Brian Martin - Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

Military shaping of technology is not all-powerful, otherwise every technology would be oriented to military purposes and we would all be wearing combat boots and living in fallout shelters. It is worth outlining the main influences that resist or challenge military priorities for science and technology, namely civilian applications, bureaucratic interests and popular resistance.

This is undoubtedly the greatest influence, covering as it does influences from a host of other factors from basic needs such as food and housing to commerce and culture (including art). Civilian interest groups, including corporations, governments and consumers, usually want technologies to serve their immediate purposes. In capitalist societies, cost in the market is a key consideration. This explains, for example, why most industries are not designed to withstand a military attack. (Only in a few countries, such as Iraq, Sweden and Switzerland, are some factories built underground or otherwise designed with military threats in mind.) In most countries, there are few stockpiles of food, goods or strategic minerals beyond what is dictated by the search for profits. Most road and rail systems are designed primarily for civilian purposes.

Military influences do have some influences on all these areas, but civilian influences are usually much greater. Military influence on technology is greatest in areas where there is little civilian interest, such as missiles.

Within the military and within military industries, officers, soldiers, managers and workers have jobs, status, authority, routines, standard ways of thinking, and emotional commitments. In other words, the current way of doing things is a way of life. Changes in technology also introduce the prospect of social changes. These social changes are likely to be welcomed by some and opposed by others, in ways that don’t necessarily correlate with military efficiency. In other words, vested interests within various bureaucracies constitute one influence on technological development.

Sometimes the main vested interest can be called conservatism, since it manifests itself as resistance to new technologies. For example, around 1900, when the new method of continuous-aim firing from ships was proposed, bureaucrats within the US Navy at first ignored and then did everything possible to discredit the method and delay its introduction, in spite of the fact that it was vastly superior to the existing method. The reason for the resistance was that the new method entailed changes in the organisation of tasks on board: it changed the arrangements in naval society. [31] . Elting E. Morison, Men, Machines, and Modern Times (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), chapter 2.

The introduction of the machine gun provides another example of military conservatism. It was vastly more effective than rifles and, because of this, threatened to make obsolete the traditional training and tactics based on beliefs in the importance of courage and quality of troops. Plentiful evidence was available of the superiority of the machine gun in various colonial wars, but these victories were attributed to white superiority over native peoples rather than to technological superiority. As a result, the implications of the machine gun for warfare were not grasped and integrated into military organisations and planning until well into World War I, when the suicidal implications of infantry attacks on positions defended by machine guns eventually became clear. Even in this situation, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed before commanders were willing to recognise the failure of standard methods. [32] . John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun (London: Croom Helm, 1975).

Another example is the US-produced M-16 rifle, which was the result of prolonged bureaucratic manipulation. Another rifle had been developed, the AR-15, which attained a high reputation among soldiers. However, Eugene Stoner, the designer of the AR-15, worked outside the Army’s arsenal system, and thus this rifle was a threat to the bureaucratic status quo. The AR-15 was subject to numerous design changes imposed by rigid specifications, many of which were irrelevant to practical conditions, such as performing in freezing temperatures. The design changes led to the M-16, which was much heavier, inconvenient and failure-prone, and led to more deaths in action. Soldiers who were aware of the problems with the M-16 wrote to their parents who in turn put pressure on Congress. As a result, the sabotage of the AR-15 was exposed in hearings of Congress. [33] . James Fallows, “The American Army and the M-16 rifle,” in Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985), pp. 239-251.

These examples are distinctive because strong bureaucratic interests favoured a clearly inferior technology for the purposes of warfare. However, bureaucratic interests are present at all times, and on many occasions they favour superior technology. This means that the adoption of a technology, whether technically superior or inferior, may have occurred in part because of bureaucratic considerations.

More generally, it is a reasonable assumption that military leaders will not voluntarily adopt any technology that undermines the need or rationale for their existence. As will be discussed later, even when nonviolent methods of struggle are superior in terms of reducing the threat from an enemy, militaries favour military methods. Military strength creates its own necessity, by posing a threat to other societies and stimulating military races.

Without actual war, military technologies would not need to be efficient for warfare, but could serve other functions, such as maintaining current bureaucratic systems, creating profits for industry and providing symbols of power and masculinity. During the Cold War, it has been argued, western military weaponry became more and more “baroque,” namely excessively expensive and complicated and hence not likely to be particularly effective. [34] . Mary Kaldor, The Baroque Arsenal (London: Andre Deutsch, 1982). The Cold War confrontation provided the justification for massive military expenditures, but there was no practical testing of weapons designed for war between major industrial powers.

Another key factor in technological development for the military is the unwillingness of people to support certain methods of fighting. “People” here includes civilians, politicians, soldiers, military commanders and engineers.

The role of civilians has been considerable. Peace movements have campaigned against various sorts of weapons and, in some cases, against any form of organised violence. There have been campaigns against nuclear, biological, chemical and antipersonnel weapons, among others. In many cases these campaigns are supported by government leaders. The results can be seen in the limited use of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in warfare and in treaties against these weapons. The popular revulsion against certain types of weapons and warfare is a powerful factor. But this popular revulsion is subject to change. Before World War II, aerial bombing was thought to be totally outrageous; the 1937 bombing of Guernica by the German-supported fascists in Spain generated intense anguish. Yet aerial bombing was adopted by both sides in World War II. Through a gradual process of expansion from military to civilian targets, aerial bombing became a much more “acceptable” method of warfare. In the future, it is quite possible that biological, chemical or nuclear warfare may become seen as standard procedure, most likely as a result of all-out war. Many people have worked and continue to work to ensure that this does not occur, through publicity, international law, and destruction of stocks of weapons.