Chapter 3 expands the examination of war’s great theorists and theories to include “small war,” maritime, and airpower theorists like Callwell, Galula, Trinquier, Lawrence, Mahan, Corbett, Douhet, Mitchell, Trenchard, and Slessor. This chapter emphasizes the subordinate relationship between subtheories of war and general theory and asserts that in some cases subtheories are the result of inadequacies in general theory. The chapter examines the human, political, and combat aspects of small wars from both strong and weak perspectives. Additionally, the chapter evaluates maritime and airpower subtheories and defines three tasks for domain theorists: characterize the domain in abstract terms, explain how to control it, and then show how control advances the aims of war. Finally, it synthesizes material from Chapters 2 and 3 by evaluating each theorist for balance relative to war’s twenty dialectics.

Chapter 1 analyzes the ideas of the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. It describes his life and his "America," which was socially and politically at war with itself. This chapter also discusses how the core principles Mahan borrowed from the Swiss military theorist Jomini – concentration, offensive action, and decision by battle – were brought from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. It ends with an explication of the traditional model of wars nature, which saw armed conflict as an extension of the competitive side of human nature.