How Democracies Lose Small Wars. By Gil Merom. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 310p. $65.00 cloth, $22.99 paper.

The essence of Gil Merom's argument in this book is that democratic strong actors cannot win small wars because these states are constrained by society to avoid the sacrifice—in both sustained and inflicted casualties—necessary to win: “My argument is that democracies fail in small wars because they find it extremely difficult to escalate the level of violence and brutality to that which can secure victory. They are restricted by their domestic structure, and in particular by the creed of some of their most articulate citizens and the opportunities their institutional makeup presents such citizens. Other states are not prone to lose small wars, and when they do fail in such wars it is mostly for realist reasons” (p. 15). Merom adds that “[e]ssentially, what prevents modern democracies from winning small wars is disagreement between state and society over expedient and moral issues that concern human life and dignity…. Achieving a certain balance between … the readiness to bear the cost of a war and the readiness to exact a painful toll from others—is a precondition for succeeding in war” (p. 19).