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

Rating:
Summary: Overall Excellent Primer, Some Warts
Review:
In the context of the thousands of book on strategy, force structure, emerging threats, and so on, this is a solid primer and excellent work for both those who know nothing of the many other books, and a good place to start for conventional military minds ready to think more deeply about transformation.

Most irritating to me is the author's complete self-centered discussion, with cursory credit to people that I know had a great deal to do with his understanding: John Boyd,, Col GI Wilson, Col Mike Wylie, Bill Lind, and more recently, Ralph Peters, Max Manwaring, Steve Metz, and Tony Zinni. We are all a team, and help each other, and it does not help the public to be given the impression that there is only one voice in the wilderness. He mentions the Special Operations Forces, where unconventional thinking has been resident for decades, just once. For this lapse he loses one star.

That out of the way, this is an excellent book over-all. His two key points are clear: 4th Generation Wars take decades, not months as the Pentagon likes to fight; and only 4th Generation Wars have defeated super-powers--the US losing three times, Russia in Afghanistan, France in Viet-Nam, etc.

The author offers solid critiques of the Pentagon's mediocre strategy (Joint Vision 20XX) and its preference for technology over people, an excellent short list of key players in world affairs, interesting lists and a discussion of insurgent versus coalition force strengths and weaknesses in Iraq, and a brutal--positively brutal--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.

There are flashes of brilliance that suggest that the author's next book--if he does his homework and gives due credit--will be just as good if not better. He understands the war of ideas and talks about insurgent handbills as a form of ammunition that the US is not seeing, reading, or understanding; he points out that Al Qaeda is like a venture capitalist, franchising and subsidizing or inspiring distributed terrorism; and he is superbly on target, on page 39, when he points out that when Al Qaeda attacks in the US, the only thing that is "moving" is information or knowledge. Everything else they pick up locally--hence, US homeland security comes down to intercepting the information, not the players or the things they use to attack us.

The author is among those who feel that we must nail Egypt, Syria, and Iran, among others (I would include Pakistan), for exporting support to terrorism.

I have a number of underlinings and margin comments throughout this book, so it is by no means a light read. It is a very fine place to start understanding war in the 21st Century, and an excellent foundation for reading the more nuanced and broader works of GI Wilson, Max Manwaring, Steve Metz, Ralph Peters, and others.

Rating:
Summary: A Basic Confusion of a War's "Nature" with its "Grammar"
Review: "If war is part of policy, policy will determine its character. As policy becomes more ambitious and vigorous, so will war, and this may reach the point where war attains its absolute form. If we look at war in this light, we do not need to lose sight of this absolute: on the contrary, we must constantly bear it in mind." Clausewitz, On War, Book 8, Chapter 6.

I've looked forward to reading this book for some time. Here finally (I thought) there would be a Clausewitzian analysis of our current political/military dilemma which would act as a sort of signpost, allowing for orientation and reassessment. I've just received this book and have only read one chapter, but already I can say that it is something of a disappointment.

My rating is four stars, since I assume that the balance of the book will be an improvement over Chapter 12 - "Iraq: High-Tech versus Fourth Generation". Any good book on strategic thought requires some time to contemplate, to think over. Since the chapter on Iraq is current, and we can judge it based on reporting from Iraq through a Clausewitzian lens, I needn't wait to weigh the mass of dubious assumptions that pass for analysis concerning Operation Iraqi Freedom. A thoughtful Clausewitzian analysis requires a hard look at the situation on the ground and an honest attempt to get beyond one's own cultural or national outlook/interests. One must try very hard not to deceive oneself.

Col. Hammes starts with a quotation from Clausewitz, which is appropriate, but then fails to follow up on exactly what Clausewitz means by "nature". Referring to the paragraph preceding that quote is helpful here, "First, therefore, it is clear that war should never be thought of as something autonomous but always as an instrument of policy; otherwise the entire history of war would contradict us. Only this approach will enable us to penetrate the problem intelligently. Second, this way of looking at it will show us how wars must vary with the nature of their motives and of the situation which give rise to them." On War, Book 1 Chapter 1 Section 27.

So the nature of any war is determined by its subjective political goals, since war is an instrument of policy, not something autonomous, with the influence of that policy going through the entire course of the war into the following peace, as Clausewitz points out elsewhere. So where is the discussion of what exactly US policy is?

There is no discussion, there is no thought given as to how the extensive nature of US war aims in Iraq define the nature of that war. Instead, we are told that "the Bush administration failed to understand the type of war they were embarking on. They tried to turn it into a short, high-technology, conventional war. . . Unfortunately, the underlying nature of the Iraq War is not that of a high-tech war but rather that of a fourth-generation netwar", page 172.

That is not "the underlying nature of Iraq war", it is rather "the grammar" of that specific war that Hammes is describing, that with the metaphor "4th Generation Warfare". What makes the Iraq war 4th Generation, and not just another Guerrilla war, or a war of national liberation similar to that in Spain against Napoleon in 1809? There are in fact a great many simularities with that bloodbath as even a simple viewing of Goya's works will make clear. Hammes provides no convincing answer.

My main complaint here is not the use of the term "4th Generation Warfare", but the Procrustian bed of catagories that it seems to entail. Should we not rather look at the four generations of warfare as Ideal Types, that is as being pure conceptual tools with which to measure reality, instead of trying to get reality to fit our measure? Are not modern militaries a combination of various complex elements belonging to all three (or even four) generations, and even pre-modern warfare?

Under weaknesses, Hammes notes that the Anti-Coalition Forces (a much better term than the Administration's "Anti-Iraqi Forces") "lack a unifying political creed", and "have no comprehensive plan for the future of Iraq". Their unifying creed may simply be Iraqi Nationalism as it was in 1920 against the British, what more do they need? And, is not simply rejecting our plan enough? As to not having any unity, their dispersion and decentralization is necessary, since if they were to form a united front we would target that front. Their nebulous consistency, btw, is also pure Clausewitz as pointed out in his chapter, "The People in Arms".

In short, the Iraqis have every reason to fight us since they seemingly reject the Bush Administration's vision of what Iraq's future must be. This is tied to the radical and extensive nature of our war aims - not the public war aims of WMD - but the restructuring of the Iraqi state, the disbanding of their army and civil service, the implementation of "market forces" which is in effect the economic control of the country by foreign investors, not to mention the permanent stationing of US forces in Iraq. "Their government" consists of exiles (many former Baath party members) and dual nationals who have little following in Iraq. Hammes mentions "the daily improvement in power, sanitation, water and trade", but this is going on behind a backdrop of the constant aerial bombardment of their population centers.

The assumptions go on and on, piled one upon another. Yet there is no mention at all of how our extensive war goals require as Clausewitz points out, "great physical and moral superiority or else an extremely enterprising spirit, an inclination for serious risk". In effect we are demanding that the Iraqis accept under threat of violence a new political identity, one which has been an abject failure so far. This is the same policy that Israel has pursued with the Palestinians which by the way has also been a failure. By confusing the nature of the war with its subjective grammar, and labelling it "4th Generation", we conflate this dubious "war of choice" with the very real struggle against Al Qaida.

I am not arguing that there is no such entity that we could refer to as "more or less 4th Generational", and I believe that Al Qaida is a serious threat, but conflating the struggle against Al Qaida with the Iraqi debacle, which was unnecessary and fought for very questionable goals (I would say goals which betray our ideals as Americans) we have injured ourselves seriously, as well as our prospects in the real conflict with Al Qaida.

Instead of offering us a way out of this quagmire, Col. Hammes has only added to the general confusion.


Rating:
Summary: Every military decision maker needs this book
Review: Every military appropriations decision maker in congress, every soldier, and every concerned citizen should read this one. This is a monumental work that should forever change our paradigms of military science.

Rating:
Summary: Colonel Hammes: the Man and the Marine.
Review: I am not a Military Scholar or a professional officer with a long distinguished career. I have also never been in combat. However, I am someone who is uniquely qualified to say something very positive about Colonel Hammes: the Man and the Marine. As a young Marine Second Lieutenant I had the privilege and honor of serving in the same Rifle Company with Tom Hammes 27 years ago. We were both Platoon Commanders with India Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Brigade, Fleet Marine Force Pacific in Hawaii. As I remember Tom, he was an outstanding human being and brilliant young officer and everyone in our Battalion knew that he was destined for greatness. It looks like we were all correct to think so. I have not seen him in almost 30 years and I have not read his new book. However, I can't wait to pick up a copy. Robert K. Leonard, Former Captain, USMCR.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most important books of the year
Review: I've seen the author on CNN and read him in the New York Times. The guy is brilliant. On Aaron Brown's show, Hammes spoke plainly and articulately--in a non-partisan way--about insurgencies lasting 12, 30, maybe 35 years, and then they cut to a clip of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld talking about people like Hammes with "mystical powers ... pulling numbers out of midair."

This book is a cautionary tale for the Donald Rumsfelds of the world. Modern warfare has the ability to mobilize assets and inflict catastrophic human tolls, but that is not enough. Hammes discusses how weaker forces are able to defeat more powerful conventional forces by forcing them to use tactics they are not comfortable with.

The conclusion I've taken out of this book is this: superior powers throughout history have fallen into that same trap of fighting an imaginary enemy rather than the one that stands before them. Likewise, we might wish we were fighting an enemy that is blindly fanatical and subhuman, but maybe we're fighting one that is more clever, organized, trained, and well-equipped for a long, drawn-out fight than some would like to admit.

Maybe Secretary Rumsfeld and others don't think Americans can handle the truth. They might be right... but you can read this book and prove them wrong.

Introduction
Chapter 1: Four Generations of Warfare
Chapter 2: The First Two Generations of Modern War
Chapter 3: Transition to Third Generation Warfare
Chapter 4: Changes in Society
Chapter 5: Mao and the Birth of Fourth-Generation War
Chapter 6: The Vietnamese Modification
Chapter 7: The Sandinista Refinement
Chapter 8: The Intifada: Civilians versus an Army
Chapter 9: The al-Aqsa Intifada
Chapter 10: Al Qaeda: A Transnational Enemy
Chapter 11: Afghanistan: A Tribal Network
Chapter 12: High-Tech versus Fourth-Generation
Chapter 13: Technology: Not a Panacea
Chapter 14: Characteristics of Fourth-Generation War
Chapter 15: Where to from Here?
Chapter 16: Evaluating the Threat
Chapter 17: The Future is Flexibility

Rating:
Summary: Forget the battles, let's win the war
Review: In 1991, Israeli historian and military analyst Martin van Creveld shocked the defense community with his book, The Transformation of War. At least, he shocked that part more worried about post-Soviet threats than about buying weapons. Van Creveld preached that future danger to the West would come from groups other than state armies and that they would employ means that we would find repulsively violent and indiscriminate. In the intervening 13 years, all this has come to pass, but, as Marine Colonel T. X. Hammes eloquently argues in this important new book, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

What we are in fact seeing is "fourth generation warfare," (4GW) a term coined in a famous 1989 paper in the Marine Corps Gazette and now easily available on the Internet. Hammes argues that 4GW, far from being something academic or esoteric, represents the cumulative efforts of "practical people" trying to solve the problem of confronting superior military power. Their efforts are bearing fruit: "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." Amen.

The failure, in Hammes' view, will not be defeat in some Clausewitzian "decisive battle," but failure nonetheless as American politicians, tiring of the costs and despairing of victory, withdraw our forces short of achieving our objectives. He traces the evolution of 4GW through its successes--Mao, the Vietnamese, Sandinistas, Somalis, and Palestinians (in the first Intifada)--and its failures--the Al-Aqsa Intifada and perhaps al-Qa'ida, although the verdict, I fear, is still out on the latter.

It is the transnational element--we are not confronting state-based armies or even isolated insurgencies--that is driving the evolution of guerilla warfare into 4GW. So the 4GW danger in Iraq is not so much the insurgency but whether the conflict acts as a recruiting depot, training facility, and War Lab for violent transnational ideological groups, as was the case in Afghanistan.

Hammes concludes that when 4GW organizations remain true to their socially networked roots, and keep their focus on influencing their state opponents' desires to continue, they win. Such organizations only lose when they drop out of the 4GW paradigm--as when the Palestinians of the Al Aqsa Intifida shifted their focus away from influencing Israeli and Western opinion and directly towards destruction of the State of Israel, or perhaps when al-Qa'ida brought the war to the US homeland on 9/11.

In the last third of the book, Hammes raises issues that should trouble every US political and military leader. Perhaps most penetrating, given DoD's current focus, is the observation is that if information technology is the key to success in future combat, then we're probably going to lose. The reason is that dispersed, rapidly evolving networks can more quickly invent ways to exploit new information technologies than can large, bureaucratic, hierarchical structures such as the Pentagon. The parade of viruses, Trojans, and other worms that assault our (non-Mac) computers daily attest to the truth of this argument.

The solution, in Hammes' view, is to become more of a network ourselves. He is brutally realistic about the problems this entails--for starters we would need to eliminate about 50% of the field grade and general officers on active duty, which agrees with most studies of successful transformation--to "lean," for example-- which suggest reducing management ranks by 25-40%. Such thinking is a refreshing change from the gradualist school of "transformation" prevalent in DoD these days.

Many of his other recommendations will be familiar to those who have read US Army Major Don Vandergriff's The Path to Victory, which Hammes credits as the basis for his own personnel proposals: Solve the people problems and our troops will figure out ways to employ suitable technologies. Hammes' application of Vandergriff's ideas to fashioning a military capable of 4GW are among the most innovative parts of the book and potentially among the most decisive.

By the way, watch for Hammes' sly take on the phrase "coalition of the willing," which reveals a biting wit generally thought rare in Marine colonels.

If you are curious about where armed conflict is heading over the next 20-30 years, you must read The Sling and The Stone. You may not agree with all of Colonel Hammes' recommendations, but you'll find it hard to argue that he hasn't made a correct diagnosis of the problem. And just in time.

Rating:
Summary: Most insightful book on the history and evolution of warfare
Review: This is a fascinating book that exposed me to a different type of author: the military intellectual. For many civilians this may represent an oxymoron. But, reading this lucid, analytical, visionary, and incredibly insightful book will convince you that it is not. There is intelligence in the military after all.

Sadly enough, the material of the book was mainly derived from two long internal essays the author generated within the military back in 1988 and 1994. So, the concepts that seemed new to me as a civilian at the end of 2004 were known within the military for over a decade. Thus, even though the author proposed a framework for restructuring the Department of Defense based around human skills able to deal with insurgent warfare instead of solely technological capabilities aimed at outdated State-to-State warfare, the DOD under Rumsfeld and his predecessors chose to go in exactly the wrong direction.

The author develops his analytical framework around its main theme: fourth generation warfare (4GW) in 17 very clearly written and sequentially developed short chapters. Near the beginning of the book, he gives his concept a broadbased historical foundation by suggesting that warfare evolves in parallel to society in general. So, just as our civilization has evolved from various disaggregated stages including: nomadic, agricultural, industrial, and finally information based; warfare has now also reached its fourth stage centered also on information and the dissemination of ideas.

Counterintuitively, the author demonstrates brilliantly that the U.S. DOD is at a huge disadvantage in this new information based warfare style. Yes, we have superior technology, we have the best weapons. But, because of our uncreative hierarchical monopolistic centralized organization we are totally incapable of exploiting our technology in a timely manner. The author takes the example of generating a surveillance request within the DOD. The turnaround for this information to be authorized and processed will be about a week. On the other hand, a terrorist group simply watching CNN and using cheap commercially available surveillance technology will have information on many of the enemies positions almost live.

The more perplexing challenge is that the U.S. with all its wealth and infrastructure and military personnel represents a huge set of targets. The insurgents in whatever shape or form are totally stealthy, mixed in within civilian populations, and often use explicitly civilians as either shields or supporting system for their warfare.

Another challenge is the battle of ideas. 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 U.S. offensive. This is also done by orchestrating spectacularly shocking beheadings of innocent civilians whose only crime were collaborating with the U.S.

The author proposes many detailed solutions to all the above challenges. They appear somewhat Herculean in the changes that the DOD will have to undertake to spend its $500 billion effectively so as to fight today's wars instead of yesterday's. The author makes an interesting comparison between IBM in the pre PC world and today. IBM was focused on mainframes where it had an unrivaled advantage. It did so for too long until mainframes became almost irrelevant. Today, the technology industry is more flexible, creative, and fast paced moving than IBM was capable of handling. But, the author feels that the DOD's obsession with developing superior but irrelevant technology at the detriment of developing the smart human skills necessary to deal with 4GW effectively is just as ineffective as IBM's former mainframe based strategy. What good is superior technology if it takes you five days to turnaround a surveillance request.

The most fascinating part of the book is his analysis of Vietnam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts (chapters 6 and 8) using his 4GW framework. These are the most insightful writings I have read on the subject.

I strongly recommend this book for how much knowledge it provides not only in military strategy but in the recent history of the most intractable conflicts. If you are interested in this subject, I also recommend Wesley Clark's "Winning Modern Wars"; Robert Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy" and van Crevald's "The Transformation of War." All these books outline the changes of warfare, and complement nicely this book. But, this book serves as the core of the knowledge base regarding the evolution of warfare from a State-to-State phenomena to something completely different the DOD is ill equipped to deal with organizationally.