Governing Military Technologies in the 21st Century: Ethics and Operations

Ethics and Operations

R. O'Meara, Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137449177
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Governing Military Technologies in the 21st Century is one of the first books to tackle the big five technological threats all in one place: nanotech, robotics, cyberwar, human enhancement, and, non-lethal weapons, weaving a historical, legal, and sociopolitical fabric into a discussion of their development, deployment, and, potential regulation.

1

Introduction: The Nature of the Problem

Abstract: The innovation, adaption, and use of new technologies on the battlefield have a history which precedes even the written record. How to identify the nature of their impact and regulate their use has been an ongoing challenge for centuries. Contemporary innovation, however, may well represent a shift in traditional paradigms, given that innovation is democratized, that is available to anyone with minimal constraints, and flourishes in unregulated spaces. How to describe emerging technologies and their impact on the battlefield is of considerable importance as humankind wrestles with the legal and ethical decisions required to insure that it is not overtaken by, and perhaps destroyed by, technology’s unintended potential.

O’Meara, Richard Michael. Governing Military Technologies in the 21st Century: Ethics and Operations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137449177.0005.

The scope of contemporary technological innovation is both impressive and staggering. Indeed, for the average consumer of these technologies, whether on the battlefield or in daily life—the general who orders this technology, the politician who pays for it, the user whose life is changed by it, even the Luddite who rails against it—these technologies are magic. They are incomprehensible in the manner of their creation, the details of their inner workings, the sheer minutiae of their possibilities. They are like the genie out of the bottle clamoring to fulfill three wishes; guess right and the world is at your fingertips, guess wrong and there may well be catastrophe. And you have to guess quickly for the genie is busy and has to move on. There are, of course, shamans who know the genie’s rules, who created the genie or at least discovered how to get it out of the bottle. You go to them and beg for advice regarding your wishes. What should I take from the genie? How should I use my wishes? Quickly tell me before I lose my chance and the genie makes the choices for me. And you find that the shaman is busy with new genies and new bottles and hasn’t given your choices much thought at all. He may stop to help you ponder your questions, but most probably he goes back into his tent and continues his work. “You’re on your own kid . . . Don’t screw up!”

Discussions regarding the scope of emerging technologies are often difficult due to the breadth and sophistication of the information about them. They often descend into ramblings about gadgets and gizmos and reflect the short answer to Peter Singer’s question, “Why spend four years researching and writing a book on new technologies? Because robots are freakin’ cool.”¹ Because innovation is and has always been catalytic, feeding off itself, reacting to its intended and unintended consequences, influenced by the environment in which it is created and creating new environments as it goes, the discussion must, or course, be much longer and more nuanced. Of equal importance is the fact that demands for emerging technologies are coming faster and faster, and failure to keep up can have disastrous effects on the battlefield.

Emerging technologies are not new to the battlefield. Indeed, humankind has effected and been affected by the military use of technology since at least the use of stones as weapons. The history of warfare, of course, begins with the written record. The anthropology of warfare, on the other hand, has a considerably longer tail. While there is a good deal of speculation regarding man’s inherent penchant for violence, it is clear that many of the characteristics of the successful warrior can also be identified with the successful hunter of the prehistoric age. Prehistorians Henri Breuil and Raymond Lautier, for example, note the similarities between hunting humans and their prey. “The bonds between them were not yet broken, and man still felt near to the beasts that lived around him, that killed, and fed him . . . from them he still retained all the faculties that civilization has blunted—rapid action and highly trained senses of sight, hearing and smell, physical toughness in an extreme degree, a detailed, precise knowledge of the qualities and habits of game, and great skill in using with the greatest effect the rudimentary weapons available.”²

Yet, there are many ways to look at the issue. John Keegan notes that some 10,000 years ago there occurred, perhaps for the first time, a revolution in weapons technology with the appearance of four “staggeringly powerful new weapons”—the bow, the sling, the dagger, and the mace.³ And there have been multiple revolutions since. Keegan, for example, divides his discussion of warfare into four general groups: stone, flesh, iron, and fire. These categories refer to the types of technologies described and their impact on civilization. Flesh, for example, speaks to the harnessing of animals, specifically horses and the technologies used by horse warriors; chariots, warhorses, large and small, and the composite bow (used on horseback by nomads), and so on.⁴ Some innovations, according to Keegan, are so revolutionary as to change the manner in which mankind operates. Geography, too, affected the tools man developed in order to challenge those privileged to live in river valleys where stone, bronze, and the horse monopolized the successful organization of war. Iron, it turns out, was a game changer in this regard. Unlike bronze, a difficult technology both in its forging and its cost, iron appears to have been much more available. Because it created stronger tools and was able to maintain a sharper edge, its use quickly became widespread and changed multiple social relationships both between the outliers of the river civilizations and within outlier societies. The adaption of iron to agriculture, for example, opened up the vast heartland as iron tools were used to tackle the difficult soils of the steppe. Iron swords, shields, helmets, and spears became the tool of choice for soldier formations, which because of these tools’ relative cost, became larger as more and more men could afford their ownership and use.⁵

This discussion, then, emphasizes the technology itself and chronicles the myriad intended and unanticipated consequences that flow from its creation and use.

More recently, the literature eschews discussions of specific technologies and speaks in terms of industrial revolutions and their effect on tactics and strategy with the warning that actors (traditionally nation-states but increasingly non-state actors) which are unable to recognize the importance of technology and adapt accordingly “. . . cease to be great . . .”⁶ “Great powers,” Max Boot argues, “cease to be great for many reasons. In addition to the causes frequently debated—economics, culture, disease, geography—there is an overarching trend. Over the last 500 years, the fate of nations has been increasingly tied to their success, or lack thereof, in harnessing revolutions in military affairs.”⁷ Here the emphasis is not on the particular technology itself, but rather the ability of the group to envision and organize its application, conceive of its relationship and use with other technologies, and otherwise maximize its benefits as it competes with other groups.

Others continue the de-emphasis of specific technologies and speak of military-social revolutions. Williamson Murray, for example, emphasizes the creation of the modern state and its ability to organize both warfare and peaceful endeavors. “Between 1792 and 1815, two separate military-social revolutions occurred which again altered the framework of war. The French Revolution completely upset the social and political framework within which the European states had conducted their wars since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 [institution of the practice of levée en masse and total war], and the Industrial Revolution was to have equally profound implications . . .

If technology exercised little influence over the battlefields of this period, it did play a crucial part in the Seventh Coalition’s winning the campaign against Napoleon. The Industrial Revolution was at the time changing the way the British economy worked. By revolutionizing the means of production, it altered the basis on which economic activity had rested since the dawn of time—namely, human, and animal muscle power. The gains this revolution in economic affairs and technology provided to Britain enabled its government to subsidize the great coalitions against the French, including the last one that destroyed Napoleon’s empire.⁸

Murray continues his emphasis regarding the symbiotic relationship between the innovation of emerging technologies in the civilian sphere and in the military. “From 1914 to 1989, military technology drove civilian technology. During the interwar years, military organizations pushed the development of technologies like the airplane and radio, with spin-offs like radar, all of which had immense significance for civilians . . . Today, the 1914–89 pattern has shifted back to the pre-1914 paradigm: technological developments in the civilian world of computers and communications are now driving military technology.”⁹

Another way of getting at the subject is to speak the language of epidemiology and ecology. Here mankind constitutes the only significant macroparasites of the animal world

. . . who, by specializing in violence, are able to secure a living without themselves producing the food and other commodities they consume. Hence a study of macroparasitism among human populations turns into a study of the organization of armed force with special attention to changes in the kinds of equipment warriors used. Alterations in armaments resemble genetic mutations of micro-organisms in the sense that they may, from time to time, open new geographic zones for exploration, or break down older limits upon the exercise of force within the host society itself.¹⁰

Others speak of revolutions in military affairs or cultural ways of war. Peter Wilson, for example, outlines four revolutions in military affairs which have resulted in four ways of war for the United States. The first deals with organization around fighting vehicles and the way they communicate; the second deals with irregular warfare (which he believes will become the regular way of war); the third involves the standoff in nuclear weapons technology, practiced primarily during the Cold War; and the fourth deals with the present and includes military operations at high speed with low casualties which are rapid and decisive.¹¹ All of these involve responses to new military technologies and demonstrate, in his view, attempts to harness and organize around these technologies in order to gain efficiencies on the battlefield. Michael Guetlein speaks specifically to information technology when he notes, “[T]he business of collecting, communic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: The Nature of the Problem
• 2  Gadgets and Gizmos
• 3  Innovators and Consumers: The Culture of Innovation and Use of Military Technology in the 21st Century
• 4  Intended and Unanticipated Consequences
• 5  Contemporary Governance and Architecture
• 6  Arms around the Problem: Suggestions for Future Governance
• 7  Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index