RESEARCH General History

WARFARE
Historian rejects notion that technology is paramount in war

Andrea Lynn, Humanities & Social Sciences Editor
(217) 333-2177; andreal@uiuc.edu

6/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand Military historian John A. Lynn has written "Battle: A History of Combat and Culture," which focuses on "the interplay of cultural ideas" by analyzing case studies from East and South Asia, the Middle East, Europe and America.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In his new book about battle, a military historian may surprise, even shock, some readers – including top members of the military and the Bush administration – with some of his claims and rejections. It is fair to say that he goes into battle against some current sacred cows.

The author claims, for example, that in warfare, the idea is mightier than the sword. That is, that cultural conceptions, including values, beliefs, assumptions, expectations and preconceptions, rather than technology, drive warfare. "Unfortunately, a desire to explain styles of warfare simply as a response to weaponry has long afflicted our view of battle," writes John A. Lynn, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Lynn rejects the idea, so fashionable in Washington circles, that that there is a "Western way of warfare" that has been continuous from classical Greece to today.

"I totally deny that thesis," Lynn said. "Arguments that there were no real non-Western parallels for Western military practices result all too much from our ignorance of non-Western warfare."

Lynn, the author of "Battle: A History of Combat and Culture" published this month by

Westview, is the director of the Military Education Council at Illinois and the author of seven books. He is the former Oppenheimer Chair of Warfighting Strategy at the Marine Corps University, Quantico, Va.

In his new work, which spans three millennia, Lynn focuses on "the interplay of cultural ideas" by analyzing case studies from East and South Asia, the Middle East, Europe and America.

What he finds is that technology has "mesmerized" modern militaries.

"They tend to believe that we’re in the midst of a ‘revolution in military affairs’ – shorthand for another great technological shift in the way militaries do things. The assumption is that what matters most in the evolution of warfare is the evolution of military technology. I challenge that idea.

"Certainly since the Industrial Revolution, technological change has accelerated and been immensely important. However, the most critical aspect of change has been the choices that different militaries have made concerning it." An example, he said, comes from 1940 when France and Germany had the same technologies, "but made very different tanks and used them in very different ways."

"I don’t deny that technology is important," Lynn said. "But I would advise people that just as other ages have overemphasized the role of technology, we might be in danger of doing the same thing. And I think it’s very important for the military and the White House to recognize that there is this role of ideas that is ultimately more important. In the long run, technology is a tide that raises all boats, and the critical thing then becomes the choices you make with that technology."

In his full rejection of the Western way of warfare thesis, promoted by historian Victor Davis Hanson, Lynn also rejects the corollary notion of a "universal soldier." "He is wholly an imagined being born of fear and projection – a cultural construction. It is time to intone his requiem."