Surviving a Revolution in Military Affairs

The conventional assumption is that the future of American power lies in our economic strength. There is a great deal of truth in this, but it is not the whole truth. If you look at the history of the past 500 years, a prime determinant of which nations rise and fall has been their success in taking advantage of revolutions in military affairs. There have been four such major shifts in military tactics and technology since 1500: the Gunpowder Revolution (1500-1700), the First Industrial Revolution (1850-1914), the Second Industrial Revolution (1917-1945) and the ongoing Information Revolution (1970 to the present).

Of course a country's success, or lack thereof, in harnessing change cannot be divorced from such underlying factors as its economic health, scientific sophistication, educational system, political stability, and so forth. But even big and wealthy countries often lose wars and head into longterm decline through a lack of military skill. There are many examples of the poorer side emerging victorious -- Britain beat the Spanish Armada (1588), Prussia beat the Habsburg Empire at Königgrätz (1866), Japan beat the Russian Empire (1904-1905). More recent instances might be cited, such as North Vietnam's defeat of the United States or the Afghans' defeat of the Soviet Union.

The ongoing proliferation of destructive technology means that the link between economic and military power is more tenuous than ever. Al Qaeda, whose entire budget wouldn't buy a single F-22, can inflict devastating damage on the world's richest country. Advances in biological and cyberwar promise to put even more destructive potential into the hands of ever smaller groups -- as does the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Dreamers can convince themselves that military power no longer matters, that economic interdependence has consigned war to the dustbin of history, and that a country need only wield "soft power," but history is likely to deliver a stark rebuke to such wishful thinking. As a matter of fact, it already has. The attacks of September 11, 2001 put an end to a decade of talk about the "end of history." It reminded us that war still matters, albeit a different form of war from what we had gotten used to.

In assessing the future conduct of conflict, most analysts tend to fall into one of two camps. One group stresses the dangers of terrorists and guerrillas who use cheap, simple weapons like AK-47s, machetes, or explosives. Another group stresses the danger of high-tech weapons such as cruise missiles and killer satellites proliferating around the world and into the hands of states such as China and North Korea. The former school (associated with ground-combat arms) stresses the need for better warriors; the latter school (associated with air and naval forces), the need for better machines. The reality is that both high-intensity and low-intensity threats are real and that both superlative people and first-rate equipment are needed to counter them.

Today, the U.S. is much further along in figuring out how to deal with conventional threats, and it needs to place more emphasis on making up for its deficiencies in irregular warfare. While the Information Revolution has decreased the number of soldiers needed to defeat a conventional adversary, occupation duty and nation-building -- the prerequisites for turning a battlefield triumph into a long-term political victory--continue to demand lots of old-fashioned infantry. Therefore, the U.S. and its allies would be making a mistake if they were to stint on force size in order to procure more high-tech systems.

But that doesn't mean that the U.S. can simply ignore the dangers of major war fighting or the dictates of technological change. That was the mistake Britain made before 1914 and again before 1939. The British had the world's best "small war" force -- an army well-trained and equipped for fighting bandits and guerrillas -- but it was ludicrously insufficient to deter German aggression or to defeat Germany once a world war broke out. That mistake, symbolized by deficiencies in tanks and aircraft carriers, hastened the end of the Pax Britannica.

The possibility of conventional inter-state war is now lower than at any time in 500 years, but it has not disappeared altogether. Because Americans and other citizens of Western democracies no longer seem willing to suffer the same level of casualties experienced by their ancestors, their armed forces must be able to defeat adversaries at scant cost in lives. That argues for keeping the qualitative edge that the U.S. gained in the Information Age -- an edge that cannot be preserved by standing still.

Innovation must be organizational as much as technological, and it needs to focus on potential threats across the entire spectrum, from low-intensity guerrilla wars to high-intensity conventional conflicts. To fight and win the wars of the future -- wars that may more closely resemble a series of hit-and-run raids than traditional force-on-force armored, aerial, or naval engagements -- we need to cut away bureaucratic fat to turn bloated Industrial Age hierarchies into lean Information Age networks.

Whether the U.S. is ready for such challenges will determine whether it can keep its position as the lone superpower or whether the world will see another power shift of the kind that accompanied the Gunpowder Revolution, the First Industrial Revolution, the Second Industrial Revolution, and the early stages of the Information Revolution.

Max Boot is a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the new book War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (Gotham Books).