The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs

by Andrei Martyanov

Overview

The liberal world order, a euphemism for American global hegemony, is crumbling at an accelerating pace. While its collapse is tangible, the outcome of such a collapse remains a matter of speculation and public debate. The US is desperately seeking to preserve the status quo, which rests primarily upon recognition of its military supremacy. For millennia, warfare has been a driving force behind changes in the geopolitical status of power configurations (whether of peoples, states or empires), and it remains so, today. Accordingly, short of actual warfare, the assessment (modeling) of relative military power plays an inordinate role in the determination of national status. Models of emerging changes in military capability range from relatively simple to extremely complex ones. Viewing the evolution of the current system of international relations outside the framework of actual, rather than propaganda-driven, military capabilities is not only useless, it is dangerous since states’ mistaken assessment of their own and other states’ military power can lead to misadventures and catastrophic mistakes. The United States’ efforts to preserve not just its dominance but the perception of its dominance are bound to fail for many important reasons, none more important than what is often misidentified in past American military-theoretical hypotheses about the future of warfare, known generically as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This book explains why those hypotheses are failing and will continue to fail, and addresses the real RMA. In the end, technological development in weaponry as a response to tactical, operational and strategic requirements defines not only a nation’s geopolitical status but determines the global order. Assessments of military capacity, if reality-based, serve as good predictors of the level of volatility in international relations and the level of violence globally. This book gives an insight into the evolution of weapons and the way they influenced international relations in the 20th and 21st centuries. It also defines Revolution in Military Affairs as manifested via policy, politics, and technology. It reviews some models which are useful in assessing the current geopolitical situation. This book also tries to give a forecast of the future development of warfare and the ways in which it is going to change the whole system of the international relations, hopefully towards a new geopolitical equilibrium.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781949762082
Publisher:	Clarity Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/01/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Andrei Martyanov is an expert on Russian military and naval issues. He was born in Baku, USSR in 1963,graduated from the Kirov Naval Red Banner Academy and served as an officer on the ships and staff position of Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. He took part in the events in the Caucasus which led to the collapse of the USSR. In the mid-1990s he moved to the United States where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group. He is a frequent blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog. He is author of Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction:
THE ABSENCE OF WAR:
An Omission in the Western Definition of “a Good Life”

Globalism is aggressive for a number of reasons ranging from purely economic interests to convictions of cultural superiority. These form a ballast for what goes on to become military aggression, easily resorted to because of the often complete inability to understand the practice (what really happens during warfare) and the consequences of the application of military power (trauma and destruction) and accordingly an appreciation of how to achieve a global military balance precluding war. This is not to say that liberal academe doesn't try to understand this—it tries repeatedly, including by creating a variety of models and theories of international relations and of wars, but too many of those theories are nothing more than white board abstracts. It warrants noting that for all its aggressiveness, globalism's main driver, the United States, produced a rather mediocre record of military accomplishments, while providing a cornucopia of theories on how to win wars and what is military balance. Many theories have come and gone trying to explain how war and international relations interact, be that Stephen Biddle's “New System,” or Foreign Policy Realism in its mind boggling variety from Structural to Offensive to Defensive theories, or even Offense-Defense Theory.

Few of those, however, answer the question as to what military power and balance really are, what is their nature and what is their role in the fight for survival. That brings forth a hugely important moral issue of who is the victim and who is the predator in a dyadic relation of nations. Without addressing this question, no amount of Offense-Defense or any other reasoning will help in understanding the process of the formation of military power and balance in the modern world. In other words, it matters a great deal why a nation builds its own military power and what it intends to use it for. The answer defines a key condition for a good life for the potential victim—survival, preservation of life, that is, or in other words an ability to live in peace thanks to the strength of arms. There is no good life without peace and liberalism is not capable of defining that as a key component of a good life, due to liberalism and its scholarship living in a complete delusion about the predatory intentions driving its own economic and often grossly exaggerated military capability.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

Introduction: The Absence of War: An Omission in the Western Definition of "a Good Life" 4

Chapter 1 The "Thucydides Trap" Delusion: The Incoherence and Fallacy of Contemporary Geopolitical Concepts 15

Chapter 2 Measuring Geopolitical Power in Numbers: Why Existing Mathematical Models Fail 29

Chapter 3 How to (Really) View Warfare in Numbers 48

Chapter 4 The Revolution in Military Affairs: Two Different Views 69

Chapter 5 The End of Invulnerability 92

Chapter 6 Shield Trumps Sword: Today's Air-Space Battles 113

Chapter 7 The Global Impact of the Proliferation of New Military Technologies 133

Conclusion: A New Era Begins 152

Postscript: What Is the Future of Warfare? 175

Endnotes 194

Index 217

Editorial Reviews

Martyanov convinced me that the Pentagon's war planners need to upgrade their understanding of war and how to conduct one…”
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, Foreign Policy Journal

"Martyanov's book could be an ideal 'introduction to military analysis' or a 'planning military forces 101' course...A Herculean effort to wake up comatose Americans... I consider both of Martyanov's books as a 'must read'...” THE SAKER, UNZ REVIEW

"Andrei Martyanov's book provides indispensable knowledge for anyone who wants to understand the current geo-political developments.” MOON OF ALABAMA

"Once in a blue moon an indispensable book comes out making a clear case for sanity in what is now a post-MAD world. That's the responsibility carried by “The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs,” by Andrei Martyanov (Clarity Press), arguably the most important book of 2019." PEPE ESCOBAR, Consortium News

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