The Wonder War - [since I haven't read this (and the back cover doesn't help much) - for a plot summary I rely on parts of a review in Analog August 1964]:
"The Overdogs, protagonists of the story, have been sent out to keep burgeoning civilizations from getting too big for their britches. The Earth-based Confederation is doing very nicely, expanding through the galaxy, and it doesn't want any military or scientifically efficient competition. In the name of humanity, it can't go around wiping out promising civilizations, so it has adopted the very humane technique of preventing the kind of war that might give science a shot in the arm. In this case, the Overdogs are involved on both sides of a pending war on the Earthlike world, Wh'Gralb. They are ingenious and hapless by turns, and are not helped in the least by having a freshly graduated, extremely feminine officer along to interfere with smoothly grinding sand in the wheels..." [-P. Schuyler Miller]