William H. McNeill in Pursuit of Power discusses the phenomonen of command technology. He uses the term in a similar manner to command economy and describes it as state based and state funded technological innovation through the military. Rather than the industrial-military complex as described by Eisenhower, to McNeill it would be the technology-military complex. McNeill traces the origins of command technology to the late-19thC British Navy.

Prior to the mid-19thC innovations in armaments came from private industry and followed the restrictions of the free market such as private equity and finding customers. As an example one of the biggest armament companies in the 1800s was Krupps. They had several innovations in the areas of artillery and naval guns. A lot of their success was the innovation in the production process of these guns which improved their capability and length of use. The interesting thing though is that only 25% of Krupps' business was with Germany. Three quarters of their armament sales were to international customers.

McNeill isn't calling the industrial process the 'command' part. It is the technological innovations that are command technology and prior to the 1850s this was handled by private capital rather than state capital. There were state-based factories for armaments; for instance Britain's Woolwich Arsenal. But the state based factories would buy the innovations from inventors and technology companies of the day so they could manufacture these arms.

A good modern day example of the command technology process is the Joint Strike Fighter [JSF] program. The United States government funded two prototypes, one by Lockheed Martin and one by Boeing. They then chose a winner and funded the development process for Lockheed Martin's JSF prototype to become a mass manufactured weapon system. State based investment has bank rolled the whole technological innovation process; not private equity.

In the mid-1800s organisational technology was improving, the industrial revolution was maturing and Britain had adopted a two ocean naval policy. However they were finding that the industrial revolution had brought an escalating pace of technological change. As a result the capital investment required to come up with naval weapon systems and ships was increasing as the systems increased in complexity.

France was mainly concerned with a continental army but wanted to see British seapower upset by new technologies. As a result French scientists came up with the torpedo boat and the submarine. Both disruptive industrial technologies that were very cheap in comparison to the capital intensive battleship. The British response was to fund metallurgical and engineering innovation for quick firing naval guns and a new platform that was faster than the small and cheap torpedo boats which could protect the battleships. We know this today as a Destroyer.

This process of command technology continued in the capital intensive and technologically complex area area of naval systems at a quickening pace of state investment. It produced the Dreadnought which obsoleted every battleship in every navy, including Britains.

HMS Dreadnought.

By this stage all countries were nationalising their technology development of armaments and free-market manufacturers like Krupps and Armstrong were unable to sell into foreign markets like they had in the past. Soon Krupps was selling to the German government nearly exclusively.

With WWI and the industrial demands of a war economy all nations adopted both a command technology and command economy platform. This never really left government policy. The Soviets took it to extremes, and despite their successful industrialisation of their economy in peacetime, born out by their success against Germany in WWII, the brutal cost in lives, tyranny and oppression was repugnant.

Differing versions of command technology organisation have existed through history, but since the 1880s and 1890s it has become the dominant form of creating new armaments for organised violence.

Often the implementation of organisational technologies revolutionise systems and performance. Sometimes quite cheaply. William H. McNeill identifies the introduction of systematic drill to European warfare by the Dutch Maurice of Nassau in 1585. This changed organised violence in Europe and paved the way for the modern routines of Military Drill.

Constant and repetitive drilling is not new. The Spartans for instance structured their society around organised violence which meant their citizenry was constantly being trained and drilled in methods of warfare. This was such a large part of peacetime Spartan society that the soldiers enjoyed going to war as it was a kind of holiday. Their commanders would not work them so hard as they wanted them rested for battle.

European armies up until Maurice used drill to train their soldiers but drilling didn't extend past that. Once the soldiers or militia knew their weapons it was assumed they were right to go and no further training was conducted. Drilling was only used for initial training.

Warfare at the time involved establishing garrisons, sieges and often waiting for a well-defended keep to break from hunger, thirst or disease. The problem was that the army conducting the siege was usually a rabble. Since the soldiers had nothing to do they would indulge themselves in debauchery and drunkenness. Maurice did not like this.

To keep his army active he re-introduced the spade and repetitive drilling. What happened was that his army became very cohesive, very efficient, healthier and took less casualties. Maurice made it very systematic too. McNeill writes:

He [Maurice] analysed the rather complicated movements required to load and fire matchlock guns into a series of forty-two separate, successive moves and gave each move a name and appropriate word of command. His soldiers could then be taught to make each movement in unison, responding to a shouted word of command.

This was so effective that Maurice increased the numbers of guns in his army and reduced the number of pikemen.

It can be argued that this drilling paved the way for the modern regular army. A small well drilled military unit was now sufficient to put down most revolutions of citizens bearing arms. The Vinegar Hill battles in Ireland and Australia are a good example of this. In 1804 a small contingent of the Rum Corps numbering twenty-nine put down a rebellion of two hundred and thirty well armed convicts.

Drilling was the difference and overcame larger numbers.

Britain, France and Germany dealt with their booming population in the 19thC largely by industrialisation. Britain supplemented this with emigration and France with a revolution that changed agrarian patterns into a martial one. South and West of Germany William H. McNeill identifies the inability of industrialisation to "keep pace with population growth." McNeill argues that this political fault line or area of 'acute political distress' manifested itself in the Hapsburg Empire and the Balkans. It was the assassination of a Hapsburg Prince by a Slavic political revolutionary that started the mechanics of what would be World War I.

McNeill writes:

Consequently, the most acute manifestations of political distress appeared within the borders of the Hapsburg and ex-Ottomoman empires (Russia's Polish provinces belong in this category too.)

Overseas emigration, though very great, was insufficient to relieve the problem. Youths who pursued secondary education in hope of qualifying for white collar employment were strategically situated to communicate revolutionary political ideas to their frustrated contemporaries in villages.

They did so with marked success, beginning as early as the 1870s in Bulgaria and Serbia, and at somewhat later dates in other parts of eastern Europe. The Balkans, accordingly, became the powder keg of Europe.

It was appropriate indeed that the spark that triggered WWI was struck by Gavrilo Princep, a youth whose efforts at pursuing a secondary school education had entirely failed to provide him with satisfactory access to adult life but had imbued him with an intense, revolutionary form of nationalism.

I argued in the past that the disturbances in the Middle East are more a function of over population than culture or religion. Population growth in the Middle East is faster than the ability of globalisation and emigration to absorb it.

It is striking how many parallels there are to the 19thC Balkans and the 21stC Middle East; over-population, a revolutionary educated class of youth, and the limits of globalisation's economic homogeneity (actually globalisation is more recognition of economic heterogeneity).

The Middle East is definitely the modern day region under-going 'acute political distress'.