The too-much-information age.

War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today, by Max Boot (Gotham, 640 pp., $35)

RETROSPECTIVES on the Rumsfeld era in the Pentagon have focused on the war in Iraq and the various issues surrounding it--pre-war intelligence, weapons of mass destruction, lack of planning for the post-major-combat-operations phase, and so forth. Yet Secretary Rumsfeld's most important legacy may well turn out to be a paradigm shift in the defense establishment encapsulated in the concept of "Defense Transformation." The changes that have taken place under the "transformation" rubric will revolutionize how the United States fights wars and manages the business of national security for years to come. Its precepts are enshrined in documents such as the Quadrennial Defense Review, the National Military Strategy, and other supporting strategies, many of which are unfamiliar outside the confines of the national-security community, but which are reshaping views of threats, risks, capabilities, and objectives.

The Transformation debate has been raging for many years, in many guises: The subject was called the Military-Technical Revolution (or MTR) in the 1980s, the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in the 1990s. Some say these concepts are nothing new, that the U.S. military has been in a constant state of transformation since its inception. Others believe that while some of the core transformational concepts have merit, its more fervid apostles have raised it to the level of an unquestionable dogma that has yet to deliver on its more optimistic promises. Many of the true believers speak the language of business models more fluently than that of war plans--shades of McNamara--and their terminology is reminiscent of the jargon used during the dot-com boom by young visionaries eager to usher in the virtual future. The stock-market collapse in 2000 corrected most of that hyper-optimism, but in the defense bureaucracy, free of the discipline of the bottom line, the quest continued.

With some exceptions, such as studies of the changes during the interwar period of 1919 to 1939, the debate over transformation has lacked deep historical context. Into the mix comes Max Boot's War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today. As the title indicates, it is an ambitious undertaking, a review of five centuries of warfare as seen through the lens of twelve exemplary battles.

To look at war made new, Boot immediately takes the reader back 500 years to the French King Charles VIII's invasion ("Blitzkrieg," Boot calls it) of Italy in 1494. It is a commonly used demarcation in military history, witnessing the first large-scale, truly national European army with organic artillery capability. The French cannon brought down previously impregnable fortresses in matters of days or in some cases hours. It was the beginning of the end of the Renaissance, and Machiavelli and Guicciardini both saw it as the finish of Italian independence. Charles's invasion demonstrated the superiority of national armies over mercenaries--called by the Italians "condottieri," which literally means "contractors." Ironically, today's defense transformers seek to outsource every possible military specialization.

The twelve battles examined in War Made New are grouped in threes under each of four "revolutions"--the gunpowder, first and second industrial, and information revolutions. Throughout the book Boot explores five interconnected themes: that advanced technology alone does not confer victory; that innovative countries tend to be winners; that countries must know their limits; that even victorious countries cannot rest forever on their laurels; and that the pace of innovation is accelerating.

Though using battles as illustrative touchstones, each chapter reviews the key events and developments leading up to the contest in question. For example, the chapter dealing with the March 9-10, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo is primarily a review of the development of strategic-bombing concepts and technology in the decades preceding World War II. The narrative of the bombing itself is brief yet gripping. The low-altitude bomber crews reported smelling burning human flesh; 16.8 square miles of Tokyo were destroyed in that single raid, and around 100,000 people died. By way of comparison with the 9/11 attack, imagine a line from Ground Zero going north to about 135th street. Flatten every building in a mile-wide swath on each side of that line, and you get the general idea.

Beyond the specifics of the raid, one learns that the "systems approach" to war fighting so beloved of the transformation thinkers is hardly new--it had been the dominant paradigm in the air services since at least the 1930s. Victory in World War II went to the best-organized bureaucracies: startlingly, not the Germans or the Japanese, whose industrial plans and war-mobilization efforts were surprisingly inefficient and unsystematic. (To be fair, a point the author does not make is that in this case our homeland was secure, which tended to give the U.S. an advantage over enemies whose factories were bombed and whose supply ships were sunk daily.)

One also learns of the tendency toward technophilia among the transformation apostles--hotly denied, but evident in the fascination with cutting-edge gadgets. The U.S. has always prided itself on its technological innovations, but many forget that America was behind the curve in most respects at the onset of World War II. Our tanks in particular were substandard compared with Europeans'. As well, the Germans in 1940 faced French and British forces that not only had better arms and equipment in most cases, but more of them. Yet the outnumbered Germans were able to conquer France in six weeks owing to a combination of doctrine, campaign coordination, deception, and, frankly, luck. The takeaway is that there is a great deal more to defense transformation than just having the latest wonder weapon.

Boot provides a sweeping, accessible narrative. Most of the chapters contain information that should be familiar to anyone versed in military history. The exemplary battles are a mix of the famous and the not-so (e.g., the 1803 battle of Assaye, between Indian Mahratta warriors and British regulars--the latter led by Maj.-Gen. the Hon. Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington). The most familiar will be the "information age" conflicts of the past 15 years. One can quibble with Boot's choice of battles and wars, but there is enough dogmatism in the transformation debate as it is. Rather, one should, as Boot does, approach the topic with a measure of humility. The book was not intended to be a compilation of the twelve "most significant" battles, but rather those most illustrative for the author's purposes. The analytical sections are the strongest, in which the themes are drawn out and lessons applied. The concluding portion discusses possible futures, with all the caveats appropriate to such a discussion.

It is unfortunate that the book focuses on major combat operations. This is not to say that the U.S. will never again fight conventional wars; but the spirit of the age leans toward encounters with guerrillas, terrorists, and other irregular forces. Such groups cannot defeat our armed forces, nor can they bring down our country; but they can have a major impact on the unconventional battlefield. The conflict in Iraq demonstrates that all the network centricity in the world will not guarantee success. Likewise with a possible future conflict with Iran. The U.S. has the strongest military and the largest economy in history. U.S. defense spending is around two-thirds the aggregate spent on defense in the entire world. We outspend Iran annually by 80 times. But how does this superiority translate into power writ large? Surely, the U.S. could defeat Iran in a head-to-head conventional military struggle. But this does not mean that we ever will fight Iran, or that we would win the peace afterward.

The problem with the debate over defense transformation is that it deals principally if not exclusively with the military instrument of national power. As recent events in Iraq have shown, this overweening focus on the "kinetic" factors can lead to serious problems. There is more to war than battles and weapons, more to it even than organization and logistics. For all the talk of transformation, revolution, and the various ages of warfare, the human factors in war are eternal and unchanging. Planning, cultural understanding, leadership, wisdom, the ability to get things done--these sometimes ineffable qualities will always be critical to success in war. The best network in the world will not prevent a decision maker from making a poor decision, but it will make certain that it is implemented with unprecedented speed and thoroughness.

A few years ago, a student of mine from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College went from Quantico to General Franks's planning staff for Operation Enduring Freedom. Some time later, I asked him if anything he had learned in school had helped him in fighting a real war. To my surprise he said that the parts of the curriculum that focused on the campaign-planning process were not the most important--these were very much by the book, and one could learn them very well by doing. What he truly valued, he said, was the unit I taught on Thucydides. He said it well prepared him for dealing with the Afghan tribal warlords, whose behavior Pericles would have understood perfectly. War can be made new, but human nature refuses to be transformed.

Mr. Robbins is author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett, and the Goats of West Point.