Military Innovation Studies: Multidisciplinary or Lacking Discipline?¹

ABSTRACT

This article explores the evolution of the field of military innovation studies, critiquing its theoretical foundations and setting out a number of challenges that must be overcome if the field is to fulfil its potential and enhance its contribution to wider disciplinary debates as well as to the practitioner community. Tensions between the main theoretical approaches to military innovation are examined as are the challenges inherent in its increasingly multidisciplinary character. The issue of whether military innovation studies constitutes a field in its own right is addressed before recommendations are made to expand the field’s research agenda, broaden its theoretical base and strengthen its multidisciplinary credibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Military Innovation
• Organisations
• Critical Approaches
• Military Culture
• Institutional Learning
• Multidisciplinary

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to all my friends and colleagues working in the area of military innovation and learning who have been so important in shaping my thoughts on the subject, especially those who had the dubious honour of listening to my early musings at the inaugural event of the King’s College London Military Innovation and Learning Research Group in June 2015. Particular thanks must go to Dr Chris Tuck and Dr Robert Foley of the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, for their advice on the article and insightful comments on its various drafts.

Notes

¹ The analysis, views and opinions expressed or implied in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the UK Ministry of Defence or any other government agency.

² Adam Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/5 (2006), 905–34.

³ Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, 908. For a different approach to surveying the field, see Suzanne C Nielsen, An Army Transformed: The U.S. Army’s Post-Vietnam Recovery and the Dynamics of Change in Military Organizations, (US Army War College, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute Letort Paper 2010), 5–33.

⁴ Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1984).

⁵ Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1994).

⁶ Andrew J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: the US Army between Korea and Vietnam (Washington, DC: National Defense UP, 1986).

⁷ See for instance Harvey M. Sapolsky, Polaris System and Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1972) and Owen R. Cote, The Politics of Innovative Military Doctrine: the US Navy and Fleet Ballistic Missiles (PhD thesis submitted to the Dept of Political Science: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1996) available at http://dspace.mit.edu (DSpace@MIT)

⁸ Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1991).

⁹ See for instance B. Hayes and D. Smith (eds), The Politics of Naval Innovation (Newport, Rhode Island: US Naval War College 1994); Susan L Marquis, Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding US Special Operations Forces (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute 1997); Suzanne C Nielsen, Preparing for War: The Dynamics of Peacetime Military Reform, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University PhD dissertation, 2003).

¹⁰ See for instance, Elizabeth Kier, ‘Culture and Military Doctrine: France between the Wars’, International Security 19/4, (Spring 1995); Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997); Andrew F Krepinevich, The Army in Vietnam (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). More broadly, Graham Allison’s seminal Essence of Decision was instrumental in demonstrating the importance of organisational culture to national security decision-making, shaping the field of study ever since. Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, MA: Little Brown 1971). See also Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1974).

¹¹ Theo G. Farrell and Terry Terriff, The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Theo Farrell, Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005); Terry Terriff, ‘Innovate or Die: Organizational Culture and the Origins of Maneuver Warfare in the U.S. Marine Corps’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/3 (2006), 475–503; Theo Farrell, ‘The dynamics of British military transformation’, International Affairs 84/4 (2008), 777–807.

¹² See for instance, Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Farrell and Terriff, The Sources of Military Change. For a range of different approaches by authors in the field see for instance, Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky and Kjell Inge Bjerga (eds), Contemporary Military Innovation: Between Anticipation and Adaptation (London and NY: Routledge, 2012): Theo Farrell, Frans Osinga, James A Russell (eds.), Military Adaptation in Afghanistan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).

¹³ Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies’, 925–30.

¹⁴ For studies of adaptation as a form of innovation, see for instance Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War: with Fear of Change, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Farrell, Osinga, and Russell (eds), Military Adaptation on Afghanistan.

¹⁵ Theo Farrell, ‘Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2006-09’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (2010), 567–94.

¹⁶ James A. Russell, Innovation, Transformation and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005-2007 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011)

¹⁷ Robert T. Foley, Stuart Griffin and Helen McCartney, ‘Transformation in Contact: Learning the Lessons of Modern War’, International Affairs 87/2 (2011), 253–70.

¹⁸ For a flavour of the breadth of scholarship see the following edited volumes; Risa A. Brooks and Elizabeth A. Stanley (eds), Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Adamsky and Bjerga (eds), Contemporary Military Innovation; Farrell, Osinga and Russell (eds), Military Adaptation in Afghanistan.

¹⁹ Itai Brun and Carmit Valensi, ‘The Revolution in Military Affairs of the “Other Side”’, in Adamsky and Bjerga (eds), Contemporary Military Innovation, 107–29.

²⁰ Kjell Inge Bjerga and Torunn Laugen Haaland, ‘Doctrinal Innovation in Small States’, in Adamsky and Bjerga (eds.), Contemporary Military Innovation, 83–106.

²¹ Anthony King, ‘Understanding the Helmand Campaign: British Military Operations in Afghanistan’, International Affairs 86/2 (2010) 311–32; David Betz and Anthony Cormack, ‘Hot War, Cold Comfort: a Less Optimistic Take on the British Military in Afghanistan’, RUSI Journal 154/4 (2009), 26–29.

²² Sergio Catignani, ‘Getting COIN at the Tactical Level in Afghanistan: Reassessing Counter-Insurgency Adaptation in the British Army’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 35/4 (2012), 513–39.

²³ Chad C. Serena, A Revolution in Military Adaptation: The US Army in the Iraq War (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011).

²⁴ Nina A. Kollars, ‘War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 38/4 (2015), 529-53.

²⁵ Raphael D. Marcus, ‘Adaptation in the Israel-Hizballah Conflict: the Institutionalization of Lesson-Learning in the IDF’, Journal of Strategic Studies 38/4 (2015), 500–28.

²⁶ Stuart Griffin, ‘Iraq, Afghanistan and the future of British Military Doctrine: From Counterinsurgency to Stabilization’, International Affairs 87/2 (2011), 317–33.

²⁷ For a good overview of thinking about strategic culture, see Jeffrey S Lantis and Darryl Howlett, ‘Strategic Culture’, in John Baylis, James J Wirtz and Colin S Gray (eds), Strategy and the Contemporary World, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 76–95.

²⁸ See for instance, Jonathan Boff, ‘Combined Arms during the Hundred Days Campaign, August-November 1918‘, War in History 17/4 (2010), 459–78; Robert T Foley, ‘Dumb Donkeys or Cunning Foxes? Learning in the British and German Armies during the Great War’, International Affairs 90/2 (2014), 279–98.

²⁹ Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation.

³⁰ Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation, 10–11.

³¹ Murray, Military Adaptation in War, 308–309.

³² Theo Farrell, ‘Introduction: Military Adaptation in War’, in Farrell, Osinga and Russell (eds.), Military Adaptation in Afghanistan, 1–23 (8).

³³ Kier, Imagining War, 140 and 164.

³⁴ For an excellent introduction to the key debates within International Relations theory, see Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith (eds), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

³⁵ For a comprehensive study of the relevance of critical approaches to security studies, see K.M. Fierke, Critical Approaches to International Security (London: Polity Press, 2007). For an insight into the work of one of the most important thinkers, see James Der Derian, Critical Practices in International Theory: Selected Essays (London: Routledge, 2009).

³⁶ Lantis and Howlett, ‘Strategic Culture’, 77–78.

³⁷ Lantis and Howlett, ‘Strategic Culture’, 78.

³⁸ See for instance, Theo Farrell, John Duffield, Richard Price and Michael C. Desch, ‘Correspondence: ‘Isms and Schisms: Culturalism versus Realism in Security Studies’, International Security 24/1 (1999), 156–80.

³⁹ See Charles King, ‘The Decline of International Studies: Why Flying Blind is Dangerous’, Foreign Affairs (July/Aug 2015). King makes an important point about how government funding in general and DoD Minerva grants in particular have skewed the research agenda.

⁴⁰ For these debates, see for instance Dunne, Kurki and Smith (eds), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity.

⁴¹ Michael C. Desch, ‘Culture versus Structure in Post-9/11 Security Studies’, Strategic Insights IV/10 (Oct 2005), 8.

⁴² For the challenges of developing an effective practitioner-researcher relationship, see Argyris and Schön, Organizational Learning II, 30–51.

⁴³ Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, 926 (footnote 105).

⁴⁴ See for instance Chris Argyris and Donald A Schön, Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method, and Practice, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley 1996); Anthony J. Dibella, Edwin C. Nevis and Janet M. Gould, ‘Understanding Organizational Learning Capability’, Journal of Management Studies 33/3 (1996), 361–79; Barbara Levitt and James G. March, ‘Organizational Learning’, Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1988), 319–40; James G. March, The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence: Decisions and Learning in Organizations (Malden, MA: Blackwell 1999); Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1990).

⁴⁵ Chris Argyris, ‘Double-loop Learning in Organizations’, Harvard Business Review (1977); Argyris and Schön, Organizational Learning II.

⁴⁶ For higher and lower-level learning, see Adamsky The Culture of Military Innovation. For adaptive and generative learning, see Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline.

⁴⁷ See earlier references regarding the development of thought on organisational culture. Barry R. Posen, arguably the founder of the specific field of military innovation studies, devotes much of Chapter 2 (34–80) of The Sources of Military Doctrine to core concepts of organisational theory.

⁴⁸ Richard Duncan Downie, Learning from Conflict: the U.S. Military in Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Drug War, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998).

⁴⁹ John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

⁵⁰ Sergio Catignani, ‘Coping with Knowledge: Organizational Learning in the British Army’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 37/1 (2013), 30–64.

⁵¹ A.H. Sinno, Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).

⁵² Francis G. Hoffman, Learning While Under Fire: Military Change in Wartime, PhD thesis, War Studies Department, King’s College London, 2015.

⁵³ See for instance Robert T. Foley, ‘A Case in Horizontal Military Innovation: the German Army, 1916-1918, Journal of Strategic Studies 35/6 (Dec 2012), 799–827; Foley, ‘Dumb Donkeys or Cunning Foxes’.

⁵⁴ Kier, Imagining War.

⁵⁵ For a highly respected account of French doctrine between the wars that differs in important respects from both Kier and Posen, see Robert A Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster: the Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-39 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1985).

⁵⁶ Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.

⁵⁷ See for instance David French, The British Way in Counter-insurgency, 1945-1967 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013); Huw Bennett, ‘Enmeshed in Insurgency: Britain’s Protracted Retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 25/3 (June 2014), 501–21.

⁵⁸ Huw Davies, ‘The Instrumentalisation of History’, blog for Defence-in-Depth defenceindepth.co/2014/09/30/the-instrumentalisation-of-history/.

⁵⁹ Quote widely ascribed to an anonymous senior officer in Saigon. See Brian M. Jenkins, The Unchangeable War, RM-6278-2-ARPA (Santa Monica: RAND) 1970, p.3.

⁶⁰ For an interesting study of US military culture and the problems Vietnam posed for it, see Robert M. Cassidy, ‘Prophets or Praetorians? The Utopian Paradox and the Powell Corollary’, Parameters (Autumn 2003), 130–43.

⁶¹ This is a common argument throughout the literature. For a concise summary, see Nielsen, An Army Transformed, 11–13.

⁶² This exact term has been used repeatedly by representatives of the UK government since the terrorist attacks in Sousse, Tunisia 26 June 2015. PM David Cameron first used it in the House of Commons on 29 June 2015 having previously used it in media interviews and it became a core theme of subsequent speeches.

⁶³ See almost all of the organisational theory and management references cited above.

⁶⁴ For an interesting recent analysis of military responsiveness, see Meir Finkel, On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield, (Stanford, CA: Stanford, 2011).

⁶⁵ Much of the Management literature on organisations cites the occasional military case study in support of specific arguments or mentions militaries as ‘traditional’ organisations but rarely conducts more detailed analysis. Interestingly, although James G. March’s considerable anthology mainly conforms to the above, this highly influential thinker also considered military organizations important enough to devote a monograph to them. James G. March and R. Weissinger-Baylon (eds), Ambiguity and Command: Organizational Perspectives on Military Decision Making (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1986).

⁶⁶ See Ole Wæver, ‘Still a Discipline after all these Debates?’ in Dunne, Kurki and Smith (eds), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, 306–28.

⁶⁷ Again, Prof Steve Smith makes a very similar point in response to those who argue that International Relations is a misnomer because of the diversity of its theories. Steve Smith, ‘Introduction’ in Dunne, Kurki and Smith (eds), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, 1–13, 10.

⁶⁸ Barry D. Watts and Williamson Murray, ‘Military Innovation in Peacetime’, in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (eds), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 369–415.

⁶⁹ Bridget Somekh, ‘Key Features of Research in the Social Sciences’, in Bridget Somekh and Cathy Lewin (eds), Research Methods in the Social Sciences (London: Sage 2005), 2.

⁷⁰ Desch, ‘Culture vs Structure’, 2.

⁷¹ Charles King, ‘The Decline of International Studies’.

⁷² Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

⁷³ Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, 924.

⁷⁴ The obvious caveat here is that each military culture has unique attributes so the relative emphasis placed upon institutional learning varies greatly. In the United States, for instance, Operations Research has traditionally been regarded as core service business although, as in other militaries, the balance between identifying and learning lessons has been variable.

⁷⁵ Comments by senior MoD officials (anonymously attributed) at the inaugural King’s College London Military Innovation and Learning Research Group roundtable, 17 June 2015, Joint Services Command and Staff College, Defence Academy of the UK.

⁷⁶ Jeffrey W Knopf, ‘The Fourth Wave in Deterrence Research’, Contemporary Security Policy 31/1 (2010), 1–33.

⁷⁷ See for instance, Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity 2004).

⁷⁸ Steven C. Roach, ‘Critical Theory’, in Dunne, Kurki and Smith (eds), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, 183.

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Stuart Griffin

Stuart Griffin is Reader in Strategic Studies in the Defence Studies Department, King's College London based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom (DAUK).^*