On the Precipice of a New Era of Warfare? Reflections on Military Revolutions, Past and Future
John F. Morris | 11.14.24
On the Precipice of a New Era of Warfare? Reflections on Military Revolutions, Past and Future
The literature on military revolutions and revolutions in military affairs has proliferated since historian Michael Roberts coined the former term in 1956. Among the most clear and compelling examples is MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray’s 2001 sketch of the historiography of both concepts. First, they define military revolutions as fundamental changes to the framework of war, recasting societies and states in addition to military organizations. Revolutions in military affairs, or RMAs, on the other hand, are less dramatic; they are “clusters” of technological, tactical, doctrinal, or organizational changes that are confined to the military sphere. Knox and Murray then summarize the consensus among historians that—preceded by “anticipatory RMAs of the Middle Ages and early modern era”—five military revolutions occurred in the West from about 1618 to the present. The first was “the seventeenth-century creation of the modern state and of modern military institutions”; the second, the French Revolution; the third, the Industrial Revolution; the fourth, the combination of the first three revolutions during World War I; and the fifth, “nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems” development from the end of World War II. Each of these military revolutions was associated with and resulted in certain RMAs. I should like to modify Knox and Murray’s narrative by grouping the first three and the last two of their military revolutions into what may be termed two fairly distinct paradigms of warfare. By doing so, and then examining today’s sociopolitical, strategic, and technological landscapes, it becomes clear that we may be on the precipice of a third.
From the early 1600s until the early 1900s, what I shall call the Westphalian paradigm transformed warfare in the West and allowed a handful of Western states to conquer most of the world. This paradigm included three military revolutions, the first of which began during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and came to fruition in the decades that followed. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia inaugurated a system of states and of balance of power in Europe that would last until the first sounds of the guns of August in 1914. Most of the successful states in this system concentrated power in the hands of absolute monarchs, who created modern military institutions, such as standing regiments and technical academies, composed of forces loyal to them rather than to individual nobles and mercenary chiefs. They grouped themselves into temporary alliances to further their realist foreign-policy goals and conducted mercantilist exploitation of their overseas possessions to finance wars. Under the command of professional officer corps, armies incorporated Maurice of Orange’s and Gustavus Adolphus’s tactical reforms, improved the use of combined arms, and inculcated in their soldiers via drill what John A. Lynn has called the “battle culture of forbearance”—the ability to withstand indiscriminate musket and artillery fire without breaking and sometimes without even responding. Military engineers like the Marquis of Vauban in France both utilized trace italienne design techniques to build the star-shaped fortresses that still mark the European landscape today and developed siege warfare tactics to reduce them. Victory in continental war, which during the eighteenth century usually meant no more than a slight readjustment of state borders, relied on perfection of these methods. King Frederick II exemplified this mastery, managing to expand his Prussian realm despite being surrounded by foes.
The French Revolution of 1789 unleashed the second military revolution, with Napoleon Bonaparte threatening (though ultimately falling short of destroying) the entire Westphalian state system by combining French army reforms of the late-monarchical era, particularly the use of mobile field artillery, with the sociopolitical changes of the 1790s, foremost among them the levée en masse of 1793. Napoleon fought with an army that at first was several times the size of those of his opponents and drawn from all estates. Although we should not overstate it, his was a force imbued with the spirit of nationalism, which made soldiers less likely to desert. This, as well as the dramatic growth in the European population in the eighteenth century, meant that Napoleon and his generals could allow their men to forage for food when the army was on the march, no longer restricted to poor road networks and reliant on wagon resupply from caches. And this in turn facilitated dispersion, usually in corps-sized units, the avoidance of enemy strong points, and incredible speed of maneuver. Eventually France’s enemies not only adopted to an extent her tactical, doctrinal, organizational, and even sociopolitical innovations but also coalesced in a grand alliance against her, restoring the Westphalian state system and the balance of power between states in the Concert of Europe.
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/on-the-precipice-of-a-new-era-of-warfare-reflections-on-military-revolutions-past-and-future/
