Paradigm Shifts and Warfighting Lag
In his 1959 work, Strategy in the Missile Age, nuclear theorist Bernard Brodie looked back at World War I as the likeliest parallel to his atomic era for how technological change obviated cherished strategic, operational, and tactical approaches to warfighting. While presaged by the American Civil War and the Russo-Japanese War, the Great War saw the apotheosis of mechanized fighting and the deadly employment of machine guns, armor, aerial attack, gas weapons, and massed artillery. What lagged behind was the human equation, with leading generals unable to adapt tactics and operations as quickly as new warfighting technologies made them horrifically costly.
Brodie writes that World War I
“completely baffled the military leaders who had to fight it. They were not incompetent men, but they had been reared under a regime of maxims and precepts which bore no relation to the situation in which they found themselves. Their ability to make reasonable deductions from the events in which they were caught up seemed to be paralyzed by the very magnitude of those events.”
Brodie, of course, was comparing such inability to grasp new realities with the paradigm shift in military thinking brought about by nuclear weapons, and was preparing the ground to argue that planning for limited nuclear war should be adopted by the nation’s military strategists.
Today, Brodie’s observations on paradigm shifts and warfighting lag are once again valuable. There is much discussion of asymmetric weapons systems, disruptive technologies, and new warfighting frontiers. Concerns over anti-ship ballistic missiles, hypersonic cruise missiles, cyber warfare, and electro-magnetic pulse are getting increasing attention by military thinkers. Yet, it is hard to avoid the sense that technology is outstripping our ability to conceptualize not merely tactical response but even strategic calculations. Our network-linked force is more lethal than ever before, but that in turn now makes it possibly among the most vulnerable. Are our warfighters, and their supporting circles, truly prepared for a conflict that might obviate the vast and crucial advantages the U.S. military now possesses over any other force on earth? The standing up of Cyber Command is a much needed response to the changing nature of warfare, but it will have the double duty of implementing currently needed defensive measures while staying ahead of a contstantly changing technological curve.
The full scope of U.S. strategic vulnerability remains poorly understood. How realistic are the scenarios planners are playing in which U.S. military screens go black, or are any of them doing in-depth reviews of the failure of strategic plans on the Western Front in WWI? Such thought-exercises will make the unknown a little more manageable for tomorrow’s military leaders.
Michael Auslin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
