The role of ideas in defense planning: revisiting the revolution in military affairs

ABSTRACT

Which ideas shape defense planning and why? The following paper builds on over 80 interviews with senior defense officials to dissect the origin, evolution, and fall of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), a major post-Cold War US defense innovation paradigm. In studying the emergence and diffusion of the RMA concept, my research suggests a central role for collective actors sharing constitutive ideas about practice and competing for legitimate authority and influence in the defense establishment. The rise of the RMA as an organizing idea in U.S. defense planning is thus not reducible to bureaucratic competition, technological determinism, or strategic culture as an external set of norms. Rather, it can be portrayed as a social process involving boundary activation by bureaucrats and soldiers (re)interpreting their key tasks and core missions for future war.

KEYWORDS:

• Strategic studies
• military theory
• revolution in military affairs
• practice
• military innovation
• security studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the definitive look at Andrew Marshall and the Office of Net Assessment he founded, from both an organizational and intellectual historical perspective, see Krepenvich and Watts (2015).

2. This line of inquiry can be seen as embodying a policy window type approach in which exogenous shocks produce the possibility of change in otherwise rigid, hierarchical institutions. On the concept of institutional evolution and punctuated equilibrium, see True et al. (1999), Thelen (2003, 2004), and Thelen and Steinmo (1992).

3. In academic circles the publication of a special issue in the Journal of Strategic Studies and the release of Dima Adamsky’s book on the RMA and strategic culture illustrates there has been renewed interest in the RMA that tends to focus on the subject as a function of cultural antecedents (Adamsky and Bjerga 2010).

4. For an account of the policy process based on institutional rational choice, see Ostrom (1990), Ostrom et al. (1994), Eggertsson (1990), and Moe (1984), (Moe 1990). With respect to incentives inside bureaucracies, see Tullock (1965) and Niskanen (1971).

5. The emphasis on agents advancing ideas finds parallels in Stephen Rosen’s earlier work on military innovation and the central role played by career progression in determining whether or not reformists produced lasting institutional change (Rosen 1988, 1991).

6. On the practice turn, see Bueger and Gadinger (2014, 5) and Pouliot (2008).

7. This criteria is drawn from earlier studies by Hassenteufel et al. (2010).

8. For similar definitions of mechanisms, see McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly (2001). There is a wide range of definitions as to what causal mechanisms are and in turn what they can explain. James Mahoney has identified over twenty different definitions. This work draws on Charles Tilly’s characterization. For competing definitions, see Schelling (1978), Elster (1989), Coleman (1990), Stinchcombe (1991), Hedström and Swedberg (1998), and George and Bennett (2005). Most definitions deal with the bridging effect of mechanisms, the linking of cause to effect. Where they often depart is the extent to which some accounts preface a cognitive and hence rational choice based account of mechanisms (Schelling 1978, Elster 1989, Bates et al. 1998, Hedström and Swedberg 1998). Tilly also discusses this move in outlining cognitive mechanisms (Tilly 2001, 24).

9. On the concept of social boundaries in sociology, see McAdams et al. (2001), Tilly (2001), Tilly (2002), Tilly (2003), and Tilly (2005).

10. This implies a use of counterfactual analysis derived from Weber and the concept of ideal-types. On counterfactuals, see Fearon (1991). Note that in his assessment, counterfactuals are an applicable check on validity as long as they analyze conditions vs. strict causation and that the counterfactual claim is “contenable” with initial facts and conditions (Fearon 1991, 190–191).

11. Accessed from the archive at www.rumsfeld.com.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique [ANR-08-BLAN-0032].

Notes on contributors

Benjamin M. Jensen

Benjamin M. Jensen, PhD holds a dual appointment as an Associate Professor at Marine Corps University and as a Scholar-in-Residence at American University, School of International Service. He is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council.