Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 51

MYTH OF COMPLEXITY

security situation throughout Europe by 1914. That
environment, according to military historian John
Keegan, “progressively overwhelmed the capacity of
statesmen and diplomats” to control it.5 As a result,
Europe abruptly went to war with itself.
The rapidity by which the continent went from
“peaceful productivity” to being fully immersed in a
war of unparalleled destruction was alarming, even by
today’s standards.6 Equally remarkable was the scale
of transformation in warfare that occurred between
1914 and 1918, a relatively short period. The war gave
birth to airpower, armor, chemical weapons, and the
primacy of the machine gun and indirect artillery fire.
Nations that were accustomed to fighting wars strictly
on the ground soon found themselves fighting in the
air and under the oceans’ surface. It is hard to know if
the soldiers fighting in World War I realized that these
new tools of war would retain their central role on
the battlefield more than a century later, or how that
realization might have felt. Such a dramatic, sweeping
transformation in weaponry has not occurred since or
much less as quickly. Therefore, when the current narrative discusses the challenges of complexity combined
with the need to keep up with new technologies on the
modern “ever-changing” battlefield, it is instructive to
remember that such challenges are nothing new.
The interwar years. Even more than during World
War I, the interwar period was defined by military
innovation, the scope and speed of which had never
been seen before. It was a time defined by “intellectual and technological jockeying” that, like most other
interwar stretches, resulted in “systemic and massive
changes to the basic nature of warfare,” according to
Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet.7 The United
States and European nations, such as Great Britain,
France, and Germany, along with the Soviet Union and
Japan, raced to produce armaments and technologies
that would provide an advantage in combat, although
future opponents and battlefields were unknown. The
capabilities of airpower and submarines combined with
the rapidly increasing lethality of all weapon systems
produced a charged strategic environment that was
extremely competitive, dangerous, and unpredictable.
Such advances in warfare took place against the
backdrop of dramatic changes in other domestic and
political spheres. During this period, fascism and communism were taking root in Europe, while the Second
MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2016

Sino-Japanese War was displaying Japan’s aggressiveness as well as its military capability. The rise of Nazism
in the 1930s demonstrates that radical ideologies
feeding into conflict is not a recent phenomenon at all.
Also, the financial impact of World War I on nations
followed by the Great Depression placed “tremendous strain on national economies” and produced an
economic crisis in which “currencies crashed, unemployment figures rose, unrest flourished, and moral
standards declined,” according to the authors of Men
in Arms.8 This swirl of military, political, and economic
turmoil during the period leading up to World War II
produced a global situation that would undoubtedly
be viewed today as dangerously chaotic, unstable (as it
truly was), and extremely complex.
World War II. Historian Brian M. Linn recently characterized World War II as “the Army’s finest
hour.”9 In many ways it was. It showed the U.S. military
to be one of tenacious, organized professionals possessing extraordinary strategic vision, resilience, and guts.
For the United States, the enemies were known and the
mission was clear, or so it seemed. It is all fine and good
for retired generals to wax nostalgic for “the good old
days of the Good War! The old-fashioned and simple
conventional war,” but such comments understate the
real nature of the two world wars and the Cold War
they spawned, just as stating that today’s wars are far
more complicated than those of the twentieth century
is a dubious claim.10 No event that involved the armies
of over thirty nations, resulted in more than forty million military casualties a nd forty-five million dead civilians, and was fought in over thirty operational campaigns around the globe was simple.11 Most Americans
today (especially those in the military) would be awed,
stunned, or overwhelmed by the enormous strategic,
operational, and logistical complications and frustrations that came with fighting wars of such magnitude
and dire consequences.12 Unfortunately, the passing of
seventy years has dulled our collective memory in this
regard. And, unlike its predecessor, World War II also
brought a new totality to war, defined most poignantly by the first use of atomic weapons—and with it, a
frightening uncertainty about future conflicts.
The Cold War. Following the collapse of the Soviet
Union, it became popular to remember the Cold War
in uncomplicated terms: democracy versus communism; good versus bad. The specter of mutually assured
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