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Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern
Battle. By Stephen Biddle. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004. 312p. $37.50.Stephen Biddle has written a worthy book on the never-ending debate
over why land wars are won and lost. It contributes to the academic
literature, and his policy judgments deserve attention. He puts forth the
theory that "force employment" (i.e., doctrine for using
military forces in battle) plays a major role in determining outcomes, as
big a role as the size of contending forces and the sophistication of
their technologies. He further argues that modern employment doctrine,
which enables skilled ground forces to negate the effects of lethal fires
against them, was born in late World War I, when attackers finally
overcame entrenched defenses. A skilled operations research analyst of
tactical battles, Biddle offers a multimethod approach that combines
logical reasoning, case studies, mathematical models, statistical
analysis, and dynamic simulations. His book can be read by nonspecialists,
but many of its technical discussions (e.g., Lanchester equations) require
expert knowledge.