"'Peace with honor.' This was the Nixon administration's euphemism for disengagement from South Vietnam, a place where corruption and incompetence had long doomed any hope of victory; even a victory as modest as the simple negative objective of preserving the political independence of tiny South Vietnam."

As long as there was an army to fight, the U.S. was unstoppable, writes a Harvard scholar who studies asymmetric conflicts. But once we lost the Iraqi people, all the power in the world wasn’t enough to achieve victory. (Second of two parts.)

A Harvard scholar explores the implications of his recent research on asymmetric conflicts, which shows that strong actors are losing to the weak more and more often over time, and gleans some important lessons about the United States and Iraq. (First of two parts.)

"If it is true that every strategy has an ideal counterstrategy, then understanding how to counter terrorism demands some understanding of terrorism as a strategy."

"In How the Weak Win Wars, Arreguin-Toft means to convince the reader that when the very strong meet the weak in asymmetric armed conflict, strategy matters more than power. Despite minor excursions in his conclusions, he achieves this goal through expert scholarly analysis and a writing style that elucidates complex topics with facility. His work is extremely relevant in the current geopolitical context and serves as a warning to US policy makers to get military strategy right, regardless of relative power. Arreguin-Toft's argument makes perfectly clear the perilous consequences of neglecting the importance of strategic interaction."

— Edward Bradfield, Harvard International Review (Summer 2005)