A Ciencia

as environmental degradation and disease (which were in fact rather old concerns) and ideas of geoeconomics rather

than geopolitics seemed poised to dominate the agenda. Some were prepared to discount these challenges because

they did not emanate from the conscious decisions of another actor and would therefore not involve strategic interaction.

Others, however, have viewed these issues as a lifeline for a broadening discipline of strategic studies itself—and valid

academically because these challenges might well threaten the survival of nation states.

A middle-range position, as noted by Alan Dupont (2001, 14–15), suggests that nonmilitary challenges should be taken

into account if they nonetheless increase the prospects of armed conflict. Examples could include armed conflict

between neighboring states over increasingly rare natural resources such as clean water or the exacerbation of internal

conflict by environmental damage. Of course the early 1990s witnessed the continuing role of an older and more direct

nexus between resources and armed violence—the energy considerations that were a factor in Iraq's invasion of Kuwait

in 1990 and in the US-led response.

The second criticism from the post-cold war era is that, even if use-of-force issues were allowed to remain dominant

within strategic studies, the model of inter-state symmetric warfare was now obsolete. The Israeli military historian

end p.565

Martin van Creveld (1991) argued that there was little life remaining in what he regarded as the Clausewitzian universe of

large, state-based armed forces in an age of unconventional wars fought by nonstate actors. This theme was an

attractive one, but it took the September 2001 attacks on the United States to bring the analysis of nonstate groups and

networks toward the forefront of strategic studies.

These sudden events raised questions about the supposed rationality of nonstate actors who were ready to use force,

and about their willingness to limit that force in line with reasonable political aspirations. Yet, while some studies have

emphasized the potentially catastrophic reach of terrorism (Allison 2004), others, including the account of suicide

terrorism by Robert Pape (2005), have indicated the continuing relevance of viewing strategy as violence associated with

particular (and sometimes quite limited) political aspirations. Moreover, while the terrorism question challenged prevailing

assumptions about the specific origins of threats, it has to some extent reinforced the old bias toward use-of-force issues.

There is also growing recognition that the state's demise as a strategic actor in a globalizing world has been

exaggerated, as has the irrelevance of strategies of deterrence (Morgan 2006, xix).

These supposedly obsolete features of international strategy have been reinforced as the United States and its allies

have taken on “rogue states” and addressed their concerns about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As

force has been employed with these ends in mind, the importance of military technological change has again been

highlighted, although the results have not always been promising. For instance, while some scholars have been cautious

about the degree to which military technology can enhance fighting power and strategic influence (Biddle 2004), others

have been much more willing to endorse notions of an information-age revolution in military affairs. In an example of the

perils of strategic studies in action, the more optimistic argument helped feed the Pentagon's notion of defense

transformation, which came unstuck in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. This experience helped invigorate interest in the

analysis of asymmetric conflict, where the weak seem so often to have advantages over the strong. But this has done

less to revolutionize strategy than to emphasize hard power relationships between different sets of actors.

In sum, the evolving focus of strategic studies is shaped as much by the political conditions in which threats arise and are

dealt with as by their material basis. In Clausewitz's time, Napoleon's failed bid for European hegemony focused

attention on the political uses of armed force by the great powers of that day. Following the Second World War, the

arrival of the United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers placed a premium on managing their competition in a

hazardous nuclear era. The end of the cold war contest gave the international community room to consider the use of

force for more humanitarian purposes, reflected in the spate of literature on peace operations. It allowed a dominant

United States

end p.566

space to intervene militarily, stimulated by fears that the weak had become its main adversaries. This power imbalance

also gave the weak an obvious target upon which to concentrate their frustrations. As these political conditions evolve, so

will the focus of strategic studies. As a new multipolar order approaches, and as the global balance shifts in the direction

of Asia, the contest between the new mix of great powers will increasingly shape the strategic studies agenda.

4 Empirical, Normative, and Theoretical