Why The Strong Lose??

Why the Strong Lose
JEFFREY RECORD
© 2005 Jeffrey Record

T

he continuing insurgency in Iraq underscores the capacity of the weak to
impose considerable military and political pain on the strong. Whether
that pain will compel the United States to abandon its agenda in Iraq remains
to be seen.
What is not in dispute is that all major failed US uses of force since
1945—in Vietnam,Lebanon, and Somalia—have been against materially
weaker enemies. In wars both hot and cold, the United States has fared consistently well against such powerful enemies as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan,
and the Soviet Union, but the record against lesser foes is decidedly mixed.
Though it easily polished off Milosevic’s Serbia and Saddam’s Iraq, the United
States failed to defeat Vietnamese infantryin Indochina, terrorists in Lebanon,
and warlords in Somalia. In each case the American Goliath was militarily
stalemated or politically defeated by the local David. Most recently, the United
States was surprised by the tenacious insurgency that exploded in postBaathist Iraq, an insurgency now in its third year with no end in sight.
The phenomenon of the weak defeating the strong, thoughexceptional, is as old as war itself. Sparta finally beat Athens; Frederick the Great
always punched well above his weight; American rebels overturned British
rule in the Thirteen Colonies; the Spanish guerrilla bled Napoleon white;
Jewish terrorists forced the British out of Palestine; Vietnamese communists
drove France and then the United States out of Indochina; and mujahideen
handed theSoviet Union its own “Vietnam” in Afghanistan. Relative military
power is hardly a reliable predictor of war outcomes.
Why do the strong lose? One must distinguish between general factors common to many cases of great-power losses to weaker adversaries and
those that, I argue, may be peculiar to the United States. With respect to common causes of the stronger side’s loss to the weaker, Andrew Mack,in his pio-

16

Parameters

neering 1975 assessment, argued that the place to look was differentials in the
political will to fight and prevail, which were rooted in different perceptions of
the stakes at hand. Post-1945 successful rebellions against European colonial
rule as well as the Vietnamese struggle against the United States all had one
thing in common: the materially weakerinsurgent was more politically determined to win because it had much more riding on the outcome of war than did
the stronger external power, for whom the stakes were lower. In such cases:
The relationship between the belligerents is asymmetric. The insurgents can
pose no direct threat to the survival of the external power because . . . they lack
an invasion capability. On the other hand, themetropolitan power poses not
simply the threat of invasion, but the reality of occupation. This fact is so obvious that its implications have been ignored. It means, crudely speaking, that for
the insurgents the war is “total,” while for the external power it is necessarily
“limited.” Full mobilization of the total military resources of the external
power is simply not politically possible. . . .Not only is full mobilization impossible politically, it is not thought to be in the least necessary. The asymmetry
in conventional military capability is so great and the confidence that military
might will prevail is so pervasive that expectation of victory is one of the hallmarks of the initial endeavor.1

Superior strength of commitment thus compensates for military inferiority. Becausethe outcome of the war can never be as important to the outside power as it is to those who have staked their very existence on victory, the
weaker side fights harder, displaying a willingness to incur blood losses that
would be unacceptable to the stronger side. The signers of the Declaration of
Independence risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in what became a
contest with an...