Sticky Business: How Napalm Became the World’s Most Recycled War Crime
Napalm, the sticky sweetheart of 20th-century warfare, is having a moment again—though not the kind that comes with candle-lit dinners. From the charred outskirts of Kharkiv to the scorched orchards of Gaza, its descendants—thermobaric goulash, white-phosphorus flambé, and the ever-popular Mark 77 cocktail—are being ladled out by generals who insist, with the sincerity of a hedge-fund manager at confession, that they are merely “defending national interests.” International humanitarian law sighs in the corner like a Victorian ghost nobody invited to the party.
The recipe itself is elegantly simple: aluminum salts, polystyrene, and enough gasoline to make a Hummer blush. Invented at Harvard in 1942 (because nothing says “higher education” like inventing better ways to melt people), napalm was originally intended as a flamethrower filler for Pacific jungles. Instead it became the world’s most successful export of American ingenuity outside fast food and conspiracy theories. Seventy countries later, everyone from Syrian pilots to Sudanese militias has tried the home-brew version, usually with the culinary finesse of a frat boy making Jägerbombs in a bathtub.
Global supply chains, those miracles of just-in-time capitalism, keep the dream alive. While the UN debates adjectives—“deeply concerned,” “gravely alarmed,” occasionally “super-duper worried”—shell companies in Cyprus, Dubai, and Delaware shuffle precursor chemicals like collectible NFTs. A 2023 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found that 89 percent of the world’s napalm ingredients pass through at least three jurisdictions where asking questions is considered impolite, like inquiring about someone’s offshore account at a Monaco yacht party.
The environmental angle is, of course, a riot. Climate conferences in Sharm el-Sheikh drone on about carbon offsets while militaries treat the atmosphere like a free charcoal grill. One afternoon of sustained napalm bombardment releases more CO₂ than the annual emissions of Iceland, yet Iceland still gets blamed for volcanoes. Meanwhile, Amazonian loggers—feeling morally outgunned—console themselves: at least they only kill trees, not the PR budget.
Human-rights lawyers have gamely tried to rebrand napalm as a “legacy” weapon, as if it were a charming heirloom rather than an airborne war crime. Their PowerPoint slides feature grainy photos of Kim Phúc and other 1970s fashion victims, but the audience keeps refreshing TikTok, where today’s collateral damage is filtered in real time. Amnesty International issues another report—downloadable for free, copyright strictly enforced—and defense attachés yawn in seventeen languages. The marketplace of ideas, it turns out, runs on the same fuel as everything else: the cheapest available.
So why does the world keep re-warming this particular dish? Because nothing recalibrates a chaotic map faster than the promise of a quick, photogenic barbecue. States that can’t agree on daylight-saving time miraculously synchronize on scorched-earth tactics. Meanwhile, arms fairs in Abu Dhabi and Paris hawk “improved formulations” with lower viscosity and higher Instagram saturation—proof that even war has UX designers now. The brochure copy practically purrs: “Napalm Lite—now with 30 % less lingering moral residue!”
In the end, napalm persists not because it is especially efficient—drones and cyberattacks are tidier—but because it remains the most honest form of diplomacy: loud, indiscriminate, and impossible to ignore. It is the international equivalent of setting your neighbor’s lawn on fire to win an argument about hedge height. And as long as sovereignty is measured in the ability to ruin someone else’s tomorrow faster than they can ruin yours, the Harvard recipe will stay open-source. Pass the marshmallows.
