Innovators tend to be solipsists. They often want to cram every stray fact and experience into their new model. As the historian Robert Darnton has written, ‘The marvels of communications technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past…’This rings true for a great deal of the treatment of history by the RMA debate.
On that note, Rolf Hobson’s latest [1] contrasts the historical accounts of Blitzkrieg in the RMA literature with current historical research (conducted over the past ten years) into the Wehrmarch’s way of war and finds the former to be narrow and incomplete. Hobson’s article includes a more nuanced portrayal of the French pre-WWII than the caricatures of a “Maginot-line mentality” that are often trotted out during RMA-type discussions. The French made horrible errors in 1940 (and these do much to explain why they failed so spectacularly in 1940) but their defense posture was more nuanced and broader than the Maginot fortifications. For example, their broader defense plans included building armored units to serve as a strategic reserve and modernizing their air force, a point that I’ve rarely seen addressed by RMA advocates. But then, to paraphrase Darnton, they often have a false consciousness [and a false consensus] about the past.
[1] Rolf Hobson, “Blitzkrieg, the Revolution in Military Affairs and Defense Intellectuals,” Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 4 (2010): 625.
