Don't Send a Lion to Catch a Mouse
5 March Washington Post - Don't Send a Lion to Catch a Mouse by Shankar Vedantam.
Quote:
...Two political scientists recently examined 250 asymmetrical conflicts, starting with the Peninsular War. Although great powers are vastly more powerful today than in the 19th century, the analysis showed they have become far less likely to win asymmetrical wars. More surprising, the analysis showed that the odds of a powerful nation winning an asymmetrical war decrease as that nation becomes more powerful.
The analysis by Jason Lyall at Princeton University and Lt. Col. Isaiah Wilson III at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point shows that the likelihood of a great power winning an asymmetrical war went from 85 percent during 1800-1850 to 21 percent during 1950-2003.
The same trend was evident when the researchers studied only asymmetrical conflicts involving the United States. The more industrialized a powerful country becomes, the more its military becomes technologically powerful, the less effective it seems to be in an asymmetrical war.
Essentially, what Lyall and Wilson are saying is that if you want to catch a mouse, you need a cat. If you hire a lion to do the job because it is bigger and stronger, the very strength and size of the lion can get in the way of getting the job done...
More at the link.
Difference of sensibilities
Just to add a period note to reinforce the changing times-changing means, here is a note from the Boxer Rebellion, in other words why what worked in the past doesn't always translate too well today:
Tientsin: Allied Proclamation to the Inhabitants
To the Inhabitants of the City of Tientsin:
In bombarding the city of Tientsin the allied forces only replied to the attack made by the rebels on the foreign settlements.
At present, as your authorities, forgetting their duties, have deserted their posts, the allied forces consider it their duty to establish in the city a temporary administration, which you all have to obey. This administration will protect everyone wishing to deal in a friendly manner with foreigners, but will punish without mercy everyone who causes trouble.
Let the bad people tremble, but the good people should feel reassured and quietly return to their houses and begin their usual work. Thus peace will be restored.
Respect this.
Tientsin, the 16th July, 1900.
Approved by:
Allemagne: Von Usedom, Capitaine de Navire.
Autriche Hongrie: J. Tudrak, Lieutenant de Vaisseau.
États Unis d'Amérique: Colonel Meade, American Marines.
France: De Pelacol, Colonel.
Grande-Bretagne: Le Général Dorward, Captain Bayly.
Italie: G. Sirianni, Lieutenant de Vaisseau.
Japon: Le Général Fukushima.
Russie: Vice-Amiral Alexieff.
250 cases - what are they?
Interesting article in the Post and thanks to Jed for the full draft article. I scanned the article for a list of the cases - haven't had time to read the whole thing yet - but could not find a list. That,alone, gives mepause.When Max Manwaring and I wrote our origninal piece in Small Wars and Insurgencies, wepublished the entire list of 43 cases. So, I wonder what the cases are. For example, do the authors address every single Indian War in the US beginning with 1800? I should note that the outcome, despite some significant setbacks for the US Army such as the Little Bighorn, was victory in every case! In all the post-WWII insurgencies in Latin America, there have only been 2 victories for the insurgents - Castro in Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1979). So, the definition of victory and defeat is of importance as well. The track record of insurgents is simply not very good. So, at a minimum, caution is indicated when we read the paper in its entirety.
Congo/Zaire Wars and Angola
John
I would add the following to the list:
Congo 1960-1963: Belgium, US, UN: Government and UN "win"
Subset Katangan Secession: Belgium versus Congo, US, and UN: Congo win
Congo 1963-1965 US, Belgium, Congo versus Simbas with some later PRC assistance: Congo win
Angola 1975-1977(?) US, Holden Roberto (FNLA), Zaire versus MPLA, Cuba, USSR: MPLA "win"
Zaire 1977-1978 (Shaba 1 and 2) France, Belgium, US, Morocco, Zaire versus East Germany, Angola; Zaire win
That would make the total 47 with 15 cases where the Western power lost.
Best
Tom
Classic support for partisans
The Peninsula campaign is a classic example of Great Power support to partisans in a secodary theater of war. In this respect, it is not dissimilar to the anti-Japanese guerrillas in the Philippines supported by the US.Another example is the partisans in Yugoslavia supported by the UK, US, and USSR or the maquis in France before D-Day. In any event, if Great Powers are involved on opposite sides, the case is much more complex than a simple insurgency with carefully limited support from one Great Power or another. It is for this reason that I noted that someone else might break out the winners and losers among the Western Power supporters/participants differently than I did among out 43 cases.
Comments on the article that provoked this thread
I finally got a chance to read the whole article yesterday. While it has some useful insights, particularly in the latter section case study of Iraq, it is too often an attempt to bend the facts to fit the theory.
Pardon the political science stuff that follows but it is necessary to critique the authors on their own terms as well as those of practitioners. Since I "are one" of those political scientists - my job.
The most critical failing of the article is its failure to list its cases - they state they have some 268 cases of small wars and insurgencies but never list a single case (unless Iraq is one - if so, they list 1, 2 if the Peninsula campaign is included). As important is the fact that they nowhere state how their cases were coded as wins v losses. As we found in our 43 cases this is not really so easy or obvious. David's Rhodesia case also points out the difficualties involved as to who supported whom with both the UK and US on the side of the eventual winners. so, without this information, their whole premise is suspect.
The authors have also used the Correlates of War project definition (perhaps modified but not clearly stated if so) of war. That definition excludes everything with less than 1000 "battle deaths" - the authors use the term casualties so they may have modified it. In any event, this definition would exclude both Grenada and Panama from inclusion in their small wars category!
The article also makes dubious use of statistics. First, it defines as statisitically significant a probability of 0.1 of something occurring by chance alone as statistically significant. Although statistical significance is simply a convention, the commonly used one is 0.05 - much more rigorous. They thencompound the problem by drawing inferences from results of their tests that are not even statistically significant by the convention they have imposed themselves!
Their conclusions rest on the premise that more developed states are increasingly losing small wars and insurgencies. This conclusion is based on a data set that is not provided nor is its coding. It also runs counter to the evidence in the data set that Manwaring and I used as well as subsequent cases we have added and the cases added by Tom. Based on this premise, the authors propose that the explanation for lack of success is based on the great forces of modernization at work - the economy, technology, etc. They propose that the modern army is simply not capable of fighting these kinds of wars effectively. They give no weight to the issue of leadership - I submit that in addressing their Iraq case it would have made a difference if the 101st had been commanded by Ray Odierno and the 4th ID by Dave Petraeus. We might well be lauding the efforts of the 4th ID and deploring those of the 101st. See John Nagl's preface to the paperback edition of his book for what a well led armor unit can do in an insurgency!
The authors do raise a problem that we have been commenting on in one way or another in several threads - that is, why the institution as a whole seems to have to relearn and reinvent its own doctrine every time a new "Uncomfortable War" comes on the scene.
Lions and Mice: "Ahem..."
I regret to say that the Vedantam piece may need retraction. Lyall and Wilson presented the ideas cited by Vedantam at an American Political Science Association panel in 2006, where it was roundly criticized, not for the content of its arguments, but for the fact that they lifted almost their entire argument from another author's work. Ivan Arreguin-Toft published the same argument (including virtually the same empirical trend) in an essay entitled "How the Weak Win Wars" in International Security in 2001 (v26, n1). Toft later published his findings in a book in 2005. For those of you interested in the actual article Vedantam cites, it's available at Lyall's "personal web page" at Princeton.edu. I've attached pages 1–5 of Toft's paper (note the graphic on p. 97) so readers can judge for themselves. Lyall and Wilson appear to be moving forward with a new version of "their" argument, to be presented at a West Point conference next week. One can only hope they've re-framed their paper to acknowledge their debt to Toft (at the panel they presented, Toft was actually the panel discussant!).