Why has strategic success proven elusive? An interesting academic article by Ivan Arreguín-Toft published in International Security just before the 9/11 attacks analogizes wars like the one we have been fighting to the famous “rumble in the jungle” boxing match that Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fought in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1974. Foreman was heavily favored, as he was “the strongest, hardest hitting boxer of his generation.”
The more powerful Foreman’s preparation did not ready him for Ali’s strategy. In the second round, Ali began to cower against the ropes. Arreguín-Toft writes that Foreman’s “punches became a furious blur,” and to the crowd, which was “unaware that the elastic ring ropes were absorbing much of the force of Foreman’s blows, it looked as if Ali would surely fall.” But Foreman tired himself out. His strength became a weapon against him. Ali knocked out an exhausted Foreman in the eighth round.
Similarly, when weak powers confront a superpower like America (and for all its recent success, the jihadist movement remains relatively weak), their most potent tool is turning the enemy’s strength into a weapon against it. The U.S.’s various policy blunders have not just been windfalls for jihadist groups. They have in fact been a central part of how the campaign against America is conceived.
We are up against an enemy that wants to force us to err, and too often our own misapprehensions — about the jihadist movement or the broader strategic environment — have produced serious mistakes that played into the enemy’s hands.
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