Strategic culture--Israel, Military art and science--Technological innovations--Israel, Military art and science--Technological innovations--Soviet Union, Military art and science--Technological innovations--United States, Strategic culture--Soviet Union, and Strategic culture--United States

This book studies the impact of cultural factors on the course of military innovations. One would expect that countries accustomed to similar technologies would undergo analogous changes in their perception of and approach to warfare. However, the intellectual history of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in Russia, the US, and Israel indicates the opposite. The US developed technology and weaponry for about a decade without reconceptualizing the existing paradigm about the nature of warfare. Soviet'new theory of victory'represented a conceptualization which chronologically preceded technological procurement. Israel was the first to utilize the weaponry on the battlefield, but was the last to develop a conceptual framework that acknowledged its revolutionary implications. Utilizing primary sources that had previously been completely inaccessible, and borrowing methods of analysis from political science, history, anthropology, and cognitive psychology, this book suggests a cultural explanation for this puzzling transformation in warfare. The Culture of Military Innovation offers a systematic, thorough, and unique analytical approach that may well be applicable in other perplexing strategic situations. Though framed in the context of specific historical experience, the insights of this book reveal important implications related to conventional, subconventional, and nonconventional security issues. It is therefore an ideal reference work for practitioners, scholars, teachers, and students of security studies.

Industries--Soviet Union, Technological innovations--Soviet Union, Industries--Russia (Federation)--Siberia, Capital investments--Soviet Union, and Capital investments--Russia (Federation)--Siberia

Investment activity in the Soviet Union is presently undergoing a decline hitherto unknown in the history of the nation: The growth of capital investment has stopped, while levels of production have fallen. One important factor in this phenomenon is the Soviet policy of reindustrialization—shifting new investments into the expansion and improvement of existing facilities—which severely limits capital available for new construction. In this book, Dr. Rumer examines current Soviet investment policies and assesses their impact on economic development, especially in Siberia. Reindustrialization is intended to combine more rapid amortization for updating and retooling, growth in the volume of industrial output, and minimal capital investment. However, concludes Dr. Rumer, this investment pattern hinders the development of Siberia and thus reinforces the spatial polarization of fuel-energy and raw-material resources in the east of the country and the manufacturing industry in the west, with serious consequences for Soviet strategic/military vulnerability and for the Soviet economy.