Mare Somniorum

The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century by USMC, Colonel Thomas X. Hammes is a difficult book to review. This is mostly why it’s taken me two months after I finished it to write about it. It is an informative book. There are good reasons to read it. It has quality (spot the reference if you please). However… I didn’t really take to it, and I shall attempt to explain why.

I’ll dare venture into an analogy, and compare the understanding of warfare to the construction of a bridge. I have “recently” read The Utility of Force by Sir Rupert Smith that deals with some of the same material — and as such, they stand to be compared. And I believe that this comparison explains most of my reaction to “The Sling and the Stone”.

“The Sling and the Stone” is an engineers handbook, it’s an attempt to give you the nitty-gritty details of building a bridge. It goes through the materials, the workforce, the managerial challenges, the way you should rework your current taskforce and it does so by repeating the same terms, drilling in its message — and making potshots at those who haven’t read the handbook and understood it, or simply view things differently than the author.

“The Utility of Force” doesn’t seek to tell you how to build bridges. It attempts to make you understand bridges. What does bridges do, what are their purpose, what do they seek to achieve, who builds bridges, why do they build those specific bridges, why do you sometimes make suboptimal bridges, what bridges are built through human history and, again, why? It feels a lot more like you’re trying to enlighten, not encase, a point. It doesn’t matter that Hammes is, on paper, the scholar of the two authors — or at least he’s the one who fronts his scholarly experience.

Sir Smith tells you about his experiences in the field, hands on, and how he experienced warfare — and how he has come to understand it. Hammes is on a crusade to make you agree with him, ridiculing those who don’t, or didn’t, get it. Make no mistake about it, this is how you build bridges, or, well fight fourth-generation warfare — 4GW as its abbreviated. Oh, and be warned, you’ll see ‘4GW’ written so many times you’ll expect to see it on your cereal box cover afterwards.

That’s the core of my annoyance right there. Now, add to this that the book is highly US-centric (count the pages that directly relate to how the US Military should relate to 4GW warfare, they’re a substantial part of the book) and that the language is, well, not overly interesting to read. There were several occasions where I reread a sentence with utter amazement — “did he really get that construct past the editor?”.

Still, my advice would be to read the book. I would however suggest you to read the book without feeling guilty for, at times, quickly scanning over pages, rather than reading every word very carefully.