Offensive versus Defensive: Military Strategy and Alternative Defence

Abstract

Since the early 1980s the concept of non-offensive defence has gained considerable support in peace movements as well as among peace researchers in Western Europe. The debate has, however, become a 'for' and 'against' argument, while fundamental analytical questions have been left aside. This article deals with the nature of the premises for the implementation of defence policy alternatives based on specific technologies with assumed political and strategic effects. The distinction between offensive and defensive appears, in a historical perspective, as far more complex than assumed in the current debate. The concept of non-offensive defence presupposes that these distinctions can be handled through conscious and rational choices. Research in the interaction between technological change and military strategy and in the determining factors for the development of military technology and weapons systems provides very little support for such a conclusion. The concept of non-offensive defence, as presently developed, therefore appears as an attempted short-cut past the basic problems involved in the control of the development of military technology, and the debate therefore runs the risk of ending as just another 'single-weapon concept', soon to be forgotten.