Thanks to everyone for your interesting responses to my post based on my new book, War Made New, which I've been reading while in Houston today on my book tour. (Tomorrow am off to Dallas followed by Kansas, where I'm speaking at the Army's Command and General Staff College.) My plan is to continue to post excerpts from the concluding chapter all week. You will see that future excerpts will address many of the points raised in today's postings.

For instance, a number of commentators suggest that economic power is more important than military prowess, with the most commonly cited example being World War II: Wasn't the outcome determined by the greater economic and demographic resources of the Allied powers over the Axis? I address this point at length in my book and will address it in very short form in an excerpt planned for Thursday.

But in short the answer is: No, World War II doesn't make the case for economic determinism. In the early stages the Axis had tremendous success against a coalition of states that were much larger in aggregrate but much less prepared for war in the Second Industrial Age. Thanks to their early success, Germany, Italy and Japan overran much of Europe and East Asia, which should have allowed them to compete in a war of resources with the Allies. That they failed is in part because the Soviets and the American exhibited greater skill in mobilizing the resources of their societies.

It was also because, after making terrible tactical blunders early on, the Allies learned their lesson and managed to utilize tanks, aircraft carriers, bombers, submarines, and other important technologies as skillfully as their enemies did. If they hadn't, not even the Allies' superiority in materiel would necessarily have been sufficient to prevail. (For greater elaboration of this point, see Richard Overy's excellent book, Why the Allies Won.)

In War Made New, I chronicle numerous instances of the smaller, poorer power defeating a bigger, richer adversary, starting with the Battle of the Spanish Armada: In 1588 Spain was much bigger and richer than England but lost anyway because it had not yet mastered sail and shot tactics as effectively as the English had. We are seeing a similar story play out in the present day, with ragtag Iraqi insurgents defeating the armed forces of the world's No. 1 economic power. You can argue that what we're suffering in Iraq is a political, not a military, defeat, but what's the difference? The point of military action is to achieve political results and if you don't get the results you want, you've been defeated, even if (as in Vietnam or Iraq) you win every single battle.