build whatever they chose, given the fairly well-understood technical constraints (e.g.,
attainable engine power) of the time. Second, and far more significant, were the questions
that bore on the fundamental matter of what shouldbe built. It was not simply a question
of discovering what new machines for land and air combat could offer; rather, it was a
matter of deciding upon the tasks in need of performance by the machines. For new
military technologies to effect a radical change in the character and conduct of warfare,
first there has to be a doctrine suitable for their employment. Furthermore, that doctrine
should match the tasks laid by foreign policy upon the military establishment.
Land warfare
RMAs are not always entirely self-evident in their strategic implications. Rarely has
that point been as pertinent as it was to the problems and opportunities presented by
mechanization in the 1920s and 1930s. Consider the following crucial issues. Would
tanks be the dominant weapon in future ground warfare? Would they be effective only in
the context of combined arms, rather than in isolation as tank forces? If tanks were to be
dominant, or at least critically important, how much of the rest of the army needed to
be mechanized or motorized? What does mechanization imply for the relevance of
recent historical experience? Is mechanization and motorization affordable? How should
tanks be employed? What ought to be their roles? Given the high cost of procuring
mechanized forces and the dynamism of technical innovation, when should one settle
upon particular designs and order mass production? How many different types of tank
will one need? If a country’s foreign and strategic policy is essentially defensive, what
are the best technical and doctrinal answers to a mechanized style of threat from abroad?
One can easily assemble a like listing for military aircraft. The point is that during this
twenty-year period, governments and their military establishments were required to make
decisions about military mechanization in the face of profound uncertainty. Moreover,
as suggested by the different terms employed, mechanization posed complex challenges,
not least to slim defence budgets in a period of severe economic constraint. The three key
concepts were armoured warfare, meaning tanks; mechanization, meaning all-terrain
tracked (or half-tracked) vehicles, including tanks; and motorization, meaning wheeled
vehicles. One might invest expensively in the mobility provided by motorization, but be
militarily embarrassed if one’s truck-borne troops ran into an enemy’s armoured fighting
vehicles.
Strategic history was to provide the necessary education on the benefits and hazards
of armoured warfare, for example, but as always the context was crucial. There was no
single correct doctrine for armoured warfare, but even if there had been, most countries
would not be in a position to exploit that knowledge fully, given their local needs and
constraints.
France and Britain had been the great exponents of the mechanization of war in
1917–1 8. Germany decided not to acquire a tank force, a decision that post-war critical
analysis recognized to have been a mistake. In the 1920s and into the early 1930s, Britain
retained both a technical and a theoretical lead in the development of tanks. There
was lively debate led by such controversialists as Brigadier General J. F. C. Fuller and,
in good part following his lead for a while, Captain Basil Liddell Hart. British experi-
ments in 1927 with a fully mechanized combat brigade were monitored assiduously by
116 War, peace and international relations