Strategy for Chaos

Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History

Colin Gray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135754754
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

In this volume, Professor Colin Gray develops and applies the theory and scholarship on the allegedly historical practice of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA), in order to improve our comprehension of how and why strategy 'works'.The author explores the RMA hypothesis both theoretically and historically. The book argues that the conduct of an RMA has to be examined as a form of strategic behaviour, which means that, of necessity, it must "work" as strategy works. The great RMA debate of the 1990s is reviewed empathetically, though sceptically, by the author, with every major school of thought allowed its day in court.The author presents three historical RMAs as case studies for his argument: those arguably revealed in the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon; in World War I; and in the nuclear age. The focus of his analysis is how these grand RMAs functioned strategically. The conclusions that he draws from these empirical exercises are then applied to help us understand what, indeed, is - and what is not - happening with the much vaunted information-technology-led RMA of today.

1
High Concept

By a wide margin, the idea of a revolution in military affairs (RMA) was the concept-of-the- decade among Western strategic thinkers in the 1990s.¹ RMA is a classic case of what, by analogy, Hollywood means by ‘high concept’. As such a concept, RMA was fashionable and therefore literally bankable. Almost any topic that could carry the RMA label found a ready sponsor. One should not be unduly cynical about this phenomenon. Theory is important for future practice, and theorists require patrons. The market for strategic ideas is not entirely one of unrestricted open competition. The academy does not rule on the salience of particular ideas. Rather, as Raymond Aron expressed it: ‘Strategic thought draws its inspiration each century, or rather at each moment of history, from the problems which events themselves pose.’² Aron was almost correct, but it is more true to claim that strategic thought draws its inspiration at each moment of history from the problems and opportunities flagged by officials acting as opinion leaders. It is the ‘spin’ put on contemporary challenges by a Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, or a Secretary of Defense Robert S.McNamara, that generates great debates, in their cases about nuclear deterrence and strategic stability.³

Of the many high concepts in strategic studies that were the focus of more and less scholarly exposition from the 1940s through to the 1990s, RMA ranks at the more imperial end of the scale of grandiosity. Such ranking is not reduced by the fact that RMA transpired to be a hugely contestable concept. That said, notably expansive understanding of what the RMA debate is all about has been signalled by significant players in the realm of strategy. US Secretary of Defense William S.Cohen advised that: ‘A Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) occurs when a nation’s military seizes an opportunity to transform its strategy, military doctrine, training, education, organisation, equipment, operations, and tactics to achieve decisive military results in fundamentally new ways.’⁴ There are notable problems with this definition, but Secretary Cohen’s words are worth quoting both for the clarity with which they announce the importance of an RMA and for the scope of the claims advanced. Cohen talks of transformation, of decisive military results, and about fundamentally new methods. We are in the realm of high concept, indeed.

RMA is almost the latest of the high concepts around which policy-oriented theory in strategic studies has swirled over the past half-century.⁵ The intellectual and policy progenitors to RMA include containment in the 1940s, nuclear deterrence and then limited war in the 1950s, strategic stability and arms control in the 1960s, détente in the 1970s, ballistic missile defence (BMD), and competitive strategies in the 1980s. Asymmetric threats, strategy, and warfare succeeded RMA in the late 1990s and the 2000s. Although some among that distinctly mixed bag of ideas had the potential to open doors to wide and deep understanding of major strands in strategic history,⁶ the RMA hypothesis of the 1990s had the possibility of functioning as super-theory. Behind the hypothesis that an RMA was under way in the 1990s was the necessarily overarching proposition that the course of strategic history has been shaped by an irregular succession of great discontinuities which we are calling revolutions in military affairs, but which sometimes are referred to as military transformations. The very concept itself postulates the central significance of such discontinuities. The RMA hypothesis rests upon a theory which purports to explain, at least with broad brush strokes, how, why, when, and by which agency strategic history advanced, if not prospered.

The various official and commercial patrons of RMA theory (and theories) in the 1990s undoubtedly were motivated largely by parochial—albeit legitimate—concerns of US defence policy and even simply by business opportunity. The theory which those patrons triggered, however, was soon to appear anything but parochial as to client and topic. For example, in 1994, one of the earlier and better of the contributions to the RMA debate provided a candidate historical context for the developments of the 1990s that allegedly could be traced through ten succeeding RMAs from the fourteenth century to the present day.⁷ In the mid-1990s there was a modest scale of mobilisation among professional historians as they scampered to protect both their turf and the quality of scholarship (i.e. good history) from ruthless seizure and exploitation by strategic theorists more concerned to illustrate an argument than to write careful history.⁸

This book is about matters historical, strategic theoretical, and sociological, while most especially it is about the connections between all three. More specifically, the discussion explores the strategic history of the past two hundred years, the period which frames the three historical case studies examined (in Chapters 6–8). I am interested in probing how social science and history have collaborated, and can collaborate, to contribute to a better understanding of the course of events.⁹ As strategic theory should be able to improve understanding of history, so a faithful approach to history should enable the social scientist to apply theory to good effect in the interpretation of the richness of historical experience. There needs to be a constant dialogue between the social scientist-strategic theorist and the historian.

To deconstruct the book’s title, the complex subject of strategy and revolutions in military affairs necessarily always stands on the edge of the chaos that lurks in the sometimes nonlinear realm of the use of force for political purposes. With due thanks to Christopher J.Langton, I acknowledge readily writings on chaos and complexity theory as one of the propellants for this analysis.¹⁰ Complexity, even chaos, theory, duly translated for human behaviour, is important to my story because it poses a potentially fatal threat to the integrity of some leading variants of the RMA hypothesis. That hypothesis, though vulnerable to assault when it appears either in simple technocratic form, or, of course, when it is caricatured, nonetheless has performed valuable service, in some cases if only for its illustration of strategic error. The RMA debate of the 1990s sparked scholarly reconsideration of the nature of strategy and strategic effectiveness which, though scarcely novel in its outcome, highlighted matters of great significance for security which people and organisations are wont to forget. Argument about an RMA in the 1990s, and more broadly about RMAs in strategic history, have had the unexpected, certainly the unintended, consequence of flushing out new or refurbished theory on the nature and working of strategy. Truly, serendipity rules. With its focus upon allegedly revolutionary discontinuities, the RMA postulate and RMA theory slid unwarily into a debate over whether the nature, or only the character, of strategy and war changes.¹¹

STRATEGY, COMPLEX AND SOMETIMES NONLINEAR

This book broadly is about strategic effectiveness, and narrowly concerns the contribution of alleged RMAs to that effectiveness. The nature, structure, and functioning of strategy are vital to the argument, as indeed is judgement on the ever changing tactical character, or—following Clausewitz—grammar, of strategy.¹² Because RMAs must function to express strategy, it is only by understanding the nature and working of strategy that a grip can be secured upon the promise in an RMA. Similarly, judicious interpretation of the constituents and the effect of historical RMAs can rest only upon a mature comprehension of strategy.

It is necessary to register the definition of seven key terms: strategy, strategic history, war, RMA, nonlinearity, chaos, and strategic effectiveness. The following are the connections between these terms for the limited purposes of this text: RMAs operate through strategy—certainly through strategic effectiveness—in and as strategic history which is inherently prone to some nonlinearity and can be chaotic in its course and consequences.

By strategy I mean the use made of force and the threat of force for the ends of policy. Of the terms defined here, strategy comes closest to enjoying truly authoritative treatment. My verbal formula is only the lightest of adaptations from Carl von Clausewitz: ‘Strategy [is] the use of engagements for the object of the war.’¹³ The most essential quality of this definition is that it insists upon the instrumentality of strategy. Strategy is neither the use of force itself, nor is it policy, rather it is the bridge that should unite the two.

By strategic history I mean the course of historical events most directly affected by the threat or use of force. There is no suggestion implicit in the concept that a high fence and moat can or should separate strategic from non-strategic affairs. I take a broad and inclusive view of my subject. While acknowledging wholeheartedly the merit in the approach to strategic phenomena known as ‘war and society’,¹⁴ and while recognising the continuous two-way traffic between civilian and military realms, still it is desirable and necessary to distinguish the nature of the subject of strategy. While conceding that ultimately everything relates to everything else, that concession does not cancel the analytical merit in asserting the integrity of strategic history as a field of study.¹⁵ There is no clear outer boundary line, rather is there a grey zone, demarcating the strategic from the extra-strategic, but at least we have a decision rule (relevance to the threat or use of force) to assist us in judging what is more, or less, pertinent to our enquiries. The merit in this use of ‘strategic’ illuminates by contrast the reasons why the largely vacuous, at least unduly inclusive, concept of ‘security’ is best eschewed.¹⁶ I am not hostile to security studies, but I do not know exactly what they are or how I would proceed to find out.

By warI mean organised violence carried on by political units against each other for political motives. This is a modest expansion (with the addition of ‘for political motives’) of the workmanlike definition provided by Hedley Bull in his book, The Anarchical Society.¹⁷ Given the admittedly historically restricted scope of this enquiry (c.1800– c.2000), the contestability of definitions of war is not of great significance. However, the hypothesis that a contemporary information-led RMA is under way does refer to an emerging political and strategic context wherein, according to some theorists, traditional institutions—including war and the state—lose much of the character that has been their trademark since the middle of the seventeenth century.¹⁸

By RMA I mean a radical change in the character or conduct of war, or, in Jeffrey R.Cooper’s words, ‘a discontinuous increase in military capability and effectiveness’.¹⁹ Unlike strategy and war, definition of this concept requires careful policing more for what should be excluded than included. A decade of experience with RMA debate highlights the necessity for an open mind as to catalytic agent or agents. Above all else, it is vital not to require by definition that RMAs be triggered by new technology. A classic example of what to avoid is revealed in the still popular definition offered in 1994 by Andrew F. Krepinevich. This definition has the signal virtue of recognising much of the complexity of the process of the RMA, but still it has two fatal flaws.

What is a military revolution? It is what occurs when the application of new technologies into a significant number of military systems combines with innovative operational concepts and organisational adaptations in a way that fundamentally alters the character and conduct of conflict. It does so by producing a dramatic increase—often an order of magnitude or greater—in the combat potential and military effectiveness of armed forces.²⁰

The first fatal flaw in Krepinevich’s definition is his requirement that an RMA functions, inter alia, with the application of new technologies.²¹ The second such flaw is his claim that an RMA produces a dramatic increase in combat potential and military effectiveness. This point is of a commonsense nature, and should be true. However, it suffers from the same generic weakness of circular logic as did Basil Liddell Hart’s imperial concept of the indirect approach in strategy. What is the indirect approach? It is the approach that tends to deliver meaningful victory.²² How can we locate this wonderful approach in strategic history? We find it in the records of strategic success. If strategy works well, it has to be a case of the indirect approach. Returning to the notion of RMAs, how do we find them? When there is a dramatic increase in combat potential and military effectiveness. But can such potential and effectiveness be the product of events or processes other than RMAs? Although RMAs might be triggered by change in several, or more, of strategy’s dimensions, it cannot be sound to require such change to result in a ‘dramatic increase in combat potential and military effectiveness’. What if a military machine is revolutionised, but fails to del...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• ABBREVIATIONS
• 1. HIGH CONCEPT
• 2. RMA ANATOMY: PATTERNS IN HISTORY?
• 3. RMA DYNAMICS
• 4. ON STRATEGY, I: CHAOS CONFOUNDED?
• 5. ON STRATEGY, II: THE RMA CONNECTION
• 6. CASE STUDY I: THE NAPOLEONIC RMA
• 7. CASE STUDY II: THE RMA OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
• 8. CASE STUDY III: THE NUCLEAR RMA
• 9. STRATEGY AS A DUEL: RMA MEETS THE ENEMY
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY