How Wars Are Fought 283defeated in Indochina and Algeria; Portugal in Mozambique and Angola; the United
States in Vietnam; the Soviet Union in Af ghan i stan; and Israel in Lebanon. In each
case, well- equipped, industrialized militaries had sought to overcome smaller, nonin-
dustrial adversaries and lost. Ominously, both the French experience in Algeria and
the Soviet experience in Af ghan i stan added a new ele ment to the mix: religion as a
means of inspiring and aggregating re sis tance.
Today, this pattern of advanced industrial states pitted against either nonstate actors
or relatively weak states has become commonplace. International relations theorists now
refer to such contests as asymmetric conflict.
Asymmetric conflict undercuts an impor tant proposition of both conventional war-
fare and nuclear war: that conventional weapons and nuclear confrontations are more
likely to occur among states having rough equality of military strength and using
similar strategies and tactics. If one party is decidedly weaker, the proposition goes, fear
of defeat makes that party unlikely to resort to war. Asymmetric conflicts, in contrast,
are conducted between parties of very unequal strength. The weaker party seeks to
innovate around its opponent’s strengths, including its technological superiority, by
exploiting that opponent’s weaknesses.^17
Like any strategy, revolutionary guerrilla warfare itself has weaknesses. In two asym-
metric conflicts following World War II, the strong actors— Britain during the Malayan
Emergency (1948–60) and the United States in the Philippines (1952–53)— devised a
counterinsurgency strategy that effectively defeated revolutionary guerrilla wars. That
strategy aimed not at insurgent armed forces (terrorists and guerrillas), or even their
leaders, but instead focused on the real strength of successful guerrilla warfare:
the people. As Mao recognized in his early writings, incumbent governments can defeat
a well- led, well- organized guerrilla re sis tance in only two ways: either change the
minds of the people (via a conciliation, or “hearts and minds,” strategy) or destroy them
utterly (a strategy one theorist calls “barbarism”).^18 In either case, the social support of
a guerrilla re sis tance is destroyed, and that re sis tance will collapse. Mao was confident
that his “Western” and demo cratic adversaries were too arrogant in their own power
to attempt to change minds and too squeamish in their ethical conduct to pursue a
genocidal counterinsurgency. Yet in both Malaya and the Philippines, incumbent
governments, supported by Britain and the United States, sought to redress the griev-
ances that had led many of the country’s poor or disaffected either to active support
of guerrillas or to po liti cal apathy. Since World War II, “hearts and minds” strategies
have proven the most effective method of counterinsurgency on the ground, but they
are costly in po liti cal terms because they take a long time to work and, in most cases,
they demand large numbers of troops.^19
Yet guerrilla warfare is only one of several strategies a combatant might use to
overcome a more materially power ful incumbent and its allies. Another such strategy
is nonviolent re sis tance: re sis tance to authority that employs mea sures other than