Systemic effects of military innovation and diffusion

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Systemic effects of militaryinnovation and diffusionEmily O. Goldman a & Richard B. Andres ba Associate professor of political science ,University of California , Davisb Ph.D. candidate in the Department of PoliticalScience , University of California , DavisPublished online: 24 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Emily O. Goldman & Richard B. Andres (1999) Systemiceffects of military innovation and diffusion, Security Studies, 8:4, 79-125, DOI:10.1080/09636419908429387

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SYSTEMIC EFFECTS OF MILITARY

INNOVATION AND DIFFUSION

EMILY O. GOLDMAN AND RICHARD B. ANDRES

AMERICAN COMBAT effectiveness in the Persian Gulf War has inspireda broad-ranging debate in both policy and academic circles aboutthe likely consequences of an impending "revolution in military

affairs" (RMA). In the estimation of "revolutionaries" in the U.S.Department of Defense,1 the United States has an opportunity to leveragefor political purposes the discontinuous increase in military capability andeffectiveness portended in the Gulf War. Proponents argue the UnitedStates should take advantage of its current information edge to acceleratea revolution in warfare that will sustain U.S. power and leadership into thefuture and that can be exploited in U.S. foreign policy to build aninternational system hospitable to the nation's interests and principles.2

RMA skeptics, mostly in the academic and consulting communities, raise ahost of objections. They assert that the United States will not be able torealize any decisive advantages or leverage its lead, and that such ademonstration of uncontested military superiority, if the U.S. military couldeven realize it, will only stimulate the rise of challengers.

For both proponents and skeptics, a key question is what theinternational consequences would be if the United States succeeded inrealizing the dramatic increase in military effectiveness hinted at duringthe Gulf War. We examine past watersheds when dramatic increases inmilitary effectiveness occurred to see how revolutionary military advances

Emily O. Goldman is associate professor of political science at the University of California,Davis; Richard B. Andres is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at theUniversity of California, Davis.

1. All the services have now bought into the idea of the information revolution. See JointVision 2010, (Washington DC. Joint Chief of Staff, 1995).

2. Joseph S. Nye Jr. and William A. Owens, "America's Information Edge," Foreign Affairs75, no. 2 (March/April 1996): 20-36.

SECURITY STUDIES 8, 4 (summer 1999): 79-125Published by Frank Cass, London.

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80 SECURITY STUDIES 8, no. 4

affected the balance of international influence, particularly the leadenjoyed by the superior military power.3

To assess how superior military capabilities and practices affect thefortunes of states in the international system, we focus on militarydiffusion and the conditions under which the technologies, ideas, andbehavioral practices associated with dramatic military innovations arelikely to spread and be adopted.4 Little attention has been given in thescholarly literature to military diffusion, yet several historical puzzleshighlight its importance for understanding state adaptation to profoundmilitary transformation. Nineteenth-century Ottoman Turkey and ManchuChina failed to emulate superior Western military practices while MeijiJapan spectacularly made the transition. Mongol practices were used togreat effect in the thirteenth century to subject to military domination thelargest area ever before or since, yet they failed to diffuse and influencecontemporary warfare in Europe. Innovations do not always diffuse froma single source, or "core." Several states, more or less simultaneously, maysucceed in harnessing new technologies to great avail and, bydemonstrating these technologies on the battlefield, establish their value.Yet in the current period, the United States has taken an early lead in theapplication of information technologies to military affairs. It is notunreasonable to expect attempts by other nations to emulate U.S. practices,to learn about U.S. technological, organizational, and doctrinal advances,and to try to apply that knowledge to their particular strategic situations,with consequences for long-term U.S. military superiority.

From a contemporary U.S. defense policy perspective, the diffusion ofmilitary innovations is a key issue, whether or not we are in a period ofrevolutionary military transformation. Much of U.S. foreign and securitypolicy depends on a large and long-lasting U.S. conventional superiorityover most possible challengers in most types of warfare. Is this areasonable expectation? Advocates of the RMA believe that whatever the

3. We focus on the superior military state in the system, in part because estimates basedon overall power are fraught with so many problems. Moreover, as Resende-Santos (p. 212)points out, "The rankings of states, based on their aggregate capabilities or resources, shiftcontinuously because of changes in the underlying bases of national power. But the appeal ofany one great power's military system will wax and wane with its fortunes in war, not shifts inaggregate capabilities" (Joao Resende-Santos, "Anarchy and the Emulation of MilitarySystems: Military Organizations and Technology in South America, 1870-1930," SecurityStudies 5, no. 3 (spring 1996).

4. There is a large and rich literature on military and organizational innovation. We areconcerned, however, with adoption, rather than innovation, in order to understand theprocess and consequences of diffusion. For an overview, see Theo Farrell, "Figuring outFighting Organisations: New Organisational Analysis in Strategic Studies," Journal of StrategicStudies 19, no. 1 (March 1996): 122-35.

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Systemic Effects of Military Innovation and Diffusion 81

current situation, if the United States could master this "new way of war,"then current apparent U.S. military superiority could be sustained for a longtime. There are implicit assumptions about diffusion that underlie thislarger belief and these assumptions need to be subjected to intensivescrutiny, particularly because they cut against prevailing beliefs in scholarlycircles that the technologies and practices associated with the informationrevolution are going to spread widely and rapidly, even more so than thoseassociated with past military revolutions.

To assess the international-political consequences of militaryinnovations (for example, their affect on the balance of internationalinfluence, the lead enjoyed by militarily superior states, the behavior ofpotential challengers), we investigate the conditions under which states arelikely to adopt particular military advances; whether states with particularcapacities benefit from particular types of innovations, whetherinnovations produce long-term advantages or whether leads are quicklyeroded, and whether new military methods pave the way for newchallengers to arise.

INTERNATIONAL IMPACT OF RISING MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS

THE LITERATURE on the sources and outcomes of military-technologicalinnovation is large, but concerned chiefly with its impact on the

conduct of war. Less attention has been paid to the systemic consequencesof revolutionary military capabilities and practices.5 We explore fourbodies of theory that make different assumptions about the motivationsand capacities of states and their military organizations to adopt newmilitary methods. Each school leads to different hypotheses about thescope of military diffusion (for example, uniform or uneven), rates ofadoption (for example, rapid or delayed), national response to successfulmilitary practices abroad (for example, emulation,6 reinvention,7

5. For some earlier writings that do address systemic consequences, see Quincy Wright,The Study of International Relations (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1955), 369-89;William Fielding Ogburn, ed., Technology and International Relations (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1949); Bernard Brodie, "Technological Change, Strategic Doctrine, andPolitical Outcomes," in Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems, ed. Klaus Knorr(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976), 263-306.

6. Emulation refers to imitation of the innovation.7. Reinvention refers to change or modification of the innovation in the process of its

adoption and implementation. It is defined as "the degree to which an innovation is changedor modified...in the process of its adoption and implementation." An innovation is "notnecessarily invariant during the process of diffusion. Adopting an innovation is not

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countervention,8 or no response), and shifts in state influence (forexample, advantaging or disadvantaging particular subsets of states). Atone extreme, neorealism predicts that states will be highly reactive to eachother's military practices, rapidly emulating the best practices from abroad,leading to the uniform diffusion of military innovations. At the otherextreme, organization diffusion theory (hereafter referred to asorganization theory) predicts uneven diffusion and differential stateresponse. Whether and how quickly states emulate new military methodsdepends on the compatibility between the innovation and the state'sorganization, society, and culture. Between these two extremes lie power-transitions theory and offense-defense theory, both of which, for differentreasons, predict less uniformity and responsiveness than neorealism, butmore uniformity and responsiveness than organization theory.

NEOREALISM

For neorealism, the competitive logic governing the international systemcreates a powerful incentive for states to adopt new military methods andto emulate the military practices of the most successful states in thesystem. The success of some units induces other units to copy them, asthey come to know the advantages and disadvantages of certaininstitutional arrangements and technologies. As Resende-Santos describesthe process, emulation works through the demonstration effect. Throughcontact and communication, states become familiar with the mostsuccessful practices and the pressures of competition motivate them toadopt these practices. States are aware of alternative institutional andtechnological options but in order to stay competitive, they must adoptthe most successful forms and practices. The great wars of the eradetermine which military practices are superior.

Neorealists argue that, "States, like firms, emulate successfulinnovations of others out of fear of the disadvantages that arise frombeing less competitively organized and equipped. These disadvantages areparticularly dangerous where military capabilities are concerned, and soimprovements in military organizations and technology are quickly

necessarily a passive role of just implementing a standard template of the new idea" (EverettM. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1983), 16-17. "Re-invention represents changes in an innovation that are made by its adopters in order to fitthe technology to their specific conditions" (ibid., 146).

8. Countervention refers to the employment of methods to counter, or off-set, theinnovation.

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imitated."9 Military historians concur that competition is a powerful factorin the spread of military innovations. Lynn writes, "More than any otherinstitution, militaries tend to copy one another across state borders, andwith good reason. War is a matter of Darwinian dominance or survival forstates, and of life or death for individuals. When an army confronts new ordifferent weaponry or practices on the battlefield, it must adapt to them,and often adaptation takes the form of imitation."10 External balancingmay slow the pace of emulation, but only to a degree. Emulation is theprimary behavior expected of units in a self-help system. As Waltz argues,"The possibility that conflict will be conducted by force leads tocompetition in the arts and instruments of force Contending statesimitate the military innovations contrived by the country of greatestcapability and ingenuity. The weapons of the major contenders, even theirmilitary strategies, thus begin to look much the same all over the world."11

The implication of neorealist analysis is that new and proven militarymethods, even if they are truly revolutionary, will have no lasting affect onthe balance of international influence because diffusion occurs quicklyamong states that are within range of each other's war-making ability.Diffusion is a uniform and rapid process driven by competition anddemands for technical efficiency. While revolutionary military innovationsmay produce benefits for their initiators, these will be short lived.Moreover, the theory posits few obstacles to the adoption of innovations.Resource capacity and threat environment may vary, but internalcharacteristics, such as socio-cultural values, which might affect the speedand uniformity of the spread of innovations, are assumed away.12

Logically, states that do not adopt the most effective military practices willnot survive.

In sum, neorealism predicts that the best military practices will diffusequickly and uniformly among states. Successful practices will be emulated.Military innovations will have little impact on the balance of internationalinfluence in the long run (though they may in the short run) becausediffusion will erode any advantage derived from the innovation.

9. Resende-Santos, "Anarchy and the Emulation of Military Systems," 196.10. John A. Lynn, "The Evolution of Army Style in the Modern West, 800-2000,"

International History Review 18, no. 3 (August 1996): 509.11. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley,

1979), 127.12. Edwin Mansfield, The Economics of Technological Change (New York: Norton, 1968), 123.

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POWER-TRANSITIONS THEORY

Power-transitions theory provides a second theoretical starting point.13

The theory focuses on different patterns of national growth rather thancompetition as the engine of international change. National growth, orwhat Organski and Kugler call "development," changes the pool of criticalresources available to states and hence their capacity to wage wareffectively.14 The system of international power is rooted in thedevelopment process. That process "is not uniform across countries.There are major differences in the timing, the sequences of growth, andthe speed with which changes take place. There is no single road ofdevelopment most nations must follow, and the different combinations offorces that determine the different ways in which development occursexert an important influence on the level of power available to any givennation, because alternate developmental patterns produce different kindsof resources for the elites to draw upon in their dealings with othernations."15

For power-transitions theory, power is rooted in the broader macro-social capacities16 of states to utilize their human and material resources,not in military capabilities and methods. In particular, the source of astate's capacity to utilize its national resources effectively centers aroundits ability to industrialize. The adoption of industrial technology providesnations with a rapid accretion in capabilities that destabilizes the capabilitydistribution in the interstate system. As nation-states industrialize, theyundermine the existing order by challenging the dominant power. Asindustrial technologies and practices diffuse to more states, the state withthe resources most able to exploit the new methods for economicproductivity and military effectiveness gains international influence.

The theory considers industrialization to be history's chief revolutionarytechnology because it dramatically increases the level of productivity thatcould be extracted from any given population.17 Industrialization, in otherwords, increases the capacity of states to utilize their human and materialresources for both wealth and war. Logically, those states with a largerfraction of their total population of working and fighting age will be able

13. A. F. K. Organski, World Politics, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 1958); 2nd ed. (NewYork: Knopf, 1968); A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1980).

14. Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger, 9.15. Ibid., 8-9.16. Macrosocial is the word we use to describe Organski's conception. He does not use

the word himself.17. Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger, 8-9.

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to realize more productivity from industrial technology and become morepowerful.18 The ability to wage war effectively is also tied closely to anation's productivity. The theory considers the connection betweenpolitico-economic power and military strength to be so close that onecould legitimately infer one from the other. After the industrial revolution,in fact, the correlation between industrial and military power was veryhigh.19

Power-transitions theory focuses on the shift from agricultural toindustrial modes of production. It does not address other macrosocialtransformations that have had significant military implications. Both theprofessionalization of the late-Middle Ages and the nationalism of thenineteenth century had a profound impact on the ability of states togenerate and utilize human and material resources effectively. Each in factaltered the pool of resources at the nation's disposal by opening up thearmed forces to sources of manpower that had heretofore been excluded,and by institutionalizing ideas and practices that made those forces farmore effective on the battlefield. Nor does power-transitions theoryconsider the shift from the industrial to the postindustrial age, whichshould logically affect how states leverage different types of resources toincrease their relative influence. The information revolution suggests theprocess of improving resource utilization does not end with industrialmaturity.20 By the end of the cold war, for example, it appeared as if theSoviet Union had reached the level of industrial maturity of whichOrganski spoke. In one key indicator of industrial capacity, steelproduction, the USSR was producing 160 million tons per year in 1985, ascompared to 74 million tons produced by the United States. Yet, in the1980s, even Soviet military strategists realized that the Soviet Union couldnot keep pace with the West. The macrosocial foundations of success inthe information age are not limited to industrialization and population.They depend upon a process of institutionalized innovation and theexploitation of information. As in earlier periods, states are likely to havediffering resource capacities to take advantage of various macrosocialinnovations and are likely to adopt them at different rates.

18. Ibid., 33.19. This was because of the tremendous capital investment required to produce a modern

mass production industrial base for warfare in the industrial age. The correlation need not beso close in the information age.

20. This is the thesis the Tofflers adopt when they explain their three civilizations and warforms: agricultural, industrial, and information. See Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler, War andAnti-War (New York: Warner, 1993). For a critique of the Tofflers, see Robert J. Bunker,"The Tofflerian Paradox," Military Review 75, no. 3 (May-June 1995): 99-102.

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For power-transitions theory, the consequences of diffusion are afunction of the speed of power transitions. In the preindustrial age,changes in the distribution of capabilities between and among nationstook a long time. Efforts by one nation to increase its relative capabilities,either through territorial conquest or alliance formation, gave rise to asufficiently even distribution of capabilities to prevent any one nationfrom subjugating others by means of war, a process upset by the industrialrevolution. The adoption of industrial technology provides nations with afar more rapid accretion in capabilities. Diffusion is not likely to occur asrapidly in the power-transitions model as it is in the neorealist model, inpart because power-transitions theory focuses on broad macrosocialchanges. The particular dynamics of the information revolution, however,may reduce the predicted range of variation between neorealist and powertransitions theories. The dynamics of information power differ fromindustrial power in that the transitions associated with the former arelikely to be much faster for several reasons. The technology is so powerfulthat it increases the incentives for others to adopt it. Moreover, as CarlBuilder points out, "The roots of national power in the industrial era werethought to lie in natural resources and plant investment...In theinformation era those roots now appear to be in the free access toinformation."21 Its far easier and quicker to assemble very advancedsoftware with a small team of experts than it ever was to amass a modernmass-production industrial base in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies. By speeding up transitions, the information revolution is likelyto reduce the ability of the United States to leverage its lead and increasethe capacity of others to leapfrog the United States.

Organski's model points to the importance of broad macrosocialdevelopments, differential resource capacities for utilizing innovations,and different rates and sequences of adoption. Unlike neorealism, powertransitions theory does not assume rapid and uniform diffusion, though itdoes predict increasingly rapid diffusion today. Military best practices willdiffuse differently among states, and the rate and scope of diffusiondepends on levels of national development, which determine the capacityof states to adopt and leverage innovations. The impact of militaryinnovations on international influence and the lead enjoyed by themilitarily superior state depends on the speed of the power transition,which affects how quickly challengers can arise. This varies acrossinnovations.

21. Quoted in Toffler and Toffler, War and Anti-War, 240.

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OFFENSE-DEFENSE THEORY

Offense-defense theory comprises a series of related observations of howmilitary capabilities affect state behavior. For our purposes, what is ofinterest is how the offense-defense balance affects individual and system-wide motives to adopt military innovations, and how military innovationsshift the offense-defense balance and advantage or disadvantage certainsubsets of states.

The offense-defense balance is defined as the amount of resources thata state must invest in offense to offset an adversary's investment indefense.22 As Kaufman and Glaser point out, the "offense-defense balanceis virtually always used to refer to cases in which both countries candeploy the full range of developed technologies."23 Granting that states donot always gain access to new technologies simultaneously, especiallywhen they have unequal resources, the symmetric case can still be used toexamine periods when military innovations have begun to saturate thesystem to determine how the offense-defense balance, and anticipatedshifts in it, affect the adoption of innovations, military diffusion, and stateinfluence.

George Quester explains how the offense-defense balance affectsmotives and capacities to adopt innovations.24 Large and wealthy statesare well-placed by their greater resource base to take advantage ofoffensive technology and use it more effectively to subdue smallercontenders.25 Conversely, smaller and less wealthy states can more

22. This definition is adopted from Chaim Kaufman and Charles L. Glaser, "Establishingthe Foundations of Offense-Defense Theory" (paper presented at the NATO Symposiumon "Military Stability," Brussels, 12-14 June 1995, 20). For similar definitions, see RobertJervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," World Politics 30, no. 2 (January 1978):188; Charles L. Glaser, "Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help," International Security19, no. 3 (winter 1994/95): 61-62. Jack S. Levy, "The Offensive/Defensive Balance ofMilitary Technology: A Theoretical and Historical Analysis," International Studies Quarterly 28,no. 2 (1984): 222-30, lists a number of other definitions. Most depend upon territorialconquest. For Jervis, an offensive advantage means that "it is easier to destroy the other'sarmy and take its territory than it is to defend one's own," and a defensive advantage meansthat "it is easier to protect and hold than it is to move forward, destroy, and take"("Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," 187). George Quester, Offense and Defense in theInternational System (New York: Wiley, 1977), 15, writes, "the territorial fixation logicallyestablishes our distinction between offense and defense."

23. Kaufman and Glaser, "Establishing the Foundations of Offense-Defense Theory," 15.24. Quester, Offense and Defense in the International System,25. Offense tends to be more costly. Some have argued that there were significant

expenses associated with the fortress revolution and trace italienne fortifications. Arnoldreviews the literature and historical record and concludes that the new military architecturewas widely available to weaker powers. Thomas F. Arnold, "Fortifications and the Military

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effectively forestall empire building when the defense has the advantage.The artillery revolution, for example, permitted Europe's largest andwealthiest state, France, to assault the castle walls of its smaller opponentsat a fraction of the cost of executing a prolonged siege. The fortressrevolution of the next century, on the other hand, permitted small citiesand states to build cannon-proof fortifications that required ever largerarmies and expanding quantities of ammunition to conduct a war of sieges.The result was to check Hapsburg hegemony in Italy and Ottomanexpansion further east. Large, wealthy states thus have a greater incentiveand capacity to adopt offensive technologies and practices, while smaller,poorer states have a greater incentive to adopt defensive technologies andpractices.

How does the offense-defense balance affect state influence?Innovations that make the offense easier (for example, make it easier totake territory) should benefit the system's stronger states and theirstrategies of political expansion because larger and wealthier states canmore effectively exploit offensive technologies. Innovations that make thedefense easier (for example, make it more difficult to take territory) shouldbenefit weaker members and their strategies of local defense. Questermakes the case that the mobility of offensive technology effectivelyimitates the geopolitical effects of open plains. Wide open terrain with fewgeographical obstacles enhances the rapid movement of armies andfacilitates the expansion of empires. This explains why the wide openplains of central Asia have been home to immense empires while thebroken regions of southeast Asia and Europe have been dominated bysmaller states. Wide open seas, like wide open plains, advantage largerstates. Similarly, pro-naval transport technology that allows ships toovercome the geographical barriers created by oceans and efficientlytransport armed forces to foreign shores advantages larger states andfacilitates expansion of empires. While the broader systemic consequencesof offensive dominance are the subject of dispute, most analysts agree thatthe system's more powerful states benefit when the offense has theadvantage and that the system's weaker states benefit when the defense isascendant.26 This has implications for the scope of diffusion. Smaller states

Revolution: The Gonzaga Experience, 1530-1630," in The Military Revolution Debate, ed.Clifford J. Rogers (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 205-6.

26. One common critique of the offense-defense approach is the difficulty of classifyingdifferent technologies as offensive or defensive. This may not be a problem for our purposessince the critical issue is how weapons are incorporated into an overall military strategy. Atthis level, it is possible to distinguish offensive from defensive strategies and to determinewhich bundles of weapons favor a strategy of political consolidation and which favor a

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have an incentive to adopt defensive technologies while larger states havea greater incentive to adopt offensive technologies.

How does the offense-defense balance affect the rate of militarydiffusion? All else being equal, when the defense is dominant, the securitydilemma will be dampened. "Defense dominance allows states to reactmore slowly and with greater restraint to the capabilities-enhancing effortsand gains of their neighbors."27 Conversely, offense-dominance, oranticipated offense-dominance, should aggravate the security dilemma andincrease pressures to quickly respond to the efforts of others. All elsebeing equal, innovations should diffuse rapidly when the offense isascending or ascendant, and more slowly when the defense is ascending orascendant. We note this effect may be enhanced by what some haveargued is an offensive bias in military organizations.28 Because militaryorganizations prefer offensive technologies and doctrines, innovations thatenhance the offense will be favored by militaries and face fewerorganizational obstacles to adoption.

All else is not equal, however. States face different geographicconstraints and technological liabilities. While both geography and thenature of military technology can encourage or discourage attack, or makethe defense easy or difficult, since geographic features are fixed, real shiftsin the balance are produced by technological and organizational changes.29

How does the offense-defense balance operate during periods oftechnological asymmetry, precisely the conditions that exist during periodsof military transformation or revolution? How do anticipated shifts in thebalance influence motivations of states to adopt the military practices ofothers? It depends on whether a state is defensively disadvantaged, namelywhether it finds it difficult to defend its national territory given geographicliabilities, the nature of existing technology, and anticipated changes intechnology. Defensively disadvantaged states are likely to devote moreattention to efforts to improve their military technology and organization.The defensively advantaged state will display a more tentative approach,perhaps neglecting military reform.30

strategy of local defense. See Kaufman and Glaser, "Establishing the Foundations ofOffense-Defense Theory," 69-75.

27. Resende-Santos, "Anarchy and the Emulation of Military Systems," 218.28. On the cult of offensive, see Stephen Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the

Origins of the First World War," International Security 9, no. 1 (summer 1984): 58-107; BarryR. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Ithaca: Cornell, 1984).

29. Resende-Santos, "Anarchy and the Emulation of Military Systems," 217.30. Ibid., 219-20.

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In sum, offense-defense theory leads us to expect that the impact ofmilitary innovations on state influence, and the scope and rate ofdiffusion, will vary depending on whether the existing balance is offenseor defense dominant, and how the impending innovation is likely to shiftthe balance. Offensive innovations will benefit the more powerful andwealthy states, stimulate adoption, and produce rapid diffusion,particularly among large wealthy states. Defensive innovations shouldbenefit weaker and less wealthy states, dampen adoption and produceslower diffusion overall with smaller states more likely to adopt defensivetechnologies and practices early on. As Kaufman and Glaser emphasize,however, offense-defense theory assumes optimal state behavior, or highlevels of military skill by all states. It is a structural theory of militarycapabilities that focuses on the constraints and opportunities presented byexternal environmental factors, particularly geography and available tech-nology.31 The theory leaves out skill, or the ability effectively to use themilitary technology,32 a variable which is taken up by organization theory.

ORGANIZATION THEORY

According to research on the diffusion of innovations by organizationtheorists, technical efficiency is only one variable that influences rates ofadoption and, hence, the scope and speed of diffusion. Along with relativeadvantage (the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better thanthe idea it supersedes), complexity (the degree to which an innovation isperceived as difficult to understand and use), trialability (the degree towhich an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis), andobservability (the degree to which the results of an innovation areobservable to others), Rogers emphasizes compatibility, or "the degree towhich the innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existingvalues, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters."33 Levitt andMarch concur on the importance of compatibility when they report that"diffusion through imitation is less significant than is variation in the

31. Kaufman and Glaser, "Establishing the Foundations of Offense-Defense Theory,"12-13.

32. On the importance of skill, see Stephen Biddle, "Victory Misunderstood: What theGulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict," International Security 21, no. 2 (fall 1996):139-79.

33. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 15-19.

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match between the technology and the organization, especially as thatmatch is discovered and molded through learning."34

Organization theory also finds that different processes drive diffusionand we cannot assume similarity in forms and practices necessarily is theresult of competition35 and pressures for increased organizationalefficiency.36 Normative processes can also drive diffusion.37 Formal andinformal pressures on organizations by other organizations upon whichthey are dependent can produce emulation.38 Uncertainty over technologycan lead organizations to model themselves on other organizations,particularly those perceived to be more legitimate or successful.39 Lynnnotes in his study of the evolution of army style that, "From time to time,a particular army became a model for its age; it provided the paradigm forother armies and, thus defined the core characteristics for a stage ofmilitary evolution. Until the mid-twentieth century, an army won the roleof paradigm on the battlefield; in other words, victory chose the para-digm."40 Finally, socialization through formal educational and professionalnetworks can result in emulation. In sum, when faced with the same set ofenvironmental conditions, "one unit in a population [tends] to resembleother units..."41 Yet competition appears to have greater influence onearly adopters of an innovation, while normative pressures appear to havea greater influence on later adopters. DiMaggio notes the "frequentlyreplicated finding that early adoption (that is, adoption of an innovationsoon after its introduction, before a large portion of the population at riskhas adopted it) of organizational innovations is strongly predicted bytechnical or political attributes of adopters but that later diffusion is morepoorly predicted by technical or political measures."42

34. Barbara Levitt and James G. March, "Organizational Learning," Annual Review ofSociology 14 (1988): 330.

35. Ibid., 329-30.36. This argument can be traced to Weber's contention that homogenization in

organizational structures is a function of formal rationality. Rational adaptation results fromthe values and needs of modern society.

37. Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited: InstitutionalIsomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields," American Sociological Review48 (April 1983): 147-160.

38. Ibid., 150.39. Ibid., 151.40. Lynn, "The Evolution of Army Style," 510. Following the Second World War, armies

gained paradigm positions for reasons like ideology and arms sales.41. DiMaggio and Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited," 149.42. Paul DiMaggio, "Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory," in Institutional Patterns

and Organizations: Culture and Environment, ed. Lynne G. Zucker (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1988),6.

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Students of technology have usually assumed that technology, broadlydefined to include both the material and nonmaterial, tends to diffuseamong similar political and economic cultures, and that diffusion hasbecome more rapid in modern times. Emphasizing cultural constraints,Quincy Wright argues that, "technologies are not superficial devices fromwhich all cultures can benefit and which may originate anywhere anddiffuse easily and rapidly. On the contrary, technologies are related to theculture as a whole and the origin, diffusion, and influence of a particularinvention cannot be understood except in terms of the total culture whichoriginated or utilizes it."43 Historical examples abound. Asian regimeslagged significantly behind their European counterparts in making themarket-oriented transformation crucial to industrial expansion thatunderwrote development of highly effective armed forces in Europe.44

Chinese market behavior and private pursuit of wealth could only functionwithin limits defined by political authorities, educated in Confuciantraditions hostile to the ethos of the marketplace.45 China and Japan alsorestricted trade with Europe to marginal proportions as a matter ofgovernment policy, further curtailing the spread of European patterns ofbureaucratized armed force into Asia.46

Modern routines of army drill that began in Holland at the end of thesixteenth century spread relatively quickly across Europe and into Russia,but not to China or Japan. They also faced tremendous resistance amongthe Turks, who came to see innovations from the West as posing a threatto the existing Islamic sociopolitical order.47 It took a century of militarydisasters before a sultan adopted modern European training methods.48

Revolutionary idealism and the administrative implementation of libertyand equality had proven their worth with French successes between 1792and 1815, but European leaders chose to revert thereafter to Old Regimemilitary methods for fear that a nation in arms would jeopardizetraditional social patterns. Arming peasants challenged the nobitity'sposition and increased the likelihood that the armed forces could not berelied upon to defend the Old Regime. Conservative traditions reasserted

43. Wright, The Study of International Relations, 375-76.44. William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982),

49.45. Ibid., 40, 69.46. Ibid., 147.47. David B. Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military

Techniques and Institutions into the Extra-European World, 1600-1914 (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1990), 48.

48. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, 135.

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themselves and innovations were purposefully squelched.49 Thus,organization theory does not see diffusion as a smooth process. It varieswith the social, cultural, organizational, and political context.

Organization theory also leaves open the question of how innovativetechnologies and practices will be incorporated into national militaryorganizations, whether they will be emulated, and if they can be leveragedeffectively by other states to affect the balance of international influence.A military organization may acquire a new technology, but face obstaclesto developing the organizational structure or doctrine needed to realize aradical increase in military effectiveness. The Tofflers point out that theway a society makes war reflects how it makes wealth. The informationrevolution in warfare is a logical outgrowth of the knowledge-basedeconomies and the computer-related technologies upon which modernsociety now rests.50 A society must permit the free flow of information toride the revolution and one can imagine social, political, and culturalresistance in many states to free flow of information. These obstacles arenot without precedent as the previous examples demonstrate. Militaryinnovations tend to require unique sets of national resources to beeffectively implemented and exploited. At minimum, implementationrequires the ability to develop and build new weapons systems andfrequently requires fundamental changes in the current social order. Insome cases, an innovation is leveraged by geographical resources such as alarge population or ocean access. Consequently, nations are differentlypoised to take advantage of innovations and there is no guarantee that thestate that originally implements the innovation will benefit from it most inthe long run. Nor is there reason to believe that the resources most usefulfor exploiting previous innovations will be the required ones for subse-quent innovations. Thus, the introduction of an innovation could logicallydestabilize the distribution of military influence in the interstate system.

Most revolutionary military advances have technological, organizational,and macrosocial dimensions. The tendency is to focus on the technicalcapabilities that typically underwrite military advances, which increase thelethality, range, or defensive capability of the military units that employthem. Historically, however, the organizational and macrosocialdimensions have been more significant for explaining militaryperformance. At the organizational level, the development of modernroutines of army drill introduced by Maurice of Nassau in the late

49. Ibid., 220-21.50. Toffler and Toffler, War and Anti-War.

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sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries enhanced military effectivenessdramatically. It created social bonds and esprit de corps among armytroops, in addition to making the use of certain weapons, like hand-heldguns, far more efficient. Macrosocial transformations, such as the mergingof military enterprise into the market system, permitted nations whoadopted market controls to operate more effectively as great powersbecause it stabilized civil-military relations and provided a stable tax baseto support larger more formidable armed forces. A list of major technicaladvances in the past millennia can be seen in Figure 1. Some inventionscould be placed in several categories.

Figure 1

TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES

Lethality' English longbow1 Cannon' Smooth bore-

small-arms• Rifled artillery• Rifled small-arms• Machine guns1 Nuclear weapons' Advanced conven-tional munitions

• Guided missiles

Range• Astronomicnavigation

• Steam ship• Railroad• Telegraph• Radio• Internalcombustion engine

• Aircraft' Mobile armorand artillery

Defense• Trace italienne• Barbed wire• Reinforced concrete

fortifications• Mines• Steel

Technical advances are seldom sufficient in and of themselves.Frequently they rely on more basic resource requirements such asindustrial infrastructure to produce the capability or money to purchase it.Bernard Brodie points out that profound changes in war-making haveoccurred during periods of static technology, and what may appear to beextraordinary change in the tools of war may have little political or militarysignificance.51 While the invention of the atom bomb was sufficient tolaunch its own military revolution, in the twelfth century the small Mongolnation needed no new technology to create one of the most effective warfighting methods the world has ever seen.

51. Brodie, "Technological Change, Strategic Doctrine, and Political Outcomes," 263.

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Systemic 'Effects of Military Innovation and Diffusion 95

Military innovations usually require changes in how militaries areorganized and operate. Examples include Mongol mobile archery tactics,the Swiss pike square, English integration of pike, longbow and cavalry,the use of drill by Maurice of Nassau and Gustov Adolphus, andNapoleon's general staff system. (See Figure 2) Like the technologicalinnovations above, these innovations may be highly significant butinsufficient in and of themselves. Some doctrinal and organi2ationalinnovations would not be possible without technological advances.Blitzkrieg, for example, relied on dive bombers, high-velocity antitankguns, and tanks.

Figure 2

TACTICAL, DOCTRINAL, AND ORGANIZATIONAL INNOVATIONS

• Mongol horse-archer tactics • Gustov Adolphus'• Mongol psychological warfare gunpowder tactics• Mongol C3I • Napoleon's general staff• Swiss pike square system• English longbow infantry tactics • Napoleon's skirmishers• Dutch linear tactics • Squad dispersion of the• Spanish tercio interwar period• Ship of the line tactics • German blitzkrieg• French strategy of strategic • Amphibious assault

fortresses • Strategic bombing• Maurice of Nassau's drill • Carrier task force

Finally, a number of macro-level social, political, and economictransformations in society as a whole have dramatically increased militaryeffectiveness. (See Figure 3) In the seventeenth century, Prussiasurmounted local opposition to centralized taxation and this allowed thestate to maintain an army of great size. In 1694 the British founded theBank of England, a centralized source of credit for financing war thatallowed them to underwrite expansive naval efforts which the French,who lacked a comparable credit mechanism, were never able to match. Inthe early eighteenth century, the fusion of the Prussian nobility and officercorps created a collective sense of honor, established financial self-sufficiency for the state, and resulted in an army of greater efficiency andcheapness than any other European force.52 Some of the most significant

52. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, 154.

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macrosocial innovations were monarchical absolutism, centralized taxationsystems, market economies, industrialization, and revolutionary nationalism.

Figure 3

MACROSOCIAL INNOVATIONS

• English and Swiss arming and training commoners cl300• Professionalization of armies• Professionalization of officers corps• Monarchical absolutism• Marketization• Standardization of national armies and weapons• Nationalization of armed forces (vs privatization)• Centralized taxation systems• Nation in arms• Industrialization• Revolutionary ideology• Military-industrial complex• Freedom of information

From organization theory, we would expect the scope and speed ofdiffusion to be far less uniform and rapid than any of the other threetheories predict. Adoption of innovations depends on the compatibilitybetween the technology and the state's society, culture, and militaryorganization. By identifying forces in addition to competition that drivediffusion, organization theory actually predicts the scope of diffusion willbe far broader, that even nations remote from the core of the innovationwill have an incentive to adopt it once normative pressures set in. Thus,logically, more potential challengers will arise, but they will adapt the newtechnologies and practices to their own organizational, social, and culturalenvironments. States are just as likely to offset as to emulate thecapabilities of the superior power.

The assumptions and predictions of neorealism, power-transitionstheory, offense-defense theory and organization theory for the scope andrate of diffusion, and its international consequences, are summarized in

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Table 1

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON DIFFUSION

Theoretical

perspective

Neorealism

Powertransitions

Offense-Defense

Organization

Motivation to

adopt

innovation

competition

nationaldevelopment

offense-defensebalance; levelof defensivedisadvantage

competitionand normativepressures

Capacity to

adopt

innovation

[theory doesnot address]

level ofnationaldevelopment

wealth

compatibilitybetween tech-nology and

organization,society,culture

Diffusion effects

(scope and rate)

uniform, rapidemulation

scope and ratedepend onmacrosocialcapacity ofstates, andcapital invest-ment requiredfor innovation

offensive in-novationsdiffuse morerapidly, par-ticularly amongwealthy states;defensive in-novations dif-fuse moreslowly overallwith smallerstates adoptingmore quickly

uneven, irregu-lar, butbroader diffu-

sion

International

consequences

rise of peercompetitorsbut little long-run impact onbalance ofinternationalinfluence

depends onspeed of powertransition whichvaries withinnovation

offensive in-novationsbenefit large,wealthy states;defensive in-novationsbenefit small,less wealthystates

broader rangeof challengersto superior

state, bothpeer and niche

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Table 1 above. After a brief review of the military innovations we haveselected for study, we perform a preliminary analysis to assess the strengthof the various theoretical perspectives for explaining patterns of diffusionof revolutionary developments in war-making and their effects oninternational influence. We conclude with some preliminary observationsabout the relevance of our findings for understanding the consequencesthat are likely to follow from the United States pursuing the informationrevolution in military affairs.

REVOLUTIONARY MILITARY INNOVATIONS

R EVOLUTIONARY military innovations are those that allow anentrepreneurial state, which successfully exploits the potential of an

integrated set of military inventions effectively in battle, to demonstrate aclear superiority over older techniques of battle. While change in the waysof making war is an evolutionary process, evolution tends to occur inspurts that punctuate an otherwise fairly stable equilibrium.53 These breaksinvolve fundamental discontinuities with the existing status quo. They arenot merely clever technological or organizational breakthroughs whichenhance performance at the tactical level. They signal a shift in thedominant modes of warfighting.

Often, the technological, tactical, or organizational advances associatedwith a particular innovation have been employed in peripheral wars andbattles. Andrew Krepinevich argues that the Gulf War may have been sucha "precursor war—an indicator of the revolutionary potential of emergingtechnologies and new military systems."54 Specific advances also tendinitially to be grafted onto existing ways of warfare. Tanks were initiallyused in support of the infantry in the First World War and aircraft wereinitially confined to spotting and scouting roles in support of battleshipfleets, each innovative technology being fit into established ways ofwarfighting. We identify a dramatic rise in military effectiveness as beingestablished when a set of inventions is combined in a unique andinnovative way and is proven in battle against a first class power. It tookthe innovative application of tanks in Blitzkrieg, demonstrated by the

53. Geoffrey Parker, "The Western Way of War," in The Cambridge Illustrated History ofWarfare: The Triumph of the West, ed. Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995), 6; Clifford Rogers, "The Military Revolution in History," in Rogers, The MilitaryRevolution Debate, 6.

54. Andrew F. Krepinevich, "Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions,"The National Interest (fall 1994): 40.

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Germans in Poland and France, and air power in carrier strike forces,demonstrated by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, to herald changes inexisting methods of war on land and sea.55 These transformations gavetheir possessors a crippling advantage in a confrontation with a majorpower and dramatically altered the nature of military competition.

If we view military evolution proceeding along a path of punctuatedequilibrium, we can identify twelve significant transformations inwarmaking that have occurred over the past one thousand years. (SeeFigure 4) We note the date of the battle, conquest, or event in which theinnovation demonstrates its superiority decisively in a contest with a firstclass military power.56

Figure 4

REVOLUTIONARY MILITARY INNOVATIONS

Mongol Decisive battles: First War against Chin Empire andconquest of Northern China, 1211-15. Mounted archerand shock troops combined with siege mechanics,extremely effective military doctrine, and superiorcommand, control, communication, and intelligence.

Infantry Decisive battle: English victory over French at Crecy,1346. Combined-arms infantry-cavalry team with pike andlong-bow infantry predominant permits dismounted armyto defeat Europe's finest cavalry nearly three times its size.

Artillery Decisive battles: French reconquest of Normandy andAquitaine, 1449-53, and beginning of expulsion of Englishfrom France with use of cannon to break through Englishstrongholds. Charles VII creates standing army withpermanent and highly effective artillery organization andreverses English victories of Hundred Years War (1337-1457) in less than five years. At the same time, Turksunder Mohammed II use massive siege artillery to batterdown walls and capture Constantinople (1453), ending theByzantine empire.

55. This need not mean that existing methods disappear. Usually they coexist.56. In most cases, it is relatively easy to identify a decisive battle which is recognized as

significant by most major military organizations and which they attempt thereafter to exploit.In a few cases, like the Fortress revolution, it may take a series of battles, which usually occurwithin a narrow enough time frame to permit us to identify a critical turning point forempirical purposes.

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Fortress Decisive battles: Sieges checking Hapsburg heir Charlesv's drive for hegemony in Italy, cl525. Cities and statesprotected by the trace italienne with its angular bastioncould withstand long sieges against traditional methodsof battery and assault.

Ship of the Decisive battle: Lepanto, 1571. First true navalline engagement in which Venetian galleasses defeat

Turkish oar-driven galleys. Checks Muslim advanceinto western Mediterranean, ends their domination ofcentral and eastern Mediterranean, and signals end ofgolden age of Ottoman power. Gradual victory ofsailing ships mounting large guns over galleysculminates with superior English tactics in the Battle ofthe English Channel (1588) that repel Spanish Armada,heralding new era of the broadside battery sailing shipthat fought effectively at long range. English stake theirclaim to mastery of the seas.

Musket/drill Decisive battles: Swedish defeats of Hapsburgs in1631—34 during Thirty Years War, beginning withBreitenfeld, 1631. Use of combined arms (pike, musket,cavalry, rapid-firing mobile artillery), linear tactics, andclassical drill and discipline permits Gustavus Adolphusto defeat armies of Spain—an empire with vastlygreater resources than Sweden's. Leveraged byimprovements in military administration and key roleof absolutist state.

Nation Decisive battles: War of the Second Coalition, 1800.in arms Napoleon vastly expands scale of war with universal

conscription and mobilization of society for war,combined with republican nationalism and modernindustrial output and logistics.

Industrialism Prussia combines technical advances in steam, railroad,I: Steam and telegraph and rifle to defeat Austria (1866) and Francerapid mobi- (1870). At sea, Britain exploits heavy-gunned ships,lization steam propulsion, and improvements in gunnery and

fire control to vastly increase overseas empire.

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Culminates with Dreadnought in 1906.

Industrialism Decisive battle: Marne, 1914. Rifled small arms andII: Machine artillery, and machine guns outstrip mobility providedgun and by steam. Industrial mass production dramaticallytrench increases supply of munitions and mobilizes society forwarfare war. Produces "total" war and tactical stalemate.

Industrialism Decisive battles: Battle of France, 1940 and PearlIII: Internal Harbor, 1941. Improvements in internal combustioncombustion, engines, mechanization, aircraft design, andradio, and communication technology reintroduce mobility andmobility maneuver and permit large numbers of warfighting

packages to deliver blows directly against enemynation.

Nuclear Decisive event: Hiroshima, 1945. Coupling of nuclearwarheads with more efficient delivery systems, jetpropulsion, and electronics (radar and computers)permits complete and instantaneous destruction ofstate without need to defeat armed forces.

Information Decisive battle: none to date. Persian Gulf War, 1991signals impending RMA. Advances in range, strike,stealth, sensors, precision-guided munitions, micro-electronics, computers, and information processingheightens importance of C3I and permits collapse ofprevious spatial and temporal constraints onsimultaneous operations.

In most cases, the contributions of one set of innovations are not lostwhen new innovations prove themselves. France's revolutionary use ofartillery in the fifteenth century incorporated the English infantry tacticsthat preceded it, and acquisition of nuclear weapons did not result in theUnited States dispensing with the mobile armor tactics that Germanypioneered between the wars.

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DIFFUSION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

THE INNOVATIONS of the Mongols permitted them to develop the moststrategically mobile military in history, to routinely defeat nations with

populations tens of times larger than their own, and to carve out thelargest land empire the world has ever seen. As Keegan remarks, "nosequence of campaigns by a single people before or since has eversubjected so large an area to military domination."57 On the surface, theMongols proceeded in the tradition of a long line of Asian horse peoples.In two related aspects, however, they differed considerably. First, theMongol way of war required an unusual commitment to training—alwaysbeginning in early childhood and providing a nearly exclusive focus duringthe warrior's life. Second, Mongol tactics required a great deal moreorganization and troop discipline than was the norm among other horsepeoples.58

At the time of the rise of Mongols tactics, the most powerful politicalunit in Asia was most certainly the Chin empire of North China. The Chindynasty fell to the Mongols quickly, and native forces succeeded inexpelling the Mongols and establishing the Ming Dynasty only in 1368.Historical accounts of later battles seem to indicate that, even after thislong period of subjugation, the Ming successors only partially adoptedMongol tactics.59 Until the rise of the Mongols, Asia had beengeopolitically divided by the Himalayas into distinct eastern and westernregions. No political unit on the western side survived the Mongolssufficiently to show whether it adopted Mongol tactics. Most actors thatfaced the Mongols were conquered by them and, consequently, garrisonedby them. States in Eastern Europe that briefly faced the Mongols such asPoland, Hungary and the Byzantine Empire, learned from them the use oflight cavalry and maneuver with emphasis on light armor, bow, andlance,60 but did not emulate Mongol tactics. Only the slave soldiers of the

57. John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Vintage, 1993), 200.58. Andre Corvisier, "Mongols," in A Dictionary of Military History, ed. Andre Corvisier,

English ed., rev. and exp. John Childs (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 531.59. Starting around 1356, Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming dynasty, drove the

Mongols out of China and conquered their capital at Karakorum utilizing a peasant army.See Charles O. Hucker, "The Ming Dynasty, its Origins and Evolving Institution," MichiganPapers in Chinese Studies, 34 (Ann Arbor, Centre for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan,1978) viii.

60. Dupuy believes the West Europeans learned from the East Europeans in the Turkishwars of Eastern Europe. See Trevor N. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare (NewYork: Da Capo, 1984), 88.

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Mameluke state of Egypt successfully resisted the Mongols and fullyemulated them without being occupied by them.

Mongol methods diffused through Asia. The Russians, in particular,learned much from Mongol cavalry doctrine and tactics, and also adoptedMongol "ferocity."61 Keegan argues that the West encountered Cossackferocity in the Moscow campaign of 1812, by Crusading in the East, and inwar with the Ottomans and, as a result, the ruthlessness of steppe warfare,its warrior culture, and its obsession with unconditional surrender,eventually made its way into Europe.62 The European armies, however,which never learned to cope with the Mongols, never learned muchdirectly from them either. As Dupuy notes, "The brief Mongol incursionwest of the Carpathians made no direct impression on military tactics andtradition in central or western Europe."63 The reasons elude militaryhistorians, but Dupuy suggests they may be twofold: at the height of theirpower, the Mongols encountered local forces who were no match forthem, and the military elites of those countries were destroyed. By thetime the Mongols moved to conquer the eastern Mediterranean, theirpower had passed its peak. When the Mongols began to recede, theirheritage remained only in the military society of the Ottoman Turks.

Mongol methods affected international politics in two key ways. First,because there were no extant militaries that could stand up to Mongolmethods, Mongol innovations radically redistributed power to nationsusing light cavalry and maneuver. Perhaps because the methods werebased on training from childhood, no emulators arose for a generation,giving the Mongols several decades to consolidate their empire withoutserious contest. Five decades after their first successes, however, theMongols met their first true defeat at the battle of Ain Jalut (1260) whenthe Mameluke kingdoms under Kotuz bested a Mongol force usingMongol methods.64 During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Asiawas dominated by the Mongols and their near eastern imitators, theMamelukes and the Golden Horde.

The second way in which Mongol innovations affected the balance ofinternational influence occurred only after their military techniques spreadthroughout Asia. Mongol techniques were based on light cavalry tacticsand allowed innovators to project force far more easily than before they

61. Keegan, A History of Warfare, 214.62. Ibid., 214, 217.63. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, 79-80.64. R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 4th

ed. (New York: HarperCollins 1993), 423.

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adopted the methods. For the larger empires, this was a great boon,allowing them to project power far more efficiently. For principalities thatrelied on geography to protect them from their more powerful neighbors,however, this was disastrous. Even after the dissolution of the MongolEmpire, as long as the Mongol techniques remained preeminentthroughout Asia, small states remained displaced by great land empires.Mongol methods reached their zenith in the late thirteenth century in Asiaand were eventually combined with emerging gunpowder technology toform the new type of warfare epitomized by the siege of Constantinople(1453).65

The innovations associated with the infantry revolution can be traced tothe constant battles between the English on the one hand, and the Welshand Scots on the other, throughout the thirteenth and early fourteenthcenturies. Lacking the resources available to England to purchaseexpensive chivalry, the smaller nations developed highly effective infantrytactics—the Welsh emphasizing the longbow, the Scottish using thepike.66 Faced with superior methods, the English soon integrated Welshlongbow and Scottish infantry tactics into their own methods. In 1346, atCrecy, much to their own surprise, the English were able to crush thearmy of the preeminent kingdom in Europe, though outnumbered three toone, taking only one casualty for every 84 inflicted.67 The ascendancy ofinfantry over cavalry, demonstrated in Edward Ill's defensive tactics atCrecy, was perfected by the Swiss, a poor mountain people, withouthorses, whose lightly armored foot soldiers achieved an offensivecapability universally recognized as the best in Europe.68 The Swiss,however, never leveraged this capacity to expand their nation's politicalinfluence, while other nations employed Swiss pikesmen to do so.

Although infantry had always played an important role in medievalwarfare,69 the English innovated in producing and maintaining a

65. Corvisier, A Dictionary of Military History, 531.66. In Wales this period occurred toward the end and following Prince Llewelyn's reign.

In Scotland representative battles include Falkirk (1298) and Bannockburn (1314).67. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 386. See also Clifford J.

Rogers, "The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War," in Rogers, The MilitaryRevolution Debate, 58-59. As Dupuy and Dupuy point out, "In a few earlier European battles,as at Legnano, Courtrai, and in the conflicts between the Austrians and the Swiss, infantryhad had some success against feudal heavy cavalry. In each of these earlier battles, however,some special circumstances contributed to the outcome. Crècy was different. Here was aclear-cut victory in the open field of steady, disciplined infantrymen over the finest cavalry inEurope" (The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 386).

68. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 441-42, 464-65.69. As John Lynn pointed out to us, the entire concept of an "infantry revolution" is

debatable. Medieval historians attack the importance of the feudal cavalry even before 1350.

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professional standing army. Raised under the indenture, as opposed tofeudal, system, English soldiers were trained from youth in the use of theirweapons and were signed on "for the duration."70 Clifford Rogers hasargued that such an army was probably only possible under a politicalsystem sufficiently liberal to permit the peasantry to bear arms.71

For over a century, England's military innovation allowed her armies tomarch across France with near impunity. Dupuy notes that otherfourteenth century leaders strived to emulate the English by dismountingtheir heavy cavalry in battle, but they failed to combine knights andarchers "to obtain a flexible combination of missile firepower, defensivestaying power, and mobile shock action."72 Eventually, others developedeffective infantry armies, but it was more difficult for feudal states toadopt England's new military system based on common infantry (that is,drawn from nonaristocratic classes) as it threatened to undermine thepillars of domestic political control. Charles VI of France is noted to havegiven up his attempt to impose long bow training when he realized thatthe common archers "if they had been gathered together, would have beenmore powerful than the princes and nobles."73

At the outbreak of the rise of infantry tactics, France wasunquestionably the most powerful political unit in Europe. Although theFrench were quick to realize the advantage of infantry tactics, they wereslower than other feudal states to embrace them. France made a numberof efforts to emulate the English infantry, but each met with failure untilFrance's territory was almost entirely controlled by its enemy. Failure wasprobably the result of France's huge advantage in wealth, population andchivalry which originally made reform seem unnecessary, and becausedoing so would have undermined the regime.74 France was able toemulate, and then defeat England, only after its political system wasmostly destroyed, its government exiled, and the French people rose up

The siege-heavy character of medieval warfare meant that infantry were always present inlarge proportions (private correspondence).

70. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 383.71. Clifford J. Rogers, "The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War," 61-62. As

Rogers points out this relationship is not necessarily direct. Nations that armed theirpeasants, for instance, tended to give them a great deal more political power after theinfantry proved its worth on the battlefield. It is interesting to note, however, that thenations that relied most heavily on infantry also tended to be relatively liberal politicallybefore the fourteenth century; this included England, Switzerland, and the Italian city states.

72. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, 84; Rogers, "The Military Revolutions ofthe Hundred Years War," 60.

73. Jean Juvenal des Ursins cited in Rogers, "The Military Revolutions of the HundredYears War," 61.

74. Rogers, "The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War," 60.

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under the symbolic leadership of Joan of Arc. Other principalities,particularly smaller states, appeared to have less trouble implementingreforms and by the mid-fifteenth century, in the most active theaters, paidprofessional armies had displaced feudal levies as far east as Hungary.75

With the rise and spread of infantry tactics, smaller states gainedinfluence at the expense of the great powers. The standing infantry armiesof the time differed from armies composed of chivalry and feudal levies inan important way. To raise a feudal army required an immenseconcentration of wealth. To raise an infantry army did not. This meantthat even poor princedoms could recruit powerful armies if they werewilling to arm commoners. Payment could be made in spoils and increasedliberty. Thus, most of the Hundred Years War was made up of internecinefighting between the rebellious continental provinces of France andEngland, with the opposing power as the rebels' patron. The effect on thebalance of international influence was to increase the relative power ofEurope's smaller principalities at the expense of larger ones. This was truenot only when the infantry innovations had diffused asymmetrically, suchas in the Hundred Years war, but in areas where both sides possessed theinnovation. Along the English-Scottish border, for instance, the vastlylarger English forces were able to make little headway against the Scots.

Although the first recorded use of firearms in Europe was at Crecy, thefirst time they played a significant strategic role was in the Frenchconquest of Normandy in 1449. Suffering from a hundred years ofhumiliation by the English, constant internal rebellion and the after effectsof Joan of Arc, Charles VII allowed himself to be persuaded to create firsta standing army and then a professional artillery organization. Using thenew integrated army, he was able to undo a hundred years of Englishvictories in less than five years. In a similar vein, the Ottoman Turks usedartillery to batter down the walls of Constantinople and end the Byzantineempire (1453).

The advantage of the new artillery on siege warfare was immediate.Prior to gunpowder artillery, castles and other medieval fortificationsgreatly hindered the mobility of attacking armies by forcing them to spendlong periods of time in besiegement. At Rouen and Cherbourg (1418 and1419) for instance, Henry V spent five and six months respectively ininvestment. Artillery allowed the French to reconquer the same territory

75. An example of this is Janos Hunyadi's use of a professional army in Hungary (cl440).David L. Bongard, "Hunyadi," in Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography, ed. Trevor N.Dupuy, Kurt Johnson, and David L. Bongard (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 359.

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without prolonged sieges.76 Soon after gunpowder artillery came into use,medieval fortifications were rendered virtually obsolete. When mountedon ships, cannon also vastly increased the reach of naval powers. TheFrench also pioneered advances in mobile field artillery and at the Battleof Marignano (1515), succeeded in delivering the first serious setback tothe Swiss who had dominated European battlefields for over a century.77

France's artillery supremacy, however, was short lived because small armswere a more effective way to combine mobility and long-range firepower.Artillery retained its importance for the attack and defense offortifications, and in naval warfare, while improvement in infantry smallarms and tactics, particularly by the Spanish, became the decisive factor onthe battlefield.78

Artillery techniques diffused throughout Europe and the Middle East,though a number of European states were slow to adopt gunpowder smallarms. England and Switzerland had developed highly effective infantrytactics based around the long bow and pike, respectively, and were loathto change them. France, which pioneered gunpowder artillery and came todepend heavily on it, was also slow to adopt gunpowder small arms.79

Although professional artillery corps were only an evolutionary advanceon the battlefield,80 they radically increased wealthy leaders' ability tocentralize authority by reducing the fortifications of rebellious nobles.This ability also tended to have a snowball effect; centralized states wereable to raise more money to purchase highly expensive artillery, whichallowed them to absorb the resources of conquered territories whichprovided them with more wealth. The expense of the innovation may bethe main reason that the innovation spread to large kingdoms andprincipalities faster than to smaller ones. By the end of the century,artillery played a major part in most European and Middle Eastern greatpowers' order of battle.81

The most radical effect professional artillery had on internationalinfluence occurred after the technology had diffused throughout Europeand the Middle East. Gunpowder artillery vastly improved strategicmobility by allowing attacking armies to quickly reduce fortifications. For

76. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 438.77. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, 101.78. Ibid., 102.79. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 436.80. In contrast, field artillery did play an essential role in some battles such as Formigny,

Casitllon (1450 and 1453) and particularly at Fornovo several decades later.81. Further east, the English introduced professional artillery to Persia around 1600 in an

attempt to balance against expanding Ottoman power.

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large states, this was a fortuitous change. In Europe, England had almostcertainly been the most powerful state, but artillery permitted thereemergence of France as the region's great power and Castile to conquerthe Iberian peninsula. In Asia, it formed the basis for the emerging"gunpowder empires." The artillery age continued in Asia until its eventualcolonization by the great powers of Europe. In Europe, however, thecoming of "artillery fortresses" around 1525 ameliorated its internationaleffects.

Early in the sixteenth century (cl525), the Italian city-states began tocounter French and Spanish depredations with "artillery fortresses"—ortrace italienne—specifically designed to nullify the effects of artillery. As theinnovation came into wider use throughout the peninsula, small Italianforces began to repulse much greater armies.82 Just as artillery had vastlydecreased the time it took attackers to take defended territory, the newfortresses returned warfare to the pre-artillery ante tremendouslyincreasing the time and resources necessary to besiege a town or fortress.83

After its introduction in Italy, the artillery fortress quickly spread toEurope's smaller states and provinces. All along the Hapsburg and Valoisfrontiers—Netherlands, Danube Valley, Germany and Northern Italy—the influence of smaller political units rose as they were able to assert theirautonomy against vastly larger armies.84 Eventually the innovation spreadto most countries in Western Europe with France adopting them later butusing them extensively, and Hapsburg Spain, the chief exception, nevermaking much use of them. The Italian city states were building artilleryfortresses by 1500 and the French had made major outlays for them by the1530s. The Spanish, however, did not begin significant spending onartillery fortresses until the 1570s, and even then it is not clear howseriously they pursued their construction program.85 Strangely, however,like professional infantry armies, the diffusion of the innovation generallystopped at the borders of Western Europe, spread only slightly intoEastern Europe and did not spread into Asia.86 Rogers, in fact, credits the

82. Arnold, "Fortifications and the Military Revolution."83. Geoffrey Parker, "The 'Military Revolution 1550-1650'—A Myth?" in Rogers, The

Military Revolution Debate 43.84. For a discussion of the historical literature relating to the effects of the cannon

fortress see Arnold, "Fortifications and the Military Revolution," 204-7.85. Ibid., 203; I. A. A. Thompson, "'Money, Money, and Yet More Money!' Finance, the

Fiscal-State, and the Military Revolution: Spain 1500-1650," in Rogers, The Military RevolutionDebate, 276-77.

86. This did not prevent the Portuguese from making extensive use of artillery fortressesin Asia to hold strategic ports.

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artillery fortress with stopping the steady advance of the Ottoman Empireinto Europe.87

By dramatically increasing the time and expense required to taketerritory, the artillery fortress allowed small states and provinces a greatdeal more autonomy than had been the case in the preceding era.Conversely, for the great empires, the artillery fortress provided a constantsource of problems as they were forced to expend increasing resources toquell internal rebellion and to exert influence over their smallnoncompliant neighbors. Not surprisingly, the only two great powers inEurope to significantly increase their international influence—Spain andEngland—were sea powers that obtained much of their wealth outside ofEurope.

Early in the sixteenth century, the sea powers of the Atlantic began toexperiment with mounting cannons on the broadsides of ocean goingvessels. The effectiveness of the resulting galleons and galleass in combatcould be seen as early as the battles of Diu (1509) and Preveza (1538).88 AtLepanto (1571), the technology was used by a combined Christian fleet ina decisive action against the Ottomans, who were the most powerful seapower of the era. Each of the galleass used in the battle held around thirtyguns broadside.89 Although only six galleass were used in the battle, thebattle demonstrated that the supremacy of the oar was at an end.90 Afterthe battle, the Ottoman Port immediately began building galleass as acounter to the Western methods.91 Of the battle, Cervantes, who lost ahand in the fighting wrote: "the world and all the nations were disabusedof the error that the Turks were invincible at sea."92 Soon after, in theBattle of the English Channel (1588), the English demonstrated that thetechnology was best applied in battle via ship of the line tactics.93

Broadside cannon greatly enhanced the firepower of ships. At Preveza,for instance, a single galleon stood off an entire Turkish fleet.94 During theperiod they also allowed innovators to project the siege power of cannonglobally, as was made particularly clear by the expansion of the Portuguese

87. Rogers, "The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War," 7.88. On Preveza see particularly W. C. Stevens, History of Sea Power (New York: Doubleday

1942), 56.89. E. B. Potter, Sea Power (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1960), 16.90. J. F. C. Fuller, Military History of the Western World, vol. 1, From the Earliest Times to the

Battle of Lepanto (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1954), 568.91. Ibid., 577.92. Stevens, History of Sea Power, 67.93. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 505.94. Stevens, History of Sea Power, 56.

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and Spanish empires. When combined with ship of the line tactics andship killing guns, they had another effect. Now, ships became more thanfloating platforms for soldiers. Before the sixteenth century, navies hadbeen little more than armies temporarily at sea; from this point forward,armies and navies became distinct organizations. Thus, England, forinstance, until the coming of aerial bombardment, was able to maintainitself as a distinctly naval power—a concept that was not particularlymeaningful in earlier times.

The technology of broadside cannon diffused across the globe quicklybut the English notion of ship of the line tactics diffused much moreslowly. In the Atlantic, the English were the first to use broadside cannonand this technology diffused quickly to Spain, Portugal, and France. Asearly as 1509, the Portuguese were using broadside cannon to some extentin the Indian Ocean and it appears that several Asian countries madesignificant effort to emulate their ships.95 In the Mediterranean, theOttomans made some efforts to emulate the technology in 1572 after theirdefeat at Lepanto. Perhaps because the Mediterranean was ill-suited tolarge, slow, ocean-going vessels, the technology did not make quickinroads in that region and as late as the seventeenth century, Venice hadto send to England for its first ship of the line.96 After the Battle of theEnglish Channel, ship of the line tactics were eventually emulated by thesea-going powers of the Atlantic, but they diffused much more slowly thanthe technology itself and England remained the most able user of thesetactics throughout the era of sail and shot. Slow innovators, who were alsothe dominant naval powers of the time, tended to suffer significant lossesof prestige in their regions of influence. Early in the sixteenth century theOttoman Empire was the greatest naval power east of the Atlantic as wasSpain in the Atlantic itself. The Ottomans were slow to emulate thePortuguese and suffered a loss of influence in the Red Sea and IndianOcean early in the century. Later, they suffered a similar decline infortunes to the Spanish in the Mediterranean. The Spanish were quick touse the broadside technology, but slow to emulate English ship of the linetactics, and consequently suffered a major loss of influence in the Atlanticto the English.

Broadside technology and ship of the line tactics are unique in that theyaffected different regions in different ways. In the Mediterranean, galleonswere significantly slower and more cumbersome than galleys. Galleys

95. Arnold Pacey, Technology in World Civilization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 66.96. Stevens, History of Sea Power, 56.

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could choose the time and place of a confrontation and could place andremove troops from land much faster than a slow moving sailing vessel.When galleys did chose to engage galleons, however, the galleons had avery substantial advantage which led military theorists of the time toconsider galleons defensive technology at sea.97 In the Mediterranean, thenew technology probably contributed to breaking the stranglehold of theOttoman empire and increasing the autonomy of the southern andwestern Mediterranean states.

In the world's oceans, however, the technology had the opposite effect.In the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, where galleys played a small role, thenew broadside ships and tactics replaced slower roundship technology andboarding tactics. The new ships allowed innovators to project cannon on aglobal basis and to control the world's oceans which contributed to theirability to project their land forces where and when they pleased. First thePortuguese and Spanish and later the English, French and Dutch used thistechnology very effectively to build their great sea-going empires.Throughout the period, which lasted until the era of steamships, theAtlantic states of Europe used the technology to consolidate vast colonialempires.

Throughout the sixteenth century, an evolutionary struggle ensuedbetween states and provinces seeking to gain autonomy by increasing theirfortifications and those seeking to expand their influence by increasing thesize and quality of their gunpowder-armies. By the time of the ThirtyYears War, the worst of the combat had moved east into the regions ofEurope where artillery fortresses had not yet taken hold.98 By 1630, armieshad grown to more than ten times the size of a century before.99 GustavusAdolphus' strategy during the "Swedish period" of the war is generallyconsidered the watershed for modern war. Adopting and perfecting thetechniques pioneered by Maurice of Nassau several decades earlier,Adolphus repeatedly proved his techniques by defeating the armies ofSpain (1630—32)—an empire with resources fantastically larger thanSweden's.

Adolphus made a number of important contributions to the art of war,but none were as lasting or politically significant as demonstrating how toraise a large, highly disciplined army from a small population, and tyingthat army inexorably to the leader of the state. Creating and maintaining

97. Ibid.98. Parker, "The 'Military Revolution'—A Myth?" 42.99. David A. Parrott, "Strategy and Tactics in the Thirty Years' War: The 'Military

Revolution'," in Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate, 239.

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such armies required innovating states to centralize military authority andincrease taxation prodigiously. For feudal states, this meant changing thesocial basis of political power and was one of the major factors in the riseof absolutism. Throughout the seventeenth century, European states racedto create the infrastructure necessary to implement Adolphus' revolution.The first states to adopt the methods, Sweden and the Netherlands, weresmall states and their early adoption probably accounted for much of theirmilitary success in the early part of the century. As larger states,particularly France, developed modern infrastructures and armies,however, the advantage was lost. The most powerful state at the time theinnovation came into use, Spain, was the last major European power toadopt the techniques but the sound defeat of Spanish tercios by the Frenchat Rocroi (1643) dislodged Spanish attachment to their long-victorioustradition.100 Spain, however, was financially incapable of supporting a largearmy.101

For what appear to be social and political reasons, nations outsideWestern Europe failed to adopt the innovations, or did so only sluggishly.The Russians translated the new drill books in 1649 but strong socialimpediments to military reform had to be surmounted. These includedvested interests of the traditional military elite—particularly the cavalryarchers, long the bulwark against the Tartar threat—and the Orthodoxchurch, the center of opposition to Western ways among a xenophobicpopulace. It would take the reforms of Peter the Great to overcome thisopposition and develop the fiscal and administrative capacity of theMuscovite state to sustain a modern standing army.102 The Ottomansfaced even more daunting political and social obstacles. Intransigence wasstaunchest among the Janissaries and ulema, the military and religiouselites who were convinced that indigenous military methods were superiorto anything the infidel had to offer and that Western practices wereheretical. Any innovation from the West was viewed as a threat to theIslamic sociopolitical order and these groups were only too willing tomobilize the populace by appealing to traditional values. Moreover,Ottoman society consisted of "a multitude of overlapping, self-administering entities..." and the sultan and his government were "simply

100. Thompson, "'Money, Money, and Yet Mote Money!'" 291; McNeill, The Pursuit ofPower, 134.

101. Thompson, "'Money, Money, and Yet More Money!"' 291; Parker, "The 'MilitaryRevolution'—A Myth?" 43-44.

102. Ralston, Importing the European Army, 13-42.

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one, albeit the most powerful, in a cluster of semiautonomous, pluralisticcenters of authority."103

With the adoption of modern drilled armies, Europe's armies becamevastly superior to those of the Middle East and Asia.104 The effect ofdrilled armies on the balance of international influence was supersededonly by the Mongol expansion. Like the Mongols, European powers usedtheir advantage to expand their influence abroad and by the beginning ofthe nineteenth century possessed around 35 percent of the world's landsurface.105

Whether the revolution in drill altered states' strategic mobility isunclear. There is little reason to think that modern armies undid thedefensive effects of fortifications since modern taxation schemes alloweda tremendous growth in the number of fortresses. Furthermore, the natureof discipline in armies during this period made foraging extremely difficult,thus limiting the range of armies to the maga2ines which providedsupply.106 Thus, it appears that most of the international effects of thisinnovation occurred because of slow diffusion rather than because itchanged the mobility of armies.

As had been the case with the Mongol, infantry and fortressinnovations, at the end of the eighteenth century, the concept of thenation in arms began in a peripheral state. In this case, the success ofAmerican citizen soldiers against the British foretold a great deal aboutwhat war would look like in future decades when appeals to nationalismwould be used to raise and motivate armies. Yet, only when republicannationalist war was embraced by a great power—France—did its truemilitary potential become evident.

Like Adolphus almost two centuries before, Napoleon's genius was toamalgamate the technical and political capabilities of his time into asystem of war. As Clausewitz points out, the effect of republicanism wasto allow France to raise as many as ten times the troops other countriescould from the same population base. None of Napoleon's achievementswas as significant for war as showing how to mobilize, train and supplysuch troops. Yet, this achievement was only possible when republicanesprit de corps was combined with modern industrial output and logistics.

103. Ibid., 43-78, particularly 59.104. The Siege of Vienna (1683) is sometimes considered the turning point for Western

fortunes.105. John F. Guilmartin, "The Military Revolution: Origins and First Tests Abroad," in

Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate, 299.106. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 668.

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The revolutionary social changes needed to implement the Frenchinnovation were reminiscent of those associated with England's infantryrevolution five centuries earlier. In order to obtain the innovation'smilitary benefits, monarchs risked social instability. Thus, as had been thecase with the infantry revolution, the monarchs of many European statesattempted to resist the diffusion of the innovation.107 Some states,however, like Prussia, quickly embraced many elements of the system.108

By mid-century, with the notable exception of Britain, most Europeanstates had adopted universal conscription. Like drill, however, it diffusedslowly, if at all, into states of non-European origin.

While centralized state governments and disciplined professional armiesare still the rule, the emergence of the levee en masse in the War of theSecond Coalition (1800) allowed innovators to overcome noninnovators'defenses. It would be difficult, however, to say whether it increased ordecreased strategic mobility. It has been argued that lower desertion ratesdecreased armies' reliance on supply magazines109 and larger armiesdecreased the importance of forts. While this was undoubtedly the case,such armies were a great deal more mobile and effective within their ownborders because nationalism aided in supply and recruitment.Consequently, when two nationalistic armies clashed, the state projectingpower into the other's home territory may have been at a significantlygreater disadvantage than had been the case in the earlier era.Unfortunately, there is little empirical evidence to support one claim orthe other since during the period of dominance of Napoleonic methods—approximately 1800—66—no wars were fought between states that hadboth adopted the methods.110 The Crimean war might have providedsome evidence but most of the belligerents—the Ottoman Empire, Russia,Britain—did not use Napoleonic methods.111 Perhaps the best evidence

107. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, 221.108. Charles E. White, "Scharnhorst, Gerhard Johann David Von (1755-1813)", in

Brassey's Encyclopedia of Military History and Biography, ed. Franklin D. Margiotta (Washington,D.C.: Brassey's, 1994), 841.

109. In prior European armies, mobility had been hampered by the need tightly to controlthe troops. Fear of desertion prohibited officers from allowing armies to live off of the landand tied advances to nonmobile magazines. (Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia ofMilitary History, 668) Because nationalistic troops were less prone to desertion and werebetter able to live off of the land this problem became less severe.

110. Note that in the war of Austria with France and Piedmont (1859), Austria was notemploying a nationalistic army.

111. There were some possible cases of nationalist armies clashing during the period inthe Americas. There were three wars in which it could be argued that nationalistic armiesfought with other nationalistic armies. These are Mexican-American (1846-48), La Plata

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comes from later clashes between France and Prussia after Scharnhorst'sreorganization of the Prussian army along Napoleonic lines.112 From therevolt of Prussia (January 1813) to Leipzig (October 1813) it appeared thatnationalist troops were easier to mobilize and use on their own home soilthan abroad, providing some evidence that the innovation decreasedstrategic mobility between innovating states. Still, the evidence is far fromclear. Like the innovations in drill, the international effects of this innova-tion are tied chiefly to rates of diffusion rather than changes in mobility.

During the Napoleonic wars, many of Europe's smaller states wereswallowed up by France, and rather than restoring the status quo ante, theCongress of Vienna merely divided most of the small conquered territoriesbetween the great powers. After the Congress, the number of smallGerman principalities, for instance, declined from over three hundred toless than forty.113 During the following decades, Europe was rocked by agreat deal of violence which culminated in the unification of Italy andmuch of Germany and the beginning of the dissolution of the Ottomanempire—Prussia and Sardinia utilizing France's nationalistic methods, theOttomans refusing to liberalize. Outside of Europe, most South Americancolonies adopted revolutionary nationalism and shrugged off imperial tieswhile Asian colonies generally did not and remained bound to Europe.

Between 1800 and 1866, science laid immense resources at the feet ofmilitary planners, but as yet no one had developed a way to integrate theminto an effective military doctrine. Again, the first effective innovatingstate was on the periphery. During its Civil War, the Union andConfederate states of America began to find ways to integrate the railroad,steamship, telegraph, rifle and other innovations into their strategies.Among the great powers, however, Prussia was the first state to do so onland, Britain at sea. Owing much to Moltke's doctrine of strategic offense andtactical defense, Prussia was able to combine recent technical advances insuch a way as to defeat Austria (1866) and France (1870).114 Britain,although not the first to develop a steam navy, was the first to realize its

(1851-52), and Franco-Mexican (1862-67). It is not clear, however, how nationalist orNapoleonic any of the states or militaries actually were at the time of each war.

112. In 1813 Scharnhorst's reorganization was visible in the revolt of Prussia againstFrance when the Landwehr, or militia, was called upon vastly to expand the size of the army.

113. Rene Albrecht-Carrie, A Diplomatic History of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1958), 12.

114. Although Moltke's methods were first tested in the Schleswig-Holstein War (1864),the small scale of the war does not allow us to learn much about the methods of massmobilization.

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potential outside of Europe, vastly increasing the size of—and its controlover—its overseas empire.

By any standards, the technical advances in military capabilities leadingup to the Austro-Prussian war were revolutionary. Railroads andsteamships increased mobilization and logistical capabilities dramatically,telegraphs improved communications, and rifled bullets improved rangeand accuracy. The question of the era was whether set defenses utilizingrifle technology, or offenses using steam, would prevail. Moltke'scontribution was to answer this question in favor of steam.

For noninnovating countries, which in this case generally meantcountries outside of Europe or America, the effect was devastating. By thetime of the First World War, nearly all noninnovators had been colonizedby innovators. This outcome stemmed largely from the increasedcapability of steamships and the need for coaling depots. Within Europe,however, these innovations diffused so quickly that they provided only abrief advantage to innovating states. In 1866, Prussia defeated Austriaowing in large part to its ability to use its rail network to mobilize itsmilitary. In 1870, the rest of Europe had not yet learned the lesson ofAustro-Prussia and Prussia was able to defeat France using the samemethods.115 Subsequent to this event, most European states quicklyattempted to adopt Prussian methods. Doing so required industrializingand creating rail-nets, however, and this was much more difficult forEastern European states than for those further west. If steel production isused as an indicator of a state's capacity to adopt this innovation (seeFigure 5 below), some countries had clear advantages. By 1913, Prussiawas able to produce 263 tons of steel per million population while Austria-Hungary was only able to produce 50 tons and Russia to produce 28tons.116

The most profound international effect of the industrial innovations ofsteam and rapid mobilization was to increase strategic mobility. One ofthe main problems with the immense armies of the period wasmobilization and supply. On land, railroads greatly alleviated this problemby allowing men and materiel to be transported and focused much moreefficiently, greatly diminishing the time it took to mobilize and project

115. At the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war, the Prussians were able to utilize theirrail net to mobilize approximately 1 of every 18 men. Owing to inferior methods ofmobilization the French were able to mobilize only around 1 in 30 until near the end of thewar (for example, the Siege of Paris) at which time they were able to match Prussianproportions (Corvisier, A Dictionary of Military History, 617).

116. J. David Singer and Melvin Small, "The Correlates of War," (New York: The FreePress, 1979).

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forces. Indeed, the Franco-Prussian war can be read as a contest betweenthe French doctrine of set defense based on rifle tactics, and the Prussiandoctrine of strategic offense and tactical defense which integrated railroadand rifle.117 After Franco-Prussia, the Prussian army displaced the Frenchas the model for modern armies.118 For the next forty-four years, theideology of the offensive prevailed in Europe.

Figure 5

STEEL PRODUCED PER ONE MILLION POPULATION

1865 1913

u.sU.K.

FrancePrussiaAustriaItalyRussia

241633241

914

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The period between the Franco-Prussian war and the First World Waris often called the most imperialistic in history.119 By the end of the periodEuropean states had more than doubled the size of their colonialpossessions. This expansion has been explained, according to somestudents of technology, by the inability of non-European states toindustrialize.120 Within Western Europe, where industrialization haddiffused, the great powers exercised nearly absolute suzerainty oversmaller states.121 In Eastern Europe, and particularly the Balkans, where

117. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, 199.118. For a discussion of emulation in South America, see Resende-Santos, "Anarchy and

the Emulation of Military Systems."119. Bruce Lenman, "Imperialism," in Larousse Dictionary of World History (New York:

Chambers Harraps Publishers Ltd., 1994), 442.120. Arnold Pacey, Technology in World Civilization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 131-49.121. For analysis of great power influence during this period in and out of Europe see R.

W. Seton-Watson, Briton in Europe: 1798-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1955), 466-650; William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism: 1890-1902 (New York:Knopf, 1951).

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Austria-Hungary and Russia were slow to innovate, however, revolutionremained common and smaller states retained a good deal of autonomy.122

Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century improvedmanufacturing techniques in conjunction with increased nationalismpresented military planners with powerful new tools. As had been the casewith a number of other innovations, these tools were first put to use byperipheral states, first by both the Union and Confederacy in theAmerican Civil War and later, to some extent, by Japan in the Russo-Japanese war.123 Still it was not until Marne during the First World Warthat the great powers began to understand their full implications. Duringthe previous half-century, the ideology of the offensive had dominatedmilitary thinking in Europe. The strategy Moltke had used so effectively inthe Franco-Prussian war had been read by Europe, particularly by France,as a call for a purely offensive doctrine.124 Yet, soon after the First WorldWar broke out, it became clear that defense would also play an importantrole and by war's end the major participants had come to believe in thesuperiority of defense. The country that could sustain the attrition of thewar for the longest period, while supplying troops and material to thefront, would win. This defensive advantage was occasioned partly bytechnology: rifle bullets, machine guns, artillery, concrete and barbwire. Anecessary component, however, was almost certainly a nationalisticpopulation and an advanced industrial base.125

The technology associated with this era diffused so evenly throughoutEurope that it is virtually impossible to discern an original innovator. Thetactics of trench warfare also diffused quickly to Britain, France, Germanyand Austria after the opening battles of the First World War.126 AfterMarne (5 September 1914), both sides began to shift their tactics awayfrom the offense and by the First Battle of Champagne (14 December1914) both sides had incorporated trench warfare into their general

122. Albrecht-Carrie provides a good general over view of this period in A DiplomaticHistory of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna. See particularly 163-295.

123. Brian Sullivan, "What Distinguishes a Revolution in Military Affairs from a MilitaryTechnical Revolution?" (paper presented at the JCISS-Security Studies Conference on "TheRevolution in Military Affairs," 26-29 August 1996, Monterey, Calif.), 13; Dupuy andDupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 1005.

124. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 1005.125. Sullivan, "What Distinguishes a Revolution in Military Affairs from a Military

Technical Revolution?" 15.126. The United States had already adopted most of the innovations by the end of the

American Civil War and Japan may have shown some proclivity for such tactics in theRusso-Japanese conflict.

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Systemic "Effects of Military Innovation and Diffusion 119

strategies.127 Beyond these states, however, little diffusion took place.From Tannenberg at the outbreak of the First World War to the Russo-Polish war (1920), the Russians continued to rely on massed offenses. Thisalso seemed to be the rule among other states during this period. In theRusso-Polish war, the Poles, possibly because they could not field enoughtroops or material to create defensive works across their long borders alsorelied on maneuver, and in the Graeco-Turkish war (1920) both sidesrelied upon pre-First World War tactics. For other countries to emulate"nation at war" tactics would have required creating the politicalinfrastructure to mobilize millions—rather than hundreds of thousands—of their populations in order to create defensive lines sufficiently long toprevent enemy penetration, and manufacturing capabilities sufficient tosupply material to sustain such troops.

Once the innovations of this period had diffused, strategic mobility wasgreatly hampered within the area of diffusion. Trench warfare wasprobably second only to the artillery fortress in transferring the advantageto the defense. The First World War is almost universally read as drivingthis lesson home. Among the great powers, this had disastrous results. AtVersailles, the losers of the First World War lost virtually all influencebeyond their greatly reduced national borders. Even the winners, however,lost a great deal of international influence due to their newfoundreluctance to utilize their militaries in areas where they might contactother innovators. This reluctance is evident in the behavior of Britain andFrance in virtually every European conflict occurring within the periodbefore the Second World War.128 It is interesting to note that, for themost part, this aversion to war appears to have extended only to the areain which the innovations diffused. Outside of Europe, the great powerscontinued to use their militaries to build and maintain large colonialempires.

By 1939 technology had again provided the tools for a new type of war.Chief among these were the internal combustion engine, radio and aircraft.Although each of these had been present in 1919, technical advances hadvastly enhanced their military utility in the ensuing twenty years.Throughout the interwar years, the great powers experimented withdifferent ways of utilizing the new technology. The sea powers—

127. The opening battles of the war provided some evidence that the offense was stillsuperior. German victories at Lorraine and Mons tend to erroneously reinforce thisperspective. It should be recalled that both Lorraine and Mons were French offensives thatfailed to a greater extent than German offenses that succeeded.

128. These conflicts include the Russo-Polish War (1920), the Graeco-Turkish War(1920-22) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).

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particularly the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan—madegreat strides in amphibious warfare and the use of air power at sea. Duringthis period, Germany also devised its Blitzkrieg strategy of mobile war.Yet, with the partial exception of the Spanish Civil War,129 none of thegreat powers' new military tactics had been tested on the battlefieldagainst the forces of a great power. When Germany invaded Poland in1939, most observers in the West assumed the Polish army collapsedquickly because of its ineptitude rather than because of the superiority ofGerman tactics.130 It was only after the Battles of Flanders and Francethat the Allies began to realize that the integrated German tactics for landwar had radically changed the nature of war.

Although the most dramatic military improvements in the SecondWorld War are generally associated with Germany's Blitzkrieg tactics, thechanges in warfare that occurred during this era go beyond the Germancontribution. During the Second World War, the great powers integratedtheir forces to an extent never before seen. As air power was increasinglyused at sea, and to bypass seas, it became clear that land and sea powercould no longer be isolated from each other. On land, the logisticalrequirements of supplying mechanized forces again required closeintegration of land, sea and air forces. In Europe, in the early engagementsof the war, and later in the Pacific, it became clear that old styletechnology and tactics were incapable of resisting the newer methods. InPoland, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries and Northern France, theGermans used their Blitzkrieg tactics to do in weeks what they had beenunable to do in years during the First World War. In the battle of Britain,they demonstrated that the Channel would no longer insulate the Britishfrom Continental conflicts. Later, in the Pacific—particularly at the Battleof Midway—the United States demonstrated that naval power wouldhence forth depend on air superiority.

The technology associated with mobile warfare on land and sea diffusedevenly to the great powers throughout the interwar years. The tacticsassociated with them, however, did not. Germany pioneered the tactics ofBlitzkrieg and used them to conquer most of Europe before the Alliescould emulate them. Mahnken argues that although the Allies began toattempt to emulate the Germans almost immediately, certainly by 1940,

129. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) the Germans were able to put some of theirideas about integrated mobile warfare to the test; however, in the absence of a significantopponent, it was unclear how helpful this was.

130. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, 1151. See alsoLieutenant Colonel A. T. McAnsh, "The New German Army Showing Organization ofPanzer Division," The Cavalry Journal 49, no. 4 (1940): 313.

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Systemic "Effects of Military Innovation and Diffusion 121

they were only partially successful and the Germans remained superior inintegrated tactics throughout the war.131 In the Pacific, naval air-sea tacticsappear to have diffused fairly evenly to Japan and the United States beforethe war and both sides improved upon their original tactics throughout thewar. By the end of the war, the technology and tactics of mobile war haddiffused to virtually all countries that had the manufacturing resourcesnecessary to field mechanized forces.

The most marked effect of mobile war was to increase strategicmobility. This was illustrated throughout the war, both againstasymmetrical forces early on, and later when both sides utilized similartactics and technology. Early in the war, the Germans were able to smashthrough the Dyle line in the Low Countries using air power in conjunctionwith land forces and then bypass the Maginot line using highly mobileforces. Later, when technology and tactics had diffused moresymmetrically, both sides were able to bypass set defenses to carry outboth land and air assaults against the other. Likewise, in the Pacific, thewar opened with a successful Japanese assault against an American targetand progressed through a long series of successful American assaultsagainst Japanese targets. In an age of mobile armor and flight, neithergeographic distance nor natural barriers could be counted on to insulatesmall countries from great ones. Much like the Mongol innovation, mobilewar tended to centralize military influence.

By 1945 the United States had developed nuclear weapons. The Sovietsfollowed suit in 1949, the British in 1952, the French in 1960, and thePeople's Republic of China in 1964. Although no war involving nuclearweapons has been fought since the Second World War, nuclear weaponswere used extensively for strategic purposes during the cold war.Originally, nuclear weapons were used by the United States as a substitutefor conventional weapons through a strategy of massive retaliation. Afterthe Soviets acquired the technology, both sides came to rely upon adoctrine of deterrence through mutually assured destruction, and persuedstrategies of limited war.

As with previous military innovations, nuclear technologies diffusedbefore the strategy and tactics for their use. The U.S. nuclear weaponsmonopoly lasted for only four years, and despite a growing cold war, theUnited States did not devise a useful strategy for their use beyond strategic

131. Thomas G. Mahnken, "Military Revolutions and Organizational Transformation:The United States and Armored Warfare, 1918-1945" (paper presented at the JCISS-SecurityStudies Conference on "The Revolution in Military Affairs," 26-29 August, 1996, Monterey,Calif.), 22-30.

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bombing. Once the Soviets acquired the technology, both sides appear tohave developed strategies resting on mutually assured destruction andextension of influence through limited and unconventional war. TheUnited States began to emulate Soviet methods of unconventional warunder a nuclear umbrella in the 1970s. Britain, France, China, India, andPakistan adopted the MAD strategy along with nuclear weapons.

Nuclear deterrence based on MAD greatly decreased strategic mobilityfrom the Second World War ante. Blitzkrieg tactics were renderedimpractical under the threat of nuclear war. Any large-scale projection ofmilitary forces, in fact, became difficult because of the possibility that theconflict might escalate into an all-out war between the superpowers. Yet inthe nuclear era, as in most others, the effects of the new methods tendedto extend only to those that possessed them. Nonnuclear countries foughtfull-scale wars using strategies based on mobile war as developed in theSecond World War.

CONCLUSIONS

T HE PRECEDING analysis provides a first cut at understanding patternsof military diffusion and their international effects. Diffusion has

rarely been a uniform process. While competition among European greatpowers stimulated a more rapid spread of innovations within WesternEurope than between Europe and the rest of the world, even withinEurope diffusion has been far from the even process that neorealismsuggests. In the fourteenth century, infantry innovations were resisted byfeudal states, such as France, much as the innovations associated withNapoleon's nation in arms were similarly resisted by European monarchsnearly five centuries later, for fear that arming the peasantry wouldjeopardize domestic political control and undermine the power of thearistocracy. Less for social and political reasons, and more due toorganizational resistance, the English and Swiss were slow to adoptartillery innovations that would have led to changes in time-honoredinfantry tactics. Hapsburg Spain proved incapable of developing the fiscalcapacity to sustain seventeenth-century innovations that heralded the eraof modern war. Finally, even when technologies diffused quickly withinEurope, as with the technologies of broadside cannon that underwrotedramatic changes in naval warfare in the sixteenth century and those ofmechanization that underwrote the mobility revolution of the mid-twentieth century, doctrine and the tactics for their use spread more

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slowly. Patterns of diffusion between Europe and non-European politicalunits qualify the notion that diffusion is a uniform process even further.Mongol innovations had little direct impact on warfare in Europe.Innovation in drill faced staunch resistance in Russia, China, and theOttoman Empire. The macrosocial innovations associated with nation inarms spread slowly to non-European states. Difference in local threatenvironment can account for some of the variation. Cultural, social,political, and organizational obstacles, however, have also placed powerfulconstraints on the scope of diffusion.

Patterns in the speed of diffusion seem consistent with the predictionsof power-transitions theory. The spread of innovations has beenaccelerating over time and there is little reason to think the trend will bereversed. The result has been a steady decline in the amount of time thatthe state that first leverages the innovation can expect to maintain amonopoly on the methods. The Mongol military maintained its monopolyfor approximately fifty years and the English military enjoyed their leadamong great powers in the infantry revolution for around sixty years. TheFrench military, however, enjoyed the advantage of their artilleryinnovations for only four years, while Sweden's lead in drill endured foronly two years. France's monopoly on the methods associated with nationin arms lasted for approximately fifteen years. Industrial innovation ofsteam was leveraged most effectively by the Prussian military for at leastforty-four years, but the Prussian state's political influence was probablynot commensurate. The German military enjoyed a monopoly of theirmobility innovations for only two years, while the spread of nuclearweapons diminished the U.S. military's monopoly in a mere four years.

In the current period, knowledge-intensive technologies are pouringinto the marketplace and spreading across national borders exceedinglyrapidly, fed by the globalization of finance and trade. Knowledge-intensivegoods that can be converted for military use can be acquired or developedrelatively easily and quickly.132 Revolutionary dual-use technologies, likecomputer and software capabilities, are not capital intensive and do notrequire a huge industrial capacity to exploit. As such, they do not requirethe level of national development that industrial mass military forces do.As capital investment requirements have declined, diffusion hasaccelerated. Yet whether or not nations like India, South Korea, andPakistan, that possess significant software capabilities, can exploit that

132. Maj. Norman C. Davis, USMC, "An Information-Based Revolution in MilitaryAffairs," Strategic Review 24, no. 1 (winter 1996): 47.

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capacity effectively on the battlefield depends on how quickly they eitherdevelop or acquire knowledge of the most effective doctrine and tacticsfor their use. History shows that practices for the use of innovativetechnologies tend to spread more slowly than does the technology itself.

In sum, diffusion is an uneven and irregular process. Variation in paceand scope can be accounted for, in part, by organizations theory'semphasis on the compatibility between the technology, and theorganization, society, and culture. Offense-defense theory also sheds lighton the capacity to adopt innovations. Small less wealthy states have tendedto adopt less costly innovations more rapidly. Adopting a new militarysystem based on common infantry was far cheaper than purchasingexpensive chivalry for Switzerland. By contrast, wealthy states, like France,could more easily afford modern artillery. In some cases, like therevolution in drill, small states could easily adopt the innovations first butwere soon overtaken by wealthy nations that could more easily afford todevelop the modern infrastructure necessary for supporting a large army.

Offense-defense theory's predictions about the internationalconsequences of diffusion, particularly about which states are likely tobenefit from offensive and defensive innovations respectively, gains agood deal of support from the historical record. Offensive innovationsthat enhanced strategic mobility favored the expansion of empires andallowed the system's most powerful states to increase their influence.Mongol methods appear to have contributed to the rise of great Asianland empires. Artillery innovations allowed large empires throughoutEurope and Asia to subjugate small states. The use of steam on land andsea increased great power influence in Europe and imperialism abroad.During the brief period it held sway, mobile warfare allowed a few greatpowers to dramatically increase their influence. Defensive innovationsallowed smaller political entities to assert their autonomy. Infantry tacticstended to result in a rise in influence among smaller innovators at theexpense of the great powers of Europe. Likewise, fortresses and trenchwarfare corresponded with greater autonomy for small states in Europe.Innovations can also affect the relative fortunes of states simply by thespeed with which they diffuse as power-transitions theory predicts. In thecases of drill and nation in arms, the systemic effects of the innovationsprobably had more to do with the rate of diffusion than with any decisiveshift in the offense-defense balance. Since it is unclear how the impendinginformation revolution innovations will affect the offense-defense balance,systemic effects may derive more from the speed of diffusion.

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While historical experience shows that over time, the leads enjoyed byinnovators have steadily diminished, dominant states have not traditionallyfared well. With the rise of Mongol methods, the most powerful states inAsia were subjugated and generally did not survive. The French refused toemulate England's infantry innovations and were almost destroyed. Withthe artillery revolution, the English lost nearly all their European holdings.With the rise of artillery fortress, the Hapsburgs suffered from a great dealof revolution within their borders, remaining Europe's leading state mainlythrough their overseas empire. The Hapsburgs refused to emulate drill andthereafter quickly declined. France was arguably the most powerful stateon the continent before it pioneered the innovation, but lost much of itsinfluence in the Napoleonic wars. The current period is somewhat of ananomaly because rarely if ever has the leading power been the one tolaunch a set of revolutionary innovations.133 History suggests that byaccelerating the information revolution, the United States may gain someshort-term advantage, but it will erode relatively quickly. At the same time,however, the United States is perhaps the first leading power that may notface the fate of earlier hegemons who resisted adopting innovative ways ofwar.

In sum, diffusion is not a uniform process, but an increasingly rapidone. Revolutionary military innovations do seem to affect the distributionof power. Yet while innovators gain a highly significant advantage in theshort-term, this advantage fades over time. Offensive and defensiveinnovations also appear to affect states differently, with large statesbenefiting from the former and small states from the latter. Finally,hegemons have historically been slow to adopt new military technologiesand methods and consequently experience a decline in influence whenrevolutionary new military methods emerge and diffuse.

133. In the case of the Dreadnought and nuclear weapons, in both cases the leading state

Britain and the United States respectively—were being closely chased by competitors.

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Documents

Systemic effects of military innovation and diffusion