Wars without winners : Rethinking victory in 21st century

AMID the shifting contours of modern conflict, the very interpretation of military victory has become elusive, fragmentary and increasingly contested. The traditional correlation between battlefield supremacy and political resolution has fractured and given way to a far more complex reality.

From the ruins of Gaza to the contested Line of Control between India and Pakistan, recent conflicts have exposed a fundamental truth articulated by scholar Robert Mandel in his seminal work 'The Meaning of Military Victory': achieving military success on the battlefield no longer guarantees strategic victory.

This transformation demands a comprehensive reassessment of what victory means in an era dominated by limited wars, asymmetric conflicts and the enduring presence of non-state actors.

The promise of total victory, so confidently proclaimed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his campaign against Hamas, exemplifies this contemporary paradox.

Since October 2023, Netanyahu has repeatedly declared that Israel stands "on the path to absolute victory," with Hamas's destruction "just months away." Yet, nearly two years into the conflict, Hamas remains operationally capable, having successfully negotiated a ceasefire. Hamas has shown resilience, with many of its 25,000 fighters still active.

Despite unprecedented destruction in Gaza — where the UN reports that 80 per cent of residential housing and 89 per cent of water infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed — Israel has failed to achieve its stated objective of eliminating Hamas as a military and political force.

The shifting goalposts of Israeli operations, from Rafah as "Hamas's last bastion" to Gaza City as "one of two last strongholds", reveal how the pursuit of total victory has evolved into an endless campaign with no clear aim.

This Israeli experience mirrors a broader pattern identified by Mandel, who distinguishes sharply between military victory and strategic victory. According to his framework, military victory involves defeating the opponent in combat and reducing its ability to continue operations — a purely tactical achievement.

Strategic victory, however, requires establishing enduring control over the defeated nation, transforming its political and economic systems and ensuring legitimate functioning within the international environment.

By these criteria, Israel's Gaza campaign — despite overwhelming military superiority and apparent tactical success — has failed to produce strategic victory. The humanitarian catastrophe — over 47,000 Palestinians killed and the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure — has isolated Israel diplomatically while strengthening Hamas's political narrative among Palestinians and throughout the Muslim world.

The recent India-Pakistan conflict of May 2025 provides another example of how both sides can claim victory in limited wars with restricted objectives. Following the Pahalgam attack, India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, conducting aerial strikes on nine sites across Pakistan and PoK. Pakistan retaliated, targeting Indian military bases.

After four days of intense combat, both countries announced a ceasefire on May 10. India claimed success in striking terrorist infrastructure and demonstrating resolve, while Pakistan asserted it had defended its sovereignty and downed multiple Indian aircraft. Each side framed the outcome as a victory, despite the stalemate.

This mutual declaration of victory, while appearing contradictory, reflects a fundamental characteristic of limited war: when political objectives are constrained and neither side seeks the complete destruction of the other, ambiguous outcomes become not only possible but also expected.

Perhaps no contemporary conflict illustrates the changed meaning of victory more starkly than Saudi Arabia's decade-long military intervention in Yemen against the Houthis. When Saudi Arabia launched Operation Decisive Storm on March 26, 2015, it promised a swift six-week campaign to restore President Hadi's government, roll back the Houthi takeover of Sanaa and eliminate Iranian influence on the kingdom's southern border.

The coalition initially comprised more than 10 nations, with substantial US and UK intelligence support, enjoyed complete air superiority and conducted over 2,400 sorties in the first month alone.

By every conventional measure of military power — technology, resources, international backing and firepower — Saudi Arabia possessed overwhelming advantages over a tribal insurgency based in one of the world's poorest nations. Yet, 10 years later, the Saudi military has achieved none of its original objectives. President Hadi remains in exile, the Houthis have consolidated their control over Yemen's regions and Iranian influence has increased rather than diminished.

The phenomenon of limited war fundamentally alters the calculus of victory. Limited wars pursue narrower goals —territorial or policy gains —using constrained means to avoid escalation. In such conflicts, victory becomes "heavily dependent on perspective" rather than objective military metrics.

What constitutes victory at the tactical level — winning battles, inflicting casualties, capturing terrain —may bear little relationship to strategic success. The US learned this lesson in Vietnam, where winning every major engagement proved "irrelevant" to the war's ultimate outcome. The same pattern emerged in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This reveals a sobering reality that strategic victories are exceptionally rare in modern warfare. The modern battlefield is marked by stalemates and ambiguous ceasefires.

The difficulty of achieving strategic victory stems partly from the changing nature of the enemy. Modern conflicts increasingly involve networked enemies like non-state actors, mercenaries, terrorist organisations and insurgent movements that lack hierarchical and centralised command structures.

When fighting such opponents, military action may produce localised effects, but other parts of the network simply ignore these effects and continue fighting.

The US has degraded the core of al-Qaida, yet its franchises persist and mutate into new groups, like the Islamic State. This reality makes traditional notions of decisive victory nearly impossible to achieve against asymmetric threats.

The implications for future conflicts are profound. As Mandel argues, nations should limit participation in wars to those "absolutely necessary for securing vital interests, where the chances, scale and significance of the benefits will justify the efforts."

Victory in the 21st century requires careful formulation of war objectives, precise selection of forces, credible exit strategies and recognition of the "vagueness of strategic victory." It demands shifting from technology- to human-focused strategies that prevent destabilisation and promote civil society.

Until political and military leaders recognise this reality and adjust their objectives accordingly, the phenomenon of wars without clear winners will define the security landscape, consuming resources while producing outcomes that resolve nothing.

Lt Gen SK Saini (retd) is former Vice Chief of Army staff.