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

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More About This Book

Overview

"4GW (Fourth Generation Warfare) is the only kind of war America has ever lost. And we have done so three times - in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. This form of warfare has also defeated the French in Vietnam and Algeria, and the USSR in Afghanistan...As the only Goliath left in the world, we should be worried that the world's Davids have found a sling and stone that work." - Chapter 1, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century

The War in Iraq. The War on Terror. These types of "asymmetrical" warfare are the conflicts of the 21st century - and show how difficult it is for the world's only remaining superpower to battle insurgents and terrorists who will fight unconventionally in the face of superior military power.

This change in military conflict may seem sudden. But in his new book, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, Thomas X. Hammes, United States Marine Corps, details how "Fourth Generation Warfare" or "4GW" has evolved over decades, with powerful military forces from economically advanced nations being defeated by seemingly weaker opponents.

Hammes, a full colonel on active duty, spent years training insurgents in various locations around the world. He was stationed in Somalia in the early 1990s before the withdrawal of American troops after the events in Mogadishu. In The Sling and the Stone, he uses this extensive experience and his lifelong study of military history to illuminate how war is evolution, not revolution, and that a "weaker" opponent will continually evolve to use ways to avoid direct military engagement. Instead of winning militarily, an insurgency will work to test the political will of a more powerful nation to stay the course during a war. "We win the battles," he states, "but we lose the war."

Hammes has seen the capability of insurgents firsthand. "I was particularly impressed with two aspects of the men I met," he writes. "First was their utter determination to continue the struggle despite the odds. They were not deterred by fear of death...The second outstanding trait was the remarkable ingenuity they displayed for overcoming problems. I found insurgents are not impressed with conventional power. Any nation that assumes it is inherently superior to another is setting itself up for disaster."

The U.S. has not properly prepared, Hammes contends, for the military needs and political will that will be required to win a "low tech conflict" that is outside the expectations of the Department of Defense's 20th century planning for a short-term conflict with a high-tech, symmetrical enemy like the Soviet Union. Featuring an overview of the first three generations of modern war, Hammes focuses on examples of the evolution of 4GW, and how it will require decades instead of months or years to win. He also examines in detail "transnational" enemies like Al Qaeda, and how the U.S. focus on high-tech weapons designed to overpower an enemy in a short amount of time means little when the enemy has a different concept of the time the conflict will last.

The Sling and the Stone is must reading for anyone who wants to know what it will take for the West to "win" the war on terror. The signs for how it will be fought (and either won or lost) have been developing for decades, and the world's remaining superpower needs to heed the many examples from the recent past in order to secure a lasting victory in the future. As a leading expert on insurgency, asymmetrical warfare, and the unconventional methods used by insurgents like those in Iraq and Afghanistan today, Hammes explains in full detail what to expect from the enemy in the first major war of the 21st century.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
Retired marine colonel Hammes maintains that modern warfare has evolved in four "generations," moving from the massed citizen armies of Napoleonic warfare to the apogee of firepower in World War I to the triumph of maneuver warfare in World War II. Finally, Hammes brings us up to fourth-generation warfare, or 4GW, from Mao to Vietnam, from the Sandinistas to the present. These conflicts show that superior political will can wear down a militarily superior adversary. A 4GW opponent fights across political, economic, social, and military spectrums to sap an adversary's will to continue fighting. Despite the emergence of transnational 4GW opponents like al Qaeda, the absence of a credible conventional threat, and past 4GW experiences in Vietnam, Somalia, and now Iraq, the U.S. defense establishment remains fixated on defeating a 3GW enemy. Instead of expensive weapons, we must, according to Hammes, invest in human capital, developing expertise in an adversary's language, culture, and history. Hammes offers a compellingly reasoned and supported argument that we need to reconsider how to defeat nonconventional threats to our national security. Recommended for military history and national security collections.-Edward J. Metz, USACGSC Combined Arms Research Lib., Ft. Leavenworth, KS Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780760324073
  • Publisher: MBI Publishing Company
  • Publication date: 2/28/2006
  • Pages: 336
  • Sales rank: 264,507
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.87 (d)

Meet the Author

A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a career Marine, Thomas Hammes has spent most of his twenty-eight years serving in infantry and intelligence assignments. Colonel Hammes is considered by many in the defense community as the foremost expert in insurgent warfare. He has written numerous articles on defense issues and has appeared on PBS News Hour and other cable and network broadcasts. He is a senior military fellow at the National Defense University. He lives with his family in northern Virginia.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii
1 Four Generations of Warfare 1
2 The First Two Generations of Modern War 16
3 Transition to Third-Generation Warfare 23
4 Changes in Society 32
5 Mao and the Birth of Fourth-Generation War 44
6 The Vietnamese Modification 56
7 The Sandinista Refinement 76
8 The Intifada: Civilians versus an Army 89
9 The al-Aqsa Intifada 111
10 Al-Qaeda: A Transnational Enemy 130
11 Afghanistan: A Tribal Network 153
12 Iraq: High-Tech versus Fourth-Generation 172
13 Technology: Not a Panacea 190
14 Characteristics of Fourth-Generation War 207
15 Where to from Here? 224
16 Evaluating the Threat 246
17 The Future Is Flexibility 273
End Notes 292
References 296
Index 311

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 7 Customer Reviews

  • Posted July 16, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    9780963869579 9780963869548 9780963869593 9780963869586

    Never Underestimate Your Enemy

    Col. Hammes makes a strong case for being prepared and aware of what your enemy can do and not on what he can't. In this age of internet and global communications,what happens is istantly reported as fact. Your most effective weapon is the media and means of comminication with the polpulace. Col. Hammes has the experience of years of advance training in the Marine Corps adn his deployment to Iraq in the invasion he draws upon years of experience to formulate his therories. As someone who was involvoed in CounterInsurgecy (I served as an Advisor to the Iraqi Army 2005-06) and taught it to deploying troops (2007-2008), the book is straight forward and easy to read. For anyone in the military regardless of rank and getting ready to deploy this is a must read and a good starter for a counterinsurgecy library.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 6, 2007

    Interesting and Relevant

    The 'Generation 4' warfare is not that new of an idea.Van Creveld alludes to it in at least two of his books as do some others. However this book is a very good read.On the other hand for someone totally uninitiated in military history and theories of warfare this book could be difficult.But my advice is stay with it the book is very worth while reading. I liked the description of the Intifada as a perfect example of Generation 4 warfare especially the disarming of the teenagers by letting them use stones only (not Molotov cocktails) thus leading to the Oslo negotiations and concessions by Israel. I also liked the example of Arafat on how not to do generation 4 warfare and screwing up much of the gains from Oslo. The tracing of the evolution to generation 4 warfare from Mao and Ho Chi Minh through all its variations is interesting as is the critique of the Pentagon hierarchical vertical command setup leading to the cumbersome non responsive defense against G4 warfare.The description of the horizontal simple networking command and control structure of G4 warfare system was very revealing.Those were the good parts of the book. However the lengthy soujourn through the G1 through G3 warfare those of us familiar with military history could have done without.Napoleonic war and the mighty attrition battles of Verdun and Stalingrad are gone and will probably never be repeated. However conventional war on the Guderian and Patton maneuver model will probably crop up again.G4 war is very dependent on terrain and cultural factors and probably will not be adopted in its pure form everywhere.The author alludes to that,but does not seem to recognize that technology does have its place in war still because G4 warfare can be effective but it does not win wars. Even Mao in 1949 and Ho in 1975 had to apply heavy doses of G3 war to secure their gains and consolidate them.Hence I did not give this book 5 stars.Technology while it has to adapt to G3 AND G4 war will not be eliminated.A very extreme (however not very likely) application would be nuclear bombing and levelling of Veziristan thus destroying al Quada virtually totally.Ah yes technology!

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

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