The internal context of combat encompasses all features, animate and inanimate, physical and cognitive, natural and man-made, that exist in the combat arena. At all times, from beginning to end, combat and all combatants are affected by the broader context in which combat is set, and what happens in combat feeds back to affect that broader context. This broader context includes everything outside the combat arena that has any influence on what is done by either side. Combat is always subservient to the wider perspective of the campaign and the war, and beyond that to the political interests and to the populace at large. The external context will impose constraints and impetus on the conduct of combatants.
Societal culture can be a powerful influence on individuals, collectively and individually.
Granting the influences of the external context, it is nevertheless in the crucible of combat that campaigns can become successful and wars can be brought to a favorable military end. And granting that in warfare, the time spent and number of persons engaging in combat are a small fraction of the total, it is in combat that critical events are made to happen. Of all human endeavors, combat is perhaps the most intense for its participants. Each puts his life and that of his opponent in jeopardy and dictates that many on each side must give up their lives for a sometimes remote, abstract cause.