Module overview
This special subject explores the development of the ‘precision ethos’ across the American military, and its representation within political rhetoric, cable news and print media, legal architecture, films, video games, and social media posts. Following the advent of airpower during WWI, strategists shared apocalyptic visions of bombers obliterating civilians as the traditional front lines of warfare were dissolved by verticality. Contra to this, a cadre of American strategists proposed an alternative vision — a precision ethos — through which a fusion of superior technology, intelligence, and training would bring military victory while sparing civilians and their environments.
Part I explores the initial development of the concept of precision, tracing how the idea was formed and transmitted. Although the devastation of WWII and the subsequent conflicts of the Cold War reveal this idea failed to take root, this module examines how it only survived its initial rejection, but went on to evolve through the latter part of the twentieth century into a society-wide belief that became the foremost strategic, rhetorical, and legal framework through which the US and its NATO allies employed military force, as well as the primary lens through which Western citizens perceived warfare.