Preserving the well-bred horse.

• Author: Bacevich, A.J.

THE TECHNIQUE HAS long formed an integral part of dialogue within the public square: institutions under siege embrace grandiose visions of change in order to deflect external pressures and preserve the essence of the status quo. Nowhere is the practice more widely or blatantly employed than in politics. Sensing the rising tide of sentiment that would "throw the rascals out," members of Congress hungry to retain office announce that the time is ripe for election reforms ostensibly designed to clean up politics once and for all. Yet such effrontery is hardly unique to politicians. With dissatisfaction at the inadequacy of American education grown rampant, the National Education Association finds the moment opportune to unveil bold new plans to reinvent public schools. With the cost of health care and access to treatment rising to the forefront of the national agenda, lobbyists for the American Medical Association trundle out far-reaching proposals for overhauling the entire health care system.

That duress or self-interest figure prominently in shaping such calls for change does not mean that they are without value. Nor does it mean that advocacy of such proposals is dishonest or insincere. On the other hand, neither is it disinterested. Reform springing from within reflects something other than unadulterated concern for the common good. Indeed, institutional prescriptions for change that provide certain answers are intended to preempt other answers and to keep other questions altogether unasked. In short, however handsomely packaged, institutional advocacy of change almost invariably conceals a defense of orthodoxy. For the most part, the public understands this and treats pronouncements issued by politicians and interest groups accordingly.

Precisely the same skepticism ought to greet the revelation that the American military establishment has uncovered a new Rosetta Stone that bids fair to transform the subject of their profession. Variously referred to as the Military-Technical Revolution, Military Revolution, or Revolution in Military Affairs, this concept postulates that advanced technology--micro-electronics, computers, precision guided munitions, sensors, stealth, the panoply of capabilities promised by the Information Age--has rendered traditional approaches to warfare obsolete.

That present-day soldiers are genuinely enthralled by this concept is not to be questioned. Given their way, they would enshrine it as their great organizing principle, devoting untold billions to exploring its implications. Yet left in military hands, this revolution in warfare is no more likely to produce fundamental change than is adoption of Total Quality Management likely to revitalize the Agriculture Department. Indeed, as interpreted by senior officers, the chief product of this revolution will be to perpetuate elements of the status quo most cherished by the military profession, ignoring altogether change with which the military is uncomfortable. In short, although the Military Revolution merits scrutiny, it does so primarily for what it reveals--if only inadvertently--regarding the limitations of contemporary military thought.

The Sin of Standing Still

PERHAPS SURPRISINGLY, the military's sponsorship of its own revolution has thus far provoked not skepticism but approbation, garnering a more respectful response than proposals for "change" advanced by the average pol or lobbyist. We may attribute this to the fact that even today the soldier who portrays himself as reform-minded and technologically progressive plays, in a vestigial sense, against type.

In an earlier day, soldiers typically mounted their defense of military orthodoxy by alluding to secrets of the warrior's craft, those deep and immutable truths to which they alone as high priests of the military art had access. As a device for sustaining confidence in military professionalism during an age of total war this approach generally has not fared well. Notwithstanding the boost given to military credibility by the recent Gulf War, events of the twentieth century have done little to burnish the military profession's overall reputation for perspicacity and progressiveness. On the contrary, through most of this century a cavalcade of bloody disasters left most politicians and many publics wary of claims by soldiers that war is a business best left strictly to professionals. For Britain and its empire, faith in the innate wisdom of generals began to wane sometime between the Somme and Passchendaele. In France, it did not survive the spring of 1940. In Germany, it died with the Third Reich. For Americans, perhaps slow learners, its demise can be pinpointed with some precision: it corresponded with the Vietnamese celebration of the lunar new year in 1968.

In a sense, the First World War dealt generals a blow from which they have struggled mightily to recover ever since. A by-product of the agonies of the Western Front, the image of unyielding stupidity endemic among senior military officers has proven all but indelible. Insisting that all would come out well if only "the Frocks" refrained from meddling and the citizenry remained compliant, purblind commanders safely ensconced in chateaux presided over years of pointless butchery, seemingly immune to learning from the process. At least so it appeared to those on the firing line and to...