Arguing About War
Military technology has a great impact on objectives of war and main operations. Today, military leaders stand at the threshold of new ways of fighting or determining wars through cybernetics and automated troop control. These developments are pregnant with possibilities, not least of which is the impact they will have on the balance between attrition and maneuver in warfare. Many believe that the emerging military revolution (EMR) elevates information above both weapons of attrition and maneuver, thus allowing them to be applied with sensationally accurate results. This will be a military revolution characterized by the ubiquitous employment of microprocessors throughout military force structures. The technology feeding this revolution does not destroy anything nor indeed transport physical objects such as troops and equipment over vast distances. Rather, it permits the precise application of pure force against an enemy’s vital centers of gravity, and it supports the assembly and deployment of forces in space and time so as to maximize their operational impact and minimize their own vulnerability
Today, the pace of innovation in every aspect of military life is rapid, including communications, transport, building and education; but, as we have noted above, nowhere has it been made more hectic than in the military sciences. The reason is that the military powers spend record amounts of money on military research and development. For instance, this is about 100 times as much in real terms as they spent before 1939. Spending by the early 1960s probably exceeded four times what they were spending at the height of the Second World War. A new industrial and economic revolution was well underway even before the Cold War reached its zenith . It is worth recalling that many on the British left, were predicting that the planned economies of the Soviet Union and those of its satellites in Central and Eastern Europe would produce even more spectacular results than their capitalist counterparts whose economies lacked proper planning mechanisms . Few, then, would have predicted the collapse of central planning and the demise of the socialist command economies and their bloated communist political systems. Yet, the triumph of the open society and its economy was not and is not inevitable. But, as we approach the turn of the century, we certainly are entitled to be optimistic about the future of capitalist democracy. The global economy is a fact: worldwide markets have been opened up to competition as trade volumes reach new heights .
Military technology influences the cause of war, its tactics and strategy. The disappearance of a massive unidirectional threat has refocused minds on the appearance of less precise or predictable risks with potential for escalation and spillover. Consequently, the definition of security is broadening after having a very narrow focus during the period of the War. The term, ‘security’, being so widely and literally interpreted, deserves some clarification. In its current, all-embracing sense, it is a product of the twentieth century, being used in this form to describe past aspirations for ‘collective security . Modern military technology is used to resolve conflicts that might endanger peace, and defence as any deterrent or retaliatory action by countries to secure their territorial integrity and protect their vital interests. Yet, it would, of course, be overly simplistic to claim that defence begins when security has failed. Defensive tasks typically take place concurrently with security, such as the building of air-defence infrastructures, pre-positioning of forces and the maintenance of nuclear deterrence. It is unhelpful and contentious to compose an exhaustive list of the elements that go to make up security, as they will vary with circumstances In the case of combat operations in the last few years of the twentieth century, the definition must include territorial integrity, the functioning of the national economy, safeguards against subversion and the preservation of international peace. Also, military strategy must be pursued by a combination of diplomatic, military and economic means. The challenges to future fall broadly into two categories: ‘hard’ security and ‘soft’ security. ‘Hard’ security issues are characterized by external armed attack against the land mass or the threat of mass destruction and are broadly issues of defense. Soft security issues form ‘lower-level’ threats including the collapse of democratic forms of government, international organized crime, mass migration, poverty and social problems around the European perimeter and dependence on raw materials .
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