How the Weak Win
Legends of asymmetrical conflict exist in most every culture. Whether David and Goliath or Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, these legends remind us that an underdog can succeed against a better provisioned and more heavily armed competitor.
These stories are remarkable because conventional wisdom suggests that the underdog prevailed against all odds. But do competitive environments always favor the stronger, more heavily provisioned party? Not always.
Oxford professor Ivan Arreguín-Toft analyzed 197 cases with lopsided opponents (greater than 5 to 1 material advantage) in the 200 years of armed conflict recorded in the Correlates of War data set. He found that the weaker actors were winning conflicts with increasing frequency over time.
Figure 1: Percentage of Asymmetric Conflict Victories by Type of Actor in Four Fifty-Year Periods
To explain this phenomenon, he unearthed an interesting pattern when controlling for the strategic approach of the interacting belligerents. If the strong actor had engaged in conventional warfare (think pitched battle) and the weak actor had likewise defended with conventional tactics, he coded the conflict “same approach.” But if the stronger actor had engaged in conventional warfare and the weaker actor had engaged in more indirect methods of warfighting (such as guerilla warfare or insurgency), he coded that conflict “opposite approach.”
After controlling for the interaction of the strategic approaches of each actor, the stronger actor’s advantage nearly disappeared. And in the cases where the weaker party chose to maneuver around the strategy of the stronger opponent, the weaker adversary had 2 to 1 odds of winning.
Figure 2: Strategic Interaction and Asymmetric Conflict Outcomes, 1800-1998
This strategic interaction hypothesis did a better job of explaining the preponderance of weak-actor victories of 1950 to 2000, the post-Mao era of hegemonic conventional superpowers. As the strong got even stronger, the weak strategized novel tactics to maneuver around the centers of gravity of their over-encumbered adversaries. The result was that 22.2% of asymmetric conflicts were waged with “opposite” strategic approaches, whereas from 1800 to 1849 only 5.9% of conflicts studied involved such a dynamic.[1]
Whether one places one’s bets with the Davids or Goliaths today ought to depend on the specific drivers of each competitors’ strategy. Despite the legends and the seemingly insurmountable advantages of scale, it is anything but a foregone conclusion that the materially advantaged are more likely to win in competitive environments.
[1] “From 1800 to 1849, 5.9 percent of interactions in thirty-four asymmetric conflicts were opposite approach. From 1850 to 1899, 10.1 percent of interactions in sixty-nine asymmetric conflicts were opposite approach. From 1900 to 1949, 16.1 percent of thirty-one asymmetric conflicts were opposite, and from 1950 to 1998, 22.2 percent of thirty-six asymmetric conflicts were opposite.”