Is military victory a useful term anymore?

 

The term ‘military victory’ is one that, in the modern world, has come to lose meaning. This is because most of the military engagements that are undertaken tend not to have a logical end, as seen through the way that the United States’ invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq did not come to a conclusion and instead, this country and its allies became bogged down in cycles of conflict (Martel, 2011, pp. 517, 531). The classical military objectives of any nation are to ensure that the enemy is forced into negotiations, or completely disarmed. However, because of the considerable developments that have taken place in recent years, non-state actors such as Daesh and insurgent groups have risen to prominence. Thus, the traditional objective of ensuring that the enemy is fully disarmed has become impossible.

Military victory has therefore essentially gone away because it is rare for warring parties to gain total victory. This is especially when one considers that war has become an extremely cheap enterprise because of the easy access that non-state actors have to weapons. The case of the way that Daesh not only evolved from Al Qaeda in Iraq and was able to have considerable territorial gains in Iraq and Syria within a very short time despite the presence of the United States and its allies, including rebel groups in Syria, shows the way that total victory cannot be attained anymore. A consequence of this situation is that it has led to the development of a scenario within which states can no longer effectively attain their stated military objectives, meaning that the term ‘military victory’ is no longer useful.