Thomas G. Mahnken. Technology and the American Way of War since 1945. New York Columbia University Press, 2010. 256 pp. $26.50 (paper), ISBN 978-0-231-12337-2.
Thomas G. Mahnken.
Technology and the American Way of War since
1945. New
York Columbia University Press,
2010. 256 pp. $26.50
(paper), ISBN 978-0-231-12337-2.
Reviewed by Tal Tovy (Bar Ilan University)
Published on H-War (October, 2012)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey
>From the dawn of history, armies have sought ways to
overcome their
enemies. They have, for example, used various forms of
technology for
military systems and warfare. Sometimes they included
civilian
technology that had been adapted for military use, and at
other
times, they focused solely on the product of military
research and
development. But the ultimate aim was the same: to obtain
an
advantage and victory over the enemy.
Technology in the service of war raises two fundamental
questions:
how does certain technology affect warfare and wars? And
does that
technology bring about revolutionary change on the
battlefield? These
two questions merge into a fascinating discussion on the
phenomenon
of the military revolution. Military revolutions begin
with
technological changes and end with far-reaching
alterations in social
structure. The most important and critical revolution was
the
discovery of gunpowder which had worldwide influence.
Historical
military revolutions occurred over very long periods of
time, even
centuries. This fact has led certain researchers to argue
that what
we have here is not revolution but a gradual development,
and
evolution. This debate is still ongoing.
In his new book, _Technology and the American Way of War
since 1945_,
Thomas G. Mahnken raises a further question. How does
technology
change warfare methods and the warfare of a specific
country, in his
case, the United States? This is a comprehensive study
that includes
a discussion of the military technological developments
that have
become integrated into the various branches of the
American military
system, from the end of the Second World War until the
first decade
of the twenty-first century, the era of war against
global terror.
The six chapters of the book examine chronologically
these
developments within their historical contexts.
The central topic in Mahnken's book is the interaction of
technology
with the military and operational culture of the U.S.
Armed Forces
within the strategic framework in which the American
forces were
active. The book also examines the interaction between
technology and
service culture. Mahnken's main claim is that although
service
culture was influenced by technology, it was the armed
services that
adapted the technology for their operational needs.
The discussion on the connection between technology and
service
culture turns the book into a kind of introduction to
understanding
the joint operations process that has engaged the
American military
system for the past three decades. It is not possible to
comprehend
the extreme complexities in activating joint operations
without
understanding the special military and operational
culture of each
service. By examining this connection, Mahnken has made
an important
contribution to those researching the historical and
theoretical
sources of the joints operations process and the many
problematic
issues involved in the shaping of an integrated system.
As Mahnken shows, the cultural differences between each
service
culture makes each service unique. A service culture
includes
accumulated reservoirs of information, operational experience,
warfare doctrine, educational models, and even ceremonial
niceties
that distinguish one service from another. Service
culture is what
stands counter to joint operations.[1] The military high
commands as
well as the civilian ranks in the Pentagon are aware that
bringing
all the armed services to fight in cooperation with each
other
requires more of a cultural change than a change in
doctrine. This is
no easy matter. In the Pentagon and in military
academies, there are
voices claiming that joint operations can be achieved by
education
(at all command levels) and not by the shaping of a
doctrine. Only
after making cultural changes, some argue, it is possible
to develop
a doctrine and to instill it among the armed services.[2]
The book examines the United States Army in the years
following the
Second World War, a period that is divided into two
subperiods that
begin with military revolutions. The Cold War began with
the nuclear
revolution while the period that followed began in tandem
with the
information revolution, which is still continuing today.
The chapters
focus attention on two parallel processes. The first is
how the
changing strategic environment has influenced military
service. The
second is the interaction with technology in which the
aim of each
service was to remain relevant within the changing
strategic
environment. These processes stress the considerable
differences
among service cultures, and have led to competition
between them over
budgets, research and development, and equipment. This
competition
has also created separate warfare doctrines; different
means of
warfare with minimal cooperation; and as Mahnken shows,
the
integration of new technologies that emphasized
differences between
the services and were intended to maintain the relevance
of the
service during the Cold War and afterward. Mahnken's
thesis can be
exemplified by the army's and navy's attempts to remain
relevant
within the strategic framework of nuclear warfare in view
of the
rising strategic strength of the United States Air Force.
During the 1950s, the size of the army was reduced since
the United
States depended on its nuclear powers in the framework of
the
Eisenhower administration's Massive Retaliation policy.
This policy
determined that for every Communist threat, the United
States would
retaliate with fully military force, which meant the use
of nuclear
weapons. The 1950s also marked the beginning of military
thinking
that dealt with the doctrinal, strategic, and operative
nature of
Limited War, as presented by the Korean War. In this
atmosphere, the
army focused on justifying its existence as a
conventional force in
an era of nuclear warfare. One of the ways to do this was
by arming
its fighting forces with tactical nuclear weapons, such
as short
range missiles, mines, and even artillery shells. The
Korean War
helped the army to show that a conventional fighting
force was still
relevant, even if the character of warfare had changed.
The dominant
trends during the Eisenhower administration changed only
during the
Kennedy administration, which began once again to
increase the
conventional forces of the United States in the framework
of the
Flexible Response policy. The basic principle of this
doctrine was
that for every threat, a suitable military response
should be given,
and there was no doubt that nuclear force could not be
used in
guerrilla warfare, the type of confrontation that was so
widespread
during the John F. Kennedy period.
The United States Navy also found itself pushed aside
during the
first decade of the Cold War. In spite of its historic
independence,
the navy was forced to justify its relevance in the
nuclear age,
because the sole enemy of the United States, the Soviet
Union, had a
land-based strategic orientation. Therefore, the navy was
left
without any strategic task.[3] The navy's position was
presented
through the arguments regarding the shaping of the
strategic national
security of the United States. The essence of the
argument was over
the ways to activate the naval forces in any situation of
conventional warfare and in a scenario of nuclear war.
Naval military
thinking depended on Alfred Thayer Mahan's geo-strategic
philosophy,
which explained why control over the sea was important
for U.S.
national security. The navy was perceived as the
country's first line
of defense, and its main task was to prevent any attack
on the United
States. This perception was offensive and not defensive,
not to meet
acts of aggression but to destroy any potential enemy
near its own
bases. But postwar technological developments brought the
United
States under the threat of long-range bombers and at the
end of the
1950s also of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).
In reaction
to the developments relating to nuclear weapons and the
development
of the ICBM which was the responsibility of the air
force,
justification for the continued maintenance of aircraft
carriers was
apparently diminished. The navy's response was to develop
the Polaris
missile and to build submarines powered by nuclear
energy.[4]
Aircraft carriers lost their preeminence to the nuclear
submarines of
the Nautilus type which were equipped with Polaris
missiles.
Here also lies a certain problematic aspect of Mahnken's
thesis.
There is no doubt that the strategic environment had
changed,
sometimes in a revolutionary manner, and that to continue
being
relevant it was necessary for the services to develop
appropriate
technologies and means of warfare. But the course of the
Cold War
proved just the opposite. The existence of a nuclear
arsenal in the
hands of two superpowers led to a nuclear arms race, but
it also led
to a conventional arms race because nuclear weapons
created a balance
of terror. Aircraft carriers are a good example of this,
contrary to
those who had lamented its demise after the introduction
of Polaris
missiles and nuclear submarines into navy's service.
Communist inspired guerrilla warfare (according to
American
perceptions) that threatened political stability in many
places in
the world strengthened the need for mobile military
forces. The
aircraft carrier was the ideal operational solution and
the main tool
that served to carry out an obstruction policy. Therefore
the
operational importance of the aircraft carrier was
restored. American
air power could be placed near the centers of potential
threat
without violating a state's sovereignty. Aircraft
carriers did not
need permanent land bases and could make a sudden strike
on enemy
airfields and other strategic targets or alternatively to
bring down
any bomber that was making its way to the United
States.[5] By
shaping this strategy, the navy acquired the
justification for
continued maintenance of a fleet of aircraft carriers.
Moreover, the
navy aircraft service did not suffer from the problems
encountered by
the strategic air force, which had to have permanent land
bases, and
thus required complex diplomatic maneuvers vis-à-vis
North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) members and other allies.[6]
The Korean War also helped to prove that the navy fleet
of ships in
general and the aircraft carriers in particular had not
become
obsolete. The American aircraft carriers that navigated
along the
western side of the Pacific Ocean were the first to
respond to North
Korea's surprise attack. The American navy had complete
control over
the sea and air space around the Korean Peninsula until
land control
was achieved. The North Korean navy was neutralized
during the first
stages of the war while the Chinese fleet never posed any
practical
threat.[7] During the 1950s, the American navy's task in
the western
Pacific also included a show of strength in the Straits
of Formosa in
order to prevent China from invading Taiwan, as well as
keeping track
of the Russian submarine fleet in Vladivostok. The
presence of the
aircraft carriers of the Seventh Fleet in the region of
the Straits
of Formosa was vital and prevented deterioration to a
general state
of war between Taiwan and China.[8] This presence, still
maintained
today, exemplifies how the very existence of an aircraft
carrier in a
region of tension may have the power to prevent
widespread
confrontations. At the height of the second crisis
between the two
Chinese states (August 1958), there were six aircraft
carriers in the
region. The United States had sent its aircraft carriers
to nearly
all regions of the world where there was a prospective
threat to its
interests or national safety, such as the East
Mediterranean, Latin
American, Africa, and East Asia. Many examples can be
found, and each
additional one only strengthens the claim regarding the
decisive role
played by aircraft carriers from the American
perspective.
Mahnken's book provides an important discussion and broad
view of the
warfare perceptions of the United States after the Second
World War.
The book traces the dynamic historical process in the
link between
technology and the conduct of war, and thus constitutes
an important
tier to U.S. military history research during the past
six decades.
Although it may seem that the book is a catalogue of all
the
technologies and means of warfare of the United States in
air, sea,
and land (and in space), a careful reading shows the
importance of
understanding which technologies were brought into use, what
caused
its need, and how it changed the battle situation and the
American
method of warfare.
This book may also serve those who are researching the
general
influence of technology on warfare, with the United
States as a test
case. In this field, several studies have already been
written, such
as Martin van
Creveld's_ Technology and War_ (1989), Christopher
Bellamy's _The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare_ (1990),
and Max
Boot's _War Made New_ (2006). Mahnken's book offers important
additional knowledge about the mutual interactions
between technology
and the phenomenon of war. Another historiographical
framework within
which the book may be placed is the ongoing discussion
about the
process that in the 1990s was called the Revolution in
Military
Affairs (RMA). Although the term has apparently become
defunct, the
essential discussion remains with regard to the
information
technology with which the American armed forces are
equipped and are
using. We therefore have here an important work based on
broad-ranged
and updated secondary sources for the understanding of a
variety of
historical and current phenomena and processes that are
still in a
state of emergence and that deeply concern the shapers of
U.S. policy
and strategy.
Notes
[1]. Bernard E. Trainor, "Jointness, Service Culture
and the Gulf
War," _Joint Force Quarterly_ 3 (1993-94): 71.
[2]. See, for example, Lawrence B. Wilkerson, "What
Exactly Is
Jointness?" _Joint Force Quarterly_ 16 (1997):
66-68.
[3]. George W. Bear, _One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The
U.S. Navy,
1890-1990_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994),
275.
[4]. On the Polaris missile and the competition between
the navy and
the air force, see Michael T. Isenberg, _Shield of the
Republic: The
United States Navy in an Era of Cold War and Violent
Peace_, vol. 1,
_1945-1962 _(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993),
668-687.
[5]. Carl H. Builder, _The Masks of War: American
Military Styles in
Strategy and Analysis_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press,
1989), 74-75. Stationed on American aircraft carriers
were
eighty-five planes of different types, two-thirds of
which were
combat aircraft and bombers (F-14 and F/A-18).
[6]. David Miller, _The Cold War: A Military History
_(New York:
Thomas Dunne Books, 1999), 196. For example, when the war
began in
Afghanistan (2001), the United States did not have land
bases from
which it could launch air attacks. Participating in the
initial
attacks were bombers based in the United States (B-2 and
B-1B) or on
the island of Diego Garcia (B-52), but to maintain
continuity and
sequence in those attacks, they also used planes from
aircraft
carriers.
[7]. Bear, _One Hundred Years of Sea Power_, 321-331.
[8]. J. P. D. Dunbabin, _The Cold War: The Great Powers
and Their
Allies _(New York: Longman, 1994), 139-141; Patrick
Brogan, _The
Fighting Never Stopped: A Comprehensive Guide to World
Conflict since
1945_ (New York: Vintage, 1990), 169-170; and C. J.
Bartlett, _The
Global Conflict_ (New York: Longman, 1994), 321-323,
326-327.
Citation: Tal Tovy. Review of Mahnken, Thomas G.,
_Technology and the
American Way of War since 1945_. H-War, H-Net Reviews.
October, 2012.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United
States
License.