Smith then proceeds to discuss each of the six themes in detail. Smith discusses modern guerrilla and insurgency campaigns, including various civil wars and ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa. The conflicts he discusses in the second half are almost all "wars amongst the people" and appear intractable to conventional forces. Smith analyses situations in which countries have adapted their tactics in order to respond to "war amongst the people", such as those used by Israeli forces in response to the Palestinian Intifada, in which the Israelis resorted to targeted searches when superior firepower proved ineffective. He points out that modern wars are rarely fought between individual nations, but the parties often consist of supranational coalitions or sub-state entities, and that Western governments in particular fight in such a way as to keep casualties and material losses to a minimum. Smith is critical of the conduct of the American-led coalition in the Iraq War during the insurgency which followed the initial invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003; he opines that the soldiers undertaking the counter-insurgency operations did not have the proper skills or equipment for the task. He believes that the commanders were working at a tactical rather than a strategic level, and that operations were not sufficiently guided by intelligence—relying too heavily on battlefield strength and assessments of the insurgents' technical capabilities, rather than their political objectives.