Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers.

• Author: Malin, Martin

Even after a long period in which war between the world's most powerful states has not occurred, war is still a common feature of international relations. What is intriguing about T.V. Paul's Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers is that he tries to explain the most surprising incidences of war, those in which a state that is relatively weaker than its adversary nevertheless initiates a conflict. Paul has identified an important puzzle for students of international politics. He presents six cases of major wars from this century in which the initiators were the weaker party - Japan's offensive against Russia in 1904, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Chinese intervention in Korea in 1950, Pakistan's offensive in Kashmir in 1965, Egypt's attempt to retake the Sinai in 1973 and Argentina's invasion of the Falklands in 1982 - and drives home the fact that this type of war is not especially unusual. The explanation he provides, though at times problematic, succeeds in illuminating many of the relevant immediate causes of conflict. Though Paul is not the first to address the issue of why a state might start a war in which the odds of success are unfavorable, his contribution is laudable for calling attention to the fact that wars not only occur when the strong see opportunities, but also when the weak see few alternatives.

The question of why a weaker state would attack a stronger adversary is important because it appears to undermine some of the core assumptions and central hypotheses associated with conventional understandings of the causes of war. For example, whether one believes that an equilibrium or "balance" of power preserves peace in the international system, or that a preponderance of power enjoyed by one state does so, in either case, the smallest states in the neighborhood are the ones most vulnerable to attack and should be the least willing to challenge neighboring giants. Likewise, theories that place the focus on decision makers (such as deterrence theory) cannot adequately account for why weak states would attack stronger neighbors. If the stronger state has the capability to deny the challenger its objectives, or if it can otherwise credibly threaten that the punishment for attempting to revise the status quo will definitely outweigh the benefits, then challengers should back down. Militarily weak states should be the easiest to persuade against irresponsibly ambitious attempts at challenging the status quo. In the cases Paul investigates, deterrence has failed despite the fact that the state being attacked enjoyed a preponderance of military and economic strength and had communicated its willingness to defend itself.

The question is significant not only because it eludes the major theories scholars have devised for explaining the causes of war, but also because it is timely. With the demise...