Evolutionary reality of the revolution in military affairs: Results of a comparative study.
Author | Prezelj, Iztok |
Position | POLSCI PAPERS - Report |
Introduction
Contemporary armed forces have been confronted with the constant pressure to change in order to improve operational effectiveness, and retain legitimacy in their home societies. The key drivers of this pressure have arisen from the need to adapt to changing threats in the changing security environment and conscious or subconscious copying of military models of the strongest powers that have been successfully tested in the latest wars. Practical experience, however, shows varying levels of actual military change in different time periods. Normally, change has been introduced slowly in the armed forces, as a reflection of slow changes in the security environment. However, several dramatic events in the international community (e.g. end of the Cold War, 9/11, several political-military crises, etc.) or technical innovations created an increased need for greater policy changes in military affairs in shorter periods of time. How to interpret such policy changes from political, strategic, and historical perspective has become a contentious issue in military (Chapman, 2003, p. 2; Cohen, 2004, p. 395; Sheehan, 2008, p. 14) and policy academic debates. Some authors ('revolutionists') have labelled such changes revolutionary, while some others resisted such an interpretation and claimed that we have faced nothing else but a continued evolution in military affairs ('evolutionists'). This study was motivated by a general interest in political science on policy development and revolutionary or evolutionary change in time. The existing approaches offer findings on the multidimensional nature of policy dynamics, different methodological approaches or models, warnings on research pitfalls of analytical choices in this field, etc. (Giliberto, 2009; Philippe, 2009). Discovering the degree of change in qualitative or quantitative terms has become an important analytical goal. The purpose of this article is to offer quantitative evidence on the dilemma between the revolutionary discontinuity and evolutionary progress in the policy field of military transformation, and to find out how many changes in military affairs were truly revolutionary or simply evolutionary.
The Russian policy concept of Military-Technical Revolution (MTR) from the 1980s predominantly focused on the technical aspect of change, and was replaced in the 1990s by the US concept of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which broadened the debate from a relatively narrow, technical aspect towards organizational and doctrinal aspects. Both approaches have shared the non-incremental or revolutionary understanding of the change in armed forces. The problem with these approaches has been their loose use of the term 'revolution.' This has blurred the real meaning of the process despite the fact that revolutionary change in warfare has been well grounded in history (Knox and Murray, 2001). The difficult dilemma between interpretative revolutionary discontinuity and evolutionary progress has even led some authors to publicly refrain from this debate in order to make their assessments more operational and usable (Adamsky, 2008, p. 259). To avoid this dilemma, the debate in the beginning of this century further focused on another 'new' and broader concept of defence and military transformation. (6) But again, the new concept only reinforced the dilemma between the revolutionary discontinuity and evolutionary progress as it provided a confusing spectrum of definitions, ranging from comprehensive, discontinuous, and possibly disruptive changes in military technologies, concepts of operations and organization (Osinga, 2010, p. 14) to more modest processual definitions of a continuous and pro-active process of developing and integrating innovative concepts, doctrines, and capabilities (NATO Headquarters, 2010a, pp. 3-4, 2010b, p. 6). Simultaneously, the terms defence/military reform and Security Sector Reform (SSR) have also been used to reflect on more or less fundamental changes in armed forces (Edmunds, 2004, pp. 50-60; Haltiner and Klein, 2005, pp. 9-13; Kuhlmann and Callaghan, 2000; Law, 2004, p. 10; Robertson, 2002, p. vii), but these debates have also not reduced the dilemma between the revolutionary discontinuity and evolutionary progress. A third group of authors, however, tried to integrate both the revolutionary and evolutionary views into their understanding of transformation (Kugler, 2006; Moran, 2009; Scott, 2009; Stulberg, 2005). Accordingly, armed forces predominantly faced the evolutionary progress with exceptional revolutionary discontinuities.
There has been no comparative, cross-national, quantitative reflection on the revolution-evolution dilemma since the end of the Cold War. This article fills this gap by offering quantitative evidence on this dilemma. The dilemma has been a consequence of different interpretations of the concept of RMA and knowing the actual share of revolutionary changes in the RMA policies would shed a new light on the actual value of the RMA concept. We argue that Revolution in Military Affairs has been in practice predominantly an incremental evolution in several military dimensions with rare major (revolutionary) shifts. In order to verify this argument, the criteria or thresholds for revolutionary change in a particular time period need to be defined first, and then the changes above and below these criteria need to be displayed.
The first two sections of this article reflect debates on the military change as revolutionary and evolutionary policy processes, while in the third part we present integrative arguments on the coexistence of evolutionary and revolutionary changes. The empirical part of this article presents the results of a quantitative test of actual military changes on the sample of 33 countries in the period 1992-2010. In conclusion, we sum up the results and put them in the context of the revolution versus evolution debate.
The Revolution in Military Affairs as a Discontinuous Change
The concept of the Military-Technical Revolution (MTR) was introduced in the 1980s by Soviet General Staff writers who argued that the new range of technological innovations (microprocessors, computers, lasers, electronics, kinetic energy, enhanced accuracy, range and lethality of weapons, etc.) and related Western doctrinal innovations constituted a fundamental discontinuity in the nature of war, which they dubbed the MTR. About a decade later, this fundamental Soviet approach was analysed and adapted by the US writers in the new concept, Revolution in Military Affairs. This concept criticized the narrow MTR concept, and emphasized that changes in military affairs included not only technological aspects, but also organizational, structural, doctrinal, and operational changes as well (see Cooper, 1994, p. 1; Davis, 1996; Horowitz and Rosen, 2005, p. 447; Hundley, 1999, pp. 11-17; Knox and Murray, 2001, p. 12; Krause, 1997, p. 18; Raska, 2011). A second emphasis in this concept was on the revolutionary change in military affairs that was interpreted as a profound, radical, discontinuous, non-incremental, and possibly disruptive change (see Horowitz and Rosen, 2005, p. 441; Osinga, 2010, p. 14; Roxborough, 2002, p. 71; Sheehan, 2008, p. 14). The revolutionary image of the changes was stimulated by the fascinating images from the Gulf War in 1991, wars in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The term RMA has become fashionable, and according to Horowitz and Rosen (2005, p. 440), a promotional slogan, associated primarily with selling new pieces of technology. Anything associated with it looked good and promising.
This trendy use of the revolutionary vocabulary was, however, not without cracks. The proponents overlooked some elements of the recognized understanding of revolution as a very rare, complete (wide-ranging), drastic, and sudden change (see Abercombie et al., 1994, p. 358; Oxford Advanced learner's Dictionary, 1992, p. 1085; Robertson, 1993, p. 419). Some denied that revolution means fast changes, and only stressed the depth of changes. The 'existing' revolution was also projected into an unspecified future point when new operational concepts will be created and the fundamental discontinuity finally observed. The related paradigm shift was defined as a coexistence of emerging and old core competencies (see Hundley, 1999, p. 9; Roxborough, 2002, p. 71). Finally, the whole story of the Revolution in Military Affairs can be observed through a constructivist/perceptional prism as well. For example, Adamsky (2008, p. 280) stressed that what was initially labelled as a revolution and discontinuity for the Soviet Union (Air Land Battle concept and NATO's Follow-on Forces Attack concept) was initially simply a continuity for the West, and only later did they coin the term RMA as an American concept of discontinuity by criticizing something already included into the Soviet concept (the organizational and doctrinal aspects of the change). These conceptual cracks became fertile ground for opponents of the revolutionary changes.
Arguments for Evolution and against Revolution in Military Affairs
Evolutionists generally claim that past military transformations were more evolutionary or continuous than revolutionary or discontinuous changes. They have offered a range of theoretical and empirical arguments in this direction. Historical studies of military changes, for example, portray them more in terms of evolution than revolution (see Black, 1998). Debates on the change towards the postmodern military in the field of military sociology also show that organizational transitions as a process of change over time did not take the form of a clear shift, but rather emerged in a gradual, cumulative, and even evolutionary fashion (Booth et al., 2001, p. 328). In addition to that, policy theory suggests that defence and military policy moves forward with numerous small steps and modifications, because this field is...
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