A Transformation Gap?: American Innovations and European Military Change

A Transformation Gap?

American Innovations and European Military Change

Theo Farrell

Terriff Terry

Osinga Frans

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A transformation gap? : American innovations and European military change / edited by Terry Terriff, Frans Osinga, and Theo Farrell.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780804781800

1. Europe—Armed Forces—Technological innovations. 2. Europe—Armed Forces—Reorganization. 3. Military art and science—Technological innovations—Europe. 4. North Atlantic Treaty Organization—Europe. 5. Europe—Military relations—United States. 6. United States—Military relations—Europe. I. Terriff, Terry. II. Osinga, Frans P. B. III. Farrell, Theo.

UA646.T728 2010

355’.07094—dc22

2009040654

Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/14 Minion

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgments

Contributors

1 - Military Transformation in NATO:  A Framework for Analysis

2  - The Rise of Military Transformation

3  - Innovating within Cost and Cultural  Constraints: The British Approach to  Military Transformation

4  - From Bottom-Up to Top-Down  Transformation: Military Change in France

5  - The Rocky Road to Networked and  Effects-Based Expeditionary Forces:  Military Transformation in the Bundeswehr

6  - Innovating on a Shrinking  Playing Field: Military Change  in The Netherlands Armed Forces

7  - The Innovation Imperative:  Spain’s Military Transformation and NEC

8  - Transformation through Expeditionary  Warfare: Military Change in Poland

9  - Conclusion: The Diffusion of Military  Transformation to European Militaries

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

As befits a book on a transatlantic theme, this project started as a series of conversations between the editors in California and London. We received much help along the way in developing the project and producing this volume. First, we must thank the authors for sharing their ideas over several workshops, and responding with such good cheer to editorial guidance. Everybody pulled together on the project, and a real team spirit developed. It was a delight to experience. We thank King’s College London and Allied Command Transformation (ACT) for sponsoring project conferences in 2007 and 2008 respectively. At ACT, we especially thank NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, Gen. James Mattis, and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Transformation, Lt. Gen. James Soligan, for supporting our project. We are grateful to the participants at these workshops for their feedback on the draft chapters. We also gratefully acknowledge feedback on papers presented at project panels at the International Studies Association and International Security Studies Section annual conventions. We wish to gratefully acknowledge financial support for this project from the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant RES-228-25-0063). Terry Terriff would further like to express his appreciation to the Arthur J. Child Foundation for their financial support for his work on this project, and Theo Farrell similarly would like to acknowlege the financial support he received to work on this project from a research fellowship funded under the UK Research Council’s Global Uncertainties Programme (ESRC Grant RES-071-27-0069). Finally, we wish to thank the team at Stanford University Press, Jessica Walsh, John Feneron, and especially our editor, Geoffrey Burn, whose commitment and enthusiasm for the project matched our own. And that’s saying something.

Contributors

THE EDITORS

Dr. Terry Terriff is the Arthur J. Child Chair of American Security Policy in the Department of Political Science and is also a Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. He has published widely on NATO, transatlantic security, and change in military organizations, most recently on military change in the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army.

Dr. Frans Osinga is a Colonel in the Royal Netherlands Air Force. He has recently completed a tour at Allied Command Transformation, NATO, and is now Assistant Professor at the War Studies Department of the Royal Netherlands Military Academy, Breda.

Dr. Theo Farrell is Professor of War in the Modern World in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He was Associate Editor of Security Studies (2005–9) and is the Security Studies Editor of the ISA Compendium Project.

THE AUTHORS

Dr. Antonio Marquina is Chair in International Security and Cooperation and Director of UNISCI at Complutense University, Madrid. He is also President of the Asia-Europe, Human Security Network.

Dr. Tim Bird is Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London. From September 2008 to July 2009 he was on secondment to the UK Ministry of Defence as part of the writing team producing new UK military stabilization doctrine.

Dr. Heiko Borchert directs business and political consultancies in Switzerland and Austria, is a member of the advisory board of IPA Network International Public Affairs, Berlin, and is affiliated with The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He has worked with military and national security organizations in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany.

Gustavo Díaz has an MA in Intelligence and Security Studies from Salford University. He is Academic Director of Interligare and is currently a researcher at UNISCI, Complutense University.

Dr. Rob de Wijk is Director of The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He is also Professor in the field of international relations at the University of Leiden. He was previously Head of the Defence Concepts Division at The Netherlands Ministry of Defence.

Dr. Sten Rynning is Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark. He is a former Fullbright and NATO Research fellow.

Olaf Osica (Ph.D.) is a senior research fellow at the Natolin European Centre in Warsaw and a senior lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Collegium Civitas in Warsaw.

1

Military Transformation in NATO:  A Framework for Analysis

Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff

Across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), member states are undergoing military transformation. For new member states from the former Eastern bloc, there has been transformation with the introduction of democratically controlled military organizations.¹ Some existing member states have also been transforming their militaries to phase out conscription and move toward all-volunteer professional forces.² On top of these de facto transformations in military professionalism across Europe, NATO undertook a commitment at the 2002 Prague Summit, to transform its capabilities for, and approach to, military operations, and to lead that effort a specific NATO command was created, Allied Command Transformation (ACT).

Notwithstanding the establishment of ACT, military transformation has been a US-led process centered on the exploitation of new information technologies in combination with new concepts for networked organizations and effects-based operations (EBO). European states have simply been unable to match the level of US investment in new military technologies, and so for some time critics have warned of a growing transformation gap between the United States and the European allies.³ In recent years, this process of developing transformational technologies and concepts for war has been reoriented toward tackling counterinsurgency (COIN) and stability operations. Here, the experience (especially from colonial times) of states such as Britain and France gives some European militaries a possible transformation advantage over the big war orientated US military.

This study assesses the extent and trajectory of military transformation across a range of European NATO member states. It considers cases of the major European military powers (Britain, France, and Germany), smaller Western militaries (Spain and The Netherlands), and one new member state (Poland). This study offers a more nuanced picture of the much touted transatlantic transformation gap. It shows the enormous variation among the European allies on the extent of transformation, suggesting that there may be both technological and conceptual gaps within Europe.⁴ It describes how a complex and contingent mix of international and local drivers is operating to push forward military transformation in each country. And, accordingly, it provides insight into the variable trajectories of military transformation among NATO member states.

In this chapter, we introduce the common analytical framework for the book. Essentially, this centers on breaking transformation down into three discrete elements -- namely, network-enablement, effects based operations, and expeditionary warfare. The extent and trajectory of military transformation in each case-study is assessed in terms of these respective technological, doctrinal, and organizational innovations. A secondary goal of this volume is to assess the process of military transformation in each country. This involves an enormously complex interaction among international, national, and organizational factors in each case. Nonetheless, three discrete scholarly literatures considered in this chapter, on military innovation, norm diffusion, and alliance theory, respectively, do provide pointers for analyzing the processes of military transformation.

WHAT IS MILITARY TRANSFORMATION?

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the United States officially embarked on a process of military transformation. Chapter 2 of this volume discusses the rise of military transformation in detail, and thus we provide only a brief introduction in this section to orientate the reader. In the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the US Department of Defense (DoD) declared transformation to be at the heart of its new strategic approach.⁵ Military transformation is rooted in the US-led Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) of the 1990s, when it became apparent that advances in information technology (IT), as harnessed by a resource-rich US military, offered the potential to revolutionize the conduct of warfare, in much the same way that mechanical transport, metal steam-powered ships, and manned flight all revolutionized warfare. The spectacular American victory in the 1991 Gulf War also seemed to suggest that a US-led RMA was underway and that US forces were leaping forward in military capability. ⁶ Indeed, while a number of NATO states provided air and naval forces to support the US-led coalition, only Britain and France provided significant ground contingents. Moreover, the French 6th Light Division was allocated to the far left flank, well away from the main coalition land offensive, because, unlike the British 1st Armoured Division, it was not deemed to be up to major combat operations.⁷ In large part, then, the Gulf War appeared to be a success for the RMA, and militaries around the world began to look closely at the new US military model based on the exploitation of IT. However, no state could hope to match the level of US investment in IT-enabled military capabilities.⁸ So while the rhetoric of the US RMA spread rapidly to other militaries, actual emulation of the new US military model, insofar as it occurred, did so selectively and on a surface level only.⁹

By the end of the 1990s, the term military transformation had begun to replace that of RMA in describing the program of change in the US military. This shift in terminology highlighted that this process of revolutionary military change involved as much new thinking as new technology. Whereas RMA was focused mostly on IT, transformation was equally focused on the new operational concepts and organizational forms that would enable the US military truly to revolutionize the conduct of warfare. Hence, in 2003 the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, defined transformation in this way:

[A] process that shapes the changing nature of military competition and cooperation through new combinations of concepts, capabilities, people and organizations that exploit our nation’s advantages and protect against our asymmetric vulnerabilities to sustain our strategic position which helps underpin peace and stability in the world.¹⁰

Thus, for Rumsfeld, transformation could conceivably involve all manner of things, including a return to cavalry—with US special forces operating on horseback in Afghanistan calling in precision air strikes.¹¹ Crucial to transformation was new agility in doctrinal thinking, organizational form, and operational approach. In short, transformation involved nothing less that a paradigmatic shift in the US approach to warfare. Accordingly, Rumsfeld called on the military to foster a culture of creativity and prudent risk taking.¹²

Just as the 1991 Gulf War focused worldwide military attention on the future of conventional warfare, so ongoing coalition operations following the 2001–2 Afghan War and 2003 Iraq War have focused Western military minds on the return of irregular warfare. This, in turn, has had an impact upon the transformation debate, resulting in divergent perspectives within the US on the content and direction of military transformation. Broadly speaking, it is possible to discern two strands—one focused on conventional warfare, the other on COIN and stability operations. The first strand, more commonly called Force Transformation, has been the most prominent. As noted above, it has involved innovating concepts, organizations, and technologies for major combat operations. At the same time, in November 2005, the Undersecretary of Defense (policy) issued a directive requiring the (DoD) and military service to give stability operations priority comparable to combat operations.¹³ In truth, it is hard to imagine the army, air force, and navy giving equal weight to forms of operations (such as stability operations) that essentially threaten the purpose of traditional prestige weapon platforms: heavy armor, strategic bombers, and aircraft carriers. Nonetheless, operational demands and experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and new US military doctrine on small wars and COIN, reinforce the genuine interest in the US military in what some have called Second Generation Transformation.¹⁴

Both strands of US military transformation are producing innovations—both in terms of technology and ideas—that are of interest to the European allies. As suggested above, the Europeans have been concerned for a number of years about the transformation gap, and this is leading them to consider how they need to transform their own militaries in order to be able to continue to fight alongside the US military in conventional wars. At the same time, European militaries (especially those with colonial and peacekeeping experience) will be naturally drawn to COIN and stability operations. And here there has been some two-way transatlantic traffic of military ideas. In 2004–5, the US Army was keen to learn from the European (especially British) experience of COIN. Since 2006, the US Army and Marine Corps have developed new concepts, doctrine, and organizational capabilities, building on lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan.¹⁵ The new joint US Army/US Marine Corps doctrine on COIN (FM 3-24) has greatly influenced doctrinal development and the conduct of operations by European militaries.¹⁶

THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

This study adopts a focused, structured comparison approach to examining military transformation in six NATO member states.¹⁷ Accordingly, we focus on specific aspects of each case and analysis is structured by a common set of research themes concerning the extent, process, and trajectories of military transformation. Our case selection provides for analysis of military transformation in a range of European member states. Britain, France, and Germany, as the major powers in Europe, have similar potential to resource military transformation. At the same time, these three cases offer variation in terms of political and military ties to the United States, recent operational experience, and national military culture. We have also selected two additional existing member states—one northern (The Netherlands) and one southern (Spain), and one new member state (Poland). In all three of these additional cases the states are (or have until recently been) sympathetic to US grand strategy, and the militaries have recent operational experience with US forces.

At the heart of both transformation strands are two innovations, network-centric warfare (what the Europeans call network-enabled capability) and effects-based operations. There is also a major organizational change—namely, the shift from predeployed forces for territorial defense of Europe to forces configured for expeditionary warfare. Assessment of the extent of transformation in each case concentrates on these three elements of transformation. Empirically, this involves looking at change in doctrine, training, and force structure, as well as at future force development and systems acquisition plans in each country.

Network-Enabled Capability (NEC)

This innovation originates in the US concept for network-centric warfare (NCW). This is the notion that a system of systems, connecting sensors, information processing centers, and shooters operating as one network across the whole of the battlespace, will replace platform-centric warfare conducted by large, self-contained military units. The Europeans prefer the term network-enabled capability (NEC), with enabled intentionally replacing centric; this indicates the more modest expectations (itself reflecting the more modest resources) of the Europeans in terms of the transformative effect of networking on military organization.

Effects-Based Operations

This concept originated in US Air Force thinking in the early 1990s about the future of striking air power. In its original formulation, EBO was about reconsidering how operational effects could be most efficiently produced through air strikes. Thus, whereas previously the focus had been on destroying targets, under EBO, it may be sufficient or indeed preferable to disable targets. In the late 1990s, the meaning and scope of EBO changed considerably. It was adopted more widely by all the US services and increasingly by US allies, and was redefined more broadly in terms of focusing military operations on the campaign objective—that is, the strategic effect. Arguably, this broader definition is rather meaningless (because military operations should always concentrate on campaign objectives), though it does have the virtue of focusing military attention on how the conduct of the campaign (particular in terms of the level of destruction) contributes or retracts from campaign objectives. The language of effects-based operations is now widely used in NATO even if there is some differing on precise terms and meanings. Indeed, NATO’s Military Committee formally adopted the concept of the effects-based approach to operations (EBAO) in 2006.¹⁸ Like EBO, EBAO focuses attention on the strategic effects of operations but also places priority on the integration of the various instruments of the alliance and coordination with other international organizations.

Expeditionary Warfare

This element involves the most change—in organizational structure and capabilities—for the land forces. Expeditionary warfare has always been a core mission for the US Marine Corps. But now it has become a core mission for the US Army. This is most evident in the US Army’s program for restructuring from ten divisions to forty-three brigade combat teams (BCTs). There will also be a sizable number of support brigades, but essentially BCTs will be self-sufficient combat formations. A typical army division had around 15,000 troops, whereas a BCT has between 3,000 and 4,000. Thus this new modular force structure promises to give the US Army a more agile force structure, and one that is better suited to expeditionary warfare. It so happens that a number of European militaries undertook similar restructuring programs in the mid to late 1990s, to do away with unsustainable legacy force structures and to introduce new self-sustainable and deployable units; hence Britain began to fold army regiments into battalions, while France broke up its divisions into maneuver regiments. The development of expeditionary forces needs also to be viewed in light of the innovative Combined Joint Task Force concept (CJTF), adopted by NATO in 1994. Introduced to NATO by the US military, CJTFs were the early version of the current drive to create modular expeditionary forces.¹⁹ So we would expect to find considerable evidence of this aspect of military transformation in many of the case studies.

PROCESSES OF MILITARY TRANSFORMATION

Military transformation involves both external processes of military emulation and internal processes of military innovation. To be sure, a central concern of this volume is with the question of whether, and to what degree, European military transformation has been influenced by new military concepts and ideas from the United States. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the unquestioned dominant military power. Moreover, as noted already, the 1991 Gulf War was an apt demonstration of US military prowess. Hence, the US military has provided an exemplar, or template, for European states seeking to transform their militaries for the information age. Driving this European interest in transformation is also a traditional concern with sustaining their alliance with the United States. European states recognize that, should they fail to keep up with the Americans, they will become militarily irrelevant.

In this section we consider three scholarly literatures that are relevant to our analysis of the process of military transformation in individual European states. First is the literature on military innovation, which suggests the factors that shape domestic processes of military transformation. Second is the literature on norm diffusion, which explores the transnational processes whereby US ideas and innovations spread to European militaries. Third is the literature on alliance politics, which points to traditional intra-alliance concerns with interoperability and burden sharing.

Military Innovation

Since military transformation involves a number of innovations, the military innovation literature is of obvious relevance to case studies in this volume.²⁰ This literature broadly suggests three main factors that shape the trajectory of military innovations: threat, civil-military relations, and military culture. Related literatures on bureaucratic politics and weapons procurement suggest that entrenched institutional interests can also be a barrier to military innovation.

Threat is an obvious spur to military innovation. Indeed, the dominant theoretical approach to International Relations theory (that is, Realism) stresses how alert states are to threatening changes in the international system.²¹ Threatened states may respond by forming alliances, but they may also internally mobilize military resources, and that, in turn, may require military innovation. Indeed, the threatening development may itself be military innovation by an opponent (a new weapon or way of war) that demands an innovative response.²² States will be particularly sensitive to external military threats in the shadow of war. Moreover, defeat or major setback in war can itself push militaries to innovate. ²³ Even militaries that are victorious in war but at very great cost may seek to innovate in order to make future victory less costly. Thus, a British general staff horrified by the human toll of World War I embraced new technologies in the interwar period in order that the next battles might be won with the maximum of machinery and minimum of manpower.²⁴

The military innovation literature also highlights the role of internal factors. With regard to civil-military relations, the key issues are military responsiveness to civilian policy, and the ability of civilian policymakers to effect military innovation. The literature recognizes that civilians are often more ready to contemplate major military change in response to new policy priorities or strategic challenges, precisely because they do not have an organizational stake in existing military practices, equipment, and structures. However, opinion is divided on the question of whether civilian intervention is effective, or even required, in military innovation. One school argues that because militaries are slow to change, civilians must intervene to force them to innovate (especially in peacetime), and that such innovation is most likely to succeed when civilian policymakers team up with maverick military experts.²⁵ An alternative school argues that militaries must and do innovate by choice. Innovation requires visionary military leaders, who enjoy legitimacy within their organizations by virtue of their formal position, to lead campaigns to effect major change within their organizations. Externally imposed change will fail, it is argued, because civilians lack the knowledge, and mavericks the authority, to effect real change.²⁶

The third shaping factor is military culture. Military culture comprises those identities, norms, and values that have been internalized by a military organization, and that frame the way the organization views the world, and its role and functions in it.²⁷ Military culture is embodied in (and reproduced through) military training, regulations, routines, and practice. Given that military practices, technologies, and structures usually reflect cultural bias, as a general rule we may expect military culture to act as a brake on innovation. That is the point of the military-led innovation school discussed above: since innovation involves changing those things that militaries take for granted, you need a leader with authority to champion what is, in effect, cultural change. Even with such a champion, innovation is unlikely to succeed if it challenges the core identity of the organization.²⁸ Thus of two innovations attempted by two different commandants of the US Marine Corps (USMC)—the adoption of maneuver warfare as the overarching war-fighting concept for the USMC under General Alfred Gray (1987–91), and the creation of a culture of constant innovation under General Charles Krulak (1995–99)—the former succeeded because it was consistent with the warrior identity of the Corps, while the latter failed because it was not.²⁹ For this reason, innovation that goes against organizational identity usually requires some external shock to military culture, such as defeat in war, in order to jolt the military into a fundamental rethink of its purpose and core business.³⁰

Related to the military innovation literature is scholarship on bureaucratic politics and on weapons acquisition that underlines the institutional and political barriers to innovation. The large literature on bureaucratic politics, ³¹ like the work on military culture, points to characteristics of military organizations that produce obstacles to truly innovative military change. Often these vested interests are located in dominant war-fighting communities within organizations (for example, promoters of armor in the army, bomber and fighter pilots in the air force, surface warfare officers in the navy). Military innovation almost always challenges vested organizational interests: new ideas threaten familiar operational practices, and new technologies threaten legacy systems. Crucially, military innovation may threaten the traditional flow of resources.³² Related to bureaucratic politics are broader entrenched interests that drive military procurement. Studies of weapons procurement highlight military biases toward developing high-performance and high-cost equipment, and the means the military have to advance those biases: institutional longevity, knowledge asymmetry of defense matters, and manipulation of the program process (through things like sunk costs and gold-plating).³³ These studies also point to domestic politics (favoring home-produced systems), national industrial capacity, and industry-government links as factors that influence program choice and outcome. ³⁴

Norm Diffusion

From the European perspective, military transformation is a transnational process involving an emerging norm of military organization and operations that originates from the United States. As such, the literature on international norm diffusion is relevant here. Much of this literature is concerned with the spread of norms of state sovereignty, good governance, and human rights.³⁵ More recently, some scholars have begun to look at norm diffusion in the military sphere.³⁶ The norm diffusion literature suggests external processes of military change that are shaped by a number of considerations.

The first consideration is motive. Essentially, with norm diffusion we are not talking about military innovation so much as military emulation. The military in question innovates by emulating another—usually we are talking about developing states emulating more developed ones. The norm diffusion literature suggests two motives for emulation. The first is success: militaries will emulate those that have been successful in battle. This is a rationalist account of emulation which suggests that strategic imperatives provide the driving motive. In this sense, the dramatic US victory in the 1991 Gulf War provided the perfect poster child for the US model of an IT-intensive military. The other motive is legitimacy: militaries emulate the strongest states, even if such military models are inappropriate for poorer or less threatened states, because strength confers legitimacy. Hence even the militaries of the smallest states, which had little need and could ill afford an IT-intensive military, were emulating the US military model in the 1990s. This is a cultural account of emulation which suggests that legitimacy imperatives provide the driving motive.³⁷

The second consideration is norm strength, which may be measured in terms of how well defined the norm is, how long-established it is, and how widely accepted it is.³⁸ Arguably, transformation has involved the diffusion of two norms, one involving process and the other content. The process norm is one of constant innovation: transformation aims to produce innovative militaries. Transformation is also about, as we have suggested, a specific mix of technological and doctrinal innovations and organizational changes. In this sense, we may say that there is a fairly well defined content norm that specifies network-enabled, effects-orientated, and expeditionary organizations and operations. Both norms are widely accepted by Western militaries. However, our study shows, the process norm is accepted more in rhetoric than in reality. And there is enormous variation in actual interpretation, at a national level, of the content norm. Both norms are also only a few years old, and so neither are well established.

The third consideration is the transmission structure for new international norms. The norm diffusion literature points to the role of institutional structures—legal regimes, international organizations, epistemic communities, and policy networks—in promoting, transmitting, and sustaining the norms in question.³⁹ Obviously, for this study NATO is the most important institutional structure and, in particular, Allied Command Transformation. Bilateral military relations may also be a significant form of transmission structure. This is especially true for Britain, with its close military ties to the United States, but other potential significant bilateral relations include those between France and Germany. For the European member states, the European Union may also be a transmission structure for new military norms.

The fourth consideration in norm diffusion is the end-point of the process—that is, norm internalization. Crucial to transnational norms taking root in national contexts is the degree of match or mismatch between the new norms and existing military culture. Also important is the degree of match with strategic culture—that is, beliefs shared and practiced by national policy communities about when and how to use force.⁴⁰ Strategic culture is broader than national military ways of