Limitless Warfare in the United States

If you 're in a country with an independent bureaucracy, without the overwhelming power of the state setting the boundaries of what can be achieved, as far as the advantage that one group can achieve or exploit at the expense of any other. Without that, these groups would descend into a state of total war. In a places like the united states, the presence of state power and the presence of self regulating norms that sort of set a floor on what each group can lose to each other. That's what enables people to argue over interests. Limited warfare is something that is really only possible under conditions of high trust, in that common agreement on established norms. This was possible in eighteenth century europe.