The debate

This book explores the relationship between technology, war and the state from the early modern period to the present and seeks to understand how technological change will impact the war–state relationship in the future. The idea for the book began when I was asked to deliver a course on the relationship between new technologies and their impact on strategy and operations at the UK's Defence Academy. This renewed interest in technology reflected the UK military's concern that a spectrum of emerging capabilities was starting to impact defence, and they were keen to understand how best to address the challenge of what they thought might be a potential military revolution. My initial position was one of profound scepticism, and I believed that technology would do no more than result in a superficial change in how the UK might engage in a future war. Indeed, the course I devised was essentially a warning from history about what happens when political leaders and their military organizations become seduced by the promises made regarding technology in war. To this end, a range of case studies, from Hitler's insane pursuit of wonder weapons in the Second World War to the emasculation of the United States’ conceived revolution in military affairs in Afghanistan and Iraq, demonstrated why technology is no substitute for an understanding of the geographical and political context of war (Kaplan, 2012). However, my research on the subject challenged the assumptions that shaped this course. More importantly, it also seemed to test the conventional view that prevails in broader academic debates on the relative importance of technology as a driver of change in the domain of war. The fundamental purpose of this book is to ask if we have arrived at a point where current patterns of technological change require a reassessment of the relationship between technology, war and politics, expressed here in the form of the state.

A cursory examination of the literature on this subject of war and technology reveals what can be described as an orthodox school and a revisionist school. The traditional view of technology asserts it has played a positive role in human history, and its impact on the conduct of war resulted in the emergence of a modern military system which fits into the broader aspiration of contemporary society. This school consists of three subsets.