Correspondence: Military-Technological Imitation and Rising Powers

Abstract

Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli should be lauded for making clear how the growing complexity of capital-intensive military platforms such as aghter jets hinders states, such as China, seeking to mimic the United States.1 Gilli and Gilli join a long line of thinkers, myself included, who argue that military technology does not always diffuse easily and that the characteristics of technologies matter in driving how those technologies spread and inouence international politics.2 Although there is much to like about Gilli and Gilli’s article, their analysis has some theoretical limitations with implications for policymaking. First, because Gilli and Gilli evaluate only military technology adoption, they miss the broader ways that human capital, tacit knowledge, and organizational practices shape military power. Gilli and Gilli’s unit of analysis is military-technological superiority (p. 145), suggesting a technologically determinist view of military power. Technology, however, is only a subset of how states generate military power. More important for victory and defeat, on average, is how states develop and employ their capabilities on the battleaeld.3 Gilli and Gilli’s ignoring of the organizational component of military power is relevant because another reason why a country such as China might struggle to adopt some of today’s key military capabilities involves a lack of tacit organizational and Correspondence: Military-Technological Imitation