The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas (review)

Over the last two decades, analysts seeking to understand dramatic changes in military technology and operations and to identify likely developmental paths have generated a significant body of literature on military innovation. Most of the scholarship has focused on the domestic sources of innovation, particularly during the interwar period. The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas, which explores the international spread of military innovation and its consequences through a series of case studies drawn from the eighteenth century through the twentieth, is therefore a welcome addition to the field.

A collaborative effort between the University of California, Davis, and the Naval Postgraduate School, funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the book successfully bridges the divide between academia and policy. It brings scholars from the fields of political science, military history, strategic studies, sociology, public policy, and international relations together with defense practitioners in order to examine how technology, ideas, and practices diffuse among nations and to provide insights useful to policymakers. Diffusion, according to editors Emily Goldman and Leslie Eliason, is "the introduction, application, and institutionalization of new technologies and practices" (p. 9). By highlighting "the complex and contingent nature of diffusion" (p. xi), this collection not only broadens our understanding of the process but also alerts practitioners that the spread of new knowledge is neither straightforward nor uniform and thus cannot be easily controlled.

The eleven case studies trace the transmission of military hardware (technology) and software (doctrines, tactics, organizational structures, and macrosocial changes) in several regions and historical eras while highlighting a wide variety of diffusion's causes, mechanisms, and effects. Some of the most interesting case studies highlight the ways in which cultural values and behavior patterns shape diffusion. In his account of the East India Company's invention of the sepoys—native soldiers armed and trained according to eighteenth-century European standards—John Lynn argues that the synergy between European military practices and Indian cultural values produced unexpectedly effective military forces. The keys to the sepoys' success were the compatibility between the European regimental forms and indigenous culture and the East India Company's willingness to alter the regimental system substantially to fit local conditions. Similarly, Michael Eisenstadt and Kenneth Pollack conclude that the compatibility of Soviet military doctrine with Arab culture determined its diffusion in the Arab world. The elements of Soviet doctrine that emphasized flexibility, independence, and responsibility clashed with Arab cultural values of conformity, deference, and avoidance of shame. When the Syrian army employed Soviet doctrine rigidly and mechanically in 1973, the result was disaster. When the Egyptian army adapted Soviet doctrine to local conditions, however, it enjoyed much greater success.

Geoffrey Herrera and Thomas Mahnken suggest that not only a nation's cultural values but also its political, economic, social, and military institutions affect its eagerness and ability to adopt military innovations. Despite Napoleon's success employing a mass national army organized into divisions and corps, trained in a flexible tactical system, and commanded by a meritocratic officer corps, France's adversaries were largely unwilling to implement the drastic social changes needed to replicate the Napoleonic system. Politics, economics, social structure, and military bureaucracy also complicated the efforts of Prussia's competitors to emulate its combination of breech-loading rifles, railroads, telegraphs, and a general staff and reserve system. In a second essay, Mahnken considers how the organizational cultures of the Allied armies constrained their ability to match Germany's development of combined-arms armored warfare during World War II.

Other case studies examine how cultural affinity fostered the standardization of military tactics, techniques, and procedures among the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and New Zealand after World War II; highlight the political considerations that determined the allocation of military technology within the Warsaw Pact; distill the reasons why nations decide to acquire nuclear weapons; follow the migration of innovations such as unmanned aerial vehicles from peripheral states like Israel to core countries; analyze the differential rates of integration of...