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Creating Military Power

Stanford University Press

Contents

Contributors..........................................................................................................................................viiAcknowledgments.......................................................................................................................................ix1. Introduction: The Impact of Culture, Society, Institutions, and International Forces on Military Effectiveness Risa A. Brooks.....................12. Nationalism and Military Effectiveness: Post-Meiji Japan Dan Reiter...............................................................................273. Social Structure, Ethnicity, and Military Effectiveness: Iraq, 1980-2004 Timothy D. Hoyt..........................................................554. Political Institutions and Military Effectiveness: Contemporary United States and United Kingdom Deborah Avant....................................805. Civil-Military Relations and Military Effectiveness: Egypt in the 1967 and 1973 Wars Risa A. Brooks...............................................1066. Global Norms and Military Effectiveness: The Army in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland Theo Farrell.................................................1367. International Competition and Military Effectiveness: Naval Air Power, 1919-1945 Emily O. Goldman.................................................1588. International Alliances and Military Effectiveness: Fighting Alongside Allies and Partners Nora Bensahel..........................................1869. Explaining Military Outcomes Stephen Biddle.......................................................................................................20710. Conclusion Risa A. Brooks........................................................................................................................228Index.................................................................................................................................................239

Chapter One

RISA A. BROOKS

WHY ARE SOME STATES, at some times, better able to translate their basic material and human strengths into fighting power? Why are some militaries able to make the most of their limited resources on the battlefield, whereas others perform poorly despite significant material advantages? These questions are the central themes of this volume. The study explores why states vary in their military effectiveness. It seeks to explain how states organize and prepare for war and ultimately create military power.

This book's overarching argument is that states' military effectiveness often depends on the global environment and the particularities of their political cultures, social structures, and institutions. The creation of military power only partially depends on states' material and human resources. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for states' ability to create military power. Equally important, however, are how a state uses those resources.

Cultural and societal factors, political institutions, and pressure from the international arena all shape how a state uses its resources. They constitute the environment in which a state's military activities take place: for example, they influence how patterns and routines emerge and evolve for strategic and operational planning, selection of leaders, procurement of weapons, training of soldiers, and creation of doctrine. By influencing these activities, a state's society and its international environment affect how well it uses its material and human resources in the process of organizing and preparing for war and therefore its ability to create military power.

This book examines these social and political forces in an effort to understand the sources of states' military effectiveness. Each of the following seven chapters examines a different potential "cause" of effectiveness. These include the impact of nationalist sentiments, ethnic divisions, civil-military relations, domestic political institutions, and the international pressures induced by interstate competition, international organizations, and global norms. Chapter 9 assesses the implications of effectiveness for outcomes in war.

Here I introduce the common framework that provides the analytical infrastructure for each of these individual chapters. Specifically, in assessing military effectiveness we are interested in the degree to which a military exhibits four central attributes: integration, or the ability to ensure consistency in military activity, create synergies within and across levels of military activity, and avoid counterproductive actions; responsiveness, which is the degree to which a state accommodates both internal and external constraints and opportunities in preparing itself for armed conflict; skill, including the capacity to ensure that military personnel are motivated and prepared to execute tasks on the battlefield; and quality, or the capacity of the state to supply itself with essential weapons and equipment. The more a military exhibits these attributes, the more capable it is at generating military power.

Before presenting this framework in greater detail, I begin by discussing why military effectiveness is such a critical issue worthy of study. The chapter then addresses previous studies of military effectiveness, emphasizing the strengths of individual research traditions and the need for a more unified, coherent research program to allow for greater accumulation of knowledge in this area. The book's analytical framework follows.

Why Study Military Effectiveness?

Studying military effectiveness provides insight into a core concept of international relations: military power. Military power is central to a vast range of research questions in political science, yet few scholars of international relations have examined a key component of military power, that of effectiveness. Conventional assessments of military power in international relations tend instead to emphasize basic resources. For example, large-n studies often use gross national product (GNP) as a proxy or core indicator of military power. Some studies include industrial capacity and population size; more detailed studies may use numbers of troops or weapons on the two opposing sides as measures of power. At best, however, studies try to equate capital expenditure per soldier, estimated by dividing total defense dollars by number of personnel in the armed forces. Power generally is reduced to basic human and military inputs.

Although economic and technological resources are essential to any assessment of potential military power, they are not the sole important factor affecting the ability to project force in war. The actual creation of military power involves two things: the basic resources a state has-GNP, technology, and the like-and how it uses those resources, or effectiveness. Resources are important in assessing potential power, but effectiveness tells how well a state can translate those resources into actual power in war. Effectiveness is the difference...