in being, a constant threat that could neither be negotiated with, or exterminated. They expect that, at some point, the US will weary of endless skirmishes, with one or two Americans coming home in bodybags every time, and that the US will then withdraw. Although Hammes doesn’t make the comparison directly, AQ – the first of the enemy transnational networks – was successful in altering the behaviour of the Spanish Government in their favour, hardly a ‘victory’ for coalition forces in Iraq. They will attempt to make other such attacks in the future.

Hammes attempts, in the final part of the book, to propose solutions. The US is not geared up to fight a long-term insurgent war across most of the planet; that has to change. Instead of top-down and compartmentalised hierarchical structures (which cost the US dear during Operation Anaconda, in Afghanistan), the US should prepare networks for local command and control, ensuring that all intelligence is provided to those who actually have to rely on it, with the local commanding officers given much greater control over their own operations. There are other lessons as well; the US must show resolve and a will to fight, if it has to fight, for years, if not decades. Examples of idiocy – such as the edict that no intelligence service could recruit a known terrorist – must be abandoned (this was done, to some extent, post-9/11) and the US must work to create US allies in the battlefield.

To some extent, the book is shorter than it needs to be, but it is written in a flowing and easy to understand style. There is, perhaps, more redundancy than would normally be acceptable, but that is beside the point. I recommend this book.

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