ABSTRACT
Anyone can manufacture definitions and coin terms with intriguing acronyms. Nothing as simple as the RMA idea per se, however, has been at stake in the debate. All debaters could, and by and large did, agree that if the RMA concept is empirically plausible, and if contemporary trends appear to fit the concept well enough, then the 1990s registered a radical change in the character or conduct of war, which is to say that the 1990s registered an RMA. The two qualifying ‘ifs’ are significant caveats. The debate in the 1990s included some, though probably insufficient, argument about the empirical plausibility of the RMA idea itself, the identity and character of the RMA(s) that might be under way, and also the prospective strategic significance of such an RMA. These three topics, though clearly interdependent, nonetheless are distinguishable.
