Throughout history, starting and then losing unprovoked wars has been a reliable way for dictators to forfeit their grip on power, either at the vengeful hands of the countries they targeted, via palace coups by disgruntled elites or occasionally even through uprisings by ordinary citizens weary of making sacrifices for a tyrant's deadly delusions. Within days of losing the Falklands Islands War to the United Kingdom in 1982, Argentina's General Leopoldo Galtieri, the leader of the embattled military junta that had launched the war to head off popular demands for new elections, resigned his office and started the process of...