Quagmire in Civil War

Our understanding of civil war is shot through with the spectre of quagmire, a situation that traps belligerents, compounding and entrenching war''s dangers. Despite the subject''s importance, its causes are obscure. A pervasive ''folk'' notion that quagmire is intrinsic to certain countries or wars has foreclosed inquiry, and scholarship has failed to identify quagmire as an object of study in it...