Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win

6. Conclusion

131 Conclusion Conclusion Conclusion Conclusion Conclusion 6 6 6 6 6 Examination of Goliath defeats reveals the limits of material preponderance and the importance of political will, strategy, and, in the case of an insurgent enemy, isolation from external assistance. Conventional military strength is indispensable in big wars, but it has limited utility in small wars, which involve combat against irregular adversaries. Conversely, the weaker side risks swift defeat if it attempts to fight the stronger side on conventional military terms; to survive and prevail, the weak are driven to strategies of indirection and protraction. Andrew Mack, IvanArreguin-Toft, and Gil Merom have made critical contributions to the literature on weak-actor victories over the strong, though they have either downplayed the significance of external assistance or ignored it altogether . An extensive assessment of their work, combined with my own previously published research on the Vietnam and Iraq wars and subsequent research on other asymmetric wars, leads me to the following conclusions: 1. The stronger side usually wins; the best strategy, therefore, is to be strong. Clausewitz was right. It is always good to be strong and never good to be weak. The United States has an unusual record of military success in large part because it has been—or has been on—the stronger side in virtually all of its major wars. Even in the case of theAmerican War of Independence, it is arguable that Great Britain lost its status as the stronger side, at least in the North American theater of operations, once the French intervened in full financial, military, BEA BEA BEA BEA BEATING GOLIA TING GOLIA TING GOLIA TING GOLIA TING GOLIATH TH TH TH TH 132 and naval force. The British were certainly the weaker side at Yorktown, by which time ally-less Britain was at war with Spain and the Netherlands as well as the French and the Americans. The only major war Americans lost was the Confederacy ’s futile attempt to achieve decisive conventional military victory over a materially preponderant Union. Overwhelming force is inherently desirable, though it is easier to state as an objective than it is to achieve on the battlefield. The United States and its coalition partners enjoyed overwhelming force in the Gulf War of 1991; no amount of will, strategic legerdemain, or foreign help could have sustained an Iraqi defense of Kuwait against the coalition juggernaut assembled by President George H. W. Bush. Twelve years later, however, a much smaller, “transformed” U.S. force, supported by a politically less impressive coalition than that of 1991, swept aside minimal Iraqi conventional military resistance but failed to secure the country against the effects of the Iraqi state’s abrupt disintegration, especially catastrophic looting and an eruption of insurgent violence. Numbers count. The cold war Soviet threat in Central Europe, which was the primary focus of NATO force planning and justification of its nuclear first-use policy, was the sheer enormity of Soviet forces deployed opposite NATO Center and readily reinforceable from the Soviet Union’s western military districts. 2. Weaker-side victories are exceptional and almost always rest on some combination of stronger political will, superior strategy, and foreign help. Single-factor explanations of asymmetric war outcomes are rarely satisfactory . There are simply too many variables at play in war—the most complex of all human enterprises. The American rebels and the Vietnamese Communists prevailed because both had a stronger will and a better strategy and massive foreign help. Will, absent capacity to act effectively, counts for little; Osama bin Laden cannot will his way to victory using a strategy hitched to political objectives that provoke resistance beyond al Qaeda’s ability to overcome. With respect to successful insurgencies, their common reliance on irregular warfare, at least until they move from being the weaker side to becoming the stronger, reflects recognition of their own conventional military weakness. Irregular warfare is a strategy of necessity, and against a strong and determined enemy it implies—indeed, mandates—superior political will because without a greater readiness to sacrifice time and blood an insurgency has little reason to CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION CONCLUSION 133 hope for victory against its materially stronger foe. Only against exceptionally feckless and inept governments can insurgents expect relatively easy wins, but in such cases it is the regime that is the weaker side. If state power is left lying in the street, the first politically and organizationally prepared...