Winning Wars Isn't Simple

On the surface, winning wars appears to be a simple calculation of which international actor has more military power. The more guns, the more people in arms, the more ammunition, the more likely it is that a particular country will win an armed conflict. The record of winning wars, particularly over the last forty years, has been much less clear, however. The United States lost a war to an underdeveloped country, Vietnam, which had fewer weapons and lower levels of technology than the United States. The former Soviet Union lost a war in Afghanistan under similar circumstances and ultimately withdrew from that country in defeat. And Russia continues to have a high degree of difficulty in suppressing the rebellion in Chechyna by undersupplied and underfunded rebel forces.

Your task in this exercise is to do a bit of web-based research to uncover commonalities that exist across these different conflicts where a seemingly powerful actor was defeated or having difficulty defeating a seemingly weaker opponent. You may think of other conflicts than the three mentioned above and should feel free to research those as well (or instead), assuming your instructor thinks that it's OK.

Start your research by logging onto one of the major news archives on the web: CNN, New York Times, US News and World Report, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor or any other source that you have worked with and feel comfortable using.

When doing your research and creating your list of commonalities among the various conflicts, you may want to think about the following questions:

• What advantages did (does) the "weaker" actor have over the "stronger" one?
• How were these advantages used?
• How did domestic politics (within both the stronger and weaker actor) influence the outcome of the conflict?
• What advice would you have given (or give) to the leaders of each actor in the conflict?
• What does this tell you about the relative nature of power in world politics?

Conflict # 1

1		Conflict:

Conflict # 1

2		Commonalities Found:

Conflict # 1

3		Sources used to research this conflict:

Conflict # 2

4		Conflict:

Conflict # 2

5		Commonalities Found:

Conflict # 2

6		Sources used to research this conflict:

Conflict # 3

7		Conflict:

Conflict # 3

8		Commonalities Found:

Conflict # 3

9		Sources used to research this conflict: