arreguin-toft (2001): how the weak win wars

How the Weak Win Wars

No one had givenMuhammad Ali a chance against George Foreman in the World HeavyweightChampionship ght of October 30 1974 Foreman none of whose opponentshad lasted more than three rounds in the ring was the strongest hardest hit-ting boxer of his generation Ali though not as powerful as Foreman had aslightly faster punch and was lighter on his feet In the weeks leading up to theght however Foreman had practiced against nimble sparring partners Hewas ready But when the bell rang just after 400 am in Kinshasa somethingcompletely unexpected happened In round two instead of moving into thering to meet Foreman Ali appeared to cower against the ropes Foreman nowcondent of victory pounded him again and again while Ali whisperedhoarse taunts ldquoGeorge yoursquore not hittinrsquordquo ldquoGeorge you disappoint merdquo Fore-man lost his temper and his punches became a furious blur To spectators un-aware that the elastic ring ropes were absorbing much of the force ofForemanrsquos blows it looked as if Ali would surely fall By the fth round how-ever Foreman was worn out And in round eight as stunned commentatorsand a delirious crowd looked on Muhammad Ali knocked George Foreman tothe canvas and the ght was over

The outcome of that now-famous ldquorumble in the junglerdquo was completely un-expected The two ghters were equally motivated to win Both had boasted ofvictory and both had enormous egos Yet in the end a ght that should havebeen over in three rounds went eight and Foremanrsquos prodigious punchesproved useless against Alirsquos rope-a-dope strategy

This ght illustrates an important yet relatively unexplored feature of inter-state conict how a weak actorrsquos strategy can make a strong actorrsquos power ir-

How the WeakWin Wars

Ivan Arreguiacuten-Toft

A Theory of Asymmetric Conict

International Security Vol 26 No 1 (Summer 2001) pp 93ndash128copy 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ivan Arreguiacuten-Toft is a postdoctoral fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center forScience and International Affairs at Harvard Universityrsquos John F Kennedy School of Government

The author wishes to thank Stephen Biddle David Edelstein John Garafano Charles Glaser JohnMearsheimer Sharon Morris Jordan Seng Jessica Stern Ward Thomas Monica Toft Stephen Waltparticipants in the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago partici-pants in the 1999ndash2000 National Security Seminar at the John M Olin Institute for Strategic Studiesat Harvard University and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments He also grate-fully acknowledges support from the Institute for the Study of World Politics and the Smith Rich-ardson Foundation

relevant1 If power implies victory in war then weak actors should almostnever win against stronger opponents especially when the gap in relativepower is very large2 Yet history suggests otherwise Weak actors sometimesdo win3 The question is how

Understanding the conditions under which weak actors win wars is im-portant for two reasons First if there are dynamics unique to asymmetricconictsmdashor if their analysis provides fresh insights into symmetricalconictsmdasha general explanation of asymmetric conict outcomes is not onlydesirable but necessary both to reduce the likelihood of unwinnable wars andto increase the chances of US success when a resort to arms is necessary Sec-ond because asymmetric conicts ranging from catastrophic terrorism to mili-tary intervention in interstate ethnic and civil wars are the most likely threatto US security and interests only a general theory of asymmetric conict out-comes can guide US policymakers in their efforts to build the kinds of armedand other forces necessary to implement an effective US strategic response

Thus far only one scholar has advanced a strong general explanation ofasymmetric conict outcomes4 In ldquoWhy Big Nations Lose Small Warsrdquo An-drew Mack argues that an actorrsquos relative resolve or interest explains successor failure in asymmetric conicts5 In essence the actor with the most resolve

International Security 261 94

1 ldquoActorsrdquo here mean states or coalitions of states although the same dynamics would apply togovernments ghting against rebels ldquoConictsrdquo in this analysis are restricted to wars (1000 battledeaths per year on average) although again similar dynamics may apply in conicts that are notwars (eg terrorism trade wars and labor disputes) Because this analysis focuses on explainingasymmetric conicts it excludes those few wars in which the ratio of forces changed dramatically(toward symmetry) between the conictrsquos beginning and end2 In this article I follow established practice by introducing an imperfect but quantiable proxyfor power A strong actor is one whose material power exceeds that of its adversary or adversariesby at least ten to one Material power is the product of a given statersquos population and armed forcesldquoStrongrdquo and ldquoweakrdquo therefore have meaning only in a particular dyadic context Italy in 1935 isweak compared with Nazi Germany but strong compared with Ethiopia For an introduction tothe literature on empirical and quantiable measures of relative power see John Jacob NutterldquoUnpacking Threat A Conceptual and Formal Analysisrdquo in Norman A Graham ed Seeking Secu-rity and Development The Impact of Military Spending and Arms Transfers (Boulder Colo LynneRienner 1994) pp 29ndash493 TV Paul Asymmetric Conicts War Initiation by Weaker Powers (New York Cambridge Univer-sity Press 1994) p 4 Paulrsquos analysis focuses on why weak states initiate wars against strongerones His threshold of analysis for asymmetry is a power ratio of 12 where power is measured intraditionalmdashthat is materialmdashterms On Paulrsquos denition of asymmetry see ibid p 20 On theproblems of reducing power to material net assessments see ibid p 22 Nutter ldquoUnpackingThreatrdquo and Michael P Fischerkeller ldquoDavid versus Goliath Cultural Judgments in AsymmetricWarsrdquo Security Studies Vol 7 No 4 (Summer 1998) pp 1ndash434 See Andrew JR Mack ldquoWhy Big Nations Lose Small Wars The Politics of AsymmetricConictrdquo World Politics Vol 27 No 2 (January 1975) pp 175ndash2005 Robert A Pape considers Mackrsquos explanation as part of a family of balance-of-interest argu-ments which closely approach balance-of-resolve arguments I agree that they are analytically dis-

wins regardless of material power resources Mack contends that this resolvecan be derived a priori by assessing the structure of the conict relationshipPower asymmetry explains interest asymmetry The greater the gap in relativepower the less resolute and hence more politically vulnerable strong actorsare and the more resolute and less politically vulnerable weak actors are Bignations therefore lose small wars because frustrated publics (in democratic re-gimes) or countervailing elites (in authoritarian regimes) force a withdrawalshort of military victory This seems true of some conicts but not of others

In this article I argue that the best predictor of asymmetric conict outcomesis strategic interaction6 According to this thesis the interaction of actor strate-gies during a conict predicts conict outcomes better than do competing ex-planations7 The rst section lays out the puzzle of strong-actor defeat inasymmetric conicts and Mackrsquos interest asymmetry argument more fully Thesecond section introduces the strategic interaction thesis which holds thatstrong actors will lose asymmetric conicts when they use the wrong strategyvis-agrave-vis their opponentsrsquo strategy The next two sections offer quantitative andqualitative tests of the argument The article concludes by drawing out theoret-ical and policy implications of the strategic interaction thesis and suggests ave-nues for further research

How the Weak Win Wars 95

tinct but this distinction does not matter in practice because the two motives invariably move inthe same direction High interest implies high resolve and vice versa I therefore use the two termsinterchangeably See Pape Bombing to Win Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca NY Cornell Uni-versity Press 1996) p 4 n 96 My use of the term strategic interaction should not be confused with its usage in formal modelsin which strategy is invoked as both a proxy for actor rationality (ie strategic actors calculaterisks and benets) and an attribute of states especially great powers See for example Curtis SSignorino ldquoStrategic Interaction and the Statistical Analysis of International Conictrdquo AmericanPolitical Science Review Vol 93 No 2 (June 1999) p 279 On the distinction between rational choicetreatments of strategy and strategy as traditionally used in strategic studies see Pape Bombing toWin pp 8ndash97 Among these are nature of actor arms diffusion and rise of nationalism arguments The logic ofthe nature of actor argument is that because (1) democratic actors do not ght as well as authori-tarian actors and (2) an increase in strong-actor failures in asymmetric conicts correlates with anincrease in the total number of asymmetric conicts involving democratic strong actors actor re-gime type explains asymmetric conict outcomes See Michael C Desch ldquoDemocracy and VictoryWhy Regime Type Does Not Matter (Much)rdquo unpublished manuscript University of KentuckySeptember 2000 The arms diffusion argument is a strand of offense-defense theory that holds thatthe diffusion of relatively advanced small arms to the developing world caused the costs of con-quest or occupation to rise sufciently to offset expected benets On offense-defense theory ingeneral see Sean M Lynn-Jones ldquoOffense-Defense Theory and Its Criticsrdquo Security Studies Vol 4No 4 (Summer 1995) pp 660ndash691 The rise of nationalism argument holds that after World War IInations came to believe that only through self-determination could they prevent colonialist de-struction of their social fabric In this view the costs of conquest and occupation rose because na-tionalists are generally more stubborn and more willing than others to risk death in pursuit ofautonomy See for example Eric R Wolf Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York Harperand Row 1973)

Explaining Asymmetric Conict Outcomes

Since Thucydides the root principle of international relations theory has beenthat power implies victory in war8 Thus in asymmetric conicts9 the strongactor should almost always win Indeed this expectation is on balance sup-ported (see Figure 1) Yet if one divides the roughly 200-year period covered inthe Correlates of War data set two related puzzles emerge (see Figure 2) Firstweak actors were victorious in nearly 30 percent of all asymmetric wars whichseems high given the sup3 51 asymmetry represented here Second weak actorshave won with increasing frequency over time If relative power explains out-comes and structure of the conict is held constant as in Figure 2 conict out-comes should not shift over time as they have What explains both strong-actordefeat in asymmetric wars and the trend toward increasing weak-actor victo-ries over time

interest asymmetry or relative power revisitedAndrew Mackrsquos explanation for how weak states win asymmetric wars com-prises three key elements (1) relative power explains relative interests (2) rela-tive interests explain relative political vulnerability and (3) relative vulner-ability explains why strong actors lose According to the logic of this argumentstrong actors have a lower interest in winning because their survival is not atstake Weak actors on the other hand have a high interest in winning becauseonly victory ensures their survival10 Mack introduces the concept of politicalvulnerability to describe the likelihood that an actorrsquos public (in democratic


8 Throughout this article the term international relations theory refers to a simple version of real-ist theory with three key elements (1) there is no authority above states that is capable of regulat-ing their interactions (2) all states have some capacity to harm other states and (3) states thereforeseek to increase their relative power which can deter other states from launching attacks intimi-date them into making concessions or defeat them in war9 In this analysis the threshold of asymmetry that matters is sup3 51 in favor of strong actors wherepower is the halved product of a strong actorrsquos armed forces and population at the start of aconict versus the simple product of the weak actorrsquos armed forces and population Halvingstrong-actor power simulates the tendency of strong actors to have diverse security interests andcommitments Data for this survey come primarily from J David Singer and Melvin Small Resortto Arms International and Civil Wars 1816ndash1980 (Beverly Hills Calif Sage 1992) Additional dataare from Walter Laqueur Guerrilla A Historical and Critical Study (Boston Little Brown 1976) andJohn Ellis From the Barrel of a Gun A History of Guerrilla Revolutionary and Counter-Insurgency War-fare from the Romans to the Present (London Greenhill 1995) Cases used in this analysis are listedin the appendix10 The classic work on this point is Glenn H Snyder and Paul Diesing See Snyder and DiesingConict among Nations Bargaining Decision Making and System Structure in International Crises(Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1977) p 190 See also Mack ldquoWhy Big Nations LoseSmall Warsrdquo p 181

regimes) or competing elites (in authoritarian regimes) will force its leadersto halt the war short of achieving its initial objectives11 A strong actorrsquos lowinterests imply high political vulnerability In contrast a weak actorrsquos highinterests imply low political vulnerability Mack argues that this politicalvulnerability explains why the strong lose to the weak12 Delays and reverseson the battle-eld will eventually encourage war-weary publics or greedyelites to force the strong actorrsquos leaders to abandon the ght Mackrsquos argu-ment therefore reduces to the claim that relative power explains strong-actordefeat in asymmetric wars Power asymmetry determines interest asym-metry (high power equals low interest) Interest asymmetry is the key


11 Ibid pp 180ndash18212 Ibid pp 194ndash195

Figure 1 Percentage of Asymmetric Conflict Victories by Type of Actor 1800plusmn 1998

Figure 2 Percentage of Asymmetric Conflict Victories by Type of Actor in Four Fifty-Year Periods

causal mechanism and Mackrsquos thesis is in this sense an interest asymmetryargument

Mack applies this logic to the case of US intervention in Vietnam where itappears to provide a strong explanation of that warrsquos unexpected outcomeAccording to Mack the United States lost the war because it had less at stakethan did North Vietnam Over time the United States failed to coerce NorthVietnam and was eventually forced by an angry and frustrated American pub-lic to withdraw short of achieving its main political objective a viable inde-pendent noncommunist South Vietnam

Mackrsquos interest asymmetry thesis has at least three problems First relativepower is a poor predictor of relative interest or resolve in peace or war Inpeacetime a strong state may act as if its survival is at stake when it is not Astate that imagines itself ldquoleader of the free worldrdquo for example might ratio-nally calculate that although the defeat of an ally in a distant civil war wouldbe materially insignicant its own survival as a free-world leader depends ona favorable outcome These calculations are often intensied by domino logicin which a series of individually insignicant interests are linked so that theircumulative loss constitutes a material threat to survival Prior to the South Af-rican War (1899ndash1902)13 for example Great Britain had calculated that the fateof its empire hinged on protecting India which demanded that Britain securethe sea-lanes of communication passing the Cape of Good Hope This in turnrequired control of Cape Colony which made it imperative to resist with forcethe independence demands of two tiny republics in the hinterlands of thesouthernmost region of Africa Similarly both identity survival and dominorationales inuenced the US decision to intervene in the civil war in Viet-nam14 Once strong actors enter into a conictmdasheven one acknowledged tohave been initially peripheral to their interestsmdashtheir resolve to win may in-crease dramatically This was as true of Soviet calculations in Afghanistan as itwas of US calculations in Vietnam15 Second the operation of political vulner-ability which Mack uses to explain weak-actor success presupposes a span of


13 The South African War is what historians formerly called the Boer War The new name moreaccurately reects the important role played by black South Africans in the war and for this reasonI refer to the Boer War as the South African War throughout this article14 See for example George C Herring Americarsquos Longest War The United States and Vietnam1950ndash1975 2d ed (New York McGraw-Hill 1986) p 170 and Stanley Karnow Vietnam A History(New York Viking 1983) pp 169ndash170 377ndash378 399 42315 On Soviet calculations in Afghanistan see Ralph H Magnus and Eden Naby Afghanistan Mul-lah Marx and Mujahid (Boulder Colo Westview 1998) pp 68 122 For particularly apt examplesfrom the US intervention in Vietnam see Herring Americarsquos Longest War p 222

time But nothing in the interest asymmetry thesis explains why some asym-metric conicts end quickly yet others drag on16 Third if the interest asymme-try thesis is right there should be little or no variation over time in thedistribution of asymmetric conict outcomes when relative power is held con-stant But as shown in Figure 2 (in which relative power is held constant)weak actors are increasingly winning asymmetric conicts

In sum Mackrsquos interest asymmetry thesis is weakest when explaining actorinterests as a function of relative power and strongest when explaining strong-actor failure as a consequence of political vulnerability In the next section Ipresent a theory of asymmetric conict outcomes that subsumes Mackrsquos thesisby bracketing the conditions under which political vulnerability causes strongactors to lose asymmetric wars

The Strategic Interaction Thesis A Theory of Asymmetric Conict

This section introduces the strategic interaction thesis as a general explanationof asymmetric conict outcomes It begins with denitions of key terms fol-lowed by an exploration of the theoryrsquos logic and concludes with several de-rived hypotheses

strategyStrategy as dened here refers to an actorrsquos plan for using armed forces toachieve military or political objectives17 Strategies incorporate an actorrsquos un-derstanding (rarely explicit) about the relative values of these objectives18 In


16 Mack recognizes this problem explicitly by suggesting that guerrilla warfare strategy explainsthe longer duration of asymmetric conicts See Mack ldquoWhy Big Nations Lose Small Warsrdquo p 195But this argument suffers from two related problems (1) weak actors do not always defend withguerrilla warfare (this limits the generality of Mackrsquos theory) and (2) some defenders using guer-rilla warfare strategy are defeated quickly (this limits his theoryrsquos explanatory power)17 The meaning of strategy is both complicated and constantly evolving John J Mearsheimeruses perhaps the simplest denitionmdashrdquothe plan of attackrdquo See Mearsheimer Conventional Deter-rence (Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1983) pp 28ndash29 For a discussion of strategy and itsevolution see BH Liddell Hart Strategy 2d ed (New York Praeger 1967) pp 333ndash346 and JPCharnay ldquoStrategyrdquo in Andreacute Corvisier and John Childs eds Chris Turner trans A Dictionary ofMilitary History and the Art of War (Cambridge Mass Blackwell 1994) pp 768ndash77418 This lack of explicitness is an important component of strategy because guessing wrong abouthow an adversary values its objectives can lead to unexpected outcomes US strategy in Vietnamfor example assumed that after sustaining a certain level of casualties North Vietnam would nolonger be willing to support the insurgency in the South The search for this breaking point anduncertainty over whether it would have any political utility bitterly divided the Johnson adminis-tration There may in fact have been a breaking point in Vietnam but as US Secretary of DefenseRobert McNamara concluded in 1967 reaching that point would have resulted in virtual genocide

this sense strategy should be distinguished from two closely related termsgrand strategy and tactics Grand strategy refers to the totality of an actorrsquos re-sources directed toward military political economic or other objectives Tac-tics refers to the art of ghting battles and of using the various arms of themilitarymdashfor example infantry armor and artillerymdashon terrain and in posi-tions that are favorable to them19 Grand strategy strategy and tactics all de-scribe different points on a continuum of a given actorrsquos means toward a singleend compelling another to do its will

The following typology of ideal-type strategies is a useful starting point foranalysis

Attack (strong actor) strategies1 direct attack2 barbarism

Defense (weak actor) strategies1 direct defense2 guerrilla warfare strategy

This typology includes two assumptions (1) strong actors initiated the asym-metric conict in question and therefore ldquostrong actorrdquo and ldquoattackerrdquo are syn-onymous20 and (2) these ideal-type strategies are war-winning rather thanwar-termination strategies21

direct attack Direct attack means the use of the military to capture oreliminate an adversaryrsquos armed forces thereby gaining control of that oppo-nentrsquos values The main goal is to win the war by destroying the adversaryrsquoscapacity to resist with armed forces Both attrition and blitzkrieg are direct-


See Steven Rosen ldquoWar Power and the Willingness to Sufferrdquo in Bruce M Russett ed Peace Warand Numbers (Beverly Hills Calif Sage 1972) pp 167ndash168 John Mueller ldquoThe Search for thelsquoBreaking Pointrsquo in Vietnam The Statistics of a Deadly Quarrelrdquo International Studies Quarterly Vol24 No 4 (December 1980) pp 497ndash519 Frederick Z Brown ldquoComment on Mueller AmericanMisperceptionsrdquo ibid pp 525ndash529 and Karnow Vietnam A History pp 454 59619 This denition of tactics is a paraphrase of one from the Littreacute Dictionary as quoted by CharnayldquoStrategyrdquo p 77020 Of course empirically strong actors are not always the initiators in asymmetric conicts Paulcounts twenty weak-actor-initiated conicts from 394 bc to 1993 of which eleven are includedhere See Paul Asymmetric Conicts pp 3ndash421 In eight asymmetric conicts (41 percent) the outcome was affected by a war termination orconciliation strategy Conciliation strategies include the use of bribes offers of amnesty powersharing and political reforms and do not require armed forces to implement Examples of asym-metric conicts that ended as the result of a conciliation strategy include the Murid War (1830ndash59)the Third Seminole War (1855ndash58) the Malayan emergency (1948ndash57) the British-Cypriot conict(1954ndash59) and the Philippine-Moro conict (1972ndash80)

attack strategies22 Some readers may nd inclusion of the blitzkrieg in thisdenition puzzling because it seems the very denition of an indirect attackstrategy23 But because armored formations target enemy armed forces (the ad-versaryrsquos capacity to resist) in a blitzkrieg it counts as an indirect tactic but a di-rect strategy24

Historically the most common pattern of a direct-attack strategy has beenone in which an attackerrsquos forces advance to capture a defender rsquos values (acapital city an industrial or communications center or a bridge) or strategic as-sets (defensible terrain or a fort) and the defender moves to thwart that effortA battle or series of battles ensue sometimes marked by lulls lasting entire sea-sons until one side admits defeat

barbarism Barbarism is the systematic violation of the laws of war in pur-suit of a military or political objective25 Although this denition includes theuse of prohibited weapons such as chemical and biological agents its most im-portant element is depredations against noncombatants (viz rape murderand torture)26 Unlike other strategies barbarism has been used to destroy anadversaryrsquos will and capacity to ght When will is the target in a strategic


22 Mearsheimerrsquos denitions of three main-attack strategiesmdashblitzkrieg attrition and limitedaimsmdashprovide a useful starting point for the variations I introduce here See Mearsheimer Conven-tional Deterrence pp 29ndash30 33ndash43 53ndash5623 A blitzkrieg features mobile armored formationsmdashtanks supported by motorized infantry mo-bile artillery and tactical air supportmdashconcentrating their attack against a narrow portion of a de-fenderrsquos extended position (usually thought of as a line) Once the enemyrsquos line is penetratedinstead of turning immediately to engage anked forces armored columns penetrate deep into thedefenderrsquos rear areas cutting communications capturing supplies and generally making it impos-sible for now-isolated forward-deployed defenders to coordinate a defense As a result ldquoan oppo-nent can be disarmed without numerous battles of annihilationrdquo See ibid p 3024 Mearsheimer notes that a successful blitzkrieg encirclement often results in the destruction of asurrounded unitrsquos will to resist See ibid p 38 Although in the case of blitzkrieg the impact is re-stricted to the unit level (tactical) the observation supports the association between indirectnessand will proposed here25 The laws of war have evolved considerably over time As used here they include the HagueConventions of 1899 and 1907 the Genocide Convention of 1948 the Four Geneva Conventions of1949 and the Two Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 On the laws of warand their historical development see Andreacute Corvisier and Barry Paskins ldquoLaws of Warrdquo inCorvisier and Childs A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War pp 443ndash453 MichaelWalzer Just and Unjust Wars A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations 2d ed (New York BasicBooks 1992) and Michael Howard George J Andreopoulos and Mark R Shulman eds The Lawsof War Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven Conn Yale University Press1994) For a concise collection of the documents themselves see Adam Roberts and Richard GuelffDocuments on the Laws of War 3d ed (New York Oxford University Press 2000)26 See for example Walzer Just and Unjust Wars p 151 Chemical and biological weapons havebeen traditionally included in this category because they are inherently indiscriminate Deliberatedestruction of a defenderrsquos natural environment (through deforestation draining of swamps etc)is also a violation of the laws of war for the same reason See Mark Perry and Ed Miles ldquoEnviron-

bombing campaign for example the strong actor seeks to coerce its weakeropponent into changing its behavior by inicting pain (destroying its values)27

When will is the target in a counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign the strongactor attempts to deter would-be insurgents through for instance a policy ofreprisals against noncombatants28 Strong actors can also target a weak actorrsquoscapacity to sustain an insurgency by for example the use of concentrationcamps29 Historically the most common forms of barbarism include the mur-der of noncombatants (eg prisoners of war or civilians during combat opera-tions) the use of concentration camps30 and since 1939 strategic bombingagainst targets of no military value31


mental Warfarerdquo in Roy Gutman and David Rieff Crimes of War What the Public Should Know (NewYork WW Norton 1999) pp 132ndash13527 The classic work here is Thomas C Schelling Arms and Inuence (New Haven Conn Yale Uni-versity Press 1966) especially chaps 1 and 4 See also Robert A Pape Jr ldquoCoercive Air Power inthe Vietnam Warrdquo International Security Vol 15 No 2 (Fall 1990) pp 103ndash146 and Pape Bombingto Win In theory it is possible to employ strategic air power to target an adversaryrsquos capacity toght by using air forces to destroy or interdict supplies demolish key communications points(railroad junctions bridges and airelds) or level arms factories If it were possible to do so with-out killing noncombatants this would count as a direct-attack strategy But in practicemdasheven tak-ing into account advances in precision-guided munitionsmdashstrategic air power is too a bluntweapon and noncombatants are killed disproportionate to the military necessity of destroying thetargets NATOrsquos strategic air campaign in Kosovo in 1999 is a case in point See for example Inde-pendent International Commission on Kosovo Kosovo Report Conict International Response Les-sons Learned (New York Oxford University Press 2000) pp 92ndash9428 Such reprisals typically include executing randomly selected civilians in retaliation for the kill-ing of an occupying soldier See for example Robert AspreyWar in the Shadows The Classic Historyof Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Persia to the Present (New York Little Brown 1994) p 10829 Insurgent intelligence and support networks depend on the participation of sympathetic non-combatants and concentration camps disrupt these networks See for example Donald W Hamil-ton The Art of Insurgency American Military Policy and the Failure of Strategy in Southeast Asia(Westport Conn Praeger 1998) p 59 and Paula M Krebs ldquolsquoThe Last of the Gentlemenrsquos WarsrsquoWomen in the Boer War Concentration Camp Controversyrdquo History Workshop Journal No 33(Spring 1992) pp 41ndash4230 The British used concentration camps as a COIN strategy during the South African War Al-though not intended by the British as many as 28000 Boer women and children died in thesecampsmdashmore than the combined total of combatant casualties from both sides On the use of con-centration camps as a COIN strategy see John Ellis A Short History of Guerrilla Warfare (New YorkSt Martinrsquos 1976) p 111 On their use and consequences in the South African War see ChristiaanDe Wet The Three Yearsrsquo War (New York Charles Scribnerrsquos Sons 1902) pp 192ndash193 ThomasPakenham The Boer War (New York Random House 1979) chap 29 and pp 607ndash608 and KrebsldquolsquoThe Last of the Gentlemenrsquos Warsrsquordquo31 Allied bombing of Dresden is a common example See Ronald Schaffer Wings of JudgmentAmerican Bombing in World War II (New York Oxford University Press 1985) pp 97ndash99 On thesubject of strategic bombing as coercion against Nazi Germany more generally see Pape Bombingto Win pp 260ndash262 In terms of Papersquos argument strategic bombing that targets noncombatantswould count as barbarism When air power is used to target enemy forces it would count as a di-rect-attack strategy Attacks on infrastructure and industry are more problematic Noncombatantsare not targets but those who employ this strategy know beforehand that noncombatants will bekilled in such attacks

direct defense Direct defense refers to the use of armed forces to thwartan adversaryrsquos attempt to capture or destroy values such as territory popula-tion and strategic resources Like direct-attack strategies these strategies tar-get an opponentrsquos military The aim is to damage an adversaryrsquos capacity toattack by crippling its advancing or proximate armed forces Examples includelimited aims strategies static defense forward defense defense in depth andmobile defense32

The inclusion here of limited aims strategies may seem counterintuitiveLike preemptive or preventive attack strategies these strategies begin with aninitial offensivemdashsay attacking concentrations of enemy armed forces acrossan international bordermdashbut their ultimate aims are defensive33 Limited aimsstrategies target an adversaryrsquos capacity to attack by destroying vital strategicforces or by seizing key strategic assets (territory bridges promontories etc)They are most often employed by weak actors that have initiated wars againststrong actors34 Examples include Japanrsquos air assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941and Egyptrsquos attack on Israel in 1973

guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare strategy (GWS) is the organizationof a portion of society for the purpose of imposing costs on an adversary usingarmed forces trained to avoid direct confrontation35 These costs include theloss of soldiers supplies infrastructure peace of mind and most importanttime36 Although GWS primarily targets opposing armed forces and theirsupport resources its goal is to destroy not the capacity but the will of theattacker37


32 For full summary descriptions see Mearsheimer Conventional Deterrence pp 48ndash5033 Ibid pp 53ndash5634 Ibid pp 24ndash26 16835 A related strategy is terrorism which commonly has political objectives similar to GWS Thelogic of most terrorism mirrors that of coercive strategic bombing A largely urban phenomenonterrorism seeks either to inict pain on noncombatants so they will pressure their government toaccede to the terroristsrsquo political demands or to delegitimize a government as a means to replaceor coerce it This implies that the strategy will be most effective when citizens have a say in theirgovernmentrsquos policies36 On this point especially see Samuel Huntingtonrsquos remarks in Stanley Hoffmann Samuel PHuntington Ernest R May Richard N Neustadt and Thomas C Schelling ldquoVietnam Reap-praisedrdquo International Security Vol 6 No 1 (Summer 1981) p 7 See also Eliot A Cohen ldquoCon-straints on Americarsquos Conduct of Small Warsrdquo International SecurityVol 9 No 2 (Fall 1984) p 15737 For general introductions to GWS see Laqueur Guerrilla Ellis From the Barrel of a Gun AspreyWar in the Shadows and Anthony James Joes Guerrilla Warfare A Historical Biographical and Biblio-graphical Sourcebook (Westport Conn Greenwood 1996) On Chinese and Cuban variations ofGWS see Mao Tse-tung On Guerrilla Warfare trans Samuel B Grifth (New York Praeger 1961)Edward L Katzenbach and Gene Z Hanrahan ldquoThe Revolutionary Strategy of Mao Tse-TungrdquoPolitical Science Quarterly Vol 70 No 3 (September 1955) pp 321ndash340 Che Guevara Guerrilla War-fare (New York Monthly Review 1961) and Regis Debray Revolution in the Revolution (New YorkPenguin 1968)

GWS requires two elements (1) physical sanctuary (eg swamps moun-tains thick forest or jungle) or political sanctuary (eg weakly defended bor-der areas or border areas controlled by sympathetic states) and (2) asupportive population (to supply ghters with intelligence and logistical sup-port as well as replacements) The method of GWS is well summarized by per-haps its most famous practitioner Mao Tse-tung ldquoIn guerrilla warfare selectthe tactic of seeming to come from the east and attacking from the west avoidthe solid attack the hollow attack withdraw deliver a lightning blow seek alightning decision When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy they withdrawwhen he advances harass him when he stops strike him when he is wearypursue him when he withdraws In guerrilla strategy the enemyrsquos rear anksand other vulnerable spots are his vital points and there he must be harassedattacked dispersed exhausted and annihilatedrdquo38

GWS is not a strategy for obtaining a quick decisive defeat of invading oroccupying forces39 Moreover because guerrillas cannot hold or defend partic-ular areas they do not provide security for their families while on operationsor when demobilized to await new missions GWS is therefore a strategy thatrequires placing key values (eg farms family religious or cultural sites andtowns) directly in the hands of the adversary Logically then important costsof adopting a GWS depend on both the purpose and the restraint of the adver-sary40 When invading or occupying forces do not exercise restraint in the useof force or when their purpose is the destruction of a weak actorrsquos peopleGWS can become a prohibitively expensive defensive strategy

the logic of strategic interactionEvery strategy has an ideal counterstrategy Actors able to predict their adver-saryrsquos strategy can therefore dramatically improve their chances of victory bychoosing and implementing that counterstrategy Mao for example arguedthat ldquodefeat is the invariable outcome where native forces ght with inferiorweapons against modernized forces on the latterrsquos termsrdquo41 Maorsquos maxim sug-gests that when the weak ght the strong the interaction of some strategieswill favor the weak while others will favor the strong


38 Tse-tung On Guerrilla Warfare p 4639 See for example Hamilton The Art of Insurgency p 2740 In March 1900 the British captured the rst Boer capital Bloemfontein The surviving Boercommanders gathered to decide whether to surrender or keep ghting The commanders wereclosely divided but tipping the balance in favor of continuedmdashguerrillamdashresistance was faith inBritish civility The Boer ultimately found their faith unjustied See De Wet The Three Yearsrsquo Warpp 192ndash19341 Quoted in Mack ldquoWhy Big Nations Lose Small Warsrdquo p 176 (emphasis in original)

Building on Maorsquos insight I argue that the universe of potential strategiesand counterstrategies can be reduced to two distinct ideal-type strategic ap-proaches direct and indirect42 Direct approaches target an adversaryrsquos armedforces in order to destroy that adversaryrsquos capacity to ght Indirect ap-proaches seek to destroy an adversaryrsquos will to ght Toward this end a GWStargets enemy sodiers and barbarism targets enemy noncombatants43 Same-approach interactions (direct-direct or indirect-indirect) imply defeat for weakactors because there is nothing to mediate or deect a strong actorrsquos power ad-vantage These interactions will therefore be resolved quickly By contrast op-posite-approach interactions (direct-indirect or indirect-direct) imply victoryfor weak actors because the strong actorrsquos power advantage is deected ordodged44 These therefore tend to be protracted with time favoring the weak45

In asymmetric conicts when strategic interaction causes an unexpected de-lay between the commitment of armed forces and the attainment of military orpolitical objectives strong actors tend to lose for two reasons First althoughall combatants tend to have inated expectations of victory46 strong actors inasymmetric conicts are particularly susceptible to this problem47 If powerimplies victory then an overwhelming power advantage implies an over-whelmingmdashand rapidmdashvictory As war against a Lilliputian opponent dragson however dramatic overestimates of success force political and militaryelites in the strong state to escalate the use of force to meet expectations (thusincreasing the costs of a conict) or risk looking increasingly incompetent Ei-ther way domestic pressure to end the conict is likely to result And as Mackhighlights in his discussion of political vulnerability the longer a war drags onthe greater the chances are that the strong actor will simply abandon the wareffort regardless of the military state of affairs on the ground Strong actorsalso lose asymmetric wars when in attempting to avoid increasing costsmdashsuchas declaring war mobilizing reserves raising taxes or sustaining additional


42 This reduction of strategies to two mutually exclusive types is well established in the strategicstudies literature See for example Andreacute Corvisier and John Childs ldquoIndirect Warfarerdquo inCorvisier and Childs A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War p 378 and Liddell HartStrategy pp 197 361ndash36443 For a similar denition see Pape ldquoCoercive Air Power in the Vietnam Warrdquo pp 106ndash10744 In GWS an attackerrsquos armed forces are physically avoided or engaged only on favorableterms In a blockade or strategic bombing campaign against a direct defense in a limited war thestrong actorrsquos destructive power is deected because such attacks invariably place the noncomba-tant population between attackers and political elites45 On the importance of conict duration as a cost of conict see Mearsheimer Conventional De-terrence p 24 and Katzenbach and Hanrahan ldquoThe Revolutionary Strategy of Mao Tse-Tungrdquopp 324ndash32646 See Geoffrey Blainey The Causes of War 3d ed (New York Free Press 1988) p 5347 See for example Mack ldquoWhy Big Nations Lose Small Warsrdquo pp 181ndash182

casualtiesmdashthey yield to the temptation to employ barbarism Barbarism con-serves friendly forces but even when militarily effective it is risky48 Barbarismcarries the possibility of domestic political discovery (and opposition) as wellas external intervention

strategic interaction explaining the trend My explanation for thetrend toward increasing strong-actor failure is suggested both by the timing ofthe biggest shift in outcomes favoring weak actors (1950ndash98) and by the logicof Kenneth Waltzrsquos argument that actors in a competitive international systemldquosocializerdquo to similar policies and strategies As Waltz argues ldquoThe fate of eachstate depends on its responses to what other states do The possibility thatconict will be conducted by force leads to competition in the arts and the in-struments of force Competition produces a tendency toward the sameness ofthe competitorsrdquo49

This said what is the appropriate spatial context for socialization I arguethat socialization works regionally and that after World War II two differentpatterns of socialization emerged in two different regions of the world Inthe blitzkrieg pattern success was measured by the capacity to produce anddeploy large mechanized and combined-armed forces designed to destroyan adversaryrsquos armed forces and capture its values without costly battles ofannihilation This model was imitated by the United States its European alliesthe Soviet Union and to some extent Japan In the guerrilla warfare patternsuccess was measured by the ability to prosecute a protracted conict againsta technologically superior foe Maorsquos long ght for and eventual conquestof China was a model copied by Algerian rebels the Vietminhthe Hukbalahap Cuban insurgents Malayan communists and to a large ex-tent the Mujahideen50 The blitzkrieg model emphasizes direct strategic ap-proaches the guerrilla warfare model indirect strategic approaches When thetwo interact systematically strong actors should lose more often

These patterns of socialization suggest that actors on the threshold of armedconict are not entirely free to choose an ideal strategy for two reasons Firstforces equipment and trainingmdashall closely integratedmdashare not fungibleMoreover the development and prosecution of an actorrsquos ideal strategy may


48 Mack correctly emphasizes that barbarism is judged in proportion to the relative power of theactors Weak actors will be forgiven abuses for which strong actors will be hanged See ibidpp 186ndash18749 Kenneth N Waltz Theory of International Politics (New York McGraw-Hill 1979) p 12750 On Maorsquos revolutionary guerrilla warfare as template see Hamilton The Art of Insurgencyp 18 and Katzenbach and Hanrahan ldquoThe Revolutionary Strategy of Mao Tse-Tungrdquo p 322

be blocked by contrary organizational interests or traditions51 Second actorsprioritize threats If the United States and Soviet Union for example identiedeach other as the primary threat and both calculated that the most likely areaof direct confrontation would be the heart of Europe then adopting war-winning strategies forces equipment and doctrines favorable to winning thatsort of war would be a sound strategy

hypotheses strategic interaction and conflict outcomesThis section explores the logic of four distinct strategic interactions and ex-plains how hypotheses derived from each can be reduced to a single hypothe-sis The expected relationship of strategic approach interactions to outcomes inasymmetric conicts is summarized in Figure 3

direct attack versus direct defense In this interaction both actors makesimilar assumptions about the priority of values over which they will ghtBoth can therefore be expected to agree about the implications of a catastrophicloss in battle the rules of war or the capture of a capital city Because in this in-teraction nothing mediates between relative material power and outcomesstrong actors should win quickly and decisively

Hypothesis 1 When strong actors attack using a direct strategy and weak actors de-fend using a direct strategy all other things being equal strong actors should winquickly and decisively

direct attack versus indirect defense Unlike direct strategies whichinvolve the use of forces trained and equipped to ght as organized unitsagainst other similarly trained and equipped forces indirect defense strategiestypically rely on irregular armed forces (ie forces difcult to distinguish fromnoncombatants when not in actual combat) As a result an attackerrsquos forcestend to kill or injure noncombatants during operations which tends to stimu-late weak-actor resistance Most important because indirect defense strategiessacrice values for time52 they necessarily take longer to resolve so long asweak actors continue to have access to sanctuary and social support53 Inasymmetric conicts delay favors the weak


51 See for example Andrew F Krepinevich Jr The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore Md JohnsHopkins University Press 1986) Susan L Marquis Unconventional Warfare Rebuilding US SpecialOperations Forces (Washington DC Brookings 1997) Cohen ldquoConstraints on Americarsquos Conductof Small Warsrdquo pp 152ndash154 and Asprey War in the Shadows p 83652 See Katzenbach and Hanrahan ldquoThe Revolutionary Strategy of Mao Tse-Tungrdquo pp 325ndash32653 Although a GWS requires sanctuary and social support mere access to them in no way man-dates its adoption French forces for example had access to both as they faced defeat in the

Hypothesis 2 When strong actors attack with a direct strategy and weak actors defendusing an indirect strategy all other things being equal weak actors should win

indirect attack versus direct defense Because the overwhelming forceavailable to the strong actor implies success against a weak adversary that at-tempts a direct defense an attackerrsquos use of an indirect strategy in this contexttargets the defenderrsquos will to resist Prior to the advent of strategic air powerand long-range artillery (eg the V-1 and V-2 rockets in World War II) block-ades and sieges were the only means of coercing adversaries in this way Todaystrategic bombing campaigns54 are the most common form of indirect attackagainst direct defense

As coercive strategies intended to destroy an adversaryrsquos will to resist stra-tegic bombing campaigns tend to backre stimulating precisely the sort of re-solve they aim to break German bombing of London did not cow the Britishinto surrender as Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goumlring expected Instead it stiff-ened British resolve Strong actors will lose these interactions because they aretime-consuming and tend toward barbarism55


Figure 3 Expected Effects of Strategic Interaction on Conflict Outcomes (expectedwinners in cells)

Franco-Prussian War in 1870 France actively considered adopting a GWS after its disastrous de-feat at Sedan Yet threatened with the loss of Paris France surrendered instead See MichaelHoward The Franco-Prussian War (New York Methuen 1961) pp 249ndash25054 Pape Bombing to Win chap 6 has shown that strategic bombing or ldquopunishmentrdquo strategiesrarely work (and that they cannot work against indirect defense strategies such as GWS) See alsoMark Clodfelter The Limits of Air Power The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York FreePress 1989) If Pape is right and tactical air power is highly effective as a means to coerce an adver-sary then tactical air support that accepts collateral damage should become increasingly commonand ldquohuman shieldrdquo defense of say armored or transport columns would become an increasinglycommon countermeasure55 Strategic bombing campaigns usually start out with the intent to spare noncombatantsmdashoftento the point of putting pilots and their crews at considerable risk (eg by ying lower or slower)mdash

Hypothesis 3 When strong actors attack using an indirect strategy and weak actorsdefend using a direct strategy all other things being equal strong actors should lose

indirect attack versus indirect defense Indirect defense strategies pre-suppose a certain level of moral restraint on the part of attackers When strongactors employ a strategy that ignores such restraint weak actors are unlikelyto winmdashboth because there would be no one left to win for and becauseGWS depends directly on a network of social support for intelligence logisti-cal assistance and replacements56 Barbarism works as a COIN strategy be-cause by attacking either or both of the essential elements of a GWSmdashsanctuary and social assistancemdashit destroys an adversaryrsquos capacity to ghtFor example in the Murid Warmdashthe Russian empirersquos struggle to conquer theMuslim tribes of the Caucasus Mountains from 1830 to 1859mdashthe Russiansfound that they could not make any headway against the mountain Muridsbecause of severe attrition and supply problems associated with passingthrough the heavy beech forests of Chechnya The Murids raided Russianforts and settlements from mountain fortresses that were virtually impreg-nable to attack except by heavy artillery Masters of marksmanship and hit-and-run tactics the Chechens would strike heavily armed Russian columnsand then vanish into the forest before the Russians could mount a counterat-tack The Russians ultimately fought back by felling thousands of trees virtu-ally deforesting Chechnya By 1859 they were nally able to use their heavyartillery to blast Murid mountain strongholds into rubble and resistance sooncollapsed

Hypothesis 4 When strong actors employ barbarism to attack weak actors defendingwith a GWS all other things being equal strong actors should win

Each of these hypotheses describes an interaction of either same-approach oropposite-approach strategic interaction It follows that all four may be tested asa single hypothesis


but in most cases these campaigns escalate until either noncombatant casualties are simply ac-cepted (as was the case with US bombing of North Vietnam during the Rolling Thunder cam-paign) or noncombatants become accepted targets (as in the case of the re bombings of Dresdenand Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) A strict interpretation of the lawsof war may make a strategic air campaign that accepts ldquocollateral damagerdquo (viz death or injury tononcombatants) a war crime The issue is tricky The laws of war permit collateral damage so longas that damage is proportional to the military value of the target itself But if strategic air powerhas no military utility then collateral damage from strategic bombing would constitute a warcrime56 Mao Tse-tung once analogized the relationship between insurgents and citizens in a peoplersquoswar by likening the ghters to sh and the people to the sea Effective counterinsurgency wouldtherefore require either altering the terrain (making the sea transparent) or killing expelling or

Hypothesis 5 Strong actors are more likely to win same-approach interactions and loseopposite-approach interactions

A First Test Strategic Interaction and Asymmetric War Outcomes1800ndash1998

The aim of this section is to determine whether a statistically signicant corre-lation exists between strategic interaction and asymmetric conict outcomes Itbegins with a discussion of how cases were coded and then analyzes three keyrelationships (1) strategic interaction and conict outcomes (2) strategic inter-action and conict duration and (3) strategic interaction and the trend towardincreasing strong-actor failure over time

coding and casesThe basic method of coding cases was to examine the history of each war in theCorrelates of War data set A conict was coded asymmetric if the halved prod-uct of one actorrsquos armed forces and population exceeded the simple product ofits adversaryrsquos armed forces and population by sup3 51 If the strong actor usedarmed forces to attempt to destroy a weak actorrsquos forces or capture values itwas coded as a direct attack If the weak actor used armed forces to attempt tothwart these attacks it was coded as a direct defense A coding of barbarismwas reserved for strong actors that systematically targeted noncombatantsemployed illicit weapons or accepted collateral damage in a strategic bombingcampaign after bomb damage assessments cast considerable doubt on theefcacy of the campaign as a whole A weak actor was coded as using a GWS ifit sought to impose costs on the strong actor with armed force while avoidingpitched battles Each conict dyad was coded with one of four strategic inter-actions (direct-direct direct-indirect indirect-direct or indirect-indirect)57 be-


imprisoning the people (drying up the sea) Both would count as barbarism See Mao Tse-tungldquoPrimer on Guerrilla Warfarerdquo in Donald Robinson ed The Dirty Wars Guerrilla Actions and OtherForms of Unconventional Warfare (New York Delacorte 1968) p 28457 Most asymmetric wars contain a single strategic interaction from start to nish but a fewmdashsuch as the South African War and the US intervention in Vietnammdashcontain multiple-sequentialor multiple-simultaneous interactions respectively In multiple-sequential interaction conictsstrategies change but in temporal sequence One sidersquos strategic shift is quickly followed by an-otherrsquos Multiple-simultaneous interaction conicts are those in which a single actor or an actorand its allies pursue different strategies against the same adversary within a single theater of op-erations The empirical distribution of conict types is as follows single 134 (775 percent) multi-ple- sequential 29 (168 percent) and multiple-simultaneous 10 (58 percent) In this analysisconict outcomes are explained by strategic interaction outcomes

fore being reduced to one of two interaction types (same approach or oppositeapproach)58

The key variable of analysis is strategic interaction (STRATINT) as comparedto conict outcome (OUTCOME) If strategic interaction causes change inconict outcome then a shift in the value of strategic interaction across thecase universe should be matched by a corresponding shift in outcome TheSTRATINT variable was coded 0 if the strategic interaction was same approach(direct-direct or indirect-indirect) and 1 if it was opposite approach (direct-indirect or indirect-direct) The OUTCOME variable was coded 0 if the strongactor lost and 1 if it won59

strategic interaction and conflict outcomesRunning correlations established both that strategic interaction and asymmet-ric conict outcomes are associated and that the relationship is statisticallysignicant (see Figure 4)60 The results thus support hypothesis 561 Strong ac-tors won 76 percent of all same-approach interactions and weak actors won 63percent of all opposite-approach interactions

strategic interaction and conflict durationThe key causal mechanism of the strategic interaction thesis is time Same-approach interactions should be over quickly whereas opposite-approach in-teractions should be protracted (with weak actors tending to win drawn-outwars) An analysis of the average duration of same-approach and opposite-


58 The relatively few wars with multiple interactions were reduced to single interactions In mul-tiple-sequential conicts the nal interaction was used to represent the overall conict The SouthAfrican War was coded same approach because it ended with an indirect-indirect interaction Inmultiple-simultaneous conicts interactions were averaged US intervention in Vietnam wascoded opposite approach because although some interactions were same approach on balance thecontest was decided by a direct-indirect interaction The chief consequence of these reductions is atougher test for the strategic interaction thesis because collapsing interactions increases the impactof relative material power on outcomes Because strong actors have a greater material capacity toadapt to failure than do weak actors collapsing interactions hides strong-actor rather than weak-actor failures59 Stalemates and ongoing conicts were coded losses for the strong actor60 Pearson chi-squared (1) 1456 p lt 00161 An analysis of the relationship between strategic interaction and interaction outcomes (as op-posed to war outcomes) produces an even more striking nding Weak actors win 231 percent ofsame-approach and 784 percent of opposite-approach interactions This relationship is statisticallysignicant Pearson chi-squared (1) 4095 p 001 An analysis of the impact of externalnoncombat support for weak actors did not refute the strategic interaction thesis Even when weakactors received no support they were still three times more likely to win opposite-approach inter-actions than they were same-approach interactions Pearson chi-squared (1) 1138 p 001

approach interactions supports this claim Same-approach interactions lasted269 years on average (298 years was the overall mean) opposite-approach in-teractions lasted an average of 486 years

strategic interaction and long-term trendsBoth opposite-approach interactions and strong-actor failures have increasedover time From 1800 to 1849 59 percent of interactions in thirty-four asym-metric conicts were opposite approach From 1850 to 1899 101 percent ofinteractions in sixty-nine asymmetric conicts were opposite approachFrom 1900 to 1949 161 percent of thirty-one asymmetric conicts were oppo-site and from 1950 to 1998 222 percent of thirty-six asymmetric conicts wereopposite

In sum the data analysis supports three key hypotheses relating strategic in-teraction to asymmetric conict outcomes First strong actors are more likelyto lose opposite-approach strategic interactions Second opposite-approach in-teraction conicts take longer to resolve than do same-approach interactionsThird the frequency of opposite-approach interactions has increased in pro-portion to strong-actor failure over time

The analysis is limited however because some data are missing Many civiland colonial wars recorded neither the quantity of forces committed nor thestrategies employed Although these defects are balanced by statistical con-trols even a perfect data set would support only a correlation between vari-ables not causation Thus although the data analysis might have refuted thestrategic interaction thesis only in combination with a careful comparison ofhistorical cases could the thesis be conrmed62


Figure 4 Strategic Interaction and Asymmetric Conflict Outcomes 1800plusmn 1998

62 See Ivan Arreguiacuten-Toft ldquoArts of Darkness Guerrilla Warfare and Barbarism in AsymmetricConictsrdquo PhD dissertation University of Chicago 1998

US Intervention in the Vietnam War

In this section I present a synoptic case study of US intervention in Vietnam(March 1965 to January 1973) as a preliminary test of the causal logic of the in-terest asymmetry and strategic interaction theses The Vietnam War representsthe strongest case study for Mackrsquos interest asymmetry thesis If strategic inter-action can explain the warrsquos outcome better than can interest asymmetry thenall other things being equal it should be considered a better theory

backgroundUS military intervention in Vietnam began soon after the defeat of France atDien Bien Phu in 1954 The commitment of US combat troops however didnot occur until eleven years later In 1965 the US population was about 194million while North Vietnamrsquos stood at approximately 19 million63 US andNorth Vietnamese armed forces totaled about 25 million and 256000 respec-tively Adding in allies that contributed combat troops (negligible) multiply-ing population and armed forces and dividing the strong actorrsquos total by tworesults in a relative force ratio of about 531 Even allowing for the factthat the United States did not actually devote half of its armed forces andhalf of its population to the conict64 there is no question that (1) this wasan asymmetric conict and (2) the United States and its allies were the strongactor65

us military intervention 1965ndash73

US military intervention involved four distinct strategic interactions (1) bar-barism (Rolling Thunder) against a direct defense (2) a direct attack against adirect defense (the main-force units war) (3) direct attacks against a GWS (theguerrilla war in the South I) and (4) barbarism against GWS (the guerrilla warin the South II)

interaction 1 rolling thunder 1965ndash68 The rst strategic interaction ofthe war began in March 1965 with a US strategic bombing campaign later


63 These gures are taken from Singer and Small Correlates of War war number 16364 The logic of the relative power estimate does not require calculating how much of a givenactorrsquos power resources were applied to the ght What matters is the resources that an actorcould have applied to win the war On this point see Schelling Arms and Inuence pp 142ndash14317265 Even if we assume for the sake of simplicity that the contest was between only the UnitedStates and North Vietnam the ratio shifts to 491 in favor of the United States

named Rolling Thunder66 Its main goal was to destroy the willingness ofNorth Vietnam to support the guerrilla war campaign in the South and as itsname implied the campaign was expected to take time ldquoInstead of a coordi-nated air campaign which would destroy the enemyrsquos ability to wage warand break their will to resist air operations over the North were designed as adiplomatic lsquoslow squeezersquo signaling device As Secretary of Defense Robert SMcNamara said on February 3 1966 lsquoUS objectives are not to destroy or tooverthrow the Communist government of North Vietnam They are limited tothe destruction of the insurrection and aggression directed by North Vietnamagainst the political institutions of South Vietnamrsquordquo67

The United States wanted to inict enough pain on North Vietnam to com-pel it to stop supporting the GWS in the South North Vietnamrsquos defenseagainst Rolling Thunder was direct It sought to thwart US military attacks onits infrastructure and forces by means of ghter aircraft and an increasinglydense radar and surface-to-air missile defense network

US Air Force generals and civilian leaders shared a theory about the gen-eral effectiveness of strategic bombing Strategic bombing should have bothhampered North Vietnamrsquos war effort and coerced its leadership into givingup When neither expectation was realized military and civilian elites faced astark choice either reject the theory or blame failure on some aw in imple-mentation The Air Force chose to emphasize aws while the Johnson admin-istration was increasingly split Some agreed that the United States was hittingthe wrong targetsmdashor not hitting the right targets hard enough Others includ-ing eventually Defense Secretary McNamara concluded that against NorthVietnam strategic bombing could not work McNamararsquos reports indicatedthat the military value of Rolling Thunderrsquos destroyed targets was zero68


66 On the origins of the Rolling Thunder campaign and its purpose see Karnow Vietnam A His-tory p 397 On collateral damage to noncombatants in Rolling Thunder see ibid p 458 On rela-tive US moral restraint in Rolling Thunder see ibid p 653 For a dedicated analysis of RollingThunder and its failure see James Clay Thompson Rolling Thunder Understanding Policy and Pro-gram Failure (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1980) for a theoretical treatment thatanticipates the strategic interaction thesis see Pape Bombing to Win especially chap 6 Pape ar-gues that when air power is used to target an adversaryrsquos armed forces it generally wins andwhen used to target an adversaryrsquos values (including infrastructure) it generally fails In otherwords punishment and denial represent indirect and direct strategic approaches respectivelyPapersquos argument as Mearsheimerrsquos before it and mine after therefore constitutes an argument forthe independent causal impact of strategy on conict outcomes67 Quoted in Harry G Summers Jr Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War (New York HoughtonMifin 1995) p 9668 Its political utility was less than zero It increased international and domestic opposition to theUS war effort and although the North Vietnamese feared and hated the bombing they never con-sidered altering their war aims as a result of the pain it inicted

Bombing that accepted collateral damage subsequent to this recognition wastherefore a war crime barbarism

Rolling Thunder continued until a week before the November 1968 USpresidential election It was an interaction in which a strong actor (the UnitedStates) employed an indirect strategy against a weak actor (North Vietnam) us-ing a direct strategy and lost69

interaction 2 the main-force units war 1965ndash69 This phase of the warfeatured a series of pitched battles between North Vietnamese regular unitsand those of the United States and the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) In asequence of engagements that lasted throughout the war US forces provedoverwhelmingly successful at destroying North Vietnamese Army (NVA) andVietcong (VC) main-force units

Examples of this interaction in which a strong-actor direct-indirect opposeda weak-actor direct strategy include Operation Starlite (August 1965) the Bat-tle of Ia Drang (OctoberndashNovember 1965) MasherWhite Wing (JanuaryndashMarch 1966) and Phase II of Operation Attleboro (OctoberndashNovember 1966)70

As the ground war continued into 1968 the frequency of these interactionsdwindled and US forces in the South focused increasingly on the problem ofcounterinsurgency

Part of the decreasing frequency of this direct-direct interaction reected ac-tor learning North Vietnamrsquos leadership analyzed main-force unit engage-ments carefully and concluded that US forces were so adept at combiningmaneuver and repower that unless the encounter took place between dra-matically mismatched forces (as at LZ Albany in November 1965) NVA andVC main-force units would invariably be destroyed In the context of Maorsquoswarning above native forces were ghting with inferior weapons on USterms and as predicted they lost

As the loser in this interaction the North began to innovate tactically andstrategically In tactical terms NVA units attempted to ldquocling to the beltrdquo ofUS and ARVN forces71 getting so close so quickly that allied forces could not


69 No one involved in the campaign on the US side considers Rolling Thunder a success al-though it is fair to say that the reasons proposed to explain the campaignrsquos failure have been nu-merous and controversial From the military perspective the consensus is that the campaign failedbecause it misapplied military means to achieve a political end For a more thorough discussionand analysis of Rolling Thunderrsquos target and impact see for example Thompson Rolling ThunderHerring Americarsquos Longest War p 147 Clodfelter The Limits of Air Power and Pape ldquoCoercive AirPower in the Vietnam Warrdquo70 These examples are drawn from Summers Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War and MarcLeepson ed Websterrsquos New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War (New York Simon and Schuster1999)71 See Karnow Vietnam A History p 463

benet from close air or artillery support In strategic terms the North shiftedmore of its resources into the guerrilla campaign in the South

interaction 3 the guerrilla war in the south i 1965ndash73 Guerrillas inthe South waged their campaign with considerable skill and were countered with abewildering mix of professionalism passion sadism and incompetence In this di-mension of the conict more than any other US efforts were heavily lteredthrough and constrained by the United Statesrsquo South Vietnamese allies72

In US Army areas of responsibility the rst attempts to defeat the VC insur-gency involved search and destroy missions In this type of mission regulararmy units acting on intelligence that had located enemy unit concetrationswould seek to make contact with these concentrations and destroy themLarge-scale examples of this type of interaction include Phase I of OperationAttleboro (SeptemberndashOctober 1965) Operation Cedar Falls (January 1967)and Operation Junction City (FebruaryndashMay 1967) but these interactions re-peated themselves on a smaller scale throughout the war Forces were killed onboth sides but the strategic balance slowly shifted to favor the VC largely be-cause US forces relied heavily on indirect repowermdashtactical air and artillerysupportmdasha consequence of which was considerable death or injury to non-combatants73

Not all US COIN efforts failed outright or succeeded through barbarismUS Marine Corps forces in the mountainous northernmost area of South Viet-nam for example pursued a COIN strategy combining local and highly moti-vated (but poorly trained and equipped) villagers with direct support fromUS Marine combat platoons These combined action platoons (or CAPs) oper-ated on an ldquoinkblotrdquo principle Secure a village or hamlet then patrol out inwidening circles until intersecting with another CAPrsquos secured area The strat-egy had two major disadvantages however First although it protected SouthVietnamese citizens from immediate danger of terror attacks by VC guerrillasit could achieve success only in the long termmdashand time favored the VC74 Sec-ond although militarily effective CAP success only highlighted the inability ofthe South Vietnamese government to protect its own citizens

Ultimately the United States lost this interaction Its combat forces had beentrained and equipped to ght a uniformed regular adversary using massive


72 The record of performance by ARVN units is mixed Some units and their commanders are ex-tolled for their bravery skill and loyalty while many are remembered only for their cowardice in-competence and venality See for example Karnow Vietnam A History p 441 and SummersHistorical Atlas of the Vietnam War p 8073 See Asprey War in the Shadows p 88174 See ibid p 848

repower not an invisible enemy that refused to meet it in battle75 The indis-criminate impact of the US Armyrsquos heavy reliance on artillery and air supportprogressively alienated potential allies among South Vietnamrsquos people As los-ers however US forces were not slow to innovate a strategic response

interaction 4 the guerrilla war in the south ii 1965ndash73 US strategicinnovations that aimed at seriously undermining the VC guerrilla campaign inthe South took two forms The rst was the Strategic Hamlets program andthe second was the Phoenix program76

The US Strategic Hamlets program was modeled after a French program inwhich South Vietnamese villagers were forced from their homes and relocatedto fortied hamlets77 Where implemented effectively the US program hadthe military benet of severely damaging VC intelligence and supply net-works but it also extracted a signicant political cost As nightly news broad-casts ashed images of more and more wailing peasants being forced to leavetheir villages US public opinion began to turn against the war The programhowever was rarely implemented effectively In most cases corrupt ofcialsfailed to deliver weapons and embezzled funds and supplies intended to turnthe hamlets into functioning communities78 As a result the program alienatedthe people whose good will the United States and South Vietnam needed towin the war Forced to leave their homes and then abandoned many SouthVietnamese turned against their government and became active supporters ofthe VC By decreasing the programrsquos COIN benets and increasing its politicalcosts the South Vietnamese governmentrsquos corruption and incompetence even-tually rendered the Strategic Hamlets program a disaster

The second US innovation was the Phoenix program whose aims and legit-imacy continue to provoke sharp debate79 The overall military view is thatPhoenix was essentially a legitimate military operation It relied on special in-telligence to target and destroy VC leadership and it proved to be the singlemost successful strategic initiative pursued by US forces during the war80


75 This is the central thesis in Krepinevich The Army and Vietnam p 476 ldquoPhoenixrdquo was the code name for a US assassination program that targeted VC leadership77 On the Strategic Hamlets program in Vietnam its logic and its successes and failures seeKarnow Vietnam A History pp 255ndash257 and Herring Americarsquos Longest War pp 85ndash86 88ndash9078 Karnow Vietnam A History p 25779 Asprey War in the Shadows pp 910ndash91180 There is little question that Phoenix effectively disrupted the capacity of the VC to continuetheir GWS in the South Even the North Vietnamese admit this ldquoNguyen Co Thach Vietnamrsquos for-eign minister from 1975 admitted that the Phoenix effort lsquowiped out many of our basesrsquo in SouthVietnam compelling numbers of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops to retreat to sanctuariesin Cambodiardquo See SummersHistorical Atlas of the Vietnam War p 148 See also Karnow Vietnam AHistory p 534 and Herring Americarsquos Longest War p 232

To most observers participants and historians however the sustained effortto kill noncombatants raised troubling questions about the programrsquos legiti-macy as an extension of US policy or as a COIN strategy regardless of itseffectiveness

Overall the United States won this interaction The Strategic Hamlets pro-gram was never implemented properly so its contribution to US success inthis interaction was negative By contrast the Phoenix program which eviscer-ated the VC command infrastructure in the South may have even provokedthe North into its premature and disastrous direct confrontation with US reg-ular forces during the 1968 Tet Offensive Because both strategies systemati-cally and deliberately targeted noncombatants both must be counted asbarbarismmdashalbeit barbarism at the mildest end of the violations spectrum

politicsTwo political aspects of the war deserve special attention First why did theUnited States think it necessary to send combat troops into South VietnamWas Vietnam a vital or peripheral US interest Second why did the UnitedStates withdraw Was it fought to a stalemate on the battleeld or forced toabandon the war by US domestic opposition

The United States never entirely decided whether Vietnam was a vital or pe-ripheral interest If there is a consensus view among historians it is that theUnited States got into Vietnam incrementally condent that after just one moreescalation US forces could ldquostabilizerdquo South Vietnam and exit Eventually thefate of South Vietnam became inextricably linked with perceptions of theUnited Statesrsquo own credibility and in that sense constituted a vital interest

The United States withdrew from Vietnam when and how it did becauseUS public opinion had shifted against the war The United States did not ghtas effectively as it could have But even given the limitations of placing a forcetrained and equipped to ght and win a land battle in Europe in the moun-tains jungles and marshy river deltas of Indochina the United States provedremarkably successful at innovating tactical and strategic responses to NorthVietnamrsquos strategic initiatives As a result by 1969 US forces had achieved themilitary defeat of the North Nevertheless the war dragged on for another fouryears

The US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 was a consequence of two unre-lated problems First successive US administrations incorrectly assumed thatthe defeat of North Vietnamrsquos military forces would lead the North to accedeto US demands George Herring characterizes this problem well ldquoNixonrsquos se-cret diplomacy and implied military threats failed to wrench any concessions


from Hanoi Still hurting from those losses suffered in the Tet Offensive butby no means ready to quit the ght Hanoi in 1969 shifted to a defensive pro-tracted war strategy sharply curtailing the level of military activity in thesouth and withdrawing some of its troops back across the demilitarized zoneCertain that American public opinion would eventually force Nixon to with-draw from Vietnam the North Vietnamese were prepared to wait him out nomatter what additional suffering it might entailrdquo81

Second the military defeat of North Vietnam and the VC insurgency in theSouth took too long to accomplish82 The American public had been led to be-lieve that victory would come quicklymdashnot only because the United Stateselded the most powerful and technologically advanced armed force on earthbut because as in past wars Americans believed its cause to be just Politicaland military elites in the Kennedy Johnson and Nixon administrations did lit-tle to temper this expectation and in most cases encouraged it83

summaryThis synoptic presentation describes the Vietnam War in terms of four roughlysimultaneous strategic interactions84 These interactions and their contribu-tions to the outcome of the war are summarized in Table 1

In Vietnam the weak actor had two entirely distinct militaries ready to op-pose US forces one trained and equipped to ght an indirect war the othertrained and equipped to ght a direct war Thus the North could be far morenimble than the United States in shifting its strategic approach As AndrewKrepinevich Donald Hamilton and others have argued with the possible ex-ception of the US Marine Corpsmdashwhich had considerable operational experi-ence with COIN operationsmdashthe US military could never reconcile itself to


81 Herring Americarsquos Longest War p 22682 On this point see Karnow Vietnam A History pp 464 480 and Herring Americarsquos Longest Warp 20083 This encouragement culminated in the infamous prediction by US Comdr WilliamWestmorelandmdashjust prior to Tetmdashthat ldquothe enemyrsquos hopes are bankruptrdquo See Karnow Vietnam AHistory p 53984 Lewis Sorley argues that the war had yet another crucial phase after Tet in which US forcesshifted strategies under their new commander Gen Creighton W Abrams In terms of the strate-gic interaction thesis this would count as ldquoPhase 5 Guerrilla War IIIindirect-indirectUS winsabandons Vietnamwar endsrdquo The difculty with Sorleyrsquos argument is in measuring the effective-ness of Abramsrsquos talented leadership in the context of a VC recently devastated by Phoenix andTet and a similarly routed NVA If as many assert the North had retreated to lick its wounds afterTet then US military effectiveness would appear high regardless of its strategy For this reasonand because its inclusion would add little in the way of a test of competing explanations I do notinclude the interaction in this analysis See Lewis Sorley A Better War The Unexamined Victories andFinal Tragedy of Americarsquos Last Years in Vietnam (New York Harcourt Brace 1999)

the demands of a COIN war85 These demands do not imply the necessity ofcreating a force capable of barbarism As the CAPs demonstrated it was possi-ble to ght a GWS in the South within the framework of the laws of war Whatit was manifestly not possible to do was defeat a people in arms quickly

Thus the CAP example only underscores the importance of the key causalmechanism of the strategic interaction thesis When the power relationship im-plies a speedy victory and the interaction implies a delay the way is clear forthe operation of what Mack calls political vulnerability That is even an idealCOIN strategymdashone that destroys enemy forces without destroying enemyvaluesmdashtakes time If such strategies are to become a model for future COINoperations this implies a counterintuitive policy Strong-actor political andmilitary elites must prepare their publics for long-delayed victories againsteven very weak adversaries when those adversaries employ indirect defensestrategies

explaining vietnam interest asymmetry and strategic interactionStrategic interaction provides a powerful way to explain asymmetric conictoutcomesmdashnot only individual wars but the observed trend toward increasingstrong-actor failures over time But the interest asymmetry thesis has the samegoal and it too appears to explain US failure in the Vietnam War Althoughthe United States ultimately quit Vietnam because of domestic political pres-sure as Mackrsquos thesis suggests the strategic interaction thesis offers two im-portant qualications of his explanation of the warrsquos outcome


85 See Krepinevich The Army and Vietnam and Hamilton The Art of Insurgency p 155

Table 1 Summary of Strategic Interactions and Effects in US Intervention in Vietnam1965plusmn 73

StrategicInteraction Innovation Effect

DurationEffect

Rolling Thunder indirect-direct United States losesabandons strategy

lengthens war

Main-Force Units War direct-direct North loses withdrawsthen escalates (Tet)

shortens war

Guerrilla War I direct-indirect United States losesswitches to barbarism

(Phoenix)

lengthens war

Guerrilla War II indirect-indirect North loses escalatesthen withdraws

shortens war

First Mack argues that theoretically at least actor resolve can be derivedfrom relative power That is relative power and political vulnerability vary di-rectly In Vietnam however US resolve had nothing to do with relativepower In fact US interests in the security and stability of South Vietnam werefar greater86 than those predicted by the interest asymmetry thesis Vietnamwas a ldquolimitedrdquo war not because South Vietnamrsquos fate was a peripheral US in-terest but because US political elites believed that the use of force in propor-tion to US interests might provoke Chinese military intervention and lead to athird world war In the case of North Vietnam its legendary resolve was not aconsequence of its being a weak actor ghting for survival As many commen-tators have since observed the true sources of North Vietnamrsquos resolve werenationalism87 and revenge for the suffering caused by the US strategic bomb-ing campaign against the North Vietnamese people According to StanleyKarnow ldquoAs a practical strategy however the bombing backred Americanplanners had predicted that it would drive the enemy to capitulation yet notonly did the North Vietnamese accept the sacrices but the raids rekindledtheir nationalistic zeal so that many who may have disliked Communist rulejoined the resistance to alien attackrdquo88

Second Mack is right that the United States was politically vulnerable andthat this vulnerability ultimately drove it from Vietnam in defeat But his thesisassumes that political vulnerability will generally affect the ability of strong ac-tors to defeat weak actors The strategic interaction thesis brackets the condi-tions under which political vulnerability operates It does so only when there isan unanticipated delay between the commitment of armed forces and victory

Conclusions

Strong actors lose asymmetric conicts when they adopt the wrong strategyvis-agrave-vis their weaker adversaries Same-approach interactionsmdashwhether di-rect-direct or indirect-indirectmdashfavor strong actors because they imply sharedvalues aims and victory conditions Because nothing therefore intervenes be-tween raw power and goals strong actors will win same-approach interactions


86 Karnow Vietnam A History pp 377ndash37887 This is not to suggest that North Vietnamrsquos was a monolithic nationalism South Vietnamesecommunists had a national identity separate from that of Northerners What united them stronglyduring the war was the presence of foreigners on Vietnamese soil See Walker Connor ldquoEthnologyand the Peace of South Asiardquo World Politics Vol 22 No 1 (October 1969) pp 51ndash86 Karnow Viet-nam A History pp 462 534 and Herring Americarsquos Longest War p 27188 Karnow Vietnam A History p 458

in proportion to their advantage in relative power Opposite-approach interac-tionsmdashwhether direct-indirect or indirect-directmdashfavor weak actors becausethey sacrice values for time This results in a signicant delay between thecommitment of armed forces and the attainment of objectives Time then be-comes the permissive condition for the operation of the political vulnerabilitythat Mack and others rightly identify as attaching to strong actors in asymmet-ric conicts

theory and policy implicationsThe strategic interaction thesis simultaneously supports and in key ways me-diates the importance of relative material power in explaining conict out-comes As has often been observed material power is useful for theorybuilding because it is quantiable and measurable in a way that courage lead-ership and dumb luck are not This study has demonstrated empirically thaton balance relative material power is more than simply a methodologicallyuseful concept taken alone it explains a majority of conict outcomes since1800 The strategic interaction thesis makes clear however the limitations ofrelative material power by highlighting the conditions under which it mattersmore or less

This analysis suggests key policy implications for both weak and strong ac-tors For weak actors successful defense against strong actors depends on anindirect strategy Because indirect strategies such as GWS rely on social sup-port weak actors must work tirelessly to gain and maintain the sympathy oracquiescence of a majority of the population in question Given the risks in-volved in either aiding or taking part in a guerrilla resistance this in itself is nomean feat Additionally weak actors must have or gain access to the physicalor political sanctuary necessary to make an indirect strategy a viable choiceFor strong actors the strategic interaction thesis suggests that weak adversar-ies employing an indirect defense will be difcult to defeat Of course not allor even most asymmetric conicts need follow this pattern but when they doand when a resort to arms is the only viable option how should a strong actorsuch as the United States react

One response might be a resort to barbarism which appears to be an effec-tive strategy for defeating an indirect defense89 But even a cursory review of


89 This appears equally true of counterterrorism and terrorism Laura K Donohue analyzes theimpact of British counterterrorist legislation in Northern Ireland and concludes that Britainrsquos nu-merous ldquotemporaryrdquo and ldquoemergencyrdquo measuresmdashwhich were never temporary and which vio-lated civil rights and due processmdashproved highly effective in the short term Her analysis

postwar histories reveals that at best barbarism can be effective only as a mili-tary strategy If the desired objective is long-term political control barbarisminvariably backres The French for example used torture to quickly defeatAlgerian insurgents in the Battle of Algiers in 1957 But when French militarybrutality became public knowledge it catalyzed political opposition to the warin France and stimulated renewed and intensied resistance by the non-Frenchpopulation of Algeria90 Within four years France abandoned its claims in Al-geria even though it had ldquowonrdquo the war Barbarism thus sacrices victory inpeace for victory in warmdasha poor policy at best91

An ideal US strategic response in an asymmetric conict therefore demandstwo central elements (1) preparation of public expectations for a long war de-spite US technological and material advantages and (2) the development anddeployment of armed forces specically equipped and trained for COIN oper-ations92 Without a national consensus and realistic expectations the UnitedStates would be politically vulnerable in an asymmetric conict Without morespecial operations forcesmdashthe self-reliant and discriminate armed forces neces-sary to implement an ideal COIN strategymdashwhat begins as a military opera-tion against an isolated violent minority will tend to escalate into a war againstan entire people93

The United States must be prepared to ght and win both conventional andasymmetric or ldquosmallrdquo wars The strategic interaction thesis shows why thetwo missions demand two kinds of armed forces one to defend US interestsin conventional wars and one to defend them in asymmetric wars If theUnited States in other words is to win future ldquoboxing matchesrdquo against light-weight opponents who use their own version of the rope-a-dope it will needghters with more initiative than discipline and more endurance than punch-ing power


suggests however that insurgents always found a way around such measures eventuallyprompting yet another round of ldquoemergencyrdquo restrictions See Donohue Counter-terrorist Law andEmergency Powers in the United Kingdom 1922ndash2000 (Portland Or Irish Academic Press 2001)pp 322ndash32390 See Mack ldquoWhy Big Nations Lose Small Warsrdquo p 180 and Asprey War in the Shadowspp 669ndash67191 See Liddell Hart Strategy p 37092 See for example Ernest May in Hoffmann et al ldquoVietnam Reappraisedrdquo pp 8 9 Hoffmannibid p 10 and Cohen ldquoConstraints on Americarsquos Conduct of Small Warsrdquo pp 166ndash16793 See Walzer Just and Unjust Wars p 187

War Name Start End OUTCOME1 STRATINT2

Spain-Peru 1809 1816 1 0Russo-Georgian 1816 1825 1 0Pindaro War 1817 1818 1 0Kandyan Rebellion 1817 1818 1 0Greek War of Independence 1821 1828 0 1First Anglo-Burmese 1823 1826 1 0First Ashanti 1824 1826 1 0Javanese 1825 1830 1 0Bharatpuran 1825 1826 1 0Russo-Circassian 1829 1840 1 0Albanian 1830 1831 1 0Belgian Independence 1830 1831 1 0Murid War 1830 1859 1 0First Polish 1831 1831 1 0First Syrian 1831 1832 0 0Texan 1835 1836 0 0Second Seminole War 1835 1842 1 0First Zulu 1838 1840 1 0First British-Afghan 1838 1842 0 1Franco-Algerian 1839 1847 1 0Bosnian-Turkish 1841 1841 1 0Baluchi-British 1843 1843 1 0First Maori 1843 1848 1 0Franco-Moroccan 1844 1844 1 0First British-Sikh 1845 1846 1 0First Kafr War 1846 1847 1 0Cracow Revolt 1846 1846 1 0Austro-Sardinian 1848 1849 1 0First Schleswig-Holstein 1848 1849 1 0Hungarian 1848 1849 1 0Second British-Sikh 1848 1849 1 0Roman Republic 1849 1849 1 0Second Kafr 1850 1853 1 0La Plata 1851 1852 1 0Second Anglo-Burmese 1852 1853 1 0First Turko-Montenegran 1852 1853 0 0Third Seminole War 1855 1858 1 0Yakima War 1855 1858 0 1Anglo-Persian 1856 1857 1 0Second Opium War 1856 1860 0 0Kabylia Uprising 1856 1857 1 Tukulor-French War 1857 1857 1 0



Appendix 1 Cases and Key Variables


French-Indochinese 1858 1863 1 0Second Turko-Montenegran 1858 1859 0 0Spanish-Moroccan 1859 1860 1 0Italo-Roman 1860 1860 1 0Second Maori 1860 1870 1 0Apache and Navaho War 1860 1865 1 0Taiping Rebellion 1860 1864 1 0Nien Rebellion 1860 1868 1 0Franco-Mexican 1862 1867 0 0First Sioux War 1862 1864 1 0Second Polish 1863 1864 1 0Spanish-Santo Dominican 1863 1865 0 Second Schleswig-Holstein 1864 1864 1 0Lopez War 1864 1870 1 1Spanish-Chilean 1865 1866 1 0British-Bhutanese 1865 1865 1 0Second Sioux War 1865 1868 0 1First Cretan 1866 1867 1 1Ten Yearsrsquo War 1868 1878 1 0Algerian 1871 1872 1 Second Apache War 1871 1873 1 0Second Ashanti 1873 1874 1 0Tonkin 1873 1885 1 0Dutch-Achinese 1873 1878 1 0Red River Indian War 1874 1875 1 0Balkan 1875 1877 1 1Third Apache War 1876 1886 1 1Third Sioux War 1876 1877 1 0Ninth Kafr 1877 1878 1 0Russo-Turkoman 1878 1881 1 0Second British-Afghan 1878 1880 1 0British-Zulu 1879 1879 1 0Gun War 1880 1881 1 0First Boer War 1880 1880 0 0Tunisian 1881 1882 1 Franco-Indochinese 1882 1884 1 0Mahdist 1882 1885 0 0First Franco-Madagascan 1883 1885 1 0Sino-French 1884 1885 0 0Russo-Afghan 1885 1885 1 0Third Anglo-Burmese 1885 1886 1 0First Mandigo-French War 1885 1885 1 0First Italo-Ethiopian 1887 1887 0 0



Second Cretan 1888 1889 1 Dehomey 1889 1892 1 0Second Senegalese 1890 1891 1 0Messiah War 1890 1891 1 0Congo Arabs 1892 1892 1 Franco-Thai 1893 1893 1 Third Ashanti 1893 1894 1 0Matabele-British War 1893 1893 1 0Sino-Japanese 1894 1895 0 0Franco-Madagascan 1894 1895 1 0Balian 1894 1894 1 Cuban 1895 1898 1 0Italo-Ethiopian 1895 1896 0 0Fourth Ashanti 1895 1896 1 0Third Cretan 1896 1897 0 0Druze-Turkish 1896 1896 1 First Philippine 1896 1898 0 1Sudanese War 1896 1899 1 0Greco-Turkish 1897 1897 1 0Indian Muslim 1897 1898 1 0Nigerian 1897 1897 1 0Hut Tax 1898 1898 1 0Second Philippine 1899 1902 1 0Second Boer War 1899 1902 1 0Somali Rebellion 1899 1905 1 0Russo-Manchurian 1900 1900 0 0Ilinden 1903 1903 1 0Russo-Japanese War 1904 1905 0 0South West African Revolt 1904 1905 1 1Maji-Maji Revolt 1905 1906 1 1Second Zulu War 1906 1906 1 0Spanish-Moroccan 1909 1910 1 0First Moroccan 1911 1912 1 0First Balkan War 1912 1913 0 0Tibetan War of Independence 1912 1913 0 0Second Moroccan 1916 1917 1 Arab Revolt 1916 1918 0 1Irish Troubles 1916 1921 0 1Yunnan 1917 1918 1 First Sino-Tibetan 1918 1918 0 Russo-Polish 1919 1920 0 0Lithuanian-Polish 1919 1920 1 0Hungarian-Allies 1919 1919 1 0



Franco-Turkish 1919 1922 0 0Third Afghan 1919 1919 1 0Franco-Syrian 1920 1920 1 Iraqi-British 1920 1921 1 Sanusi 1920 1932 1 0Rifan 1921 1926 1 Druze Rebellion 1925 1927 1 0US-Nicaraguan 1927 1933 1 1Chinese Muslims 1928 1928 1 Chinese Civil War 1930 1935 1 0Manchurian 1931 1933 0 Soviet-Turkestani 1931 1934 1 Italo-Ethiopian 1935 1936 1 0Sino-Japanese 1937 1941 1 0Chankufeng 1938 1938 0 0Winter War 1939 1940 1 0Franco-Thai 1940 1941 0 Indonesian Independence 1945 1946 0 0Indochinese 1945 1954 0 0Madagascan 1947 1948 1 First Kashmir 1947 1949 1 0Palestine 1948 1949 0 0Malayan Rebellion 1948 1957 1 0Hyderabad 1948 1948 1 Korean Conict 1950 1953 0 0Sino-Tibetan 1950 1951 1 0Philippines 1950 1952 1 0Kenya 1952 1956 1 0Tunisian Independence 1952 1954 0 Moroccan Independence 1953 1956 0 Algerian 1954 1962 0 0British-Cypriot 1954 1959 0 0Cameroon 1955 1960 0 Russo-Hungarian 1956 1956 1 0Sinai 1956 1956 1 0Tibetan 1956 1959 1 1Cuba 1958 1959 0 1South Vietnam 1960 1965 0 1Congo 1960 1965 1 0Kurdish 1961 1963 1 Angola-Portugal 1961 1975 0 Sino-Indian 1962 1962 1 0Portugal-Guinea Bissau 1962 1974 0 1Mozambique 1964 1975 0 1



Vietnam 1965 1975 0 0Second Kashmir 1965 1965 0 0Six-Day War 1967 1967 0 0Israeli-Egyptian 1969 1970 0 0Bangladesh 1971 1971 1 0Philippine-Moro 1972 1980 1 0Yom Kippur War 1973 1973 0 0Turko-Cypriot 1974 1974 1 0Eritrean 1974 1991 0 0Kurdish Autonomy 1974 1975 1 0East Timor 1974 1975 0 1Vietnamese-Cambodian 1975 1979 1 0Western Sahara 1975 1983 1 Chadian Civil War 1975 1988 1 0Ethiopian-Somalian 1977 1978 1 0Afghanistan 1978 1989 0 0Sino-Vietnamese 1979 1979 1 0Peruvian Civil War 1982 1992 1 0Tamil Rebellion 1983 1990 0 1Sino-Vietnamese 1985 1987 0 0Gulf War 1990 1991 1 0Iraq-Kuwait 1990 1990 1 0Kurdish Rebellion 1991 0Serbian Rebellion 1991 1996 0 1Russo-Chechen 1994 1996 0 0

Number of cases = 197

A value of indicates missing data1 OUTCOME is the variable label for the conict outcome A value of 1 means that the strong actor

won A value of 0 means that the weak actor won the war was a stalemate or that it is ongoing2 STRATINT is the variable label for strategic interaction A value of 0 means that it was a same-

approach interaction (direct-direct or indirect-indirect) A value of 1 means that it was an oppo-site-approach interaction (indirect-direct or direct-indirect)


relevant1 If power implies victory in war then weak actors should almostnever win against stronger opponents especially when the gap in relativepower is very large2 Yet history suggests otherwise Weak actors sometimesdo win3 The question is how

Understanding the conditions under which weak actors win wars is im-portant for two reasons First if there are dynamics unique to asymmetricconictsmdashor if their analysis provides fresh insights into symmetricalconictsmdasha general explanation of asymmetric conict outcomes is not onlydesirable but necessary both to reduce the likelihood of unwinnable wars andto increase the chances of US success when a resort to arms is necessary Sec-ond because asymmetric conicts ranging from catastrophic terrorism to mili-tary intervention in interstate ethnic and civil wars are the most likely threatto US security and interests only a general theory of asymmetric conict out-comes can guide US policymakers in their efforts to build the kinds of armedand other forces necessary to implement an effective US strategic response

Thus far only one scholar has advanced a strong general explanation ofasymmetric conict outcomes4 In ldquoWhy Big Nations Lose Small Warsrdquo An-drew Mack argues that an actorrsquos relative resolve or interest explains successor failure in asymmetric conicts5 In essence the actor with the most resolve


1 ldquoActorsrdquo here mean states or coalitions of states although the same dynamics would apply togovernments ghting against rebels ldquoConictsrdquo in this analysis are restricted to wars (1000 battledeaths per year on average) although again similar dynamics may apply in conicts that are notwars (eg terrorism trade wars and labor disputes) Because this analysis focuses on explainingasymmetric conicts it excludes those few wars in which the ratio of forces changed dramatically(toward symmetry) between the conictrsquos beginning and end2 In this article I follow established practice by introducing an imperfect but quantiable proxyfor power A strong actor is one whose material power exceeds that of its adversary or adversariesby at least ten to one Material power is the product of a given statersquos population and armed forcesldquoStrongrdquo and ldquoweakrdquo therefore have meaning only in a particular dyadic context Italy in 1935 isweak compared with Nazi Germany but strong compared with Ethiopia For an introduction tothe literature on empirical and quantiable measures of relative power see John Jacob NutterldquoUnpacking Threat A Conceptual and Formal Analysisrdquo in Norman A Graham ed Seeking Secu-rity and Development The Impact of Military Spending and Arms Transfers (Boulder Colo LynneRienner 1994) pp 29ndash493 TV Paul Asymmetric Conicts War Initiation by Weaker Powers (New York Cambridge Univer-sity Press 1994) p 4 Paulrsquos analysis focuses on why weak states initiate wars against strongerones His threshold of analysis for asymmetry is a power ratio of 12 where power is measured intraditionalmdashthat is materialmdashterms On Paulrsquos denition of asymmetry see ibid p 20 On theproblems of reducing power to material net assessments see ibid p 22 Nutter ldquoUnpackingThreatrdquo and Michael P Fischerkeller ldquoDavid versus Goliath Cultural Judgments in AsymmetricWarsrdquo Security Studies Vol 7 No 4 (Summer 1998) pp 1ndash434 See Andrew JR Mack ldquoWhy Big Nations Lose Small Wars The Politics of AsymmetricConictrdquo World Politics Vol 27 No 2 (January 1975) pp 175ndash2005 Robert A Pape considers Mackrsquos explanation as part of a family of balance-of-interest argu-ments which closely approach balance-of-resolve arguments I agree that they are analytically dis-





























































































































































DurationEffect


lengthens war


shortens war


(Phoenix)

lengthens war


shortens war



Conclusions
































































































































































































DurationEffect


lengthens war


shortens war


(Phoenix)

lengthens war


shortens war



Conclusions






































Conclusions


































