Progress Without an Enemy War Shaped Innovation and the Constructive Mobilization Problem

Abstract

War has accelerated selected technologies, but acceleration does not establish that war is necessary for progress. This conceptual article asks which mobilizing capacities states assemble under threat and whether institutions can sustain them for peaceful public purposes. It distinguishes three interacting levels of war shaped innovation: protected resources, coordinated institutions, and adversarial justification. Their combination motivates the constructive mobilization problem: securing investment, experimentation, and implementation without permanent emergency, expendability, or unreviewable authority. Civic innovation capacity names the ability to meet that problem through effective coordination, public justification, independent review, correction, and refusal. An illustrative AI procurement program shows how the framework identifies choices and failure modes, without claiming empirical validation. Defensive needs, unequal power, strategic secrecy, and opportunism limit cooperation and may require bounded authority. Comparative research can test whether threat narratives affect actual decisions and whether civilian arrangements maintain both performance and contestability.