The evolution of war

This paper examines the systematic literature on the evolution of war. This literature breaks into the following broad categories: studies of war joining, studies of the summary characteristics of war, studies of winning and losing, and models of combat. With regards to war joining, most of the literature supports the notion that joining occurs when it is sensible for a state to do so. There has been far less success predicting the summary characteristics of war; those studies using an expected utility approach have been the most successful. Although there is no consensus on how to measure power, there has been considerable success predicting the outcome of war. But models of combat have not successfully tracked the dynamics of war.