How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict

by Ivan M. Arreguín-Toft

How do the weak defeat the strong? Ivan Arreguín-Toft argues that, although many factors affect asymmetric conflict outcomes (for example, the relative power of the actors, their weapons technology, and outside support), the interaction of each actor's strategy is the best explanation. Supporting his argument with combined statistical and comparative case study analysis, Arreguín-Toft's strategic interaction theory has implications not only for international relations theorists, but for policy makers grappling with interstate and civil wars, as well as terrorism.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, War, Military History

276 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2004

Reviews

[Navneet Bhushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the 43 asymmetric wars in the period 1950-1999, 51.2% wars have been won by the weaker actor. That the powerful will lose sometimes is in the nature of warfare, in general. However, they will lose in more than 50% of the times is difficult to explain especially in the established way of creating powerful military forces by nations with large populations and high economic resources. Ivan Arreguin-Toft, in his 2005 book, “How the weak win wars – a theory of asymmetric conflict”, analyses the data of asymmetric conflicts in the 200 years’ period from 1800 to 2003 and comes up with this startling trend of David’s have started winning more often than the Goliaths. The overall win percentage, sure enough, is still in favour of stronger, more powerful actors – they winning 71.5% of times. However, when he presents the data in 50-year time slots – the trend becomes increasingly stark and surprising. Consider this, for example, for the 34 asymmetrical conflicts from the year 1800 to 1849, the winning % of strong actors was 88.2%. For the period from 1850 to 1899 it reduced to 79.5% for 78 such conflicts that occurred in that half-century. For the first 50 years of 20th century, the world witnesses 43 asymmetrical conflicts, in those, the winning percentage of strong actors reduced to 65.1%.

This book has given a comprehensive analysis of asymmetric conflicts of past 200 years or so. Further Toft's strategic interaction hypothesis has been explained and verified by the data and analysis that he has.

In fact, it has led me to propose what I call Rapid Strategic Switch method for winning the asymmetric wars by the stronger players.

The article can be read at http://innovationcrafting.blogspot.in...

[Nick Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's difficult in Social Science to craft an all-encompassing theory which is capable of explaining all or almost all events. The "closest thing to a law in IR" is Democratic Peace Theory, and even it has vulnerabilities which can be found with little probing. This is the framework through which we view Arreguin-Toft's book.

He asks the simple question: How can weak actors win wars against stronger ones? Traditional explanations include regime type ("democracies are incapable of winning asymmetric wars"), arms diffusion ("with modern weapons, they can even the odds"), interest asymmetry ("powerful states are not threatened by smaller ones, so they have less stake in the outcome"), and "social squeamishness" ("democratic constituencies don't want to fight barbarously"). Arreguin-Toft disassembles and dismisses each of these arguments, and creates his own. Strategic interaction between strong and weak states influences the outcome.

Through the case studies of Imperial Russia in the Caucuses, Britain in the Boer War, Italy in Ethiopia, the US in Vietnam, and the USSR in Afghanistan, we examine the strategic interaction of each side. When both sides fight the same way (conventional vs conventional; barbarism vs guerrilla), the stronger state will win. When the fighting is mixed (conventional vs guerrilla; barbarism vs conventional), the weaker state will win.

The logical conclusion of this argument is to believe that the United States and USSR should have resorted to barbarism in Vietnam and Afghanistan, respectively, in order to achieve victory. Arreguin-Toft addresses these cases, the latter of which runs counter to his theory. His final analysis describes how this is not necessarily the right move. "At best barbarism can be effective only as a military strategy: if the desired objective is long-term political control - e.g., nation-building, "peace" keeping, or other stability or transition missions - barbarism invariably backfires."

This is a book that should be required reading for diplomats, military officers, and Congressional representatives.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be a very weak discussion and one that at times showed poor reasoning as well.

"How do the weak defeat the strong?" This is a flawed question from the start or at least the way the author handles it. Using only a subset of all possible wars and conflicts he tries to then create a theory that will answer the proposition. It's bad logic and it leaves me disheartened. I went into this book with such expectations. The possibilities of unbalanced situations. The possible game theory applications... but no.

There is a real topic to be discussed here but it just isn't handled well. Maybe it is too much of an academic's view, I don't know. But there is too much of a star-struck view of Andrew Mack's 1975 work and (even worse) the self-references to prior publications by the author of a couple years prior. If I write something now, I can then reference it as a fact later? I don't think so. To be one's own reference - short of a repeated lab experiment or formal proof - just strikes me as wrong and a bit desperate to have lots of references quoted. Really, do you need to source yourself? And for your own deductions or opinions?

I won't take the time to run down my list of counter-arguments but I will give a reference to where an easy start for some can be found. Check out "How Can Weak Powers Win?" by Yang Shaohua as published in Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 2, 2009, 335–371. I wouldn't say Yang has everything figured out but he definitely presents some valid and hard to argue counters to this book.

[Farhad Zaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book. Although it is written as a comparative study and not a standalone description of the original author's analysis, it reads well and addresses one of the most mind-boggling questions in military history. Or attempts to.

The book tries to explain why stronger militaries fail, and why the rate of failure is increasing. It somehow tries to establish an unnecessarily complicated framework to just say that if a weak military faces a strong opponent, it must not take direct action (which is traditional wisdom). Now that the ball is in the aggressor's court, if the aggressor doesn't step onto the same level, they are prone to lose. In other words, the strong wins as long as it is willing to adapt and spend (or rather, use the strength). Factors like bad press, international pressure, public opinion, or a draft all limit this willingness; overall, it is common sense that dictatorship and authoritarian regimes are better able to absorb that pain and command resources.
Now as to why the rate of defeat is increasing, I would hypothesize that the underlying driver is the long arc of mass literacy that started around 1800 and produced an audience capable of being mobilized against distant wars by the press, then radio, then television, then social media, and now AI-generated content (also used by the weaker enemy to spread disinformation ). The Boer War concentration camp scandal already shows this mechanism running through reports in the British press. The fast divergence of the cost of human life in democracies and dictatorships sits inside this same arc, with authoritarian regimes able to insulate their publics longer. The USSR lost Afghanistan partly because the political leadership did not feel secure enough to dedicate the resources needed, and Glasnost broke the enchantment of state control and propaganda. Now this trend might be changing, as the 5th column from both sides find it easier to utilize AI-generated content to influence the public opinion, yet it is the strong who controls the platforms.

Now, the author professes time and time again that there is a degree of simplification needed to form any kind of framework from historical events. However, I think what the author has come up with is the cross point of the classic nature of the actor and interest asymmetry repackaged and improved, not an entirely new perspective. Both predecessors do most of the analytical work and the strategic-interaction matrix is best read as a specification of the mechanism rather than an independent theory.
In other words, it is more like how the strong loses wars rather than the weak winning. At the end of the day, we are reminded that defeat and victory are all dependent on the actions of the strong to elongate the conflict (taking the right actions) and maybe find a win, or shorten the conflict and lose by taking the wrong action. Regime type and interest asymmetry are not independent variables here. Regime type sets the friction cost of acting illiberally and interest asymmetry sets the price the strong will pay. Liberal democracies do not refuse to act like empires categorically. They refuse below a certain interest threshold and become functionally illiberal above it, which is why the US conducted the Philippine-American War, the Banana Wars, and Cold War Latin American interventions with very different methods than it used in Iraq or Afghanistan, and why Venezuela today sits inside a logic that would be politically intolerable in Central Asia.
It is the classic US did not go far enough argument that we have heard time and time again, from Korea and the debate over using nukes, to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The unwillingness of the US military to go far enough finally ended the conflict on the adversary's terms, freeing them to claim a win (albeit with only ashes to rule over). We see the same thing from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; they changed tactics, did not commit enough men and material, and they had to leave. That said, commitment is not always the binding constraint. Afghanistan has defeated three different imperial powers in three different centuries (British 1839, Soviets 1979, Americans 2001) while Iraq was subdued by 2011, which suggests the strong can only throw the weak as far as they let them. In the absence of a central state, there is nothing to defeat regardless of willingness. Iraq is the cleaner test of where commitment does pay off. Defeat and victory are still examples of interest asymmetry strongly correlated with the nature of the actor, but the structural substrate does real work too.

The gist of the book is this: if the weak is smart, it will revert to asymmetrical warfare and bet on the strong being unwilling to spend men and material before they run out first, knowing the weak is willing to dig deeper into their pockets because of the interest asymmetry.
The rest is the author categorizing the countries within direct and indirect actions and how that phase of the conflict concluded.
I would recommend this book for a clear and precise analytical view of the conflicts it discusses in a very short length (the Russian pacification of the Caucasus, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the British takeover of South Africa, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the US involvement in Vietnam) and it gives a very good overview. However, I remain skeptical of the novelty of the proposed theory, which I perceived as a clear hybridization of previously established theories.

[Abdulrahman Tingari · Rating 3 out of 5]

قرات بالعربية وعنوان الكتاب كيف يكسب الضعفاء الحروب، الكاتب استخدم التحليلات واحصائيات عميقة في النزاعات بين الاطراف واستراتيجيات المستخدمة عند كل من طرفين قوي وضعيف في حروب.

[Peter Z.]

DNF @ 18%. If this were written into a different format it could be an interesting study of not just strategy, but tactics as well. As-is, the author's hypothesis is straightforward and most of the book is given to just applying the "rule" to a half-dozen conflicts. If one were satisfied to take the author's word for his research, the meat of this could be published in a pamphlet.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this following up on the bibliography from Malcolm Gladwell's "David & Goliath". Although I'm not an international relations scholar (seemingly intended audience), I enjoyed the historical analyses, particularly of the South African Boer War and Russian intervention in Afghanistan.

[Reed Schwartz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing I love more than a 2x2 matrix

[Adam Carrico · Rating 3 out of 5]

The theory of asymmetric combat that he develops is interesting and is well backed up to explain differences in the outcome of wars than the expectation.

The main problem I have is that the author implies this theory is sufficient to explain how strong actors lose conflicts, when it only explains a smaller subset of conflicts. In the appendix he lists ever case that he uses in the analysis, but most of the wars in which a strong actor lost were under same-approach strategic interactions. This theory doesn't explain those cases at all, leaving a large gap in the overall explanation for strong actors losing at a high rate.

That being said, the theory itself has merits on an individual case by case basis. Although it doesn't explain all variation, it does give a good explanation for conflicts that are under asymmetric conditions.

[Volodymyr Kramskyi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well structured and logically divided on chapters and parts. Author hypothesis is presented first then followed by five cases of wars. Each of the five cases of asymmetric conflicts is examined to test author's theory as well as competing explanations on outcomes of asymmetric conflicts

[صادق جعفر · Rating 1 out of 5]

قرأت الكتاب بالترجمة العربية وهو بعنوان "كيف يكسب الضعفاء الحروب؟" فكرة الكتاب تبدو جيدة ولكن ترجمته العربية سيئة جداً. لا أنصح أحداً على الإطلاق بقرائته بالترجنة العربية.