The Underdog Superpower

In August 2024, former vice president Mike Pence and Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation argued in the Washington Post that the United States has a duty to defend Taiwan. They praised the United States’ role as a global superpower and asked, “What is distance to a global superpower? . . . America remains the world’s only true superpower, fully capable of projecting forces to every corner of the earth.” While the authors are correct about the United States’ dominant global role, they understate the operational complexity of applying military power in an adversary’s backyard. This issue is important to consider, given that support from the American public for defending Taiwan is higher now than it has ever been. This public favor should be tempered by military professionals and policymakers, as operations within range of China’s defense forces present challenges that the U.S. military has not dealt with in generations. With that in mind, the decision to commit forces to a Taiwan conflict should not be made hastily. While many tools are available, a wise superpower employs the tactics that have the highest odds of success. A superpower’s relative power when operating in an adversary’s backyard is less than its absolute power globally. If military action is required in China’s backyard, the United States cannot expect to fight like a dominant power, achieving an overmatch and winning handily. Instead, it will need to adopt the agile tactics of an underdog.

While many tools are available, a wise superpower employs the tactics that have the highest odds of success.

After decades as a superpower, the United States is unaccustomed to being on the weaker side of a conflict. In 1991, in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the United States demonstrated its vast power projection and decisively defeated the Iraqi army in days. During the Global War on Terror, the United States crossed land and sea without interference to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, in Syria, a U.S. special forces team leader can destroy ISIS strongholds with precision and without endangering himself or his team. These displays of battlefield superiority have imbued an entire generation of military and political leaders with a sense of superiority. A better term might be hubris, as this way of thinking is founded on overconfidence and an underestimation of adversaries. Senior leaders, conditioned by decades of maneuver, air, and information superiority, tend to assume that the United States must represent the militarily superior side in any conflict. This attitude, in turn, influences decisions on force development, organization, and military objectives.

If the U.S. joint force takes such an approach in the South China Sea, it will face multiple dilemmas. A dominant superpower, as described by Pence and Feulner, is “fully capable of projecting forces to every corner of the earth. Distance has no bearing on our responsibility to safeguard American interests.” Dominant powers often demonstrate military strength in order to deter a change in the status quo or to compel a weaker power to comply with demands. In other words, they sometimes “escalate to de-escalate.” These actions would signal that the United States is the stronger power, and that any interference would be met with overwhelming force.

Age-old concepts like interior lines and new Chinese military capabilities offset the relative superiority of U.S. military might. In any Taiwan contingency, China would enjoy the advantages of interior lines. A line of operation conveys a military force from its bases to the enemy. When a force spreads outward from a central point, interior lines allow for faster and less costly movement, resupply, air defense, and electronic warfare protection. Alternatively, a force forms exterior lines when converging on an enemy from multiple directions. History offers many examples of successful land battles using exterior lines. Exterior lines in oceanic theaters such as the Pacific, however, require substantial resources to protect and sustain.

▲ Figure 1: The View from China. Source: Andrew Rhodes, “East Asia and the Pacific,” Thinking in Space, 2023.

In the Indo-Pacific theater, relative distances are significant. Consider mapmaker Andrew Rhodes’ image (Fig. 1) above, with Taiwan at the center. Each potential U.S. approach — from the Philippines in the south, from Guam in the center, and from South Korea and Japan in the north — is within range of Chinese anti-ship/anti-access detection. China is about 400 miles away from the Philippines, and about 100 miles from Taiwan; in contrast, Hawaii is over 5,000 miles from both places. Given this distance, the United States would have to fight just to get to the fight. Long exterior operational lines incur higher risk, as they present adversaries with increased opportunities to disrupt, delay, and deny operations. In a combat situation, China could exploit the natural vulnerabilities of exterior lines, using its substantial military investments to achieve dominance in the Pacific theater.

▲ Figure 2: How China Could Blockade Taiwan, Scenario 3. Source: Bonny Lin et al., “How China Could Blockade Taiwan,” CSIS, August 22, 2024.

China’s weapons capabilities and locations give it further near-abroad advantages. As the United States waged the Vietnam War, it did so with freedom of naval maneuver, which enabled ship-to-shore fighter attacks, uninterrupted personnel and munitions resupply, and long-range bombing; still, victory was elusive. There will be no such freedom of maneuver in China’s near abroad. Beijing’s investments in the South China Sea have exemplified the term Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2AD) — the combination of sensors, weapons, and capabilities that prevent an opposing force from entering — and are continuing to grow larger. While the United States focuses its military spending on global presence, China’s military spending is largely focused on the first and second island chains, those islands closest to its mainland. In August 2024, the CSIS ChinaPower series outlined how China could quarantine or blockade Taiwan. Figure 2 from that series shows that any intervention in the South China Sea would face a multidomain operational kill box, deliberately built and refined to prevent the United States and its partners from intervening militarily. Dominant power tactics that are usually peaceful — like shows of force and freedom-of-navigation operations — could be met with a response, lethal or not, within the Chinese sphere of influence. If a miscalculation occurs and violence ensues, Chinese anti-ship, anti-air, and long-range artillery could quickly cause unacceptable U.S. losses. Given the geographic realities and China’s strong capabilities in its near abroad, U.S. military planners should avoid seeking dominance and instead use the tools of the underdog in crafting military objectives.

Tools of the Underdog

When one side has less power than the other, it is by definition the underdog; however, when the weaker side accepts risks and aggressively tries to win against the odds, it demonstrates a scrappy mentality that is conducive to success. In his book David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell observed a variety of underdogs and misfits as they battled more powerful adversaries, and he asserted that approaching challenges with an underdog mentality unlocks a bevy of tools and tactics that are beyond a ruling power’s imagination, exploiting its hubris. A review of six underdog campaigns in modern history reveals three underdog tactics that could be useful in future warfare: novel use of readily available things (NURAT), deception, and avoiding adversary strengths. The combination of one or more of these tactics demonstrates an underdog mentality and should contribute to success.

A review of six underdog campaigns in modern history reveals three underdog tactics that could be useful in future warfare.

Vignette 1: T.E. Lawrence in Arabia, 1917

The story of T.E. Lawrence and his Arab irregulars is relevant: it provides an example of a major power — the United Kingdom — employing small bands of guerrilla forces against another major power — the Ottoman Empire — within that power’s near abroad. The United Kingdom made ingenious use of available technologies in this asymmetrical fight. Dynamite, for instance, was broadly available due to its use in railway construction. Lawrence and his fighters used dynamite to destroy remote Ottoman rail lines. Lawrence’s tactics were also deceptive: strikes on railways and bridges created an impression of a much larger force. The Ottomans responded by spreading their forces thin to secure their outposts, leaving fewer garrison forces to defend against conventional British assaults later in the war. Lawrence also avoided his adversary’s strengths during the seizure of the port of Aqaba: instead of engaging in a pitched battle supported by British naval guns, Lawrence led his guerillas across miles of vast desert to surprise and overwhelm Aqaba’s loosely defended desert fortifications. By embracing the role of the underdog, the Arab irregulars were able to inflict serious damage on a power much larger than them, and Lawrence’s leadership in this fight provides a model for special forces’ advice and assistance missions worldwide. The Ottoman Empire collapsed for a variety of reasons, but Lawrence’s Arab uprising hastened its fall.

Vignette 2: Finland in the Winter War, 1941

In 1941, the Soviet Union sought to quickly seize Finland in a rapid advance across a narrow stretch of shared border. Knowing it could not compete against the dominant Soviet forces, Finland prepared for an asymmetric defense. For anti-tank warfare, the Finns mixed high-proof alcohol, gasoline, and tar in wine bottles, inventing the Molotov cocktail. When thrown, the cocktails’ flaming, sticky substance would enter enemy tanks’ air hatches, suffocating engines and crew members alike. Finnish soldiers also used their superior knowledge of the snowy terrain to decimate the Soviets with sniper, demolition, and hit-and-run tactics. Their snow and ice equipment — including machine guns on skis — gave maximum mobility to their fighters. One Finnish tactic — named motti, or “chopped firewood” — involved sending ski troopers to attack and “cut apart” road-bound enemy units from the flanks and rear. Deceiving the Soviets, the Finns hid anti-tank and machine-gun posts in well-camouflaged ambush positions and baited Soviet forces to attack targets accessible only by roads surveilled by those posts. Motti tactics did not focus on Soviet strengths, but instead exploited their weaknesses, often doing so during vulnerable periods (while in convoy or at rest). Although the Finns ceded territory, their motti tactics helped prevent total occupation, a fate that befell neighboring Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.

Vignette 3: The United States in Normandy, 1944

The United States planned the D-Day landings from a position of disadvantage. In 1943, when U.S., British, and Soviet leaders agreed on an Allied invasion, the Allies had 37 divisions compared to the Axis’ 60. To secure a beachhead against those odds, the United States invested in hundreds of “Higgins Boat” amphibious landing craft. In addition, the innovative Norden bombsight enabled precision bombing from the air to suppress and attack defenses. The selection of Normandy instead of Calais was deceptive, as Calais was closer to German lines. In general, U.S. deception efforts in support of the D-Day landings were legendary, ranging from General Patton using a “Ghost Army” of inflatable tanks to suggest a Calais landing to a fake radio transmission that described the Normandy landings as a feint. In this example, the Allies did not avoid the adversary’s strength; they attacked Fortress Europe along the coast that Nazi Germany planned to defend. But their array of innovations and creative deceptions enabled them to gain a foothold — and eventually, victory — in Europe.

Vignette 4: Egypt in the Yom Kippur War, 1973

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel performed well and embarrassed its Arab opponents. Six years later, Egypt and Syria were determined to retaliate. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt’s forces acquired new Soviet surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank Sagger missiles to counter Israeli air supremacy and armored advantage. In addition, Egypt developed high-pressure water hoses to shape the banks of the Suez Canal into ramps, allowing for a mechanized assault. Assuming the canal to be an impenetrable obstacle, Israel was unprepared for the attack. The innovative Suez crossing, undertaken on a Jewish holiday, created a momentary period of relative advantage for Egypt. The shock of the attack took a toll on Israelis that was as much psychological as it was physical. In addition to using surprise as a tactic, Egypt combined its assaults in the south with Syrian assaults from the Golan Heights in the north. The Egyptian military actively attacked Israeli strengths — air power and armored warfare — with the latest Soviet technology, influencing force development in the United States for the next decade. Overall, the Arabs adopted an underdog mentality by launching an attack during a Jewish holiday at a location the Israeli military thought was impenetrable, exploiting the hubris of the Israeli military to achieve political objectives.

Vignette 5: Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, 2020–2023

In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenian defenders enjoyed an advantage along fortifications that had protected ethnic Armenians in the disputed territory for over 30 years. To overcome this relative disadvantage, Azerbaijan acquired Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 drones that overwhelmed the Armenian defenders with superior sensing, targeting, and destructive capability. The Azerbaijanis also creatively employed older equipment to tip the balance: they repurposed biplanes — futile in modern air combat — in remotely piloted kamikaze attacks on the Armenians. In 2020, Azerbaijan decided against a ground assault on superior Armenian defensive lines and instead used drones to pinpoint precision targets for indirect fire. While both Armenia and Azerbaijan possessed similar Soviet-era military hardware, Azerbaijan surprised the Armenians — and the world — with advanced Turkish and Israeli equipment, which allowed it to overcome Armenia’s defensive advantages. As a result, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict ended with Armenia ceding the disputed territory to Azerbaijan.

Vignette 6: Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine War, 2022–present

So far, Ukrainian innovation has thwarted Russia’s attempt to seize the country by integrating Western munitions, modern drones, and unmanned maritime surface vessels. Mirroring U.S. investments in decoy tanks during World War II, Ukraine has invested in a “Potemkin army” of plastic and wood tanks, howitzers, and radars. But nothing has been more essential to the Ukrainian command and control system as the Starlink constellations. Starlink, free for the Ukrainian military, has become the backbone of the Ukrainian military’s communication. It unites command and control, fires, and terminal guidance for drones. As the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues, the Ukrainians are using deception to gain advantages against their larger, more powerful enemy. Many Russian propaganda videos aim to highlight battlefield victories, but actually feature the destruction of makeshift decoys that Ukrainians have either contracted or built, on site. The Ukrainian case also provides two examples — one positive and one negative — of an underdog choosing to avoid adversary strengths. First is the 2023 Kherson offensive, in which Ukraine unintentionally signaled an imminent attack in the direction of Kherson, causing the Russians to move to the south, which in turn opened an opportunity for the Ukrainians to seize Kharkiv, to the east. In this instance, a dynamic situation enabled the underdog to succeed in an area of momentary dominant power weakness. The 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, on the other hand, is an example of an unsuccessful attack on an adversary strength. While the Russians proved mediocre in their initial attack on Ukraine, their expertise in creating multilayered defensive lines has proved formidable. The failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive — even when aided by advanced Western equipment and munitions — supports the hypothesis that underdogs should avoid adversary strengths.

Analysis

In five of the six cases above, the underdog’s actions led to victory, and in one case the conflict is ongoing. The Finns inflicted thousands of causalities on the Soviet Union and forced them to transition from an invading force into a defense along the Finnish border; although the Finns ceded territory, they did not become a Soviet republic like neighboring Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. The United States and its allies, following the D-Day landing in 1944, went on to capture Berlin in 1945. Egypt took Israel by surprise, making large gains; however, Israel later adapted and reversed its losses. In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan achieved a decisive victory, ending the decades-long conflict by forcing Armenia to cede the disputed territory. The Russia-Ukraine war continues unabated, despite many analysts’ assessments that the powerful Russian military would conquer Ukraine quickly.

▲ Table 1: Evidence of Underdog Tactics in Six Vignettes

Underdog tactics are not always the best methods for achieving success. Fighting like an underdog requires an acceptance of risk that might not be tolerable or acceptable to decisionmakers. The 1991 Gulf War is an example of the opposite of the underdog mentality: an overmatch mindset. In that case, the United States and partners had a relative advantage in every instrument of national power, built an overwhelming force in nearby bases, and attacked on their terms with overwhelming odds. When the dominant power has superior capabilities — such as an ability to sustain and protect lines of operation — and desires a quick and decisive victory, that power can adopt an overmatch mindset. Underdog tactics do not preclude large-scale conventional operations; in each of the historical vignettes detailed above, the underdog campaigns complemented conventional objectives. Combining techniques creates multiple dilemmas for adversaries, while also conserving finite conventional resources.

Fighting like an underdog could increase the odds of success. Political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft concluded in How the Weak Win Wars that the weaker party succeeds against dominant powers about 63.6 percent of the time when it uses an opposite approach but only 28.5 percent of the time when it uses the same approach as the adversary. This broader analysis aligns with the results from the brief vignettes to suggest a correlation between underdog tactics and success. Since exterior line vulnerabilities and anti-access and area-denial realities flip relative power ratios against the United States in an adversary’s near abroad, recommendations for operating within that environment should adopt the tactics of the underdog.

Recommendations

Underdog tactics could be used in multiple ways to affect the outcome in a potential Taiwan contingency. Any recommendations offered without situational details are conjecture, of course; however, borrowing from historical examples can inform future actions.

The first underdog tactic is “novel use of readily available things.” Given China’s advanced electronic warfare and anti-satellite capabilities, acquiring technologies outside of the space and cyber domains could help the United States hedge against debilitating command and control disruption. The fleets of unmanned surface vessels and unmanned aerial vehicles already in development by the Armed Services could prove to be a future novel use of readily available resources. Used dynamically, unmanned technologies enable outsized impact without risking lives, mirroring the motti tactics of the Finnish Winter War.

The second underdog tactic, deception, requires close interagency coordination to implement creative efforts that increase the chances of success. U.S. Special Operations Command has already invested in various small headquarters and other infrastructure in the South China Sea region and could either launch deception operations with these forces or do so in conjunction with those from other agencies. Deception efforts could resemble Patton’s Ghost Army or involve a massive information campaign that supports a similar feint from a likely yet incorrect location. Mark Cancian’s 2021 CSIS report on inflicting surprise, for instance, provided examples of creative deception operations capable of catching adversaries off guard and exploiting their vulnerabilities. The U.S. special operations community has a reputation for innovation and creativity as scrappy underdogs. Congress can amplify those efforts and underwrite risk with the right authorizations.

Underdogs tend to avoid adversaries’ strengths. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt chose to use anti-tank missiles because Israel had demonstrated domination in a tank-on-tank matchup in 1967. When planning operations in China’s near abroad, the United States should avoid enemy strengths like electronic warfare, anti-ship missiles, and anti-aircraft defenses. Instead of planning for a pitched sea battle, the United States could deploy swarms of disposable undersea and high-altitude drones to undermine China’s ability to maintain a naval blockade. In addition, unique Taiwanese defenses on the island could disrupt Chinese objectives. Finally, threatening Chinese ports and bases worldwide could divert Beijing’s limited power projection capabilities. All of these actions could impact Chinese forces, and a strategy that combines more than one of these tactics could have a cumulative effect greater than the sum of its parts.

Adopting an underdog mindset might be among the most difficult challenges for U.S. leaders. As with many presuppositions of the mind, the first step toward overcoming implicit biases is to acknowledge and actively address them. Tackling implicit hubris is especially challenging for leaders who have spent their formative years fighting the Global War on Terror, against adversaries without supremacy in any wartime domain. In their essay “Propositions on Military Deception,” Donald Daniel and Katherine Herbig note that great powers often lack experience in deception plans and need to “overcome the inertia involved in creating or revivifying them.” Leaders should challenge themselves and their staffs to appreciate and understand enemy advantages, and to accept their own relative disadvantages in certain situations. Doing so can unlock the innovation and creativity to think like an underdog.

Tackling implicit hubris is especially challenging for leaders who have spent their formative years fighting the Global War on Terror.

Conclusion

Humans have always appreciated tales of underdogs who win against the odds. The biblical tale of David and Goliath resonates because it tells a familiar story, one that readers want to hear and are excited to repeat. David used readily available technology — a sling — and avoided Goliath’s strengths with sword and shield. Readers can appreciate the underdog mentality, one that accepts necessary risk to achieve the deception required to surprise an opponent. Despite the odds (or maybe because of them), the underdog exudes a scrappy resilience that is hard to defeat.

Conflict with China over Taiwan is not a sure thing. The United States is not treaty-bound to defend Taiwan, and there is no credible intelligence that President Xi has ordered a timeline for an invasion. The analysis in this review is just as applicable to Russia’s or Iran’s near abroad as it is to China’s. In any region, a superpower’s relative power when operating in an adversary’s backyard is less than its absolute power globally. And that disparity can be amplified by that adversary’s investments in anti-access, area denial, long-range precision missiles, diplomatic relations with nearby states, and economies of scale. Given strategic logic and these historical vignettes, it is clear that underdog tactics are more effective in an adversary’s near abroad than campaigns that seek dominant overmatch. Most importantly, adopting the mindset of the scrappy underdog can help a fighting force to shed hubristic biases, accept necessary risk, and open itself to creative solutions.

Scott Pence is a U.S. Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and serves as a senior military fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.