Ivan Arreguín-Toft

Ivan Arreguín-Toft is a postdoctoral fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

His current research focuses on the the widely assumed but poorly researched question of the utility of barbarism—the systematic and deliberate violation of the laws of war in pursuit of a military objective—as a strategy in war. This research is expected to result in a book manuscript, tentatively entitled Worse than Death: The [F]utility of Barbarism in War.

He has published a journal-length treatment of his theory of asymmetric conflict in International Security and his book, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict, was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2005.

Contributions

Why victory became defeat in Iraq
COMMENTARY | March 89, 2007
As long as there was an army to fight, the U.S. was unstoppable, writes a Harvard scholar who studies asymmetric conflicts. But once we lost the Iraqi people, all the power in the world wasn’t enough to achieve victory. (Second of two parts.)

How a superpower can end up losing to the little guys
COMMENTARY | March 82, 2007
A Harvard scholar explores the implications of his recent research on asymmetric conflicts, which shows that strong actors are losing to the weak more and more often over time, and gleans some important lessons about the United States and Iraq. (First of two parts.)