Modern Warfare and Its Evolving Weapons – Assumptions and Inherent Contradictions

1. See Barry Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 5–46; Robert J. Lieber, The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 35.
2. The Holland 1 submarine entered into service in the British Royal Navy in 1901. Sir Archibald Hurd said of the submarine in 1902 that, “The submarine is not an honest weapon. It suggests the foot pad, the garrotte, and the treacherous knife dug in an opponent’s back when he is off guard.”
3. See Morton Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (New York: Wiley, 1957).
4. See Robert O.Work, “Winning the Race: A Naval Fleet Platform Architecture for Enduring Maritime Supremacy” (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2005), p. 20-31.
5. Richard Haass, “What Follows American Dominion?” Financial Times, April 15, 2008.
6. See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).
7. Idem.
Modern Warfare and Its Evolving Weapons – Assumptions and … 17
8. See Mary L. Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences Oxford University Press, USA.
9. C4ISR is Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveil-lance, and Reconnaissance. Sometimes it is written as C4ISTAR, with the extra TA being Target Acquisition. C4ISR is enabled by networks, and hence provides network-enabled capability (NEC) or network-centric warfare (NCW).
10. Strategically, sea power was always the great enabler for British land power. The jibe that the British Army was a projectile fired by the Navy had a point. Famously, A. T. Mahan (Rear Admiral of the U.S. Navy) wrote of the British Royal Navy that, “Those far-distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the domination of the world.” Arguably, the Battle of Waterloo was won not on the playing fields of Eton, as Montalembert suggested, but in the Atlantic off Cape Trafalgar.
11. The effectiveness of C2 depends on technology, but not absolutely. C2 of limited scope can be achieved with basic technology. Nelson’s subordinate commanders, his “band of brothers,” knew what was in his mind, and therefore needed only a few flag signals to implement his battle plan. At the Battle of Jutland in 1915 Jellicoe’s C2 was obscured literally and figuratively by smoke. The calcification of British naval C2 between Trafalgar and Jutland is well described by Andrew Gordon in his book The Rules of the Game.
12. This logarithmic expansion is usually expressed in terms of the so-called Moore’s Law. It has many formulations, but one of the more common is that the numbers of transistors on integrated circuits (a rough measure of computer processing power) doubles every 24 months. Moore made his original observation in 1965, expecting it to remain true for at least 10 years; it is still holding good today. It has been said that if Moore’s Law was applied in the airline industry, a flight from New York to Paris, which in 1978 cost $900 and took 7 hours, would now cost about $0.01 and take less than one second.
13. See Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2010: Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 157–188.
14. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy,” International Security, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Spring 2006), pp. 7–44.
15. Mats Berdal, “The UN Security Council: Ineffective but indispensable.” Survival, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2003, pp. 7-30.
16. See Rodney Bruce Hall, “Moral authority as a power resource.” International Organization, Vol. 51, No. 4, 1997, p. 591-622.
17. See Bethany Encina and Nils Petter Gleditch, “Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths,” European Journal of Population, Vol. 21, Nos. 2/3 (June 2005), pp. 145–166. Bruce Russett, “Peace in the Twenty-First Century?” Current History, January 2010, p. 9.
18. See Benjamin Miller, “Explaining Changes in U.S. Grand Strategy: 9/11, the Rise of Offensive Liberalism, and the War in Iraq,” Security Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Fall 2011), pp. 26–65; Mats Berdal, “The UN after Iraq,” Survival, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2004, p. 83-101; Jane Boulden, Thomas G. Weiss, “Tactical Multilateralism: Coaxing America back to the UN, Survival, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2004, pp. 103-114.
19. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute…, op. cit., p. 182.
20. A 2005 Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) report for the Lounsbery Foundation (NATO Science and Technology, Trends,
18 Richard Rousseau
Challenges, and Priorities for Reform, November 2005), drew attention to the need for NATO to support scientific work in the “intellect-rich, budget-poor” nations of the alliance.
21. Bruce D. Porter, “The Warfare State,” American Heritage, Vol. 45, No. 4 (July/August 1994), p. 52.
22. See Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus & the American Military Adventure in Iraq 2006-08, Penguin Press, 2009.
23. A 2005 Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) report for the Lounsbery Foundation (NATO Science and Technology, Trends, Challenges, and Priorities for Reform, November 2005), drew attention to the need for NATO to support scientific work in the “intellect-rich, budget-poor” nations of the alliance.
24. See Christopher Layne and Bradley Thayer, American Empire: A Debate (New York: Routledge, 2006); Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of American Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004); Josef Joffe, Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), pp. 27–28; Daniel Nexon and Thomas Wright, “What’s at Stake in the American Empire Debate,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 101, No. 2 (May 2007), p. 253.
25. See Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent, “Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Spring 2011), pp. 7–44; Christopher Layne, “The Waning of U.S. Hegemony—Myth or Reality? A Review Essay,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Summer 2009), pp. 147–172.
26. See DeborahWelch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko, “Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Responses to U.S. Primacy,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Spring 2010), pp. 63–95.
27. Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson III, “Rage against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in CounterinsurgencyWars,” International Organization, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Winter 2009), pp. 67–106.
28. Reid Sarkees and Frank Wayma, Resort to War: A Data Guide to Inter-state, Extra-state, Intra-state, and Non-state Wars, 1816–2007 (Washington D.C.: CQ Press, 2010).
29. See Robert A. Pape, “Empire Falls,” National Interest, No. 99 (January/February 2009), pp. 21–34; Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong, The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money (New York: Basic Books, 2010).
30. See Jonathan D. Caverley, “Death and Taxes: Sources of Democratic Military Aggression,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 337 pages.
31. 31See John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), p. 33-45.
32. Reid Sarkees and Frank Wayma, Resort to War: A Data…, op. cit., pp. 74-89.
33. See G. John Ikenberry, “Democracy, Institutions, and American Restraint,” in Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivalled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 207, 224–227.
34. See Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 137–168; Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987).
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35. See Jack Snyder, Robert Shapiro, and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, “Free Hand Abroad, Divide and Rule at Home,” World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009), p. 155; Stephen M. Walt, “Alliances in a Unipolar World,” World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 94–95.
36. See D. Scott Bennett and Allan C. Stam, “The Declining Advantages of Democracy: A Combined Model of War Outcomes and Duration,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 42, No. 3 (June 1998), pp. 344–366; Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003); Darren Filson and Suzanne Werner, “Bargaining and Fighting: The Impact of Regime Type on War Onset, Duration, and Outcomes,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Fall 2004), pp. 296–313; Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).
37. See John J. Mearsheimer, “Reckless States and Realism,” International Relations, Vol. 23, No. 2 (June 2009), pp. 241–256.
38. See Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States’ Unipolar Moment,” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 61-83; John Ikenberry, Michael Mastanduno, and William C. Wohlforth, “Introduction: Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences,” World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009), p. 25.
39. James Fearon, David Laitin, “Neotrusteeship and the problem of weak States,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2004, p. 5-43.
40. See I use Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 2. See Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 12; Barry Posen and Andrew L. Ross, “Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 5–53.
41. Bethany Encina and Nils Petter Gleditch, “Monitoring Trends in Global…, op. cit., p.33-46.
42. See, Headquarters Department of the Army Washington, DC, Counterinsurgency, Marine Corps Warfighting Publication, December 2006
43. See Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping, 17 June, 1992. Available at: http://www.un.org/ Docs/SG/agpeace.html
44. See Gareth Evans, “When is it right to fight?”, Survival, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2004, pp. 59-82.
45. See Brian URQUHART, “Security after the Cold War In: A. Roberts, B. Kingsbury (Ed.), United Nations, Divided World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
46. See Peter Viggo JAKOBSEN, “The Transformation of United Nations Peace Operations in the 1990s: Globalization Adding to the Conventional "End of the Cold War Explanation,” Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 37, No. 3, 2002, p. 267-282; Thomas Weiss, David Forsythe, Roger Coate, The United Nations and Changing World Politics, Boulder: Westview Press, 2001.
47. See Peter Walleensteen, Patrik Johansson, “Security Council Decisions in Perspective, In: D. Malone (Ed.), The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004.
48. See Michael Barnette, “UN Security Council, Indifference, and Genocide in Rwanda,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1997, p. 551-578, 1997.
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49. See Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), p. 5-19; Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p. 86; Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); William C. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,” International Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999), p. 8-36.
50. See Robert S. Ross and Zhu Feng, eds., China’s Ascent: Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008); and Randall L. Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu, “After Unipolarity: China’s Visions of International Order in an Era of U.S. Decline,” International Security, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Summer 2011), pp. 41–72.