The conduct of war is among the most important acts of the state. In
the last century alone, failure in this undertaking has toppled
governments and imposed hostile occupation under a conqueror's rule
for hundreds of millions from Paris to Warsaw and Tokyo to Jakarta.
Military failure in World War I destroyed the Ottoman,
Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian empires and created a host of
new states in Eastern Europe and the Balkans in their stead. Allied
military victory in World War II made global superpowers of the
United States and the Soviet Union, and split Germany into two
countries; the success of Soviet arms ended Latvian, Lithuanian, and
Estonian independence, and resulted in a generation of subjugation
under Soviet satellite rule for the peoples of Eastern Europe.
Pyrrhic victory in two world wars exhausted Britain and brought an
end to its global economic hegemony. Failure in internal war has
toppled governments from Afghanistan to Vietnam; variations in the
conduct of such wars can mean the difference between decades of
misery in grinding stalemates as in Lebanon or in a rapid, decisive
conclusion as in Rwanda's.