Conclusion: The Future of America's Military Revolution

Summary

Almost two decades have elapsed since the gulf war provided the first glimpse of a range of technologies and weapons heralding the revival of American military power and a possible revolution in the conduct of warfare. The war publicized and intensified the debate about a contemporary revolution in military affairs in which technological advances were supposedly leading to profound changes in warfare on par with some of history's great military transformations such as the introduction of gunpowder weapons, the Napoleonic reforms, and Germany's mechanized blitzkrieg. The debate has proceeded along two intertwined tracks. On a theoretical level, there were broad, general, and even grandiose predictions about the emergence of new forms of war reflecting the information revolution sweeping the society as a whole. On a policy level, the focus was on exploiting these new technologies to solve the United States' most pressing military and strategic challenges. Desert Storm appeared to confirm predictions of an RMA while validating the direction of the American defense policy since Vietnam. Recent experience in Iraq, however, has taken the shine off the RMA and called into question much of American defense policy derived from such notions. Some have even come to view the RMA with nostalgia, the military equivalent of the hula-hoop, which has little relevance for post–Iraq debates about warfare and defense policy. “Ah, the ‘revolution in military affairs,’” Frank Hoffman begins wistfully before dismissing it as “a blast from the past, a piece of pre-9/11 prehistory.”