From Afghanistan to Angola, Indonesia to Iran, and Colombia to Congo, violent reactions erupt, states collapse, and militaries relentlessly pursue operations doomed to fail. And yet, no useful theory exists to explain this common tragedy. All over the world, people and states clash in violent crucibles outside their established political systems as unfulfilled demands of order, control, and productivity bend the modern state to a breaking point. This book methodically lays out how dysfunctional governments disrupt social orders, make territory insecure, and interfere with political-economic institutions, giving rise to a form of organized violence against the state known as irregular war. Research reveals why this frequent phenomenon is so poorly understood among conventional forces participating in those conflicts and the states who send their children to die in them."--