Fluent Essays

The French Revolution and After” in The Dynamics of Military Revolution · The requirement is a short review (400-500 words). · The review focuses on the specific article assigned for H103: H103: MacGregor Knox, “Mass Politics and Nationalism as Military Revolution: The French Revolution and After” in The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050, MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, eds., New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 57-73. Structure and Format of the “Critical Reviews” Using the components of the critical review (introduction, main body, conclusion), the student will answer the following four questions:             1. What is the author’s thesis?             2. What evidence does the author use to support their argument?             3. Is the argument persuasive?             4.  How does the argument shape your view of your profession and its history? The dynamics of military revolution, 1300-2050 The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 aims to bridge a major gap in the emerging literature on revolutions in military affairs. It suggests that two very different phenomena have been at work over the past cen- turies: "military revolutions," which are driven by vast social and political changes, and "revolutions in military affairs," which military institutions have directed, although usually with great difficulty and ambiguous results. The work provides a conceptual framework and historical context for understanding the patterns of change, innovation, and adaptation that have marked war in the Western world since the fourteenth century - beginning with Edward Ill's revolution in medieval warfare, through the development of modern military institutions in seventeenth-century France, to the military impact of mass politics in the French Revolution, the cata- clysmic military-industrial struggle of 1914-1918, and the German Blitzkrieg victories of 1940. The work's case studies and conceptual over- view offer an indispensable introduction to revolutionary military change - which is as inevitable as it is difficult to predict - in the twenty- first century. MacGregor Knox served in Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and is now Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His other works include Mussolini Unleashed, 1939-1941; Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; and Hitler's Italian Allies. Williamson Murray served with the United States Air Force in Southeast Asia. He has taught at Yale University, the Ohio State University, the Naval War College, the Army War College and Marine Corps University. His extensive work on twentieth-century military history includes co-author- ship of the acclaimed history A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War. The dynamics of military revolution, 1300-2050 The dynamics of military revolution 1300-2050 Edited by MACGREGOR KNOX The London School of Economics and Political Science WILLIAMSON MURRAY Institute for Defense Analyses ffil C A M B R I D G E ^ P > UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521800792 © MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray 2001 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2001 12th printing 2009 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The dynamics of military revolution, 1300-2050 / [edited by ] MacGregor Knox, Williamson Murray. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-80079-X 1. Strategy - History. 2. Military art and science - History. 3. Revolutions - Europe - History. 4. Military history, Modern. 5. Europe - History, Military. 6. United States - History - Civil War, 1861-1865. I. Knox, MacGregor II. Murray, Williamson D25 D96 2001 355.02-dc21 00-066704 ISBN 978-0-521-80079-2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents Contributors page xi Acknowledgments xiii List of figures and tables xiv i Thinking about revolutions in warfare 1 Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox 2 "As if a new sun had arisen": England's fourteenth-century RMA 15 Clifford J. Rogers 3 Forging the Western army in seventeenth-century France John A. Lynn 4 Mass politics and nationalism as military revolution: The French Revolution and after 57 MacGregor Knox 5 Surviving military revolution: The U.S. Civil War 74 Mark Grimsley 6 The Prusso-German RMA, 1840-1871 92 Dennis E. Showalter 7 The battlefleet revolution, 1885-1914 114 Holger H. Herwig 8 The First World War and the birth of modern warfare 132 Jonathan B. A. Bailey 9 May 1940: Contingency and fragility of the German RMA 154 Williamson Murray 10 Conclusion: The future behind us 175 Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox Index 195 IX 35 Contributors Brigadier Jonathan B. A. Bailey MBE, ADC Director Royal Artillery British Army Mark Grimsley Professor of History The Ohio State University Holger H. Herwig Professor of Strategy The University of Calgary MacGregor Knox Stevenson Professor of Internation; History The London School of Economics and Political Science John A. Lynn Professor of History The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Williamson Murray Senior Fellow Institute for Defense Analyses Clifford J. Rogers Professor of History The United States Military Academy Dennis E. Showalter Professor of History Colorado College XI Acknowledgments This book has been long in gestation, but the issues it addresses are not likely to disappear soon. We owe thanks above all to our contributors for their skill and patience. We remain abidingly grateful to The Marine Corps University and The Marine Corps University Foundation, Quantico, Virginia, for the generous support and hospitality they offered to the April 1996 conference on "Historical Parameters of Revolutions in Military Affairs" from which this book evolved. Finally, we wish to express our lasting appreciation to Andrew W. Marshall, always a light in the darkness, for his contributions over many years to the understanding of military effectiveness, and to the security of the United States and of its allies. All have added in one way or another to the book's strengths; its remaining weaknesses are above all our responsibility. MACGREGOR KNOX WILLIAMSON MURRAY London Alexandria, Virginia xiu Figures and tables F I G U R E S 3.1 French battalion formations, 1622-1750 page 37 3.2 A French infantry battalion deployed for battle, ca. 1670-90 39 3.3 24-pounder French cannon of the Valliere system and de nouvelle invention 42 T A B L E S I . I Revolutions in military affairs and military revolutions 13 3.1 Barrel and shot weight of French cannon, 1650-1800 43 xiv 1 Thinking about revolutions in warfare W I L L I A M S O N M U R R A Y A N D M A C G R E G O R K N O X The term "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) became decidedly fashion- able in the course of the 1990s. It lies at the heart of debates within the Pentagon over future strategy and has gained increasing prominence in Washington's byzantine budgetary and procurement struggles. Yet few works throw light on the concept's past, help situate it or the phenomena it claims to describe within a sophisticated historical framework, or offer much guidance in understanding the potential magnitude and direction of future changes in warfare. This book is an effort to answer those needs. C O N C E P T U A L R O O T S Current notions of revolutions in military affairs derive from two principal sources: early modern historians and Soviet military theorists. The closely related concept of "military revolution" emerged in 1955 in an inaugural lecture by the British historian Michael Roberts.1 Roberts argued that in the early seventeenth century, under the leadership of the warrior-king 1 Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560-1660 (Belfast, 1956), reprinted in Michael Roberts, Essays in Swedish History (London, 1967), and in Clifford J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate, Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO, 1995). For a different view see Geoffrey Parker, "The 'Military Revolution,' 1 5 6 0 - 1 6 6 0 - A M y t h ? " and "In Defense of 'The Military Revolution,'" in Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate. See also Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1988). It is significant that the Rogers book, published in 1995, used the singular of "Revolution" in its title. The extent of scholarly interest is suggested by the following list of articles: Gunther E. Rothenberg, "Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli, and the 'Military Revolution' of the Seventeenth Century," in Peter Paret, Gordon A. Craig, and Felix Gilbert, eds., Makers of Modern (continued) I katie Highlight 2 Murray and Knox Gustavus Adolphus, Sweden had embarked on a military revolution that had swept away traditional approaches to military organization and tactics throughout the West.1 That claim provoked several decades of furious debate over the extent and nature of the changes in sixteenth- and seven- teenth-century warfare.3 In the end, most specialists came to agree that Roberts had been correct in suggesting that European warfare in this period had undergone fundamental systemic changes. But until the 1990s, military historians focused on other periods of Western history had largely ignored the concepts developed in the debate that Roberts had opened.4 The second major influence on the development of the notion of revolu- tions in military affairs was the writings of Soviet military theorists from the 1960s onward. Marxist-Leninist indoctrination made the Red Army, from its beginnings, receptive to notions of major revolutionary change. Soviet theorists had pioneered in analyzing the overall impact of the First World War on military technique in the 1920s and early 1930s.5 Stalin's attempts to ensure the "security of the rear" and his own uncontested domination by massacring his military elite checked the Red Army's development of mod- ern operational theories from 1937 onward. But the catastrophes of (continued) Strategy (Oxford, 1986); K. J. V. Jespersen, "Social Change and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Some Danish Evidence," The Historical Journal XXVI (1983); Bert S. Hall and Kelly R. Devries, "Review Essay - the 'Military Revolution' Revisited," Technology and Culture (1990); George Raudzens, "War-Winning Weapons: The Measurement of Technological Determinism in Military History," Journal of Military History (1990); David A. Parrott, "Strategy and Tactics in the Thirty Years' War: the 'Military Revolution,'" Militargeschichtliche Mitteilungen (1985) (reprinted in Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate); Edward M. Furgol, "Scotland Turned Sweden: The Scottish Covenanters and the Military Revolution, 1638-1651," in J. Morrill, ed., The Scottish National Covenant in Its British Context (Edinburgh, 1990); and Mahinder S. Kingra, "The trace italienne and the Military Revolution during the Eighty Years' War, 1567-1648," Journal of Military History (1993). One of the best surveys of the period remains Hans Delbriick, History of the Art of War, vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare (Lincoln, NB, 1990). For the context of Roberts's claims for a Swedish military revolution, see his Gustavus Adolphus: A History of Sweden, 1611-1632, II (London, 1958). See particularly Clifford J. Rogers, "The Military Revolution in History and Historiography," in The Military Revolution Debate; see also Parker, "In Defense of 'The Military Revolution,'" ibid. The best introduction to the literature is Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate, but see also William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power, Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since A.D. 1000 (Chicago, 1982), for a wide-ranging discussion of the major issues and trends; Jeremy Black, European Warfare, 1660-1815 (London, 1994) is also worth consulting. On the specific processes on building the modern state through military power see John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Steele: The French Army, 1610- 1715 (Cambridge, 1997) and Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the Modern State (New York, 1993). See especially the 1929 work of V. K. Triandafillov, The Nature of Operations of Modern Armies (London, 1994). katie Highlight katie Highlight katie Highlight Thinking about revolutions in warfare 3 1941 - in which the German Blitzkrieg came close to destroying the Soviet Union - offered an unforgettable demonstration of the possibility of revo- lutionary change in war.6 Soviet operational art belatedly recovered, and by 1945 had surpassed even the achievements of the Germans. From the late 1940s Soviet development of missile and nuclear systems likewise came to rival that of the West. Yet the appearance in the 1970s of striking new technologies within the American armed forces - precision-guided munitions (PGMs), cruise mis- siles, and stealth - suggested to Soviet thinkers that a further technological revolution was taking place that had potentially decisive implications for the Soviet Union. Given their close attention - grounded in ideology - to material factors, the Soviets focused on the technological aspects of what they perceived as an emerging "military-technical revolution." Marshal Nikolai V. Ogarkov, chief of the Soviet general staff from 1977 to 1984, commented that these advances "ma[de] it possible to sharply increase (by at least an order of magnitude) the destructive potential of conventional weapons, bringing them closer, so to speak, to weapons of mass destruction in terms of effectiveness."7 From the Soviet perspective this was a particularly frightening pro- spect. The new "smart" high-technology weapons that the American armed forces were developing and deploying threatened the very bases of Soviet operational art and of Soviet strategy: the immense armored masses, deployed in depth and aimed at swiftly submerging NATO's outnumbered defenders.8 Analysis of the highly effective use the U.S. Air Force had made of laser-guided bombs in the 1972. LINEBACKER air campaigns undoubtedly heightened Soviet unease.9 That discomfiture 6 See among others V. G. Reznichenko, Taktika (Moscow, 1978), p. 9 of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service translation in Joint Publications Research Service Report, "Soviet Union, Military Affairs," JPRS-UMA-88-008-L-1, 29 June 1988; and S. Davydov and V. Chervonobab, "Conventional, but N o Less Dangerous," Energiya: Ekonomika, technika, ekologiya, no. 7, 1987. 7 Interview with Marshal of the Soviet Union N . V. Ogarkov, "The Defense of Socialism: Experience of History and the Present Day," Krasnaya zvezda, 1st ed., 9 May 1984. 8 Soviet and East German planners envisaged reaching the French-Spanish border by D+30-35; see especially Mark Kramer, trans., "Warsaw Pact Military Planning in Central Europe: Revelations from the East German Archives," Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue 2 (1992), pp. 1, 13-19. 9 In the Gulf War of 1991, USAF aircraft used approximately 9,270 precision-guided munitions (PGM) out of 227,100 expended. In the LINEBACKER campaigns, air force aircraft had expended over 29,000 PGMs. The tactical emphasis of the LINEBACKER campaigns had prevented American analysts from seeing anything revolutionary in the greater accuracy of laser-guided bombs. The Soviets, who had access to the North Vietnamese lessons-learned studies as well as the direct results of the Arab-Israeli clashes, concluded otherwise. See Barry D. Watts, "American Air Power," in Williamson Murray, ed., The Emerging Strategic Environment: Challenges of the Twenty-first Century (Westport, CT, 1999). 4 Murray and Knox could only have grown as Soviet planners absorbed the implications of the wide use of air defense suppression weapons and PGM by the Israeli Air Force in the Yom Kippur War and in subsequent air battles against the Soviet Union's Arab proxies.10 At the same time the Soviets were watching U.S. developments such as the "Assault Breaker" program, which aimed at developing short-range ballistic missiles armed with clouds of precision sub-munitions targeted - to the full depth of the theater of war - against the follow-on echelons of any Red Army drive toward the Channel and the Pyrenees. The ability to threaten and - if opportunity arose - to conquer western Europe on the ground after 1944-45 n a d been the basis, even more than the nuclear arsenal acquired from 1949 onward, of Soviet Russia's world position. By the 1970s that position was in mortal peril. Andrew W. Marshall and his Office of Net Assessment within the Pentagon were the first to register the significance of Soviet writings on "military-technical revolution." From the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, the commentaries on Soviet doctrine and on the concept of "revolutions in military affairs" emerging from Net Assessment proved increasingly influential within the U.S. defense community.11 Marshall and his office emphasized above all the conceptual and doc- trinal, rather than the purely technological aspects of RMAs.I Z Net Assessment's explicit use of the term "revolution in military affairs" instead of the Soviet "military-technical revolution" indeed aimed at focusing the attention of the American armed forces on issues far broader than technological change. Marshall also argued repeatedly that the U.S. armed forces had not yet realized a revolution in military affairs, but were in reality no further along than were the British in the mid-1920s when they first began experimenting with armored and mechanized warfare.13 10 See Barry D. Watts and Thomas A. Keany, Effects and Effectiveness, Report II, vol. 2, The Gulf War Air Power Survey (Washington, DC, 1993), pp. 6 7 - 7 1 . 11 Marshall testified to Congress in 1995 that "available and foreseen technological capabilities in areas such as PGMs, computing power, and surveillance systems could transform war to the extent that occurred during the interwar period with armored warfare, strategic bombing, and carrier aviation" (Andrew W. Marshall, "Revolutions in Military Affairs," Statement for the Subcommittee on Acquisition and Technology, Senate Armed Services Committee, 5 May 1995, p. 1). 12 The fact that the Office of Net Assessment was willing to support a number of historically-based studies on military innovation during this period underlines this point. 13 Andrew W. Marshall, "Some Thoughts on Military Revolutions," Office of Net Assessment memorandum, 27 July 1993. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Marshall made explicit that the creation of a revolution in military affairs is inevitably a long process: "The term 'revolution' is not meant to insist that change will be rapid - indeed past revolutions have unfolded over a period of decades - but only (continued) katie Highlight katie Highlight Thinking about revolutions in warfare 5 America's crushing victory in the Second Gulf War raised interest throughout the U.S. armed forces in the revolutionary prospects of current and foreseeable technologies to an almost uncontrollable pitch. But it also had three decidedly negative consequences. First, the mastery seemingly demonstrated in the Gulf revived the very worst feature of U.S. defense culture: the recurring delusion that war can be understood and controlled in the mechanized top-down fashion of Robert Strange McNamara and his entourage in the 1960s.14 Second, victory provided the services with yet another argument in favor of procurement of new and enormously costly platforms such as the F-22, while unleashing claims from specialized pres- sure groups such as the "info-war" community.15 Finally, victory through technology appeared to promise the strategic freedom in the age of the masses seemingly lost in the paddies and jungles of Vietnam. "Virtual war" with minimal bloodshed could render unnecessary the presidential leadership, military statesmanship, and popular commitment to the fight that was seemingly in such short supply. Advocates of U.S. leadership of a revolution in military affairs outside the Office of Net Assessment made little effort to place this putative future in some sort of historical perspective. Attempts to examine the nature and limits of such revolutions in the past might - to the com- mon-sense mind - appear to offer a means of gauging both the possibi- lities and the pitfalls inherent in radical changes in war. The writings of the enthusiasts have nevertheless displayed an astounding lack of histor- ical consciousness.16 (continued) that the change will be profound, that the new methods of warfare will be far more powerful than the old. Innovations in technology make a military revolution possible, but the revolution itself takes place only when new concepts of operations develop and, in many cases, new military organizations are created. Making these organizational and doctrinal changes is a long process" (Marshall, "Revolutions in Military Affairs," 5 May 1995). For an outsider's review of the development of thinking within the Pentagon see Thomas E. Ricks, "Warning Shot: How Wars Are Fought Will Change Radically, Pentagon Planners Say," The Wall Street Journal, 15 July 1994, p. A i . 14 See Williamson Murray, "Clausewitz Out, Computers In, Military Culture and Technological Hubris," The National Interest, Summer 1997. For a vivid snapshot of the McNamara approach by two of his systems analysts, see Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enought Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (New York, 1971). 15 On "platform fever," see Williamson Murray, "Hard Choices: Fighter Procurement in the Next Century," The CATO Institute, Policy Analysis, paper no. 334 (Washington, DC, 1999)- 16 One of the foremost proponents of the claim that history is irrelevant is James Blacker; see in particular his "Understanding the Revolution in Military Affairs: A Guioe to America's z i s t Century Defense," Defense Working Paper No. 3 , Progressive Policy Institute (Washington, DC, 1997), and "Crashing Through the Barricades," Joint Forces Quarterly, Summer 1997. katie Highlight 6 Murray and Knox P A T T E R N S A N D C O N C E P T S : M I L I T A R Y R E V O L U T I O N S While Pentagon debates swirled around issues of immediate interest to the services - such as which multibillion-dollar weapons platform might best support the coming "revolution in military affairs" - historians had never- theless begun to look beyond the seventeenth century for examples of revo- lutionary military change. A paper delivered at the spring 1991 meeting of the Society of Military History suggested that the history of Western mili- tary institutions since the fourteenth century had involved periods of violent change followed by periods of relative calm in which armies had adapted to major changes in their environment, a pattern which evolutionary biolo- gists have called punctuated equilibrium.17 Such an approach offers one - admittedly metaphorical - way of understanding revolutionary change in warfare. The difficulties inherent in understanding the pattern of past revolutions arise from the enormous complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties in the historical record. The two distinct concepts already sketched out best describe radical military innovation.18 The first and most far-reaching in consequences is the military revolution. Its defining feature is that it funda- mentally changes the framework of war. Five military revolutions have had that effect in Western history: - the creation in the seventeenth century of the modern nation-state, which rested on the large-scale organization of disciplined military power; - the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century, which merged mass politics and warfare; - the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century and after, which made it possible to arm, clothe, feed, pay, and move swiftly to battle the resulting masses; - the First World War, which combined the legacies of the French and Industrial Revolutions and set the pattern for twentieth-century war; - the advent of nuclear weapons, which contrary to all precedent kept the Cold War cold in the decisive European and northeast Asian theaters. These five upheavals are best understood through a geological metaphor: they were earthquakes. They brought systemic changes in politics and 17 The paper eventually received the Moncado Prize from the Society of Military History for the best article in the Journal of Military History in 1994. For its most recent iteration see Rogers, "The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years' War," in Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate. 18 The remarks that follow draw particularly on discussions at the conference at Quantico in 1996 mentioned in the acknowledgments, and on the work of Cliff Rogers. katie Highlight Thinking about revolutions in warfare 7 society. They were uncontrollable, unpredictable, and unforeseeable. And their impact continues. The leaders of North Vietnam in their wars against French and Americans drew inspiration from the French Revolution (and its Bolshevik and Maoist progeny) as well as from Vietnamese nationalism.19 Those who expect the "information revolution" - if it is indeed a revolu- tion - to bring radical military change will consequently find the direction, consequences, and implications of any change that may result to be largely unpredictable. Military revolutions recast society and the state as well as military orga- nizations. They alter the capacity of states to create and project military power. And their effects are additive. States that have missed the early military revolutions cannot easily leap-frog to success in war by adopting the trappings of Western technology. Oil bought Saddam Hussein fabulous quantities of Soviet, French, and American hardware. But hardware alone could not confer battlefield effectiveness on forces conscripted from a society that possessed neither a modern state, nor the solidarity and resi- lience generated through mass politics, nor the breadth and depth of tech- nological skill common throughout societies that had passed through the Industrial Revolution. Whereas the Vietnamese Communist movement, which combined the revolutionary fervor of the French Revolution (derived equally from its French colonial masters and its Muscovite and Chinese patrons) with a bureaucratically organized and profoundly xenophobic traditional culture, defeated one Western great power and one superpower. The first of the five great military revolutions introduced a degree of order and predictability into an activity - war - that since the collapse of Rome had largely been the province of anarchic improvisation. Governments - insofar as the personal entourages of kings and princes merited that name - had with few exceptions exercised only the loosest control over armies and fleets. Employers frequently failed to pay their troops; subsistence through pillage was the usual result. In 1576, the unpaid soldiers of the Spanish monarchy mutinied and sacked the great city of Antwerp - an action that wrecked Spanish policy in the Netherlands and advanced the cause of the rebellious Dutch. The mutiny reflected both the inherent indiscipline of the soldiery and the inability of the financially decrepit Spanish state to compensate them for their sacrifices. Similar epi- sodes recurred throughout the Thirty Years' War that devastated Germany and central Europe from 1618 onward. But other powers tamed disorder. The Swedish Articles of War of the early seventeenth century made clear that soldiers would dig when they 19 General William Westmoreland was as little acquainted with the history of the French Revolution as with that of East Asia; it is therefore unsurprising that he botched the conduct of the war in South Vietnam. katie Highlight 8 Murray and Knox were told to dig - an uncommon notion up to that point. Impersonal mili- tary discipline focused upon the state made European military organiza- tions of the mid- to late seventeenth century infinitely more effective on the battlefield than the feudal levies, mercenary companies, and haphazardly organized hostilities-only forces that they replaced. And the new disciplined military instruments were self-reinforcing: they backed with force the sta- te's collection of the taxes needed to pay the troops regularly. In return for pay, the state could and did demand that its soldiers maintain a disciplined obedience in garrison as well as on the battlefield; Western societies could thenceforth take for granted the order and responsiveness of their military institutions. That was indeed a revolution, as the consequences of its absence in Latin America …