This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface

16.2 War

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. 
   Explain why war is best understood as a social phenomenon and why nations go to war.
   
2. 
   Outline both sides to the debate over the size of the US military budget.
   
3. 
   List the types of problems that military veterans often face.
   

War is “sustained armed conflict” that causes “large-scale loss of life or extreme material destruction” (Worrell, 2011, p. 1). ^[1] Wars occur both between nations and within nations, when two or more factions engage in armed conflict. War between nations is called international war, while war within nations is called civil war.