New Tech, Old Tactic
To the Editor:
In “Hamas’s Asymmetric Advantage” (January/February 2024), Audrey Kurth Cronin writes that “technology has shrunk the gap between states and terrorists,” allowing nonstate groups to mimic countries’ military operations. She invokes Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel as a case in point. Cronin explains how Hamas used tunnels to evade Israel’s communication systems, commercial drones to overwhelm its defenses, and social media to win global sympathy. She is right that Hamas’s use of cheap technologies provoked Israel to respond in a way that has been widely criticized as disproportionate and unnecessary. But this does not mean that Hamas is catching up with Israel militarily.
Consider commercial drones. Hamas used them to surveil and drop grenades on Israeli defenses and communication towers. But Hamas’s use of drones remains amateurish. Professional militaries link tactical actions to strategic objectives that serve broader political aims. Unlike a professional military’s operations, Hamas’s drone operations were decoupled from a broader plan. Hamas, for example, did not use its small drone fleet to locate, track, and engage Israeli soldiers responding to the group’s invasion on a large scale. Had Hamas mimicked a military in a meaningful way, pursuing its goal to eradicate Israel, it would have used drone attacks to march to Jerusalem and plant its flag there. At most, Hamas’s drone attacks capitalized on surprise to momentarily disrupt Israel’s situational awareness and strike fear in the hearts of Israelis.
Although Hamas has used technology to commit violence in new ways, it does not have a decisive military advantage in its war with Israel. Cronin concedes as much, noting that Israel has “incomparable conventional military superiority to Hamas.” Hamas is not behaving like a military. It just used new technology for the age-old tactic of terrorism. Paul Lushenko
Assistant Professor
U.S. Army War College
Keith L. Carter
Associate Professor
U.S. Naval War College
Cronin replies:
Although I thank Lushenko and Carter for their thoughtful response, it does not engage my argument. My article emphasizes Hamas’s asymmetric power in a strategic sense,
not just a military one. I wrote that Hamas does not endeavor to match the Israeli military directly because that would be a self-defeating strategy for any terrorist group. And if Hamas had used drone attacks “to march to Jerusalem and plant its flag there,” the group would have triggered a massive U.S. military intervention.
Those who pursue the “age-old tactic of terrorism” never seek to go toe to toe with state military power. Terrorist groups win by leveraging states’ own strengths against them, as Hamas has effectively done with Israel. That’s a rather strategic approach, as might be taught (and I did teach, for years) at professional military schools, including the U.S. National War College.