The Worth of War (10 page)

By the third or fourth century BCE, the Greeks had introduced a more powerful mechanical arrow-firing device variously called the
katapeltikon
or
ballista
. In this device, the Greeks applied the principles
of mathematics and physics they had begun to master. The device was built around a set of torsion springs usually made of animal sinew. These were mechanically wound to store energy which, when released, would propel a large arrow over a long distance with enormous penetrating power. During the third century BCE, both forms of arrow-shooting machines became standard elements in the arsenals of Greek armies. The principles of the ballista were adapted to build machines capable of hurling rocks as well as incendiary materials at enemy cities and fortifications.

Defenders used their own ballista and so forth to repel the attackers and, hence, the Greeks had devised both siege engines and field artillery. Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great, employed large numbers of these early artillery pieces in their campaigns as well as large, mobile siege towers, tall structures from which attackers could fire projectiles over city walls.

The power of Greek weapons became very apparent to the Romans during the siege of Syracuse, which lasted from 214 to 212 BCE. Syracuse, a port city on the eastern coast of Sicily, had been a Roman ally. In 214 BCE, however, during the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, an anti-Roman faction came to power in Syracuse and sought an alliance with Carthage. Such an alliance would pose a serious problem for the Romans because a Carthaginian army and fleet based in Sicily could open another front against Rome, which already had more than it could do to ward off Hannibal's army in northern Italy. Accordingly, a Roman force was dispatched to capture Syracuse before the Carthaginians could reinforce the city. The Syracusean army was no match for the Romans, but the city was protected by high walls and by an array of weapons constructed under the supervision of Greece's most famous scientist and mathematician, Archimedes. Ballistae, designed by Archimedes and mounted on the city's walls, pounded the Roman fleet and troops with rocks and arrows. Archimedes, moreover, had devised a giant crane and hook—dubbed the “Claw of Archimedes”—that could reach down, pull Roman ships from the water and shake them to pieces or smash them on the rocks below. According to legend,
Archimedes also built a device involving a large array of bronze mirrors able to focus the rays of the sun on Roman ships and cause them to burst into flame. There is, however, some doubt that such a device was possible given the materials actually available to Archimedes. After a two-year siege, despite these remarkable weapons, the Romans were able to take the city—as much by stealth as by force.

As they took control of Greece, the Romans came into possession of many Greek weapons, often along with the engineers who had designed and operated them. The Romans had, indeed, hoped to capture Archimedes, but unfortunately the scientist was killed when Roman troops stormed the city. Many Greek weapons entered the Roman arsenal. The Romans, with the help of Greek engineers, often modified the weapons but seldom introduced radical new designs. Thus, the Romans took the Greek ballista and modified it to improve its accuracy and range and added a universal joint that allowed the ballista's aim to be altered without moving the weapon. Another Roman modification of the ballista was the
onager
, a type of catapult with the capacity to throw stones and rocks over considerable distances. Onagers were often used to hurl clay balls filled with a combustible substance that exploded when it struck its target. The Romans also adapted and improved the
polybolos
, a repeating catapult that, like a modern-day machine gun, used a chain drive to fire several dozen bolts from a wooden box without the need to reload after each shot. And, as in the case of European armies a millennium later, the Romans also innovated in the organization of technology to maximize its military effectiveness. In the legions, every Roman
century
, or company of 80 soldiers, was issued a ballista and expected to train a small group to become expert in its use. In addition, an engineering corps was organized to supervise military construction as well as to fire the larger and more complex ballistae and onagers in battle.

The Roman interest in Greek technology may have begun with weapons. However, to build and use—to say nothing of
improve
—Greek weapons effectively, the Romans had to develop an understanding of the mathematical and scientific principles behind the weapons. This,
the Romans set out to do. Wealthy Roman families employed Greek tutors for their children and sent their sons to study in Athens and Rhodes. The Romans, to be sure, were not without technology. They were expert in a variety of areas such as bridge and road building. However, their conquest of Greece gave the Romans access to science, mathematics, and technology superior to their own, and they made good use of the opportunity. As in the case of military technology, the Romans often found ways to improve what they appropriated.

The Greeks, for example, had developed and made extensive use of the watermill, an important device that uses a water wheel to convert the energy from free-flowing or falling water into a source of power with which to grind grains and produce flour. The two main components of the watermill, the waterwheel and toothed gearing, are Greek inventions. After learning the basic principles, the Romans improved the technology of the watermill and applied the principle to other problems. The Romans built water-powered sawmills, stamp mills, and water-powered trip-hammers for use in mining operations.

Another basic piece of technology, the crane, was invented by the Greeks and improved by the Romans. The crane is a ubiquitous type of machine equipped with a hoist, ropes, or chains used to lift and move heavy objects. Cranes are used in loading, construction, and assembly. As we saw above, Archimedes used a crane and hook to lift Roman warships out of the water before dropping and smashing them. Greek cranes were powered by people or donkeys. The Romans improved upon the design and harnessed cranes to waterwheels, greatly increasing their power and making it possible to use very large cranes in heavy construction near streams, rivers, and waterfalls.

The Greeks, quite possibly Archimedes himself, also invented the wooden screw that the Romans used in a myriad of devices. The Greeks developed the gear, which the Romans used in wagons and carts. The Greeks invented the winch, the pulley, and the hoist, all of which became staples of Roman construction, mining, and commerce. The Greeks invented the screw press, which the Romans put to work in the production of wine and olive oil.

All in all, when they conquered Greece, the Romans substantially raised their own technological level. The Romans, moreover, disseminated the technologies they appropriated and adapted throughout their empire—thus throughout Europe—sometimes making use of Greek military technologies to subjugate new territories into which they would bring other technologies that were, themselves, often Greek in origin. Thus, for example, with their Greek-derived crossbows, onagers, ballistae, and so forth, the armies of the early Roman Empire crossed the Danube on a bridge built by Greek engineers to conquer Dacia (modern-day Romania). In addition, of course, to death, destruction, and slavery, the Romans brought architecture, engineering, mining, and agriculture as well as the water wheels, wine presses, screws, gears, and other devices they had learned from the Greeks. Within a century, of course, Dacian tribes like the Carpi were allied with the Goths and were using the Greco–Roman technology they had acquired from their conquerors to drive the legions back across the Danube.

IMITATION

Conquest is not the only route through which war disseminates technology. War and preparation for war also encourage societies to imitate one another's promising military technologies. Often enough, imitation of a military innovation requires assimilation of a whole new set of technologies with both civilian and military applications. In this way, copying swords may require learning to build plowshares. There are several ways in which military technologies developed by one society can spread to others. These include secondary use, simple observation, voluntary technology transfers, reverse engineering, and espionage.

Of course, several of these avenues of diffusion do not require warfare. Commercial competitors often imitate one another's products and even engage in industrial espionage to ferret out one another's secrets. In many cases, however, there is resistance on the part of established interests, both military and civilian, to the introduction of new
ideas and new technologies that threaten the existing order and their power and prominence in it. Established nineteenth-century physicians disputed the germ theory of disease as early twentieth-century physicists resisted the idea of quantum theory. Peacetime navies commanded by battleship admirals denied the value of aircraft carriers that, among other things, would enhance the power of their rivals within the navy. American auto executives in the 1960s were confident that the huge, gas-guzzling vehicles upon which their careers and profits had been built would always rule the road and dismissed Japanese auto engineering innovations. The list of examples is endless.

War, however, puts enormous pressure on societies to identify and assimilate useful innovations. Though it offers no guarantee that innovation will prevail, in war, the penalty for failing to acquire and learn to use important new technologies or modes of organization can be quite severe. Hence, in wartime, the objections of established interests to innovation are more likely to be brushed aside as detrimental to a society's chances of survival. War-driven acceptance of innovation takes many forms. During World War II, for example, Joseph Stalin decided it was better to follow the example of other armies and reduced the power of the Red Army's political officers while increasing the authority of the army's professional soldiers to make tactical decisions.
¹²
Apparently Comrade Stalin disagreed with the slogan of America's post-war peace movement and decided it was
not
better to be “red than dead.”

The most obvious and, perhaps, most common vehicle of military technological diffusion is what might be termed secondary use. This term simply refers to one state or society acquiring and using weapons built by another. The method of acquisition might be theft, purchase, or even battlefield scavenging. For instance, as I noted previously, long before they were fully conquered, some indigenous North American tribes acquired and became quite proficient in the use of firearms. Sometimes they purchased these weapons from traders; sometimes they were issued weapons in exchange for service in the US military; in some instances, they acquired them through raids and theft. Whatever
the precise mode of acquisition, this form of secondary use represented a very limited transfer of technology. Indigenous tribesmen learned how to fire weapons but lacked the technological base from which to actually build firearms and produce ammunition for them. Generally speaking, the wider the technological gulf between the recipient and source of military technology transfers, the more likely that the transfer will be limited to secondary use.

This principle usually holds true in the case of a major source of secondary use today, namely, arms sales. The United States sells tens of billions of dollars of arms every year, mainly to nations in the Middle East and Asia. Most of America's Middle Eastern customers, Saudi Arabia in particular, have little in the way of manufacturing capability, much less a sophisticated arms industry. These recipients of American arms are dependent upon the United States for maintenance, spare parts, and ammunition, hence the transfer of technology is very minor. America's Asian customers, on the other hand, most notably Japan and Taiwan, have very large and sophisticated manufacturing bases and could probable copy the American weapons they purchase. These nations are, however, constrained from so doing by agreements with the United States, as well as a calculation that it would be too expensive and politically risky to build the most sophisticated weapons in their own factories. While the Japanese and Taiwanese undoubtedly examine and are capable of reverse-engineering the aircraft and antimissile systems they purchase, the actual technology transfer is limited.

Whenever weapons are sold to a technologically sophisticated customer, however, there is a risk that the weapons transfer will not be limited to secondary use but will rather be reverse-engineered so that their secondary users learn the principles required to build them. Israel, for example, had sufficient technological capability to reverse-engineer the weapons it purchased from the United States and other suppliers and to use them as the foundations of its own arms industry. According to press reports, Israel routinely makes use of the underlying technologies of weapons it purchases from the United States.
¹³
Of course, to build a modern arms industry, the Israelis also had to
develop the ability to manufacture sophisticated computer and electronic components, and today Israel boasts an enormous number of technologically advanced start-up firms that serve both the military and civilian markets.
¹⁴
In this way, the transfer of military and civilian technology went far beyond the narrow secondary use that might have been intended by Israel's arms suppliers.

In some instances, nations have been able to purchase weapons, components, and plans on the international arms market from third-party suppliers. Such purchases often circumvent any restrictions that might have been place to prevent secondary users to build their own weapons. Indeed, in several cases, nations seeking to acquire modern arms technology have purchased American or other Western firms in possession of such know-how. The Chinese have sought to buy American technology firms. The Iranians, it has recently emerged, were able to acquire a factory in Germany that had the ability to manufacture components that might have been useful in Iran's nuclear weapons program.
¹⁵
Of course, one might say that there is nothing new here. Nineteenth-century British and German arms manufacturers sold their wares and their nations' technologies to the United States and any other nation that could pay for them.
¹⁶