Abstract

International relations theory (and common sense) predicts that stronger actors will tend to prevail in deterrence, coercion, and war. However, empirically this is often wrong. Weaker sides are sometimes successful—and the trend is that stronger powers are losing more often than they did in the past. Prominent cases include the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, North Korea’s successful development of nuclear weapons, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the failure to deter Russia in Europe. For all NATO’s military power, weaker actors continue to do what they want and sometimes get their way. Many explanations for such counter-intuitive “David and Goliath” outcomes have been proposed (such as greater motivation, longer time horizons, or irrationality). Here, we draw on biology and evolution to explore the broader “natural history” of strategies that weaker actors have successfully used—over millions of years—to prevail in competition with stronger opponents. Several fundamental strategies appear to have emerged multiple times across a wide range of taxonomic groups, including bluffing, deception, surprise, unpredictability, patience, poisons, and rapid adaptation. These have parallels in strategies that weaker sides in human conflict use to level the playing field against larger coalitions, but also suggest new ones. Indeed, intergenerational persistence, “playing dirty” (unethical weapons or means), hyper-aggression, overconfidence, apparently irrational behaviour, and rapidly altering goals and methods—a set of strategies aligned with the so-called “Napoleon complex”—all offer ways in which weaker sides can gain a competitive edge. The many strategic advantages intrinsic to weaker actors suggest we need to pay greater attention to leaders’ and combatants’ psychology and behavior over and above military strength and power. We end by considering the role of weak actor strategies in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

About the Speaker

Dominic D. P. Johnson is Alastair Buchan Professor of International Relations and Fellow of St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. He received a DPhil from Oxford in evolutionary biology, and later a PhD from Geneva University in political science. Drawing on both disciplines, he is interested in how new research on evolution, biology and human nature is challenging theories of international relations, conflict, and cooperation.

His most recent book, Strategic Instincts: The Adaptive Advantages of Cognitive Biases in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2020), challenges the common view that human “cognitive biases” are unfortunate errors or mistakes of the brain that lead inevitably to policy failures, disasters, and wars. Rather, it argues they are adaptive heuristics that evolved because they helped us make good decisions, not bad ones. Under the right conditions, these “strategic instincts” continue to lend a competitive edge in conflict and cooperation. His previous books are, God is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human (Oxford University Press, 2015), which examines the role of religion in the evolution of cooperation, and how cross-culturally ubiquitous and ancient beliefs in supernatural punishment have helped to overcome collective action problems of human society. Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics (Harvard University Press, 2006), with Dominic Tierney, examines how and why popular misperceptions commonly create undeserved victories or defeats in international wars and crises. Finally, Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions (Harvard University Press, 2004), argues that common psychological biases to maintain overly positive images of our capabilities, our control over events, and the future, play a key role in the causes of war.