ABSTRACT
Social scientists can appear cavalier, easily satisfied at least, in their approach to the empirical evidence for theory that they claim to locate in strategic history. Protagonists in the RMA debate of the 1990s, for example, proceeded undismayed by the fragility of pertinent empirical research. What is striking about the RMA literature is the prevalence of didactic certainties, even though the possible historical evidence is either inherently ambiguous or simply missing.1 Busy defence professionals lacked time and the patience to wait for the slow emergence of a more reliable base of historical knowledge of RMA phenomena.2 So speedily did the great RMA debate achieve its velocity change (or ‘delta-v’) to ascend into the orbit of live activity in the years 1991-94 that few people took the trouble to engage, perhaps indulge, in fundamental enquiry. Now that the debate has so lost momentum that natural orbital decay has brought the idea, much reduced in splendour, back to earth, we can take the time to appreciate just how flimsy are the intellectual and empirical underpinnings of speculation about RMA.
