Weapons for Strategic Effect

Book excerpt: There is no doubt that technology is important in war. While it is difficult to identify major security issues for which technology is not important, determining just how important is another matter. Despite a consensus on the salience of technology, there is little agreement on just what that means for strategic behavior. Following in the footsteps of Clausewitz, this monograph seeks to contribute to the general "theory WHICH should cast a steady light on all phenomena so that we can more easily recognize and eliminate the weeds that always spring from ignorance; it should show how one thing is related to another, and keep the important and the unimportant separate". Just how is one thing technology related to another strategy? As Clausewitz stated: "It is the task of theory, ., to study the nature of ends and means." Just how is technology--the means--related to strategy the ends?