ABSTRACT
The interwar period is generally underrated in accounts of military history. The focus, in so far as there is one, is on the two world wars, with the interwar period seen as the sequence to World War One and the preparation for World War Two. Both of these are understood primarily in terms of the major Western powers and the ways in which they sought to overcome the impasse of trench warfare. This approach is misleading, as the prospect of a resumption of symmetrical warfare between the major powers appeared limited until the 1930s. As so often, the standard approach also neglects the role of conflict outside the West, both by Western and by non-Western powers, as well, more specifically, as the militarypolitical tasks of the Western and non-Western militaries in the shape of civil wars and counter-insurrectionary struggles.
