Book Review: Keith Shimko’s ‘The Iraq Wars and America’s Military Revolution’

The forthcoming issue of Contemporary Security Policy will contain, among a great many things, a review I wrote of Keith Shimko‘s latest book, The Iraq Wars and America’s Military Revolution (Cambridge University Press). The journal editors have kindly permitted the review to be reproduced, in advance and in full, here at Kings of War. By around December, the original will be published in volume 31, number 3 of Contemporary Security Review (which also, I should add, features an article of mine on ‘Peacebuilding After Afghanistan’).

Here is the review, courtesy of Contemporary Security Policy.

The Iraq Wars and America’s Military Revolution, Keith L. Shimko. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 249. $27.99 (paperback).

by David H. Ucko

Keith L. Shimko, associate professor of political science at Purdue University, makes the case that the US military has, since Operation Desert Storm, undergone a ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA) based on the emerging technologies of precision strike, communications, and reconnaissance. In a book published 2010, this claim is less novel than it is bold: to most, the RMA lost its appeal in 2003 when the promises of ‘transformation’ and ‘network-centric warfare’ proved largely irrelevant to the challenges facing the US military. Critics piled on, pointing out how the theories of RMA proponents had led to some of the grossest strategic missteps in recent American history.

If the RMA was the thesis, the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were the antithesis. What Shimko provides is a synthesis of the two, creating a middle ground between RMA proponents and critics. The result is a much-needed reworking of typical RMA assertions, informed by a decade of experience with insurgencies in various theatres. Thus, the RMA will not ‘lift the fog of war’ but significantly reduce it, and while Shimko still sees the associated capabilities as ‘revolutionary’, they are not, he explains, relevant to all types of war.

This attempt at reconciliation is the book’s strongest point. By placing the RMA in historical context, and by elaborating on the ‘newness’ of its related innovations, Shimko offers an assessment that is less hyperbolic than usual, yet that nonetheless gives commonly discredited concepts their due. Thus, charting a course between sales-pitches and diatribes, he astutely identifies ‘the limits as well as the promise of RMA technologies’ (p. 208).

The note of moderation relies on a dichotomy in the book between conventional warfare, where the RMA is said to fit perfectly, and stabilisation or counterinsurgency, where the RMA is less helpful. The bifurcation is evident structurally as well as conceptually. The book’s first half, covering the 1991-2003 period, largely ignores the challenges of insurgency, waxes lyrical about the RMA, and feels in its sources and content like it belongs (and may have been written) in the time-period it deals with. The second half, dealing with the Iraqi insurgency, leaves the RMA lexicon behind and focuses instead on the ascendance of a US counterinsurgency strategy. The implications of each isolated half are never carried over to inform the argument as a whole; nor does the concluding chapter convincingly integrate these two sides of the same coin.

Instead, the conclusion drawn from this bifurcation is that ‘the RMA was about a revolution in warfare, not postwar stabilisation’ (p. 145). This conclusion is commendable for flagging the ‘lower spectrum of operations’ and for its recognition that precision-guided munitions have only limited relevance in such settings. Nonetheless, the dichotomy between conventional and irregular wars is questionable, and even pernicious if it allows RMA advocates to dismiss the ‘lower end of operations’ as inconvenient exceptions to otherwise foolproof theories. This appears to be the tendency of the book: Shimko even refers to the conventional and insurgency phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom as two separate wars, and draws separate conclusions about the RMA from each. This allows for a glowing endorsement of the RMA on the basis of the war’s initial blows, and the ascription of subsequent trouble to unrelated factors.

Yet to judge the RMA solely on its ability to hit or reconnoitre targets, and conventional targets at that, is to mount an artificially bounded testing-ground in which these technologies can shine. Conclusions drawn on this basis are not wrong, but the context in which they are right is too limited to allow for broader statements about the nature of warfare. Furthermore, Shimko’s ‘two wars’ are not separate: from the number of troops deployed and lack of plans to the immediate ownership of seized territory and towns, the ‘post-war’ phase in Iraq overlapped with and stemmed directly from the manner in which the country was invaded. It follows that ‘revolutionary’ technology is never really ‘decisive for outcomes’, even in ‘conventional’ wars (p. 217), because conventional wars are themselves means toward political ends, and it is here that decisiveness comes into play. Even in World War II, where the conventional and post-war phases appear so distinct, planning for the occupation of Germany began as early as 1941 and related intimately to the manner in which the war was fought and also concluded.

In lesser ways too, the book’s defence of the RMA is problematic. Shimko argues that RMA theorists of the 1990s cannot be faulted for excluding from consideration the type of enemy that would eventually be faced, as no enemy presented itself at that time (p. 130). While this is doubtlessly true, does it justify the exceedingly narrow conception in RMA thinking of war essentially as a targeting drill, ending with the military defeat of fielded forces? Similarly, Shimko argues that it was not due to transformation fetishism that war planners failed to prepare for the stabilization of post-war Iraq, but because of the entrenched US military tradition to separate political and military thinking. Again, this is no doubt true, but does RMA theory look any better if it simply shares in, rather than exclusively own, this failing? The search for nuance is commendable but sometimes appears tendentious.

Still, the book is extremely readable and well researched, offering a detailed review of American defence modernisation over the last two decades. It is unfortunate that no primary research appears to have gone into the manuscript, as much of its content is therefore rather familiar. Also unfortunate is Shimko’s occasional tendency to highlight disagreements in the secondary literature without establishing where he himself stands. For example, the John Nagl vs. Gian Gentile polemic regarding counterinsurgency as a US military priority is recited in a few quotation-laden paragraphs, yet the author moves on before presenting his own take (p. 228). Indeed, upon finishing the book, it is unclear whether Shimko is advocating greater investment in RMA systems or a rebalancing of priorities toward ‘irregular war’.

Maybe the conclusion is just that RMA capabilities have some value, in targeting, reconnaissance and communications, in some settings, and against some adversaries. As a conclusion, this one is welcomingly moderate and well presented, but it nonetheless irks this reviewer, as it rests on a conceptual dichotomy of wars as either ‘conventional’ or not, which has not been helpful to the US military either in the past or today.