Knox, MacGregor

Murray, Williamson

Sullivan, Brian R.

English

U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons

Naval War College ReviewVolume 56Number 2 Spring Article 162003The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050Brian R. SullivanMacGregor KnoxWilliamson MurrayFollow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-reviewThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contactrepository.inquiries@usnwc.edu.Recommended CitationSullivan, Brian R.; Knox, MacGregor; and Murray, Williamson (2003) "The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050," Naval WarCollege Review: Vol. 56 : No. 2 , Article 16.Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol56/iss2/16entire region will be increasingly in-volved in dealing with a more ambi-tious and yet dissatisfied Communiststate, since China still recalls the humil-iations of the nineteenth century whenit was ‘sliced’ like a melon among rivalimperialists and still shares disputedland and sea borders with many coun-tries.” America’s potential problemswith China have been exacerbated inrecent years by the disappearance of theEuropean powers from Southeast Asia,Hong Kong, and Macao, and the pre-cipitous decline of Russia in NortheastAsia, making China the only “possiblecontender for the American laurels.”Buckley, a Hong Kong–born, British-educated, and Japan-based scholar, isgenerally friendly to the United Statesand supportive of its East Asian poli-cies. However, he has his fair share ofcriticism for U.S. policy makers, in par-ticular Franklin Roosevelt’s “casual-ness” in his dickering with Stalin atYalta, Harry Truman’s huge military re-ductions immediately prior to the Ko-rean War, and Lyndon Johnson’s andRichard Nixon’s “humiliating” defeat inVietnam. In the near term, Buckleywarns, in addition to remaining thebulwark of Asia Washington must initi-ate wider regional interdependenceamong East Asian countries. Asian na-tions, instead of focusing on the UnitedStates as the Holy Grail for everythingfrom democracy to human rights tocapitalism, might do better to look at“British, European and Anglo-Pacificapproaches to such issues” in order tospread their cultural horizons. To theextent that “globalization is frequentlyequated with Americanization,” Buck-ley warns, the Asia-Pacific region mayone day resent such influence as an un-welcome American intrusion.This book went to press immediatelybefore “9/11” and the war on terror. Asa result, Buckley underestimates Japan’spotential naval contribution to anymultinational military effort, suggestinginstead that “Japan appears most un-likely to deploy its so-called self-defenseforces for anything much beyond therescue of its own citizens in emergencysituations abroad.” Buckley’s emphasison the close interaction and interde-pendence of U.S. security and economicpolicies throughout the Asia-Pacific re-gion are, however, as relevant now asever. Buckley concludes by warningthat Americans must energetically faceup to the myriad of risks—chief amongthem the growing threat from China—associated with being the dominantAsia-Pacific power.BRUCE A. ELLEMANNaval War CollegeKnox, MacGregor and Williamson Murray, eds.The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050.New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001. 203pp.$28The editors of this slim volume of es-says have wide ambitions. In 194 pagesof text, they seek to define the natureof military revolutions; describe thetripartite sources of the concept in thestill-controversial work of historianMichael Roberts on seventeenth-century European land warfare, Sovietmilitary theory, and studies by AndrewW. Marshall’s Office of Net Assessment;and critique contemporary develop-ments in American ground and air war-fare. Furthermore, to support theirarguments, Knox and Murray presentcase studies from seven centuries of1 5 4 N A V A L W A R C O L L E G E R E V I E W1Sullivan et al.: The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2003armed conflict in the West. Betweentheir introductory essay on the conceptof a revolution in military affairs (RMA)and their concluding analysis of theshortcomings of the “American RMA,”Knox and Murray place eight chapterson historical examples of military revo-lutions. There is one essay each byKnox and Murray (on the French Revo-lutionary army and the German blitz-krieg, respectively). The others are byequally prominent military historians:Clifford J. Rogers on fourteenth-century military developments underEngland’s Edward III; John A. Lynn onLouis XIV’s army; Mark Grimsley onthe U.S. Civil War; Dennis E. Showalteron the mid-nineteenth-century Prus-sian army; Holger H. Herwig onchanges in naval warfare, 1885–1914,exemplified by the British and Ger-mans; and Jonathan B. A. Bailey on thecreation of modern warfare in WorldWar I. The accuracy, comprehensive-ness, and thoughtfulness of every essayare outstanding—a rare achievementin an anthology. The editors deservecommendation.Each part of this volume is excellent,yet Knox and Murray have set them-selves such a daunting goal—to inte-grate coherently arguments based onepisodes of Western military historywith contemporary defense policy anal-ysis—that they fall somewhat short.While all the essays are fine offerings,Rogers’s essay fits awkwardly alongsidecase studies of RMAs from the time ofLouis XIV to the present, and Herwig’saccentuates the absence of other essayson the transformations of naval warfarein the age of sail and after 1918. Histori-cal examples drawn almost exclusivelyfrom British, French, German, andAmerican military history suggest acertain cultural bias; the selection ne-glects significant contributions over thepast four and a half centuries to trans-forming western military theory andpractice by the Dutch, Danes, Swedes,Spanish, Italians, Poles, and Russians.Since the editors stress the Soviet con-tribution to the RMA concept, theirfailure to include a Red Army casestudy seems egregious. The origins ofthe book in papers delivered at a smallconference at Quantico in 1996 help ex-plain its limitations. Nonetheless, awork of such ambitious intellectualscope would have benefited from dou-ble or even triple the number of chap-ters, with a greater geographical andtopical inclusiveness.Paradoxically, this reviewer’s disap-pointment arises from the great contri-butions this book does make tounderstanding RMAs and redirectingpresent American efforts to achieveone. As all the authors emphasize, andas Knox and Murray reiterate in theirconclusion, military revolutions are notactually based on technology. In fact, anRMA can occur without major techno-logical innovation at all, as in late-eighteenth-century France. Instead, amilitary revolution is a reshaping ofmilitary institutions to solve strategicand political challenges. Adopting newweapons and equipment alone, withoutinstitutional reconfiguration, producesarmies such as the British and Frenchfielded against the Wehrmacht in May1940. The editors present convincingarguments that the U.S. military hasadopted new technologies withoutinterservice integration or, far more im-portant, without attempts to relateweapons systems, doctrine, force struc-ture, and training to the strategic prob-lems facing the nation. In mitigation,B O O K R E V I E W S 1 5 52Naval War College Review, Vol. 56 [2003], No. 2, Art. 16https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol56/iss2/16Knox and Murray admit that achievingan RMA in the absence of an identifi-able foe as the focus of strategy presentsenormous difficulties. Be that as it may,they warn, the obstacle the UnitedStates presents to the ambitions of enti-ties outside the Western alliance couldmake it the object of someone else’sRMA. Perhaps that is the greatest warn-ing to arise from the coincidental ap-pearance of this book following 11September 2001. The Dynamics of Mili-tary Revolution raises critical questionsabout how the United States might re-shape its military to counter strategiesbased on asymmetrical warfare. Beyondthe valuable contribution the bookmakes to military history, one hopesthis volume will also help shape the na-tional security debate currently inprogress.BRIAN R. SULLIVANVienna, VirginiaGilbert, Marc Jason, ed. Why the North Won theVietnam War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2002. 254pp. $69.95Since the fall of Saigon in the spring of1975, Americans have sought to under-stand how their government could havelost the Vietnam War. Given the enor-mous gap in resources between theUnited States and the Vietnamese revo-lutionaries, it is difficult for even schol-ars of the war to explain why thisnation’s mighty military machine failedto defeat its enemy’s forces. Many whohave written about the war have fo-cused on the alleged mistakes of Ameri-can civilian and military leaders,arguing that more enlightened policies,such as fewer restrictions on militaryoperations or more emphasis on pacifi-cation, would have turned the tide inSouth Vietnam. The purpose of theeight essays in this volume is to placeAmerican policies in a broader context—or, as Gilbert writes, to recognize that“the outcome of that war was deter-mined less at MACV [Military Assis-tance Command, Vietnam] andWashington than by the persistence ofthe enemy on the battlefield and in po-litical cultures of the Saigon regime, theNational Liberation Front, and its part-ners in Hanoi.”The most original essays in this volume,by William J. Duiker, George C. Her-ring, and Robert K. Brigham, pursue as-pects of this theme. Duiker traces theefforts of the government in Hanoi “tomanipulate the international and diplo-matic environment to its own advan-tage” and its complicated relations withChina and the Soviet Union, allieswhose aid was vital to the North Viet-namese war effort. Herring emphasizesthe international dimensions of Amer-ica’s defeat, noting how the inability ofthe Lyndon Johnson administration togain support from European allies un-dermined the U.S. war effort. Brighamchallenges the traditional distinctionbetween northerners and southerners,arguing that it is misleading to divide“the struggle along geographical linesthat have no cultural or historical pre-cedent.” Northerners, he argues, didnot make all of the key decisions in thewar; rather, southerners came to domi-nate party councils in Hanoi and wereable to convince their northern com-rades to pursue a more aggressive strat-egy in the South.The other five essays focus, with varyingdegrees of success, more on the Americanside of the war. In a forcefully argued1 5 6 N A V A L W A R C O L L E G E R E V I E W3Sullivan et al.: The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2003

The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050

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The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050

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