Small Arms and Influence: The Normalization of Guerrilla Warfare

• In Event: Unconventional Victories: Origins, Consequences, and Resilience of Rebel Success

Abstract

Does military superiority increase a state’s chances at winning their wars and bringing them to a swift end? My paper indicates that power—defined in terms of troop numbers and military technology—does not precede outcomes, especially after World War I. Using a novel compilation of data on international conflict, I provide evidence that wars between unequal adversaries, like the United States and the Taliban, increased in duration after 1918, whereas wars between similarly capable adversaries, like El Salvador and Honduras, did not. I argue that changes in norms around warfighting, arising as an unintended consequence of great power behavior in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reshaped military superiority’s relevance by normalizing guerrilla warfare. Out of concern for what guerrilla fighting might signal about their place in international society, rebels of the nineteenth century often fought imperial powers directly in pitched battles, an approach that rewarded military superiority. Accompanying the emerging discourse of self-determination in the early twentieth century, however, rebels increasingly embraced guerrilla warfare as not only an effective strategy but also an appropriate one.

Author

• Katherine Irajpanah, Harvard University