Victory has been an elusive concept in recent history. In Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as in our own doctrine. Military Victory is at best a necessary precondition for obtaining assigned political aims - the "better state of peace" in Liddell Hart's terms. At the strategic level, we need to understand how combat operations contribute to a campaigns designated higher political outcomes and how they contribute to a strategy's theory of victory.
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Dr. Frank Hoffman is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Center for Strategic Research at National Defense University. The views expressed are the authors own and do not reflect those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.