Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

all point at the changes the technologist postmodernists also address: new modes ofeconomic production (from the industrial age to the information age), associated newsources of power (information), new modes of representation (virtual reality), and new formsof organization (cross -border commercial firms, borderless internet, erosion of the status ofthe nation-state due to globalization).Secondly, the postmodern school addresses the shift from modern armed forcesbased on 19 th century style mass armies consisting of conscripts operating mechanizedmilitary systems produced by industrial age heavy industries following an attrition typedoctrine in war in which victory depended on out-producing an opponent while eliminatingits armed forces towards postmodern militaries of professional armed forces manned byhighly skilled personnel operating not weapons but a conglomerate of increasingly capableprecision sensors and long range stand-off precision munitions aiming to paralyze theopponent through system-wide parallel attacks on numerous centers of gravity.Charles Moskos and James Burk for instance have addressed the ‘sweepingsociological changes’ affecting the militaries of the West after the end of the Cold War. ‘Thisis the postmodern age’, Moskos asserts. He refers to the rise of ‘the postmodern movementin social theory in the late 1960s and 1970s’, a movement one should not mistake as nothingmore than an idle intellectual critique of modern society. What supports postmodern claimsand makes the theory noteworthy, despite all its pretensions, are real transformations shakingcontemporary social organization. Nation-states and their institutions are becoming morefragmented and de-centralized’. Of special relevance for him is ‘the relative weakening ofcentral forms of social organizations which have been the hallmark of the modern age: thenation state, national markets, democratic citizenship, and the armed force’. Concerningarmed forces he notes that ‘We are in a period of transition away from the ‘modern’ massarmy, characteristic of the age of nationalism, to a ‘post-modern’ military, adapted to a newlyforming world-system in which nationalism is constrained by the rise of global socialorganizations’.The role and structure of armed forces change. Large scale conscription gives wayto full professional armed forces of smaller scale and with a blurring of military and civiliantasks, personnel and expertise due to the fact that modern weapon systems depend oncivilian technology and combat activities resemble civilian practices. At the same threats arenot defined by the Cold War superpower conflict. Threat perception includes a diverse andproliferating array 75 . Christopher Dandeker calls this ‘threat-complexity – a very wide rangeof security risks which are difficult to prioritize –and a corresponding mixture of missions,ranging from high intensity war fighting to low intensity conflicts and peace keepingoperations 76 .Another element of postmodern war is a distinct style of warfare. Full-fledged war ispreferably avoided as is prolonged combat. Casualties among own and even enemy militaryunits need to be minimized and public and politicians alike manifest an abhorrence towards‘collateral damage’. There is a loss of belligerency. If wars are fought, the West plays by itsstrengths - economic power and technological supremacy - to achieve its objectives atminimal cost and bloodshed. This explains the preference for the employment of precisionstand-off weapons and air power. These developments are part of a societal trend in whicharmed force as an instrument has gained questionable legitimacy. Avoiding casualties and75 Charles C. Moskos and James Burk, ‘The Postmodern Military’, in James Burk, The Military in NewTimes (Westview Press, Boulder, Co., 1994), pp.142-144. Christopher Dandeker notes similar changes,but prefers the term ‘late-modernity’.76 Christopher Dandeker, ‘A Farewell to Arms? The Military and the Nation-State in a ChangingWorld’, in Moskos and Burk, pp.128.300