Winning Wars: The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Matthias Strohn, ed. Oxford and Philadelphia: Casemate, 2022.
There are books aplenty about war and strategy. Even so, only a few consider the notion of victory as a concept—Richard Hobbs’ 1979 book the Myth of Victory and William Martel’s Victory in War (2011) are notable exceptions.[1] Even fewer books focus on how victory is imbued with different meaning in different contexts. This focus, then, is the main contribution of Matthais Strohn’s edited collection on Winning Wars, a bringing together of a range of scholars who have answered the question: what does victory look like? in varying times and places.
Hew Strachan opens the book with a nuanced introduction. He notes that the United Kingdom’s Defence Doctrine avoids terms like victory and instead focuses on the idea that war is about maintaining advantage. This theme of the use of military force to attain or maintain an advantage emerges in other chapters, as does Strachan’s suggestion that the West’s engagement in contemporary conflicts shows a divergence between tactics and strategy, ends and means. Other themes that recur throughout the contributions include discussions about the idea, perhaps expressed most clearly in the chapter on Africa by Richard Reid, that war is pursued for objectives such as “ownership, effect, ideas,” with these three broadly translatable to territorial gains, influence, and ideological battles.[2]
Despite these commonalities, however, the chapters also clearly show how the concept of victory is highly context dependent. Each chapter offers up interesting insights. Ali Parchami’s chapter, for example, outlines how Rome demanded the subjugation of all others, the Greeks sought the survival of Greek identity, and Alexander the Great sought victory for himself. John France’s chapter on war in the Middle Ages talks about warfare being endemic and asserts that warfare often took the guise of sieges or the destruction of economic means to challenge an adversary’s legitimacy rather than consisting of open fighting. David Parrott then discusses the rise of standing armies, although he notes that the wars of these times were carried out for dynastic rather than strict reasons of state. Jonathan Riley’s chapter emphasises the role of military technologies in the 1500s-1700s, and the emergence of a military science based on reconnaissance, intelligence, and calculation carried out by gunners and engineers as well as infantry. Lothar Hobelt’s chapter on the First World War revisits the ambiguity of categorizing victory in war, applying metrics to show how one could conclude that France and Germany had both achieved something closer to their respective interests despite Germany being cast as the loser of this war. Working on a similar theme, Jonathan Riley’s second chapter in the book, one focused on the Cold War, suggests that winning could be seen “as a standoff with a tense but stable peace.”[3]
The book also addresses more contemporary conflicts, beginning with an analysis of the UK’s involvement in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan by Daniel Marstan and Carter Malkasian. Their discussion of these post-9/11 wars echoes much of the sentiment of Strachan’s introduction. They note how the constant changes made to the wars’ policy goals made discerning a path to winning problematic, citing Strachan’s earlier works in talking about the absence of strategy and the lack of clear linkages between ends and means.[4] Marston and Malkasian observe the difficulties that emerged in the civil-military space, from a lack of robust dialogue in the early stages to an overreliance on military expertise in the later stages. Richard Kuno’s subsequent chapter on Syria similarly considers the dynamics of power. Taking down Assad would mean dismantling all of the government and societal linkages that are heavily reliant on the Alawite minority. Victory, in this instance, is defined as regime survival. The Assad regime engaged in extraordinary measures to maintain power, purposefully releasing extremist prisoners at the height of mass protests in 2011, for example, in order that the population would choose security over chaos.
From here the chapters change tack, focusing on country case studies that bring in historical and contemporary experiences to help round out discussions about concepts of victory in these places. The chapter on Iran describes a historical narrative that positions Iranians as descendants of great Aryan warriors. For Iranians, Ali Parchami suggests in his second chapter in the text, it is the retention of identity, regime survival, and the flourishing of the Shia community that constitute victory. In keeping with this focus on history, Parchami suggests that Iranians believe in the long game, where one can prevail by biding one’s time such that cultural superiority wins out or by “overcoming occupiers by subverting from within.”[5] Some of these themes continue into the next chapter. Kerry Brown’s piece on China talks about the Chinese emphasis on victimhood, the role of the CCP as a risk management body desiring regime survival, and, most interestingly, suggests that “China is not playing the same game as others, particularly the US.”[6] Here, his assertion that Chinese conceptions of strategy emphasise seeing and exploiting the potential in things rather than shaping them to some external ideal is particularly intriguing. Christopher Tuck’s piece on the Konfrontasi, too, again suggests that clear winners are sometimes hard to identify, with Sukarno eventually losing his position but with the Indonesian military winning great influence; Richard Reid’s chapter on Africa points out that destabilisation can be seen as winning for some; whilst Aaron Edwards work on the IRA points out that losers must recognise that they have lost and must be reconciled with. Andrew Monaghan’s chapter on Russia then introduces us to the notion that the ability to suffer can be a form of victory. Indeed they note there is a particular Russian term, stoikost, that encapsulates the ideals of courage, resilience and defiance which support this notion that the capacity to suffer is victory.[7] Monaghan suggests that, in contemporary times, Russia’s emphasis is on taking out the leadership first, then the infrastructure and economy of an enemy, such that the armed forces are targeted last of all—though the current events in Ukraine suggest that the Russian strategy is one of a form of siege warfare.
After these country-focused chapters the book then wavers a little. It moves to a chapter by Nicholas Rees that discusses peacebuilding in the context of winning the peace. Although useful enough in reiterating key emphases on peacebuilding needing to be locally driven, context specific and political in nature, this chapter feels a little out of pace with the rest of the text. However, the final chapter works well to try to bring the many threads present in the book together.
Andrew Sharpe’s closing chapter titled “So, What is Winning?” brings the book full circle. It emphasises again that military force is about maintaining advantage. The Roman conception of war as absolutely subjugating the enemy is an aberration. However, the suggestion that a military power, such as Rome, might construct a narrative of victory out of a string of lost battles is not so unusual. Victory can be wrought to suit. This fits with the understanding that who wins is not often clear—both at a national level and within a domestic jurisdiction too. And, it seems as if this conundrum has simply become more complicated with the suggestion, coming from a reading of the chapters on Chinese and Russian strategy, in particular, that the armed forces might be the last, rather than the first, line of defence.
The book…contributes a wide range of interesting material to ongoing debates about the future of war, the place of hybrid or grey operations as well as reminding us about the role of narratives, myth, and belief in shaping our understandings of what constitutes a win.
The contributions in the text are easy to follow and highly interesting to read. The book is also very timely. It contributes a wide range of interesting material to ongoing debates about the future of war, the place of hybrid or grey operations as well as reminding us about the role of narratives, myth, and belief in shaping our understandings of what constitutes a win. Although Martel’s Victory in War considers some similar material—including one chapter with some country comparisons of different notions of victory—his text is mainly focused on the experience of the United States. The diverse sites of inquiry covered in this text are therefore the main strength of the work despite the lack of diversity in its authorship. Thus, it seems a missed opportunity to tap into the rich scholarship beyond its predominantly UK-based and male authorship for the sake of its insights as well as for the benefit of academe as a professional community.
B.K. Greener is a Professor of International Relations at Massey University, New Zealand and has produced three books and numerous articles and chapters on international security-related topics such as international policing, the role of defence forces in supporting foreign policy, and security provision in peace and stability operations.
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Header Image: An image from the Korean War (Harold M. Lambert/Getty)
Notes:
[1] See Richard Hobbs, The Myth of Victory in War: What is Victory in War? (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1979) and William C. Martel, Victory in War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
[2] Richard Reid, “The Ambiguity of Victory: The Spectrum of ‘Winning’ in African History”, in Winning Wars; The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Edited by Matthias Strohn, 213-228. Oxford and Philadelphia: Casemate, 2020, 213.
[3] Johnathan Riley, “’Winning in the Cold War and the Nuclear Age, 1945-1990”, in in Winning Wars; The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Edited by Matthias Strohn, 115-126. Oxford and Philadelphia: Casemate, 2020, 119
[4] Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian, “Western Strategic Goals and ‘Winning’ in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001”, in Winning Wars; The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Edited by Matthias Strohn, 127-148. Oxford and Philadelphia: Casemate, 2020, 127-8.
[5] Ali Parchami, “The Impact of History, Politics and Religion: Three Contrasting Conceptions of ‘Winning’ in Iran since 1979”, in Winning Wars; The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Edited by Matthias Strohn, 167-182. Oxford and Philadelphia: Casemate, 2020, 171.
[6] Kerry Brown, “The Chinese Concept of “Winning””, in Winning Wars; The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Edited by Matthias Strohn, 183-196. Oxford and Philadelphia: Casemate, 2020, p186.
[7] Andrew Monaghan, “Russian Views of ‘Winning’: ‘Velikaya Pobeda’ and ‘pobedomosnaya voina’, in Winning Wars; The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Edited by Matthias Strohn, 243-260. Oxford and Philadelphia: Casemate, 2020, 248.