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The components of armed force are technology, manpower, and economic resources of various kinds. Committing manpower and economic resources to war requires diverting them from the productive economy. The French demographic economist Alfred Sauvy constructed a form of optimum population model that explains the salient features of the concrete relationships between population growth and the commitment of manpower and resources to war. This schematic model predicts that the relative size of armed forces should change with changing demographic conditions. Quantitatively speaking, military manpower commitments varied greatly in both absolute and relative terms, but the nature of the commitment also varied. The effect of changing troop strengths and investment on military effectiveness depends on the prior level of the variables themselves and the nature of the prevailing military technology. The process of raising, maintaining, and deploying military force required the commitment of men and resources.

Military technology incorporated the elements of hardware, procedure, and personnel in the same way as the technology of civilian production, and before the coming of gunpowder it was equally reliant on muscle power as an energy source. The fundamental problem of pre-gunpowder field and siege combat was the same as it was in the sphere of production: how to make the most effective use of muscle power. There were three possible solutions to the problem: the use of hardware to store and transmit energy, specialisation allied to the division of labour, and the exploitation of animal power. The rise and fall of tactical systems depended ultimately on their success or failure in winning battles. Siege or manoeuvre, rather than open-field battle, often decided the outcome of campaigns.

This chapter begins by discussing that although scientific intelligence operations against the Soviet Union were among the causes of the Cold War, a decade later, they were the ones who helped stabilize it. It then talks about the creation of ‘Dustbin’, with the aim of holding German scientists, technicians, and administrators to gather information about Germany's great advances in military technology. It explains that the information gathered was of importance for assessments of future military strength of the USSR. It examines compiled aerial photographs of the USSR. It discusses ways in which the countries sought to use German expertise to increase their scientific knowledge and military power. It investigates two particularly significant deportations of German scientists, engineers, and technicians. It explains that the West's strategic embargo was to enable the West to improve is weapons so that they can make use of the most advanced military and ‘dual-use’ technology.

Time and space are intimately related in the world of human affairs no less than in the world of modern physics. The longest time scale is that of the so-called longue duree, a term that is associated with the work of the French historian Fernand Braudel and conventionally imported into English without translation. The structures of the longue duree defined a set of outer limits, but economic and demographic life was anything but static within these. The elements of economic and demographic life are situated in space as well as time. The historical nexus between energy and space in organic economies can be depicted in a pair of concrete symbols or ‘metonyms’: the field and the forge. The balance of power between core and periphery depended in the first instance on the relative military effectiveness of their inhabitants, which itself depended very much on the military technology at their command.

The political and social context of any conflict affected strategy and operations, but variations were constrained systematically by the limitations of the military technology being used and by the underlying structures of an organic economy. High-level warfare involved the disposition of concentrated force in space and time. Its operational conduct was shaped by the interplay of strategy and logistics. The goal of high-level warfare was the destruction of enemy forces, the seizure of territory, or the looting and destruction of large swathes of countryside. Chronic armed conflict arose where neither side was able to expel the other from a given territory or where controlled areas bordered, overlapped, or were otherwise liable to continuing incursions from outside, resulting in endemic small-scale fighting between locally based forces, usually relying on point defences of some kind. The resource limitations and spatial structure shaped the strategic goals and the operational conduct of military campaigns.

The first chapter of this book examines how the traditional legal distinction between international and non-international armed conflict has become, in practice, increasingly blurred through the last century, to the point where it seems specious to continue to assert the primacy of the distinction. A number of factors, both legal and practical, have contributed to this change in the status quo. The first chapter of this book establishes that the law of armed conflict has converged to the point where there is a substantial body of law equally applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts.

This chapter focuses on an even more valuable type of informant: Germans forced to work in the Soviet Union itself. It explains that the war showed the Soviet leaders that their country was backward in military technology, particularly with regard to Germany and the USA. It adds that Stalin set the USSR the aim of catching up with the West in the most crucial military technologies. It narrates that the great flow of prisoners-of-war from the USSR supplied valuable sources of intelligence on the industry, military installations, growing military-industrial complexes, and topography of the USSR.

This chapter presents a picture of the German Army in the mid-1880s. At the apex was a gerontocracy headed by Kaiser William, Helmuth von Moltke, and 18 aging corps commanders whom the sentimental head of state refused to retire. Most of these elderly generals frowned on the prospect of wartime field duty. Army administrative leadership was increasingly divided, moreover, after the forced resignation of Kameke. These counterproductive divisions exacerbated already existing rivalries among the three main branches of the service. Cavalry, infantry, and artillery squabbles over military technology and appropriate tactical responses further divided the army against itself. It is significant that in all three branches, conservative factions managed to write their technophobic doctrines into regulations. Foreign military developments made Germany's drift toward antimodernism even more alarming. It was the French and the Russians, not the Germans, who blazed the trail of modern military technology in the 1880s and 1890s.

This chapter focuses on Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the Great General Staff. Schlieffen was a dogmatist, a doctrinaire, and a theoretist. His dogma was the offensive; his doctrine was envelopment; and his operational theories, tested by loyal professionals, were developed to reproduce glories as great as Waterloo, Königgrätz, and Sedan. The chapter talks about his plans to defend Germany against the Russians and the French.

This chapter discusses some significant technological breakthroughs that were made during classical times. It observes that some of the important achievements of classical technology were in those aspects of technology that were nonphysical in nature: coinage, alphabetization, stenography, and geometry were part of the information-processing sphere rather than the physical production sphere of the economy. The chapter notes that even when their achievements were in the physical sphere, they were mostly in construction and architecture, rather than in mechanical devices. It points out that what technological progress there was in the classical world, especially in Roman times, served the public, rather than the private sector. The chapter further notes that another area in which technical ingenuity improved efficiency in the public sector was in the construction of war machines, and that Greek and Roman military technology provides one of the few areas of successful collaboration between scientists and technology.

This chapter defines peripheral conquest and describes some of the reasons why peripheral conquest differs from the cases of European interstate conquest that attract most attention from international relations scholars. It also surveys existing explanations for peripheral conquest, including those that emphasize the role of the “military revolution” in creating imbalances in military technology and skill between European militaries and their non-European opponents. These existing explanations are found to be incomplete. They fail to explain variations in conquest outcomes within specific geographic regions or time periods. They also have limited utility in the context of peripheral conquest—where challenges in projecting power across vast distances and the organization of resistance on the part of targeted societies can frustrate the ambitions of aspiring conquerors.

In this chapter Caroll Pursell considers the changing landscape of technology in the early twenty-first century, arguing that technological developments are always a mixture of old and new. He traces continuities between late twentieth century and contemporary technology in the guise of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, including the twin architectural structures of the World Trade Center themselves, before surveying debates around environmental technologies, some of which hardly look like technology at all, and military technologies, which, he argues, continue to follow the familiar path of innovation in military hardware. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the status to US global hegemony in the field of technology, with new technological developments stemming from Europe and East Asia challenging perceptions of American technological prowess.

This chapter examines why military adaptation is so difficult. All organizations resist change, but militaries resist change even more because of the inherent uncertainty of the battlefield, strategic interaction with the adversary, the radical difference between peacetime and wartime, and the existential costs of failure. The authors argue that existing explanations of military adaptation do not provide a sufficient understanding of how adaptation occurs after a war or conflict begins. They then identify the three key elements of their analytic framework—doctrine, technology, and leadership—and explain how they use that framework throughout the rest of the book.

In this final chapter, the authors recommend ways to improve the adaptability of the US military so it is prepared to prevail in the wars of the 21st century. To improve adaptability in doctrine, the recommendations include adopting adaptation as a principle of war, integrating free play in training exercises, and training under sustained analog conditions. To improve adaptability in technology, the recommendations include strengthening rapid-adaptation organizations, chartering a rapid-adaptation skunkworks, and sponsoring an annual rapid-adaptation competition. To improve adaptability in leadership, the recommendations include evaluating adaptability in annual fitness reports, strengthening mission command, reforming professional military education, and sending more officers to advanced civil schooling. The authors also recommend that the Department of Defense expand its focus on talent management, getting younger voices in front of senior leaders, increasing the role of combatant commanders in ensuring adaptability, and chartering a Defense Adaptation Board.

This chapter illustrates how the U.S. military adapted the French combat method into the army's intellectual framework, as the changes in technology had led to a reevaluation of the American system of tactics and general regulations in the 1850s. The War Department updated its tactical regulations to include the rifled musket and also authorized new general regulations that reintroduced sections concerning combat and battle. At West Point, Dennis Hart Mahan produced the first truly American work on the military art through the publication of his classic, Out-Post, which marked the beginning of a tradition of American military thought. The stage seemed set for another intellectual revolution, with its corresponding new paradigm of war. Yet the American officer corps remained committed to the French combat method and used it to integrate the new technology and military thought into the army's intellectual framework of the battlefield.

This chapter examines the development of the Western way of war. Since the seventeenth century, Western military superiority has rested on the ability of states and peoples to stay ahead of the game in developing cutting-edge military technology, both in wars between European powers and in European expansion into the wider world. However, a study of the military history also shows that in cases where there has been a great leap forward in pure military potential and effectiveness, many transformations have little to do with a single, or even a combination of, technological innovations. Many war-transforming developments were about organization and resources, not technology.

This chapter argues that the US military is not adaptable enough for the challenges of future warfare discussed in Chapter 9. In the area of doctrine, excessive amounts hinder creativity and flexibility, revision processes are too slow, and flawed training provides too little opportunity to practice adaptability. In the area of technology, few of the problems identified in Chapter 6 have been addressed, because of the structural tension between the services and the combatant commanders, and the broken acquisition system. In the area of leadership, adaptability is hindered by the generational legacy of the recent wars, problems with the system of professional military education, and a growing tendency toward risk aversion that threatens the principle of mission command.

The strongest case for administered innovation systems relies on government sponsorship of research and development and technological discoveries during World War II and the modern postwar era. The American Civil War provides a useful counterpoint that demonstrates the effectiveness of markets in ideas even during the severe disruptions of a devastating battle on domestic soil. The Civil War was characterized by a high degree of technological creativity for military-related inventions and innovations, to a far greater extent than during the twentieth century. Both the sourcing of new technologies and military procurement were decentralized and subject to market forces. The market incentives for private inventors to engage in trial-and-error experimentation created an impressive portfolio of radical new technologies from which military leaders chose the most appropriate to support their strategies.