Politics, technology and the revolution in military affairs

Journal of Strategic Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 408-427

  Stone, John ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT; MILITARY INTERVENTION; PEACE PROCESS; WAR;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES; WESTERN HEMISPHERE; WORLD;

EID: 8744244346     PISSN: 01402390     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/1362369042000282967     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. General Carl von Clausewitz, On War, tr. Colonel J.J. Graham (NY: Barnes & Noble 2004) p.1. The full argument summarised here is set out in ibid., pp.1-19.
2. It is tempting to brigade these constraints under the heading of 'friction' - a concept which Clausewitz notably developed in another section of his book. Upon reflection, however, this appears to be an untenable position because friction's propensity to produce undesirable effects in war could also work against deliberate efforts to restrain escalation. Indeed, Thomas Schelling's 'threat that leaves something to chance' can be viewed as a concept which seeks political advantage from exactly this possibility. Escalatory threats may suffer from a lack of credibility if acting on them risks pain to the one who is doing the threatening. However, such threats may be perceived as more credible if they are based, not simply on conditional intent, but also on the prospect that escalation might escape voluntary control. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (NY: OUP 1963) pp.187-203.
3. Clausewitz. (note 1) p.17.
4. Beatrice Heuser, 'The Era of Ideological Wars', in Anja V. Hartmann and Beatrice Heuser (eds), War, Peace and World Orders in European History (London: Routledge 2001) pp.197-202.
5. For the emergence of ideas such as these during the nineteenth century, see Azar Gat, The Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon 1992) pp.46-172.
6. I.S. Bloch, Modern Weapons and Modern War (London: Grant Richards 1900). Bloch's ideas are conveniently summarised in the preface, pp.vii-1xii.
7. For a contemporary commentary, see B.H. Liddell Hart, The Revolution in Warfare (London: Faber & Faber 1946) esp. pp.83-93.
8. Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (NY: Dell 1963) p.95.
9. On this issue see Arden Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen and Prussian War Planning (Oxford: Berg 1991).
10. Gunter E. Rothenberg, 'Moltke, Schlieffen and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment', in Peter Paret (ed.), The Makers pf Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Clarendon 1986) p.314.
11. J.F.C. Fuller, The Reformation of War (London: Hutchinson 1923);
12. Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, The Remaking of Modern Armies (London: John Murray 1927).
13. Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, Lectures on F.S.R. III. (Operations Between Mechanized Forces) (London: Sifton Praed 1932) pp.129-34;
14. Liddell Hart, Europe in Arms (London: Faber & Faber 1937) pp.83-91 and passim.
15. Tukhachevskii cited in John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War with Germany, Volume 1 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1975) p.5.
16. Tuchman (note 8) pp.33-7, 112-3, 138-41.
17. Michael Geyer, 'German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare', in Paret (note 10) pp.592-3.
18. Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1983) p.134.
19. Ibid. pp.291-306.
20. Ibid. p.306.
21. Robert Osgood, Limited War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1957);
22. Thomas C. Shelling: The StrateTgy of Conflict (London: Harvard University Press 1960);
23. Thomas C. Shelling: Arms and Influence (London: Yale University Press 1966).
24. Note, for example, the title of Eisenhower's war memoirs: Crusade in Europe (London: Heinemann 1948).
25. Comments initially included in William Bundy's 'Draft Position Paper on Southeast Asia', 29 Nov. 1964, reproduced in Neil Sheehan et al., The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War (New York: Bantam 1971) p.378.
26. Ibid. p.330.
27. For example: Robert E. Osgood, Limited War Revisited (Boulder, CO: Westview 1979) pp.44-5.
28. 'The Uses of Military Power: Remarks Prepared for Delivery by the Hon. Caspar W. Weinburger, Secretary of Defense, to the National Press Club, Washington, D.C., Wednesday, November 28, 1984', < http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/military/force /weinburger.html>
29. Michael I Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, 2nd edn (London: Frank Cass 1996) pp.185-8.
30. John Stone, The Tank Debate: Armour and the Anglo-American Military Tradition (Amsterdam: Harwood 2000) pp.112-5, 124-6.
31. FM 100-5 Operations (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, June 1993) pp.1-5 with original emphasis.
32. America's Air Force Vision 2020, < http://www.af.mil/vision >;
33. Thomas E. White & General Eric K. Shinseki, United States Army, Posture Statement 2001, < http://www.army.mil/aps/01 /page3.htm >;
34. Joint Vision 2020, < http://www.dtic.mil/jv2020/jv2020a.pdf >, p.1.
35. Statement of General William F. Kernan, US Army, Commander-in-Chief United States Joint Forces Command, before the Armed Services Committee, United States Senate, 9 April 2002, p.12. While RDO also embraces the goals of coercion and compellance, the process by which such goals are to be achieved appears very traditional in character. One commentator has noted that 'RDO looks to accomplish its objectives using a concept that looks quite similar to the decisive battle of Napoleonic times' which, if it does not end a conflict, will facilitate subsequent military activities.
36. Lieutenant Colonel David R. Hogg, 'Rapid Decisive Operations: The Search for the Holy Grail of Joint Warfighting', in Williamson Murray (ed.), Transformation Concepts for National Security in the 21st Century (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 2001) p.380.
37. Offensive operations were of course terminated before all Iraqi forces in the Kuwaiti theatre of operations had been destroyed. Nevertheless, the focus of US military planning was the destruction of the enemy's means of resistance. See Colin L. Powell with Joseph E. Persico, A Soldier's Way: An Autobiography (London: Hutchinson 1995) pp.507-28.
38. Joint Vision 2020 (note 27) p.28.
39. Ibid. p.9.
40. James R. Fitzsimonds, 'The Coming Military Revolution', in Peter L. Hays et al. (eds), American Defense Policy, 7th edn (London: Johns Hopkins University Press 1997) p.581.
41. I b i d.
42. Lawrence Freedman, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 318 (Oxford: OUP for the IISS 1998) p.11.
43. 'From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.' George W. Bush, 'Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People', 20 Sept. 2001, < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010920-8.html >.
44. For two conflicting views, see Admiral William Owens' Lifting the Fog of War (London: Johns Hopkins University Press 2001), which adopts a decidedly 'technophilic' stance;
45. Michael O'Hanlon's Technological Change and the Future of Warfare (Washington, DC: Brookings 2000) which is far more modest in the claims it makes for emerging technologies.
46. Thierry Gongora and Harald von Riekhoff, 'Introduction: Sizing up the Revolution in Military Affairs', in Gongara and von Riekhoff (eds), Toward a Revolution in Military Affairs? Defense and Security at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood 2000) pp.12-15;
47. Ahmed S. Hashim, 'The Revolution in Military Affairs Outside the West', Journal of International Affairs 51/2 (Spring 1998) pp.431-45.
48. For a discussion of the challenges associated with air operations during the Kosovo War, see Benjamin S. Lambeth, NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment, MR-1365-AF (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2001) pp.101-77, < http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1365/MR1365.ch6.pdf >.
49. On Afghanistan, see Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 2002) pp.26-38.
50. For an excellent discussion of this issue, see S. Biddle and R. Zirkle, 'Technology, Civil-Military Relations and Warfare in the Developing World', Journal of Strategic Studies 19/2 (June 1996) pp.171-212.
51. Not everybody would agree with the feasibility of this approach, however. See Gongora and Riekhoff (note 37) pp.14-15;
52. Hashim (note 37) pp.443-5.
53. Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq and Conflict Termination: The Road to Guerrilla War? (Washington, DC: Centre for Strategic and International Studies, revised 27 July 2003) p.7, < http://www.csis.org/features/Iraq_ConflictTerm.pdf >.
54. Joint Vision 2020 (note 27) p.33;
55. O'Hanlon (note 36) p.19.
56. For a discussion of the problems associated with attacking North Korean Scud missiles, see Hans M. Kristensen, 'Preemptive Posturing: What Happened to Deterrence?', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58/2 (Sept./Oct. 2002) pp.55-9.
57. Such ideas are detectable in 'Nuclear Posture Review (Excerpts)', .
58. As Martin van Creveld put it, 'Suppose ... the Taliban had somehow come into possession even of a single nuclear weapon and a delivery vehicle capable of reaching, say, Islamabad or the capital of Tajikistan? In that case ... no doubt the war would never have been started'. 'The Transformation of War Revisited', Small Wars and Insurgencies 13/2 (Summer 2002) p.5.
59. General Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat (Oxford: Public Affairs 2001) pp.418-19.