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A review by mburnamfink
The Baroque Arsenal by Mary Kaldor
4.0
The Baroque Arsenal is a defense analysis that is very much of its time; published in 1981 and written in 1980, but which manages a few impressive futurological insights amidst a stream of invective.
Kaldor's main point is that contemporary military technology is not advanced, but could more precisely be defined as decadent, chasing increasingly marginal improvements in top-line metrics at the expense of combat effectiveness. This decadent is a consequence of the continuous mobilization of the Cold War, a cultural alliance between increasingly specialized types of military officers and large defense contractors, by which each class of weapon system (tank, fighter, bomber, destroyer, etc) is immediately rendered obsolete by an upcoming "follow-on" weapon system of the same type, which is superior in an objective way: higher top speed, thicker armor, more firepower, etc. These series of more cutting edge follow-ons are in fact more complex, less maintainable, and much more expensive.
The broader economic and social consequences of the baroque arsenal are what President Eisenhower perfectly described in his 1953 Cross of Iron speech. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." The arms sector, rather than contributing to national security, becomes a parasite that sucks up talent better directed anywhere else, that renders its workforce vulnerable to sudden swings in government contracting, requires public bailouts, and fails to deliver real innovation, because it is insulated from any real competitive pressure.
Kaldor traces case studies in Britain, the USA, and Europe more broadly. British global supremacy was built on the dreadnought battleship, a weapon system which saw serious action once, in the inconclusive Battle of Jutland, and which was too expensive to be committed to action. Post-war American hegemony was built on aircraft and armor. Europe has attempted to create a unified arms sector, but combined procurement programs like the Tornado strike-fighter have mostly been expensive and unsatisfying compromises. The USSR is the obvious counter to Western hegemony, and their approach is more conservative, though given the nature of data at the time, Kaldor can't be conclusive.
And for all the expense poured into advanced weapons systems, they didn't bring victory in Vietnam, keep the Shah in power in Iran, or help the USSR secure Afghanistan, and after 9/11 lead to American victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kaldor prefigures many of the arguments that would be used in the 1980s by the Military Reform Movement (see Hankin's fantastic Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia for details), and which would also be tested by the Gulf War and the lopsided Allied victory in Desert Storm.
The one bit of futurism that Kaldor nails spot on, at 40 years remove, is the key importance of precision guided munitions(PGM) and sophistication in electronics as the future of war. PGMs played a key role in Desert Storm, but it's taken the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine to showcase how cheap and disposable militarized civilian drones can absolutely shred far more expensive weapon systems. The lesson of Ukraine, as well as NATO intervention in Libya in 2014, and maritime defense operations in the Red Sea in 2024, is that weapon systems can triumph over cheaper options, that PGMs are expended at an incredible rate, and that no one is rich enough to sustain using million dollar missiles to shoot down $5,000 drones indefinitely.
As for the rest, well, I believe the book, but it's not full convincing. Kaldor has more evidence to back up Eisenhower's rhetoric, though not enough by conventional standards. Spreadsheets make everyone an econometrician, and Kaldor's methods are much closer to winging it. If you're the kind of person to crack open a 45 year old book about defense procurement, this is a pretty good one. And if you're not that kind of person, you'll find it very tedious.
Kaldor's main point is that contemporary military technology is not advanced, but could more precisely be defined as decadent, chasing increasingly marginal improvements in top-line metrics at the expense of combat effectiveness. This decadent is a consequence of the continuous mobilization of the Cold War, a cultural alliance between increasingly specialized types of military officers and large defense contractors, by which each class of weapon system (tank, fighter, bomber, destroyer, etc) is immediately rendered obsolete by an upcoming "follow-on" weapon system of the same type, which is superior in an objective way: higher top speed, thicker armor, more firepower, etc. These series of more cutting edge follow-ons are in fact more complex, less maintainable, and much more expensive.
The broader economic and social consequences of the baroque arsenal are what President Eisenhower perfectly described in his 1953 Cross of Iron speech. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." The arms sector, rather than contributing to national security, becomes a parasite that sucks up talent better directed anywhere else, that renders its workforce vulnerable to sudden swings in government contracting, requires public bailouts, and fails to deliver real innovation, because it is insulated from any real competitive pressure.
Kaldor traces case studies in Britain, the USA, and Europe more broadly. British global supremacy was built on the dreadnought battleship, a weapon system which saw serious action once, in the inconclusive Battle of Jutland, and which was too expensive to be committed to action. Post-war American hegemony was built on aircraft and armor. Europe has attempted to create a unified arms sector, but combined procurement programs like the Tornado strike-fighter have mostly been expensive and unsatisfying compromises. The USSR is the obvious counter to Western hegemony, and their approach is more conservative, though given the nature of data at the time, Kaldor can't be conclusive.
And for all the expense poured into advanced weapons systems, they didn't bring victory in Vietnam, keep the Shah in power in Iran, or help the USSR secure Afghanistan, and after 9/11 lead to American victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kaldor prefigures many of the arguments that would be used in the 1980s by the Military Reform Movement (see Hankin's fantastic Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia for details), and which would also be tested by the Gulf War and the lopsided Allied victory in Desert Storm.
The one bit of futurism that Kaldor nails spot on, at 40 years remove, is the key importance of precision guided munitions(PGM) and sophistication in electronics as the future of war. PGMs played a key role in Desert Storm, but it's taken the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine to showcase how cheap and disposable militarized civilian drones can absolutely shred far more expensive weapon systems. The lesson of Ukraine, as well as NATO intervention in Libya in 2014, and maritime defense operations in the Red Sea in 2024, is that weapon systems can triumph over cheaper options, that PGMs are expended at an incredible rate, and that no one is rich enough to sustain using million dollar missiles to shoot down $5,000 drones indefinitely.
As for the rest, well, I believe the book, but it's not full convincing. Kaldor has more evidence to back up Eisenhower's rhetoric, though not enough by conventional standards. Spreadsheets make everyone an econometrician, and Kaldor's methods are much closer to winging it. If you're the kind of person to crack open a 45 year old book about defense procurement, this is a pretty good one. And if you're not that kind of person, you'll find it very tedious.