Pittsburg ? An expert on warfare says better understanding of the world’s varying cultures is essential to victory in a changing modern era.

“War is evolving, but what is it turning into?” Marine Col. Thomas Hammes said Monday during an appearance at Pittsburg State University. “Warfare is very Darwinian: We kill off the unlucky and stupid ones early.”

Hammes, a fellow in the Institute for National Security Studies at the National Defense University, has written “The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century.” He said he was talking “not as an academician, but as a practitioner,” and that his remarks were not official Defense Department or Marine Corps policy.

Hammes spoke of a need for greater efforts to understand world cultures and learn foreign languages.

“There’s a suggestion — and a lot of people are against it — that a general officer be required to speak at least one target language,” he said. “Those include Arabic, Mandarin and Farsi. Our biggest problem in a foreign country is the language, and interpreters don’t always work. First-generation Americans can be a huge help.”

Hammes said modern warfare had moved through four generations, starting with mass manpower in the time of Napoleon. By the time of World War I early in the last century, warfare had moved to an emphasis on mass firepower. Then, World War II brought a third generation of warfare focusing on maneuvering, penetrating and disrupting the enemy.

Today, that’s shifted to a fourth generation with the focus on high technology, which Hammes said might not be the best way of fighting insurgencies such as the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Fourth-generation warfare struggles are measured in decades rather than months or years,” he said. “The Communist Chinese fought for 27 years, and the Vietnamese fought for 30 years. The Palestinians have been fighting since 1967, and the Afghans took 10 years to defeat the Soviet Union.”

So far, he said, insurgents lead the world’s superpowers 5-0 in modern conflicts.

“The United States was beaten in Somalia, Lebanon and Vietnam, and the Russians were beaten in Afghanistan and Chechnya,” Hammes said.