Military organizations engage in hybrid warfare when, having expected and prepared to wage a particular form of war, they find themselves compelled simultaneously to wage another type. German officers and military theorists explained the hybrid war transition in terms of an epochal shift from Kabinettskriege to Volkskriege, or popular war. The war that culminated the long process of German unification incorporated institutions and ideas deeply infused with eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century understandings of limited force and its utility. German officers deserve much of the blame for the cultural conceits that reinforced Germany's strategic posture. The basic problem of strategic culpability at the highest levels of decision making and social militarism at the lowest was strongly influenced by the high profile the German officer corps enjoyed, to be sure, but that fact should not obscure that the officer corps was not, in the end, the arbiter of Germany's fate.

The military success in 1644 and the subsequent expansion of the Ch'ing empire were rooted in two centuries of Jurchen multilateral relationships with Koreans, Mongols, and Chinese in the Northeast. During the Ming dynasty, Chinese distinguished three groups of Jurchens: the Wild Jurchens, the Hai-hsi Jurchens, and the Chien-chou Jurchens. By 1500, sable was a main item of trade between the Jurchens and China and Korea, and its volume continued to increase. Hung Taiji tried to establish Chinese equality with Manchus. International trade continued as a monopoly of the eight banners. Banner missions went to northern Manchuria in search of sable and to Ming borders to buy Chinese goods. The organizational and conceptual foundations laid during Nurhaci and Hung Taiji's reigns allowed the Manchus to make the successful transition and take advantage of events in north China.

Any description of the eastern frontier must start with a discussion of the relationship between Rome and Persia. During most of the reign of Yezdegerd I (399-420) and in the first years of Theodosius II (408-50), relations between Rome and Persia were marked by a policy of mutual tolerance. In the fourth century the Arab nomad forces, 'Saracens', as they are called in the contemporary literature, became an important factor in the warfare between Rome and Persia to an extent previously unknown. The Jews in Palestine and the Diaspora had enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy under Roman rule from the second century onward. The military organization of the second half of the fourth century had more in common with that of the sixth than with that of the third. This period witnessed the institution of territorial commands held by duces as distinct from the field arm.