Weapons Don't Make War: Policy, Strategy, and Military Technology

by Colin S. Gray

"Weaponry does not equal strategy, argues Colin Gray, but the two are often confused, resulting in such linguistic errors as "strategic weapons." There may be an interactive relationship between policy, strategy, and weaponry but, he contends, policy and strategy always take the front seat. An established scholar in strategic studies and longtime analyst of the U.S. defense establishment, Gray presents in Weapons Don't Make War a powerful statement on the interrelations among policymaking, strategic planning, and military technology. He argues that policy shapes strategy and gives meaning to weapons (not vice versa): that, without clear policy guidance, the weapons acquisitions process degenerates into political arm-wrestling; that military technology is only one of the many servants of defense policy (and by no means the most important); that the "arms race" concept creates more confusion than clarity in studying international security; that the pursuit of arms control is seriously flawed by the belief that international conflict can be reduced to a problem of administration and management; that uncertainty is an essential condition of--not simply a problem for--defense policy; and that nuclear-age history confirm much of the accepted wisdom of modern strategic theory. Always provocative and sometimes controversial, Gray provides a rare, detailed, and multi-angled examination of just how policy and weapons influence--or fail to influence--each other. His arguments in Weapons Don't Make War are not time bound; they hold regardless of the evolution of eastern Europe or of shifts in U.S. policy and strategy. They offer insight into "the basics" of national security not only in the post-Cold War era, but for all time. This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Colin S. Gray was a British-American strategic thinker and professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, where he was the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies. In addition, he was a Senior Associate to the National Institute for Public Policy.

Gray was educated at the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford. He worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Hudson Institute, before founding the National Institute for Public Policy in Washington, D.C. He also served as a defense adviser both to the British and U.S. governments. Gray served from 1982 until 1987 in the Reagan Administration's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. Furthermore, he taught at the University of Hull, the University of Lancaster, York University, Toronto and University of British Columbia. Gray published 23 books on military history and strategic studies, as well as numerous articles.

Reviews

[George Garkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Заглавието ми напомни на един от основните принципи, които учим в бойните изкуства. Суровите физически възможности отстъпват пред структурата на приложенията им.

Структурата на тези приложения определя действителната сила, с която се разполага. А моралът и справедливостта се налагат в практиката от позицията на силата, макар и да не произтичат непременно от нея.

[Andrew Carr · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid if uneven argument for why politics necessarily trumps tools (weapons) in the cause and nature of conflict. Rather than technology shaping or requiring states to act in particular ways, Gray shows that it is strategy and politics which governs the way weapons are understood and used.

If I liked the argument, I found the implementation a little harder to follow. There are some excellent chapters early on, including a strong take down of arms control (better political relations leads to arms control, but not the reverse). And then it somewhat runs out of steam and we get a somewhat potted 'Gray's thoughts on the US's strategic challenges in the early 1990s' (when it was published). Before finally returning to strength with an - again uneven - argument that we must test and refresh our major strategic concepts, instead of just importing them from the 1950s-1960s to the current era without consideration of changing dynamics.

Gray is one of the most important strategic thinkers of the 20th century, and this is an important argument that is not appreciated sufficiently. But like much of his work, I found Weapons Don't Make War sometimes difficult to follow along. Not because he is unclear, but unfocused. Paragraphs shift topics, chapters lack clear structures, books lose their themes. And yet, viewed at the level of a single tree (sentence) or forest (his body of work) there is a clear brilliance in his contribution and insights that makes the effort worthwhile.

[Brendan]

Just glanced through