Review: Thomas Crosbie on The Culture of Military Innovation

Dima Adamsky. The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, 248 pp. $US 25.95 paper (978-0-8047-6952-5), $US 65.00 hardcover (978-0-8047-6951-8)

Dima Adamsky’s The Culture of Military Innovation is an account of how one intellectual paradigm, called the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), rose and fell in the militaries of the USSR, USA and Israel. Adamsky characterizes it as an empirical and theoretical contribution to the third, constructivist wave of strategic culture scholarship. This subdiscipline has made various attempts to identify culture, instead of rationality, as “the pivotal intervening variable” in military development. The study distinguishes itself within its subdiscipline for its excellent sources (archival material from all three countries and interviews in Israel), skillful argumentation, and very intelligent case selection. Read more