Rational Defeat of War: How Leaders Benefit from Poor Battlefield Results

• In Event: Victory and Defeat in War

Abstract

Why do leaders choose to fight? While conventional wisdom focuses on the benefits of victory, few mention leaders could also benefit from defeat. Drawing from two historical Chinese wars and the Iraq-Iran War, this article argues that leaders could use poor battlefield performance to undermine domestic rivals. Costs of war are not equally disturbed among domestic actors, so leaders could strengthen their relative strength vis-a-via domestic rivals if they could pass on losses to rivals. In both Chinese cases, leaders waged war in order to force domestic rivals to fight against an external enemy. In the Iraq-Iran War, leaders in both countries blamed the regular army for poor performance and justified their expansion of the military forces that were directly loyal to them.

Author

• Xiao Han, The University of Hong Kong