December 2006

Military Transformation and the American Way of War

Donald Rumsfeld’s departure from the Pentagon will alter the transformation of the American military. Much of Rumsfeld’s transformation program rested on a technologically deterministic understanding of war, and the Iraq war has shown that the path to victory cannot always be paved with Joint Strike Fighters. Finding the right course for the U.S. military in this war requires a deep understanding of changes on the battlefield, those we fight, and the role of technology. On December 13, 2006, Frederick W. Kagan and Max Boot discussed both Boot’s new book, War Made New, and the relationship between war and technology.

Max Boot
Council on Foreign Relations

When trying to understand current military transformations, it is important to take a historical perspective. In the past five hundred years there have been four main military technological advances: the gunpowder revolution; the first Industrial Revolution of steam engines mechanization; the second Industrial Revolution, which featured the internal combustion engine; and the information revolution.

The most successful states take advantage of these revolutions not by having superior technology but by having a superior organizational structure. For example, the states best able to take advantage of the first three revolutions had a strong, centralized bureaucracy capable of mustering great resources. Conversely, the information revolution is a decentralizing force. This means that technologically advanced but more rigid and bureaucratic states like the United States may be losing out to more dynamic groups such as al Qaeda. Thus, a reevaluation of U.S. military policy is needed.

Frederick W. Kagan
AEI

There is an American tendency to believe that every age is new and not tied to the past. Because of this, with military affairs, it is popular to say that the old rules no longer apply. While technology may have changed, human nature--the other important element in war--has not. Thus, it is valuable to study these technological revolutions. They are not just about technology; they are about how people use technology. Nonetheless, because war is a process of interaction, there is no linear progression and exact predictions cannot be made. In his book, Max Boot, he does an excellent job of describing these changes and selecting battles that appropriately illustrate the sometimes unpredictable results of technology.

AEI intern Adrian Myers prepared this summary.