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This chapter defines and takes stock of the challenge of war escalation and the practice of limited war. It develops a logic for secrecy based on shared fears of large-scale conflict escalation. The theory is anchored in the nature of escalation dynamics in modern war and the difficulty of bounding conflict. The chapter argues that secrecy generally addresses two common pathways for unwanted escalation: political constraints and miscommunication. The heart of the chapter argues that covert forms of military intervention can simultaneously insulate leaders from outside audience reactions and communicate to adversaries one's interest in maintaining a limited-war framework. The chapter then connects these themes to two puzzles mentioned in the previous chapter by showing that limited-war dynamics make sense of collusion by an adversary and the continued value of widely exposed interventions. The chapter ends by explaining how the severity of escalation dangers influences the choice between frontstage and backstage and identifies process-related observable implications.

This chapter extends the argument to the modern era by comparing the battlefield performance of Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during two of the most destructive conventional wars in the post-1945 era: the Second Congo War (1998–2002) and the Ethiopia–Eritrea War (1998–2000). Despite remarkably similar traits, these belligerents, separated by a substantial 0.32 difference in military inequality, had sharply different wartime outcomes. The DRC's army, riddled with ethnic contradictions, nearly collapsed as a coherent fighting force at the war's outset, leading military commanders to augment regular units with a motley collection of mercenaries, child soldiers, militia, and forces from neighboring Zimbabwe and Angola. For their part, Ethiopian forces waged some of the largest mechanized battles of the post-1945 era and displayed increasing sophistication over time. Mechanized units not only repelled Eritrea's initial invasion but cracked its defensive system in a series of grueling offensives reminiscent of World War I's trench warfare. Though casualties were high, Ethiopian forces displayed a high degree of cohesion and tactical innovation on their way to capturing nearly one-quarter of Eritrea.

This chapter contrasts the Sultanate of Morocco's strong performance during the 1859–1860 Spanish–Moroccan War with the Khanate of Kokand's disastrous outing during its 1864–1865 war with Russia. Though similar across 28 covariates, these belligerents were separated by a massive 0.69 difference in military inequality. Kokand's extreme level of inequality, one of the highest recorded in Project Mars, led to mass desertion, lopsided casualties, and the copious use of coercion to force its soldiers to fight. Moroccan forces, despite being outmatched by Spanish weapons, nonetheless managed to turn in a credible performance, exhibiting far greater resilience and tactical skill than Kokand's dispirited soldiers. Since little English-language historiography exists for either war, the chapter draws on Spanish, French, and Russian documents to explore how inequality affects battlefield performance.

This chapter digs into the variety of temporal challenges posed by the war, and uncovers the practice of writing as a way of locating one’s self in time. Soldiers living at the front experienced a sense of dislocation as they tried to reconstruct a sense of the flow of time through days and nights and weeks whose meaning had been shattered. The cycle of time from day to day was distorted. But for soldiers there was also an intense alternative experience of time: the catastrophic or paroxysmal moment of battle. The intensity of the battle created a cæsura in time, an insurmountable barrier between the past and the present. This extended the psychological trauma of soldiers, but they tried to rebuild time through correspondence, through planning for leave, and through countless little rites that allowed them to reconstruct their mastery of time. The challenges to human temporal rhythms posed by modern technological change were thus distilled intensely and poignantly by the war. The generations that followed lived with that changed temporality, unable easily to find a way of counter-balancing the destruction of human time it had brought about.

This chapter assesses the importance of films about wars, which crystallises an image of the conflict depicted that remains influential at the time of its release and for audiences in the years after it was made. It argues that the significant amount of people's knowledge and understanding about any particular war comes more from films made about the conflict than textbooks or documentaries. It also describes films about modern wars that provide a cultural battleground for interpretations of how they are viewed at the time and how they will be understood by generations to come. The chapter mentions Alison Landsberg, who asserts that cinema gives powerful experiences which both resonate and influence the perception of events just as forcefully as firsthand memories. It examines the role of films in the way wars come to be understood and how master narratives are largely constructed in the national imaginary through the cinema.

This introduction sets out the way in which the book explores women's wartime experiences in the context of politics and protest, home-front mobilization, service abroad, blue-collar and white-collar work, and popular culture representations. Challenging the notion that war brought transformative changes, it nonetheless emphasizes the way in which diverse women used the war for their own agendas of expanding their economic, political, and personal opportunities. In addition to assessing war's impact on the "new woman," the introduction addresses the impact of women's service and labor on mobilizing for a modern global war.

This chapter assesses Westway's defeat, starting with an examination of the consequences, then looking at the outcome both under the law and facts relevant to the Westway proposal and as a lens to critique the law's attributes in modern regulatory wars, especially over environmental stakes. While commentators included many who bemoaned Westway's defeat, others praised the result and the process that allowed citizens, politicians, and agency scientists to oppose and defeat a project supported by many powerful interests. Hence part of this clash of views hinged on whether Westway's defeat revealed legal or political dysfunction, even if it was a sound result under the law. Westway's lengthy war and defeat also offer lessons about the law, especially in complicated regulatory wars involving all branches and layers of government, citizen activists, and clashes over environmental risks and urban priorities.

This concluding chapter considers the possibility of a similar project suffering the same fate as Westway in more contemporary times, analyzing more broadly the state of regulatory wars and what lessons Westway can offer regarding these. The chapter contends that while the context surrounding Westway's proposal and defeat no longer exists in current times, several elements illuminated by Westway's battles still remain. Westway's history provides insights into how such regulatory wars can be fought, but nothing in its tale confirms heroic expectations that citizens can alone always be there to protect the environment and check illegality. The chapter also provides further insights for future study.

This concluding chapter considers the possibility of a similar project suffering the same fate as Westway in more contemporary times, analyzing more broadly the state of regulatory wars and what lessons Westway can offer regarding these. The chapter contends that while the context surrounding Westway's proposal and defeat no longer exists in current times, several elements illuminated by Westway's battles still remain. Westway's history provides insights into how such regulatory wars can be fought, but nothing in its tale confirms heroic expectations that citizens can alone always be there to protect the environment and check illegality. The chapter also provides further insights for future study.

This chapter assesses Westway's defeat, starting with an examination of the consequences, then looking at the outcome both under the law and facts relevant to the Westway proposal and as a lens to critique the law's attributes in modern regulatory wars, especially over environmental stakes. While commentators included many who bemoaned Westway's defeat, others praised the result and the process that allowed citizens, politicians, and agency scientists to oppose and defeat a project supported by many powerful interests. Hence part of this clash of views hinged on whether Westway's defeat revealed legal or political dysfunction, even if it was a sound result under the law. Westway's lengthy war and defeat also offer lessons about the law, especially in complicated regulatory wars involving all branches and layers of government, citizen activists, and clashes over environmental risks and urban priorities.

This chapter presents the book's rationale which is to provide more contemporary perspectives to the nature, effects, and consequences of global networks and information flows. The plurality of views expressed here covers international law, global inequities, modern practice of war, governmental actions, and culture—all of which are affected by current global information flows. Conflicts over control of information flows help define who holds power in the global information economy. Globalization's biggest enabler is the Internet, which has now become the single most important network facilitating most global information flows. Moreover, transformations operated by the Internet continue to accelerate exponentially, strengthening and confirming the growing extent of the global networked society.

This chapter examines the following questions: How do operations conducted “below the threshold” of major war affect U S civil-military relations? Conversely, how does the state of civil-military relations inform the public’s perceptions of these kinds of military engagements? In recent years the U S armed forces, especially ground forces and special operators, have spent the balance of their deployments conducting so-called low-intensity conflict or irregular warfare. This chapter examines the existing scholarship on the relationships between U S civil-military relations and Americans’ perceptions of modern military operations. It then refers to responses to the October 2017 ambush in Niger to generate insights and hypotheses about the interactions between the state of civil-military relations and public perceptions of light- footprint and (previously) low- profile operations.