As I noted in Chapter 2, all other things being equal, the readiness of strong powers to escalate the level of brutality is the key to winning small wars. This readiness, however, is a necessary, not a sufficient, condition. States, as I further noted in the Introduction, need also to be able to mobilize and convert societal resources into military might, and then use the latter with little, if any, restraints. Thus, leaders must secure the readiness of the military forces to meet the “requirements” of the battlefield, and ensure the people's “acceptance” of the military strategy and the costs it involves. The capacity of strong powers to win small wars, then, is almost by definition a function of their domestic structure. Or, formulated otherwise, society cannot a priori be overlooked. If the political order in a country leaves room for society to intervene in politics, then the capacity to win small wars becomes a function of the state of normative alignment (or conversely, the magnitude of the normative gap).

In this chapter, I review the foundations of the “space” that was opened for social forces to influence policy in liberal democracies. I combine again inductive and deductive logic, and I draw on historical observations in order to explain the origins of social defiance of the conduct of state in small wars.