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continuing...

That technology shapes warfare not war is easier to see today than it was back during WWII, and certainly much easier than it was during WWI.

Like the air we breathe and the water we drink, it is unfortunate but true that for as long as Homo erectus has been around, so hasn’t war. It is timeless and universal. The fact that our species has used it as a tool to impact society’s development for over 1.6 million years, since we first started walking upright, makes one wonder if all of the cries for peace coming from the liberal left isn’t just one big waste of time? Does anyone really believe that the mere act of wanting a world at peace is going to bring one? Does anyone really think that if one element of society gives up war, all the others will too? Haven’t the wars stemming from religious intolerance made the case that man has found a way to usurp even the most beautiful part of man’s thoughts—belief in a good and peaceful God—such that rather than religion being a cause for good, it now has become a cause for war? Let’s face it, war is here to stay.

If so, then what of technology’s impact on it?

Ahhhh… we got you. You see, that’s a trick question. It’s a trick question because if one looks at the graphic below, one will see that technology has no impact on war. Instead, it’s impact is on warfare.

What’s the difference, you ask? Consider this: our current President is busy trying to reduce America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. He’s also busy shelving the research Reagan started into ways and means of shooting down ICBMs and other offense postured missiles (especially during their boost stage) and satellites. If our premise here that war impacts technology, and technology impacts warfare, and warfare impacts war is right, then doing away with nuclear weapons or missile defense shields isn’t going to do a darn thing when it comes to stopping or preventing war. All it is going to do is impact our ability to fight it when it inevitably comes.

Look at the graphic and you can see that being without nukes or missile defense systems won’t deter an aggressor from attacking… to the contrary, it might even incent one to attack sooner. But it most definitely will impact how we fight any such war that an aggressor might start. A weak military posture invites strong actions against us by those who oppose us. And if we toss our best technology into the scrap heap of history, all this will do is multiply the strong response by those who oppose us by a factor of five or more. The increase in the strength of their response will be exponential folks, not linear.

To be clear, by warfare we mean the conduct of war. In other words, the broil and scrimmage of arms in the field, or the deployment and management of armed forces in the exercise of conflict. Warfare entails what we learned of in OCS as operations, whether or not it involves engaging opposing forces directly, or via some other organized form of violence, kinetic, or non-kinetic action.

War on the other hand is little more than a condition. It is the condition of circumstance that a state or government finds itself in. While warfare (i.e. the physical activity conducted by armed forces in the context of war) can determine the final condition of circumstance that a government may be saddled with when a war is over, the fact that a country or people are in a state of war cannot determine the mode of warfare that is used to impact the final result of the conflict. Only technology can do that.

So, in the end, if a country wants to have control over the final state it finds itself in when a war ends, then it has to develop a credible means to conduct warfare. And if the desire is to be able to use warfare in a credible manner to impact the end state of a war, then that same country needs to master the use of technology to underwrite its mode of warfare… emerging technology in particular.

By now our astute readers will ask, What about diplomacy? Can’t it be used to win a war or affect its outcome? Why only warfare?

Clearly, the answer is yes, diplomacy can impact the final state of a war. However, unlike von Clausewitz, we would not say that “war is an expression of politics by another means,” instead we would say that politics (i.e. diplomacy) is an expression of war by another means. In other words, diplomacy, or what von Clausewitz calls politics, is in reality just another method of warfare. Our point then being that warfare is the overarching entity that determines society’s advance, not politics.

We say this because in our view the methods of political control over people that have come and gone through the ages have had less of an impact on society’s advancement than warfare has. Everything from dictatorships, monarchies, empires, and strange things like the old Hanseatic League through to internal revolutions, anarchy, democracy, communism, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Mao Tse Tung's thought, the teachings of Che Guevera, and much, much more has been tried. And one by one they have all fallen by the wayside or failed at giving people what they want. The only thing that has remained consistent throughout time has been the use of warfare to gain for a society that which it could not gain by political means. Unlike politics, warfare has proven its enduring ability to either protect or restore to a people the form of society that they wish to live in. Don’t mistake what we are saying here. We are not saying that war is good, only that if one looks again at the "Cause Of Effect" graphic above one will easily see that diplomacy, politics, and the state a country or society exists in are all impacted by technology.

This moves us to our next point: understanding what the impact of technology is on warfare.

Since wording is important in our making our case, let us say with specificity what we mean by the impact of technology on warfare. Here we mean that technology defines, rules, restricts, and demarcates how a war is fought. It presages how warfare will take place, and once warfare begins it (i.e. technology) becomes the instrument of warfare.

If forced to distill all of this into one word, the greatest impact technology has on warfare is that it alters it. Referring back to our discussion above about politics and diplomacy, one can see that if diplomacy is just another form of technology, then as it evolves it too can impact how a war is fought. That is, thinking of a new form of diplomacy as merely an emerging form of an existing technology, one can see (and even hope) that perhaps it might be able to take the rough edges off of the conduct of a given war… perhaps even to the point of resolving the war in an end state that the people of both sides can approve of. But, if this new “diplomatic technology” proves unable to win the war, then the combatants had better hope that their “other technologies” are up to the task… or else one side or the other will find itself in the position of the Third Reich at the end of WWII.

All in all then, technology both provides and is the chief source of military advancement, i.e. the advancement of warfare. And yes, we include diplomacy and politics within the term “military.” Technology impels changes in warfare more than any other factor, but it does not determine warfare. Underneath it all, warfare is impacted and greatly enabled by technology, but without technology warfare will continue to exist. The reason is that what we commonly refer to as the “principles of war” exist regardless of whether technology evolves or doesn’t… or for that matter even exists, and in the end it’s the principles of war that determine warfare. What do we mean by the principles of war?

In our case the term principles of war refers to the body of knowledge that a commander needs to know to conduct warfare. Strategy and tactics are included here, as are those elements that comprise a commander’s understanding of how to wage warfare. Among these are included the concepts of friction, the fog of war, chance, violence, intelligence, use of terrain, the element of surprise, maneuver, maximum advantage, planning, critical mass, economy of force, intelligence and communication security, concentration of force, overwhelming force, convergent attacks, command and control, unity of command, and much, much more. From this we can see that technology defines warfare, but it does not determine how it is fought. It presides in warfare, but it does not rule warfare.

So what does rule warfare and determine the outcome of war? For that answer, we are afraid you will have to come back next month when we continue our discussion with the Effect of Technology on Human Agency. Clearly, from this little hint you can see that in our view Human Agency, brought to bear on warfare, determines both the sate of and outcome of war. How well it does this is in great measure determined by how well Human Agency utilizes the emerging technologies at its disposal to modify and implement a more effective mode of warfare

Next Month: Human Agency And Technology Create Winning Warfare

 

- - -     Epilogue     - - -

As Raphael demonstrated in 1509, Causal Power is intrinsic to “Prime Mover” status. In the world we live in today, having Causal Power is an ontological feature of being human. Restating this, one could say that in many cases human beings hold Causal Power and therefore are able to exercise it in ways able to change the existing world. One such way is by acting on technology to become its Prime Mover. Much as early believers in 1509 thought God did when setting the universe first in place and then in motion, people today use Human Agency as the Prime Mover force to leverage technology to alter the heavens. Not by filling them with stars, but with society-altering armament.

Human Agency, acting on technology, allows the creation of new forms of warfare, which have the capability of affecting and altering the end condition of war.

Adding to this theory of critical realism is the opposing axiom that regardless of the number of society altering arms one set of Prime Mover's can place in the heavens, other Prime Movers will be able to leverage technology to defeat their utility... if, that is, they understand that technology shapes warfare, and they have used every mode of emerging technology that they can get their hands on to open as many doors to Human Agency as possible.

With this in mind, it makes one wonder: how much wisdom is there in reducing the size of a nation's nuclear arsenal, or shuttering its missile defense shield research, merely to make the rest of the world feel better?

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