The casualties and victors of war include states as well as armies. Enduring states like the American one win major wars in part by rallying the full productive potential of their populations and by controlling disruptions within their ranks. Shrewd rebels, on the other hand, know that wars can fatally weaken authorities and their institutions. Because of this, analysts of politics since ancient times have studied the effects of war on strategies for resisting, gaining, or exercising political power. I hope to demonstrate that the connection between these two endeavors is found in the strategic motivations of American statesmen, who in their planning and direction of this particular mobilization followed enduring rules of Western warmaking.
War has a curious bipolar character in studies of the political prospects of American social groups.
On the one hand, social histories of war are replete with descriptions of the new economic and political opportunities encountered by racial and ethnic minorities and women. War crises redeploy workers with new skills to new locales and launch important episodes of industrial and manufacturing development. In the process, wars set authorities off-balance and undermine social norms. Wars can, it seems, help to liberate oppressed groups, even if in an indirect and piecemeal fashion. On the other hand, there is a darker, authoritarian side of war resulting from heightened economic regulation and social regimentation.