How The Weak Won The Asymmetric Conflicts After1945:a Perspective On Strategy Modes And Their Effects

Due to the relative power disparities of all the nations in international society, asymmetry has been a normal status of international system, and as a result, asymmetric conflicts become a common existence in human history. One significance of these asymmetric conflicts is the appearance of some real uncommon cases:some relatively weak powers in unfavorable conditions reversed the overwhelmingly advantageous situation for the strong and won the competitions in the end. The proportion of these cases even reaches such a considerable number that it has challenged some traditional realist viewpoints, such as "national power is the only decisive factor to win a competition". To better analyze and understand these cases, some international studies scholars developed two study approaches to explain:the structural analysis approach with focus on conflict actors and process analysis approach with focus on conflict process. However apparently these two study approaches still have their defects. Generally, the structural analysis approach repeats the same logics of realists’ ideas which always locate their theoretical basis on national power in the end. In this approach, the reason why the weak powers win becomes a result of the change of power-confronting situation, thus the question "why the weak could beat the strong" in this kind of studies is consequently transformed into "how the power transition happens"-the question itself has already been changed intentionally or not, and disguised to another one to some extent; while the process analysis approach claims to focus on the game-playing interaction process and situation shifts of conflict actors in competitions, which is represented by the "Strategic Interaction" hypothesis proposed by American scholar Ivan Arreguin-Toft and the "Complexity Adaptive System(CAS)" theory adopted by Chinese scholars Dr. Yang Shaohua and Xu Bin. The "Strategic Interaction" hypothesis divides the strategic modes of two conflict sides into four types and tries to figure out in which situation the weak power can get more possibility to win by comparing different sets of mode panels. The problem is, this hypothesis avoids the fact on purpose that the conflict actors may choose the strategic modes by themselves rather than one side’s strategic modes are just direct reaction to their counterparts; meanwhile taking conflict duration as a key variable to explain why the weak can win is also susceptible, as the hypothesis does not explain why a longer conflict duration is advantageous for the weak in logics. CAS theory, who takes the weak power’s quicker adaption to the conflict environment as the explanation of the weak’s victory, is also doubtable, since to what extent the restriction of "environment" can really act on the strong, especially on a superpower like the U.S., as this theory preconceived, is not in accordance to all the facts. Therefore this paper is trying to adopt a more comprehensive perspective on the basis of all the existing studies and find a complete and exercisable strategic method to avoid the defects in former studies, and examine and evaluate methods through two latest cases. The whole paper consists of3parts. The first part is aiming to fulfill the theory constructing and hypothesis setting (the analyzing method in this paper will also adopt the process analysis approach):it divides the strategy modes of the weak into two kinds-Symmetric Strategy, a strategy mode of joining conflict positively and put the major military power against the strong; and Asymmetric Strategy, a strategy mode of indirect resistance distinguished from the positive military fighting, which includes guerrilla and terrorism tactics. There are also two hypothesizes for these strategy modes:for the Symmetric Strategy, the weak power can introduce a third power(such as a kind of powerful technological means, an outside conflict participant, namely a nation or an international institution) to reverse the asymmetric power situation of two existing conflict actors, the more restraint effect the third power present to the strong, the more possibility of victory the weak can get; for the Asymmetric Strategy, the weak power can use asymmetric strategy tactics such as guerrilla or terrorism to change the conflict intention of the strong side, the more restraint effect the asymmetric strategy tactics present to the strong, the more possibility of victory the weak can get. The second part of the paper will take two latest cases of different conflict results:the Preah Vihear Temple Dispute between Cambodia and Thailand(results of two conflict phases:the weak won both) and the Iraq War(results of two conflict phases:the weak lost and won each phase respectively)to examine and evaluate the theory and hypothesizes above. The last part of this paper will conclude all the theories and hypothesizes through contrast of cases. This paper takes asymmetric conflict as the research subject and uses two latest cases to examine and evaluate the theory and hypothesizes, which not only help this study practice a deeper analysis and give more convincing explanation for the question proposed in the beginning than its precursors, but also clarify the inner logics of "how the weak wins the strong" through strategic transformation and gain-cost control level analysis. All these efforts and attempts finally strengthen the theoretical significance and practical significance for this paper.