How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam

by Gil Merom

Book Overview

In this 2003 book, Gil Merom argues that modern democracies fail in insurgency wars because they are unable to find a winning balance between expedient and moral tolerance to the costs of war. Small wars, he argues, are lost at home when a critical minority mass shifts the center of gravity from the battlefield to the market place of ideas. Merom analyzes the role of brutality in counterinsurgency, the historical foundations of moral and expedient...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521804035
• ISBN13: 9780521804035
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"