Put narrowly, this book explains how democracies fail in small wars in spite of their military superiority. Yet this book is not so much about military matters and the interaction between unequal parties on the battlefield. Rather, it is largely about societal processes within democracies that are engaged in counterinsurgency and about how these processes affect world politics. Indeed, the explanatory power of the argument and the implications of this study transcend the phenomenon of small wars, and, as I explain in the Conclusion, are relevant to a number of important issues of political science, foreign policy, and international relations.

The Biased Study of War and the Neglect of Small Wars

Paradoxically, the study of war in political science and international relations may have narrowed the understanding of war. By and large, war was subjected to mechanistic models that considered variables such as industrial capacity, military hardware, levels of forces deployed, and organizational structures and routines that lend themselves to easy operationalization and measurement. Society was hardly ever the focal point of the research on war. Indeed, rarely were social friction, cultural attributes, prevailing values, and norms taken into serious consideration as determinants of the outcomes of war. Rather, the amorphous collective of society was by and large considered important only in relation to its potential as a source for the men and material needed for war.