See Eriksson and Wallensteen, p. 625. These included conflicts in which battle deaths for the year exceeded 25.

American forces performed disastrously at the Battle of Bladensburg in August 1814, allowing the British to capture and burn the capital. Two hundred years later, we may well be witnessing that battle s intellectual and policymaking analogue.

The FLN (National Liberation Front) uprising against French rule in Algeria started in 1954 with assassinations of policemen. The French at first responded with orthodox measures more police, curfews, martial law, etc. but the insurgency spread amid growing atrocities by both sides.

BERKELEY On the back left corner of my desk right now are three recent books Arthur Brooks The Battle, Charles Murray s Coming Apart, and Nicholas Eberstadt s A Nation of Takers. Together, they constitute an important intellectual movement, which also happens to be a large part of the reason that American conservatism today has little that is constructive to say about managing the economy and little purchase on the center of the American electorate.

That battle was also the subject of a recent Russian film, The Sovereign s Servant. Russian television commentators describe the countries most engaged in supporting a European oriented Ukraine Sweden, along with Poland and Lithuania, which had been brought into the Swedish orbit as seeking revenge for Poltava.