Hammes, Thomas X. 1953–

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Hammes, Thomas X. 1953–

PERSONAL:

Born 1953. Education: Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Northern VA.

CAREER:

Scholar and writer. National Defense University, Washington, DC, senior military fellow. Spent twenty-eight years serving in infantry and intelligence assignments in the U.S. military, including the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marines. Military service: U.S. Marines, retired as a colonel, served in Iraq War, 2004.

WRITINGS:

The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, Zenith Press (St. Paul, MN), 2004.

Author of numerous articles on defense issues. Contributor to the New York Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Thomas X. Hammes is a retired military officer who writes about defense issues and is considered by those in the defense community to be a leading expert in insurgent warfare. In his first book, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, the author writes "about what he sees as the preeminent form of warfare in the 21st century," according to Armor contributor William R. Betson. Hammes, who served in the Iraq War, calls this modern warfare "Fourth Generation War" (4GW) and focuses on the difficulties of a superpower being tied up by seemingly weaker opponents using various forms of low-tech warfare that have turned out to be surprisingly effective against more technologically advanced opponents.

In his introduction to The Sling and the Stone, Hammes recounts how his interest in 4GW began in the 1970s as he and others in the American military pondered the failure of the United States forces in Vietnam, a small nation of only twenty-two million people and little economic power. "Like many military officials of my generation, I was trying to understand a type of warfare that seemed to change all the rules," the author writes in his introduction. "In Vietnam, the side with overwhelming wealth, power, and technology had been decisively defeated. We had won the battles but lost the war. One had to wonder what that meant for traditional concepts of warfare."

In his book, the author explains the use of asymmetrical warfare by which countries viewed as "Davids" on the international scene defeated the world's "Goliaths." In addition to describing how this warfare is successful, the author also provides recommendations for prescriptive actions as he examines the strengths and weaknesses of conventional military power. In his introduction, the author states that the smaller, less powerful forces of the "Davids" are bolstered primarily by their willingness to persevere against what appear to be unbeatable forces because of their unwavering beliefs in their specific cause or causes. "The second outstanding trait was the remarkable ingenuity they displayed for overcoming problems," the author writes.

Hammes begins his book with an overview of four generations of warfare, describing the first two generations of modern war and the transition to third-generation warfare. From there he examines changes in society that have affected warfare. Hammes also analyzes many of the most successful insurgent efforts of the twentieth century, including the insurgency of the Chinese Communists headed by Mao Zedong; he views this event as the birth of 4GW. He goes on to analyze the contributions made to 4GW by the Vietnamese, the Sandinistas, and the Palestinians. The author then examines more recent problems, such as the terror network Al-Qaeda and recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, he explains the characteristics of 4GW. According to Military Review contributor David A. Anderson, the author describes 4GW as "warfare that utilizes all available networks (political, economic, social, and military) to convince an enemy's political decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit."

The book's final chapters look at where modern warfare is headed. Hammes states that the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, as well as other conflicts from the 1990s onward, show that for several decades the future of war will be based on insurgencies that are both sophisticated and adaptive in their efforts to counter the might of Western armies. He then writes of the ways nations can better evaluate the threats posed by other countries and groups, and how to properly deal with these threats both politically and in a nontraditional warfare setting.

"In this superb book, Colonel Thomas X. Hammes … [provides] any one interested in the major issues of military transformation with an invaluable counterpoint to the technology driven agenda that has dominated Western military debate since the end of the Cold War," wrote M. Capstick in a review of The Sling and the Stone for the Canadian Army Journal. Richard Halloran, in a review for Parameters, noted: "This is a stimulating—nay, provocative—book that should cause military readers and all associated with the security of the United States to question their fundamental assumptions. It is also a gutsy book because the author … asserts in effect that the Secretary of Defense, his team in the Pentagon, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are wrong in the way they seek to transform the nation's armed forces and in the way they are fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."