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A work with broad implications for theories of comparative strategic behavior and civil-military relations, Societies and Military Power uses the long history of the armies of India as a basis for analyzing whether the character of a given society affects the amount of military power that can be generated by the armies that emerge from that society. By examining the changing relationship between ruling elites in the Indian subcontinent and their armed forces, the book shows that divisions within society are mirrored within the military, even within the contemporary professional military.Stephen Peter Rosen explores the proposition that cultural explanations don't sufficiently account for changes in military power, whereas social structure does. He suggests also that the dynamics of civil-military relations in a non-Western setting are not explicable without social-structural insight. He concludes that the comparative study of strategic behavior and military organization has lacked a sound foundation, which the social-structural explanation offered in this book begins to provide

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Thinking about Military Innovation -- PEACETIME INNOVATION -- 2. The Shape of Wars to Come: Analyzing the Need for Peacetime Innovation -- 3. Making Things Happen: The Politics of Peacetime Innovation -- WARTIME INNOVATION -- 4. The British Army and the Tank, 1914-1918 -- 5. New Blood for the Submarine Force -- 6. The United States Strategic Bombing Force, 1941-1945 -- TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION -- 7. What Is the Enemy Building? -- 8. Strategies for Managing Uncertainty -- 9. Conclusion: Lessons Learned -- Index

Why did President John F. Kennedy choose a strategy of confrontation during the Cuban missile crisis even though his secretary of defense stated that the presence of missiles in Cuba made no difference? Why did large numbers of Iraqi troops surrender during the Gulf War even though they had been ordered to fight and were capable of doing so? Why did Hitler declare war on the United States knowing full well the power of that country?War and Human Nature argues that new findings about the way humans are shaped by their inherited biology may help provide answers to such questions.

Tradition has both positive and negative implications. It may be valuable lessons learned, lessons paid for with blood, but tradition may also be habits of the last war that make it difficult to see and react to change. There is good reason to think that future conditions in the Asia-Pacific region will not be consistent with what the strategic traditions of the U.S. military tell us we can expect.