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Abstract.
Almost fifty years ago, Cyril Fall, an eminent military historian
now much neglected, provided some sage and still timely advice
in his review of the preceding century of military developments,
when he wrote: ‘Observers constantly describe the warfare of their
own age as marking a revolutionary breach in the normal
progress of methods of warfare. Their selection of their own
age ought to put readers and listeners on their guard.
Careful examination shows that, historically speaking, the transformations of war
are not commonly violent. It is a fallacy, due to
ignorance of technical and tactical military history, to suppose that
methods of warfare have not made continuous and, on the
whole, fairly even progress.’
Colin S. Gray, the Professor of
International Politics and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading
in the United Kingdom, uses his latest book, Strategy for
Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History,
to examine the concept that successive ‘Revolutions in Military Affairs’
are the engine for the development of the theory and
practice of war. He explicitly acknowledges Falls’s writings as a
powerful critique of this view. Gray is concerned to put
to the test the existence of Revolutions in Military Affairs
using the lens of historical evidence. He considers this search
pertinent in light of the view that prevailed throughout the
1990s and into the present time that the world was
undergoing a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ (RMA) and that this
‘Revolution’ would change utterly the way war is waged.
This
is a critically important issue for anyone interested in military
affairs, whether as a practitioner, critic or observer. If it
is true that an RMA has occurred or is occurring,
then past experience loses its value as a tool to
teach, illuminate and guide current practice. A new set of
rules will be needed to direct future actions in these
new circumstances. Experts in the past practice will have no
monopoly on drafting these rules; indeed such experts may be
so captured by and beholden to the outdated paradigm as
to be unfitted to explain the future. If the prevailing
circumstances are truly those of revolutionary times, then the insights
and prognostications of a gifted amateur maybe as valid as
those of the most highly trained and educated professional, if
not more so.
Some of this confusion can be seen
in contemporary commentators’ analysis of the recent war in Iraq.
Were we witnessing the revelation of a new age of
warfare imposing ‘shock and awe’ by long distance bombardment and
rapid decision through ‘dominant maneuver’ enabled by ‘information superiority’, or
were we rediscovering the grubby and painful reality that only
boots on the ground can ensure victory.
Colin Gray is well
placed to act as our guide through this quagmire of
theory and the reality of contemporary practice. He has been
an influential writer and adviser / practitioner of the strategic
arts for the last thirty years in academia and government
in both the United States and the United Kingdom. His
seminal book, Modern Strategy, is one of the most thorough
guides available to contemporary strategic practice and its antecedents.
Gray follows
a well considered structure of: outlining the parameters of his
search, discussing the major streams of thought that underpin contemporary
theories of the nature of RMAs, examining the evidence necessary
to sustain a thesis of successive RMAs, and three case
studies of putative RMAs, before concluding. He uses the theory
of modern strategy from his earlier book to guide his
thoughts, although familiarity with this work is not necessary to
understanding his arguments.
His case studies are teling examples, ranging over
a wider field than many others would have considered. The
case studies are the Napoleonic RMA, the First World War
RMA, and the Nuclear RMA. All of these are solidly
examined with superb use of his wide reading of history
and the ability to synthesis the available evidence into a
coherent explanation. I am in awe of the depth and
breadth of his reading displayed in this book.
I found
his examination of the First World War particularly compeling. Although
the common view is that the Great War represented the
nadir of the military art in a welter of senseless
slaughter, Gray considers it, quite rightly in my view, the
birthplace of modern warfare. Here over four years, successive practitioners
collectively discarded their old Napoleonic tactics and hammered out the
modern system of war through a terrible empirical process of
trial and error. In 1914 armies still aimed to operate
in mass on the open battlefield in a style that
would have been familiar to von Moltke, Lee or even
Napoleon. Yet by 1918, all of the concepts of modern
warfare, based on dispersion and indirect fire, and using tanks
and aircraft, were visible, even if in their infancy. It
is a humbling thought that an intelligent soldier of 1918
might be well placed to understand the battlefields of 2003.
Gray is surely right to see the development of the
capabilities of artillery, particularly of massed indirect fire, with its
enabling technologies of communications, positioning, survey, etc as the cornerstone
of this revolution. Yet this revolution, as it undoubtedly was,
did not spring from the fertile mind of a single
theorist, but was rather a revolution of the empiricists, as
collectively and concurrently, practitioners built on what proved to work.
Having
thus ably examined the history of past RMAs, Gray chose
to conclude with a brief summary, rather than proceeding to
examine the evidence for a contemporary RMA. Although this was
a deliberate choice by Gray, based on a concern that
the dust had not settled sufficiently on the contemporary debate
to allow a dispassionate examination, I confess I was disappointed.
I think that as one of the most eminent contemporary
strategic analysts, and having set the groundwork so well in
his book to this point, it behoved him to address
the critical issue of whether we are currently undergoing a
Revolution in Military Affairs. I accept that such an examination
might only be provisional and require the fuller passage of
time before a final judgement could be made free of
the passion of present debate. But students of war would
have gained from Gray’s expert testimony as to whether we
can afford to throw away the playbooks drawn from the
lessons of past wars in the light of an on-going
revolution or if hard won experience will continue to be
the best guide to contemporary practice.
In summary, Strategy for
Chaos is a sound and densely argued review of the
historical evidence of the RMA concept. It provides a good
grounding for anyone interested in that debate, never losing sight
of the reality of what happened whilst spinning beguiling theories,
unlike many other theorists of the RMA, who manage to
build airy structures of logic on very flimsy and partial
foundations of historical study. I just think that Gray was
well placed to take his argument and approach quite a
bit further into the contemporary debate and chose not to
do so, a limiting choice.
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Related topics:
network centric warfare, art of war, book review
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