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Abstract
"Revolutions in Military Affairs" (RMAs) currently interest both historians and strategic analysts, but how exactly do they occur, why do they prove so decisive, and what (if any) are their limits? This essay seeks answers through the detailed study of one critical element of an earlier "Revolution in Military Affairs"-infantry volley fire-tracing its invention, first in Japan in the 1560s and then in the Dutch Republic in the 1590s, and its first use in combat at the battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600 by a Dutch army commanded by Maurice of Nassau. It then examines the current RMA in the light of that case study.
FOUR military innovations in early modern Europe facilitated the rise of the West. After 1430, the development of heavy bronze gunpowder artillery made possible the destruction of almost all fortifications of traditional vertical design, while a century later the creation of fortresses of geometrical design restored the advantage in siege warfare to their defenders. Around 1510, naval architects began to place heavy artillery aboard full-rigged sailing vessels, creating floating fortresses that proved incomparably superior to any non-Western fighting ships. Finally, in the 1590s, the invention of infantry volley fire (one rank of infantry firing in unison and then reloading while other ranks fired in turn) permitted the defeat of far larger enemy forces, whether mounted or on foot, in the field. These four developments had by 1775 allowed relatively small groups of Europeans to conquer most of the Americas, Siberia, and the Philippines, and parts of South Asia-over one-third of the world's land surface-and to dominate the world's oceans. By 1914, thanks to continuing military and naval superiority, the West had won control of over three-quarters of the world's land surface as well as almost all the world's oceans. Although thereafter the West lost its colonies, in the late twentieth century another series of linked military changes gave Western forces an overwhelming superiority in almost all forms of armed conflict.1
The Office of Net Assessment within the Pentagon used the acronym "RMA," standing for "Revolution in Military Affairs," to describe the "interaction between systems that collect, process, fuse and communicate information and those that apply military force" that has enabled the West to use "precision violence" against its foes.2...