Is Strategy Just a Theory of Victory? Notes on an Annoying Buzzword

It has become popular of late to associate strategy with a “theory of victory”. Many policy pieces and journal articles define this as a narrative explanation of why a particular strategy will work—something every strategy must contain, if only implicitly. Others go so far as to insist that a strategy is nothing more than a theory of victory.

This phenomenon is very new. Google Ngram shows the phrase was first widely used during World War II, when it was invoked mostly to discuss the effectiveness of specific capabilities, e.g. strategic bombing. Unsurprisingly, it quickly fell off once this was no longer a live question—the stalemate in Korea hardly elicited a mention. It made a small comeback at the height of Vietnam, but only really entered the military lexicon in the late 70s and early 80s as the US military took a renewed interest in the Soviet threat. Here it referred to defining what victory looks like, not how to achieve it.

Less expectedly, the phrase came roaring back just after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq. The ongoing fighting in Afghanistan played some part, but there was also a marked shift toward discussion of America’s broader priorities in the world. This raised questions about how to reposture the military to fight very different sorts of wars, while avoiding the sorts of quagmires like Iraq and Afghanistan. “Theory of victory” came to mean the proposed plan of accomplishing a victory; it was around this time that it became explicitly linked to strategy.

Strategic Art

Strategy itself is a slippery term, used in slightly different ways in different contexts. In everyday usage, it is simply a plan to accomplish some task, whereas formal military definitions tend to specify the particular end. The US joint doctrinal definition, for instance, is: “A prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multinational objectives.” If strategy is not quite a theory for victory, the connection between them is apparent.

There is a subtle problem with this definition, however. Victories are rarely won in precisely the way the victors anticipate. Few commanders can call their own shots, as Napoleon did in Italy or William Slim in Burma. Wars are complex and messy things, and good strategy requires constant adaptation to circumstance—a system of expedients, as Moltke put it. Even with the benefit of hindsight, the cause of a war’s outcome is not always perfectly clear, as the ongoing debate over strategic bombing bears witness.

"Why, look here, you fool! Melas is at Alessandria with his headquarters. There he will remain until Genoa surrenders. He has in Alessandria his magazines, his hospitals, his artillery, and his reserves. Crossing the Alps here I shall fall upon Melas, cut off his communications with Austria, and meet him here in the plains of Scrivia."

Indeed, the very idea that strategy represents a plan is very recent. From the first adoption of the word into modern languages,¹ strategy was defined more as an art: of “commanding and of skillfully employing the means [the commander] has available”, of “campaigning”, of “effectively directing masses in the theater of war.” The emphasis was decidedly on execution, not planning. As recently as 2001, the US Army’s FM 3-0 Operations defined strategy as: “the art and science of developing and employing armed forces and other instruments of national power in a synchronized fashion to secure national or multinational objectives.” Something one does, not something one thinks.

This is best understood by analogy to tactics, a realm less given to formalism and abstraction. What makes a good tactician? Devising a good plan is certainly part of it, but most tactical concepts are not especially unique—there are only so many tools in the tactical toolkit. The real challenge lies in execution: providing for comms and logistics, ensuring subordinates understand the plan, going through rehearsals, making sure that everyone is doing their job correctly, then putting oneself at the point where things are likely to go wrong and dealing with the unexpected.

Groping for a Path to Victory

If we understand strategy to be the creation and execution of a war plan, does that not still require a “theory of victory”? Part of my objection to this phrase is that it’s often interpreted as a precise defeat mechanism, some series of actions that logically leads to a desired outcome. Such a notion was certainly floated by airpower advocates in the Gulf War, who argued for methodically dismantling Saddam Hussein’s military as a system.

This proved to be a point of contention between Chuck Horner, the commander of the Desert Storm air campaign, and John Warden, who developed the original concept for it. Horner liked Warden’s target nominations and thought his concept sound, but thought that he failed to account for the unexpected—what if Saddam attacked American forces in Saudi Arabia?—while focusing too much on collapsing Iraq’s military system at the expense of destroying their forces in the field. As the man responsible for the outcome of the campaign, Horner understood the inherent uncertainty and only planned the first 72 hours in great detail.

And indeed, subsequent analysis proved him right. Careful target selection certainly increased Coalition effectiveness and reduced casualties, but never induced the promised systemic collapse. Instead, it was the six weeks of unrelenting and unanswerable devastation that compelled many front-line units to surrender at the first sight of Coalition ground forces, while those who continued to resist were so badly worn down that they were easily defeated. The theory of victory was wrong, but US air dominance was so great that it didn’t really matter.

Inducing systemic collapse.

Earlier 20^th-century airpower debates are also instructive. The outbreak of World War II quickly dispelled notions that strategic bombing could win an easy victory, which in turn raised the question of what role it should play. Allied commanders debated priorities: should it target armaments factories, components manufacturers, transportation networks, petroleum production, or the civilian population? Or should it be scrapped entirely, in favor of close-air support and interdiction?

The fog of war lay thick over Germany, but Allied analysts were able to get a reasonable estimate of what worked and what didn’t: petroleum facilities and transportation seemed to produce a good effect, while ball bearing factories and population centers didn’t. This in turn shaped target prioritization. Everyone in Bomber Command started the war with a theory of victory for the air campaign, but it was the careful balance-of-forces assessment and thorough planning that made it effective.

The same could be said on the ground: the British favored prioritizing a push from the Mediterranean, while the Americans wanted to make France the main effort. The Americans were probably going to win that argument no matter what, but the difficulties of the Italian campaign only made their case stronger.

Triumph of the Will

War is a contest of wills, and history teaches us that willpower usually collapses only with military defeat. But a weak defender can occasionally win simply through exhausting his adversary’s willingness to fight in the first place. “Will” is a tricky thing to target directly—most alleged examples are nothing of the sort—but a determined defender who grits his teeth may endure long enough for the enemy to simply give up.

Recent criticisms that Ukraine lacks a theory of victory therefore miss the mark. Ever since their counteroffensives failed to defeat Russia outright, the only question has been whether they can hold out at a cost they are willing to pay. One could argue that sheer endurance is a theory of victory, but that is too general a concept to be very useful, and certainly doesn’t amount to a strategy. It also overlooks the value of simply remaining in the fight: unexpected opportunities sometimes arise late in the game that completely alter the course of a war.

What of those smaller conflicts—the Vietnams, the Iraqs, the Afghanistans—that target a population’s will? Almost by accident, all three morphed into ambitious nation-building projects. Since these were questions of creating enduring institutions, it is reasonable to speak of theories of success, if not victory—defining what success looks like, how to know when it’s been achieved, and how to make it last. However, when military force cannot accomplish strategic objectives on its own strength, we are well outside the realm of military strategy.

Strategic Humility

Everyone goes to war with an idea of how they can win, and a few brilliant exceptions manage to pull it off. But not every campaign is France 1940. Even the best strategists face serious setbacks, and rarely end up winning precisely as they anticipated. The measure of strategic ability is not just the brilliance of the plan, but the ability to adapt to the unexpected. Older writers were correct: it is better to think of strategy as an action, not an idea.

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1. This was before Clausewitz’s inadvertent redefinition of strategy, when the term still referred to what we now call “operational art”.