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  • The Arc of War: Origins, Escalation, and Transformation
  • Brian McAllister Linn
The Arc of War: Origins, Escalation, and Transformation. By Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011) 280 pp. $27.00

The Arc of War is a provocative effort to determine how warfare has evolved through history. Levy and Thompson postulate six variables or “spheres”—military events, the organization of the armed forces, political economy, weapons technology, and the threat environment—within which changes have altered the conduct of warfare. Rejecting the monocausal interpretations of earlier scholars, they provide a valuable analysis of “coevolution,” in which even a slight change in one sphere elicits radical changes in others.

This ambitious book spans several millennia and several continents, beginning with Sargon of Akkad and ending with a discussion about the implications of the information revolution. The authors provide numerous tables and graphs that condense their arguments and data into an easily readable format. Both in the bibliography and the text they demonstrate familiarity with much of the current literature about the evolution of warfare, clearly distinguishing the points at which they agree or disagree with other authors. The book attempts to accomplish a great deal, and it largely succeeds.

Given the wide breadth of Levy and Thompson’s project and the precision of their writing, any critique may appear little more than quibbling. The following comments are intended less as a challenge to the authors’ thesis then to promote further discussion. The authors have a bias toward scientific and rational explanations for warfare’s evolution, whereas much recent military history emphasizes the impact of military culture and doctrinal concepts. The authors also tend to accept that revolutions in military affairs (rmas) completely replace previous military systems, though to their great credit they have clearly read more skeptical analyses. But they cannot escape the basic methodological problem that most students of rmas are not only predisposed to find them but also to interpret the impact of past rmas largely through the prism of their supposed relevance to current military policy.

Nor is this tendency toward applicatory scholarship restricted to the past. For example, the authors appear to accept the claim that an “information revolution” is transforming warfare today, maintaining that the revolution’s effect was “proven beyond doubt in the performance of the American military in Iraq in spring 2003” (135). But central to the justification of the information revolution apart from the war in Iraq were the doctrinal concepts—network-centric warfare, effects-based operations, and full-spectrum dominance—that purportedly allowed a transformed army to win quickly, cheaply, and decisively. Only the most extreme apologists would claim that events in Iraq since 2004 have proven the worth of either the technology or the concepts of the information revolution.

Levy and Thompson’s provocative and stimulating study of the [End Page 463] evolution of warfare deserves wide reading by both the scholarly and policymaking community. Their theoretical model is clearly articulated, well researched, and certainly useful to scholars in a variety of disciplines. In particular, the authors’ analysis of the evolutionary and co-evolutionary processes will inform future investigation into both the nature of rmas and their impact on military policy.

Brian McAllister Linn
Texas A&M University
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