Review: A Strategy for Success: How the Weak Defeat the Strong

Reviewed Work(s): How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict by Ivan
Arreguín-Toft
Review by: Michael A. Jensen
Source: International Studies Review, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 653-655
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The International Studies Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4621764
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International Studies Review (2006) 8, 653-655

A Strategy for Success: How the Weak Defeat the

Strong
REVIEW BY MICHAEL A. JENSEN
Department of Political Science, Arizona State University

How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict. By Ivan Arreguin-Toft. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 274 pp., $75.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-521-83976-9),
$29.99 (ISBN: 0-521-54869-1).

How do the weak prevail in conflicts with significantly stronger opponents? This is
the central question in Ivan Arreguin-Toft's How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of
Asymmetric Conflict. According to Arreguin-Toft, the basic presumption that power
trumps all other factors in determining who is victorious in battle is historically
untenable. With increasing frequency, the weak have been defeating the strong. As
Arreguin-Toft notes (pp. 5-6, 20), the field of international relations has failed to
produce any systematic explanation for this empirical puzzle. How the Weak Win
Wars is an attempt to fill this lacuna in the security studies literature, while pro-
viding policymakers and political analysts some insights into the conditions that
make asymmetric conflicts tremendously costly in terms of political legitimacy and
human life.
Arreguin-Toft begins by building upon Andrew J. R. Mack's (1975) seminal dis-
cussion of small wars, in which Mack argued that relative interest is the deciding
factor in wars between the strong and weak. Because weak actors are fighting for
survival, they are systematically more motivated to absorb the costs of long wars
than their stronger adversaries. In turn, the combination of low interests and high
costs puts a strong actor's ruling elite in a position of political vulnerability, and
eventually they succumb to domestic pressures to end the war short of victory.
Although Arreguin-Toft agrees that the proximate cause of strong actor defeat is
political vulnerability, he cites (pp. 14-15) three critical shortcomings in Mack's
interest-asymmetry argument. First, power is a poor predictor of resolve. Because
of alliance commitments or the prevalence of domino rationales, a strong actor may
view a materially insignificant conflict as a matter of life and death and, thus, will be
highly motivated to win. Second, to operationalize political vulnerability, Mack as-
sumes that wars between the strong and weak are protracted. There is no a priori or
historical reason, however, to believe that this is always the case. Sometimes, asym-
metric conflicts drag on, and sometimes they end quickly. Finally, Mack's interest-
asymmetry argument cannot explain variation in outcomes. If political vulnerability
is a function of interest, and interest is inversely related to power, then strong actors
should always be defeated by their weaker adversaries.
Seeking to transform Mack's interest-asymmetry argument into a general ex-
planatory model, Arreguin-Toft argues that the interaction of strategies-defined
as "an actor's plan for using armed forces to achieve military or political goals"
(p. 29)-explains how weak actors are able to prolong conflicts by deflecting the
material advantages of their stronger opponents. Arreguin-Toft reduces the uni-
verse of potential strategies that an actor can use to two broad ideal types: direct
and indirect. Direct strategies utilize conventional armies to launch offensive attacks
or defend one's homeland "with the aim of destroying or capturing [an] adversary's
physical capacity to fight, thus making will irrelevant" (p. 34, emphasis in original).

o 2006 International Studies Review.

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654 A Strategy for Success: How the Weak Defeat the Strong

Indirect strategies seek to destroy an opponent's will to continue fighting through

tactics such as barbarism (the systematic targeting of noncombatants), guerilla war-
fare, terrorism, conciliation, or nonviolence.
When the interaction of strategies used by strong and weak actors are the "same-
approach" (that is, direct-direct or indirect-indirect), Arreguin-Toft argues that
strong actors will prevail quickly because nothing mitigates their extreme advan-
tage in material power. However, when strategic interactions are "opposite-ap-
proach" (that is, direct-indirect or indirect-direct), weak actors will win because
they "refuse to engage where the strong actor has a power advantage" (p. 35).
Refusing to meet stronger actors on their terms tends to make conflicts drag on,
thus explaining the crucial mechanism that triggers political vulnerability in Mack's
interest-asymmetry thesis.
Arreguin-Toft argues (pp. 26-27, 35-36) that conflict duration, not ex ante interests,
explains political vulnerability (and thus defeat) for two reasons. First, because strong
actors have the inflated expectation that superior material capabilities imply quick,
easy, and relatively cost-free victory, they generally believe that the only legitimate
asymmetric conflicts are the ones that end quickly. Thus, as a war drags on, strong
actors have "time to consider the need to resort to arms, the value of the objectives
sought by force, the morality of how force is applied, and above all the opportunity
costs" (p. 26). Once a war is perceived as illegitimate by the public or by counter-
vailing elites, decision makers face two less than desirable options. They can succumb
to domestic pressures and end the conflict short of victory, or they can suffer the
political ramifications of escalating an unpopular war. Second, the costs associated
with long wars often tempt strong actors to use a self-defeating strategy of barbarism,
in which they seek to punish their opponent into submission. Even though this may
be an effective military strategy, Arreguin-Toft argues that in the post-World War II
era, it poses serious risks of domestic backlash and external intervention, both of
which increase the political vulnerability of a strong actor's ruling elite.
Arreguin-Toft also tries to shed light on why weak actors have been performing
so well since the end of World War II (pp. 36-38). According to Arreguin-Toft (p. 4),
weak actors have won 51.2% of all asymmetric conflicts since 1950. He argues that
the increase in weak actor success during this period is a direct result of a parallel
increase in conflicts characterized by opposite-approach strategic interactions. This
change is explained by using Kenneth Waltz's (1979) "socialization proposition" at
the regional level. Specifically, Arreguin-Toft argues that the successful use of the
blitzkrieg model in World War II socialized actors in Europe and the United States
to judge military success in terms of how fast they could deploy large mechanized
armies designed for conventional attack (a direct strategy). Conversely, in Asia
actors were socialized to imitate Mao's success in sustaining a protracted conflict by
utilizing guerrilla warfare tactics (an indirect strategy).
Using an original data set coded from the historical examination of the more
than 200 cases of asymmetric conflict listed by the Correlates of War project,
Arreguin-Toft finds a strong positive correlation between same-approach interac-
tions and strong actor victory, opposite-approach interactions and weak actor
victory, and opposite-approach interactions and conflict duration (pp. 44-46). It is
not clear, however, how much significance should be given to these rough quan-
titative indicators, given that Arreguin-Toft only controls for one other independent
factor in these tests: external support. Fortunately, he also tests his argument
against rival explanations by analyzing five historical cases: the Murid War of 1830-
1859 (chapter 3), the Second Boer War (chapter 4), the Italo-Ethiopian War
(chapter 5), the Vietnam War (chapter 6), and the Afghan Civil War from 1979 to
1989 (chapter 7). The alternative hypotheses he considers argue for the causal
importance of the nature of the actor (authoritarian regimes fight better than
democratic regimes), arms diffusion (military technology has been more equally
dispersed throughout the world since World War II, thus closing the power-gap

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 MICHAEL A. JENSEN 655

between the strong and weak), and relative inter

is inversely related to power).
The results of the qualitative tests show strong su
tegic interaction hypothesis. In fact, strategic inte
conflict outcome in two phases of the cases ana
Ethiopian War, and the second phase of the So
119-123, 181-187). Meanwhile, the cases show on
ing explanations, with arms diffusion receiving st
and Afghan cases.
Although How the Weak Win Wars provides r
argued, and well-tested explanation for asymm
could benefit from greater attention. Most notably
of Waltz's socialization argument, Arreguin-Tof
actors adopt particular strategies, or why they oft
during the course of a war (except for barbarism
measure). Arreguin-Toft makes it clear that "[t]his
actors choose the strategies they do" (p. 36). H
strategy is the crux of his strategic interaction
disappointed by this omission and frustrated b
answered. For example, if socialization is such a
actors continually failed to learn from the many s
acterized asymmetric conflicts during the past
French in Algeria, the United States in Vietnam, t
Israelis in Lebanon)?
Furthermore, in trying to explain the outcomes o
(including small wars, revolutions, civil wars, an
reguin-Toft's study may be overly ambitious. On
that he ultimately ignores the political context
unique. By equating "victory" with the military
Arreguin-Toft fails to heed David Baldwin's (1979)
insurgents on the ground is not the power to
failing regimes, win the hearts and minds of oc
of the other political objectives that are the essent
Ultimately, we need more mid-range theories, w
dual political-military nature of these conflicts, if
understanding of how the weak defeat the stro
Despite these shortcomings, How the Weak Win W
to a field that has largely ignored this importan
With the United States currently engaged in co
Afghanistan, Arreguin-Toft's insights could not be

References

BALDWIN, DAVID A. (1979) Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies.
World Politics 31:161-194.

MACK, ANDREW J. R. (1975) Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict.
World Politics 27:175-200.
WALTZ, KENNETH N. (1979) Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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