An Analysis of the Concept of “Victory” in Modern Warfare: With a Focus on the U.S.–Iran War
- 7 hours ago
- 11 min read
Lee Cheol-young
(Director, International Affairs Research Group)
In wars of the past, the concept of victory was clear. Historically, in conventional interstate warfare, victory was defined by physical events that could be clearly witnessed on the battlefield, such as the unconditional surrender of the enemy state, the fall of its capital, the loss of territory, or the conclusion of a treaty formally ratifying its military defeat. Classical strategic thinkers, including Carl von Clausewitz (1984), regarded war as a means of imposing one’s own political will upon an opponent and assumed that destroying the enemy’s physical and political center was the principal strategy leading to victory. This classical approach entrenched the belief that, if the enemy’s field army could be annihilated or disarmed through the overwhelming destructive capacity of military power, victory could be achieved by rendering the enemy’s will to resist or its cost tolerance entirely meaningless.
However, victory in modern warfare is not as clear as it once was. This is because the modern operational environment itself has undergone a paradigm shift from formalized state-to-state battlefronts to irregular warfare involving dispersed networks and hybrid actors. Modern irregular warfare is characterized not only by extreme asymmetry in material capabilities between belligerents, but also by extreme prolongation without a clearly defined point of termination. More decisively, as the central terrain of war has shifted from geographical strategic points to the human domain of “the control and loyalty of civilian populations,” the classical approach of identifying and striking a single center of the enemy has been rendered completely ineffective. In addition, the instrumentalization of digital platforms has elevated the information environment from a secondary element of war to a central battlefield, and the “LikeWar” environment identified by Singer and Brooking (2018), among others, has made it possible to manipulate perceptions of victory or defeat that are entirely disconnected from material reality.
Since President George W. Bush declared the War on Terror in 2001, the United States has been virtually the only country to wage wars by directly deploying large-scale military forces to overseas territories or foreign countries with which it does not share a border, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. However, just as Germany was in the twentieth century, the United States in the twenty-first century has acquired a reputation for being outstanding at the tactical and operational levels but incompetent at the strategic level, a tendency commonly described as “winning the war but losing the peace.” In other words, although it wins on battlefields and in battles through overwhelming military and economic power, doubts deepen as to whether it has truly won the war.
A Multidimensional Redefinition of Victory in Modern Warfare
As the concept of war itself changes in modern warfare, the concept of victory must likewise be redefined. In the modern strategic environment, victory is not an objective physical fact or a fixed condition, but rather belongs entirely to the realm of “political and cognitive judgment,” formed either as someone’s opinion or through the interaction of multidimensional factors. According to the theory of Bartholomees (2008), because victory depends heavily on perspective, the outcome of a war may appear independently to each belligerent, and even if one side has suffered enormous tactical losses, it may legitimately declare victory if it has achieved the strategic objectives that it established for itself. Accordingly, victory and defeat in modern warfare must move beyond binary and discrete concepts and be understood along a continuum of “achievement” and “decisiveness.” A condition in which battlefield success has been achieved and certain short-term political objectives have been secured, but a comprehensive resolution of the political problem has not been reached, is strictly distinguished as “Winning,” whereas the final condition in which the fundamental political problems underlying the conflict have been decisively resolved is defined as “Victory.”
Furthermore, borrowing from Clausewitz’s insights, the dynamics of crushing the enemy’s resistance in order to achieve victory can be formalized through the mathematical formula R = M × W. Here, the enemy’s resistance capacity (R) is expressed as the product of the total amount of its means of resistance (M) and the intensity of its will (W). Because it is nearly impossible to eliminate the enemy’s means of resistance (M) completely in modern warfare, genuine success can be achieved only when the enemy’s will to resist (W) is broken, thereby bringing about the collapse of that will. Whether a great power can break its opponent’s will depends on the nature of the war objectives that it has established.
Sullivan (2007) divides objectives into two categories. Objectives involving “brute force,” which can be controlled by military force alone, such as territorial occupation or regime removal, do not require the target state’s compliance and therefore involve relatively little uncertainty regarding their achievement. By contrast, “coercive” objectives aimed at changing the domestic or foreign policies of an adversary or inducing particular behavior depend entirely on the target state’s voluntary acceptance and compliance. Because such objectives can be achieved only by reaching the target’s concealed psychological threshold, they involve extreme uncertainty in predicting the cost of victory.
Integrating all of these complexities, Fernandez-Osorio and Upadhyaya (2025) presented victory in modern irregular warfare as a functional model composed of five interconnected variables: the achievement of political objectives, the weakening of enemy capabilities, domestic and international legitimacy, post-conflict sustainability, and “narrative resilience.” In this model, “narrative resilience” refers to the ability to construct, maintain, and adapt a consistent account of one’s own success and the legitimacy of one’s resistance despite the enemy’s informational pressure and the ambiguity of events. In modern warfare, it serves as the most decisive central axis for compensating for deficiencies in every other physical dimension and controlling the conflict.
An Analysis of the U.S.–Iran War: Who Has Won?
The war between the United States and Iran, which broke out on February 28, 2026, has continued for an extended period without developing into a full-scale conventional war and provides a useful empirical case demonstrating how an overwhelming superiority in military destructive capacity can result in a strategic stalemate in the face of narratives in the cognitive domain and asymmetries in cost tolerance. According to the theoretical frameworks proposed by Bartholomees and Sullivan, the United States possesses the world’s most advanced precision-strike assets, capabilities for paralyzing command and control systems, and formidable naval and air power. On the basis of this enormous physical destructive capacity (M), the United States can at any time conduct operations inflicting immense tactical damage on Iran’s core military infrastructure and always possesses the capacity to declare overwhelming “Winning” along the continuum of “achievement,” which evaluates strategic execution capability.
However, the political objectives that the United States ultimately seeks with regard to Iran involve inducing fundamental changes in the behavior of the Iranian regime, including the permanent abandonment of Iran’s nuclear program, the suspension of ballistic missile development, and the cessation of financial and weapons support for armed proxy groups in the Middle East. These constitute typical “coercive objectives” that require the voluntary acceptance and compliance of the Iranian system itself. Because such coercive objectives are deeply connected to the unobservable will of the target state to resist (W), they involve enormous uncertainty that severely diminishes the accuracy of prewar estimates of the cost of victory. Although the United States can physically increase the present and anticipated costs that Iran must bear through the use of military force, military power alone cannot directly alter or subjugate the Iranian regime’s foreign-policy orientation or its determination to build anti-American solidarity. As a result, a serious “strategic disconnection” occurs in which increases in the United States’ overwhelming tactical and military effectiveness do not immediately lead to the achievement of its political objectives.
From Iran’s perspective, by contrast, the structure of this conflict provides it with a “superiority in cost tolerance” that is thoroughly advantageous to itself. For the Iranian system, resisting American military pressure and defending its nuclear sovereignty and regional influence constitute vital interests upon which the survival of the regime and the sovereignty of the state depend. For the United States, by contrast, sanctions against Iran and the exercise of military deterrence are merely peripheral and minor interests in the Middle East that are unrelated to its own existential survival. Because of this structural imbalance, Iran possesses a strong determination to willingly absorb enormous losses of life, the destruction of military infrastructure, and national devastation caused by severe economic sanctions. This overwhelming cost tolerance on the part of the weaker actor indefinitely increases the human, material, and political costs that the great power, the United States, must pay to compel Iranian compliance, no matter how overwhelming the firepower it projects. Ultimately, it exercises a deterrent effect that causes the United States to abandon full-scale, decisive military action out of concern that it will exceed the limits of its own cost tolerance.
Under these circumstances, the logic by which Iran declares its own victory follows exactly the same trajectory as the Saddam Hussein model of the 1991 Gulf War or the Anwar Sadat model of the 1973 Middle East War. In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein suffered near-annihilating blows at the tactical and operational levels from the multinational coalition, yet because he achieved his ultimate strategic objective of “regime survival,” he was able to declare the outcome a strategic victory from his own perspective. Likewise, because Iran has maintained its theocratic system intact and preserved its regional influence, thereby achieving the status quo despite severe U.S. precision strikes and comprehensive pressure, it has the right legitimately to claim, according to its own standards, a condition of clear “strategic Winning” or at least “Not losing.” Iran demonstrates outstanding semiotic adaptability by framing the very process of refusing to submit to American military hegemony and enduring resistance to the end as a “demonstration of resolve” and a defense of the spirit of the Islamic Revolution, thereby converting material losses into moral and strategic victory.
Consequently, the two states are situated in a contradictory landscape in which two of the five variables proposed by Fernandez-Osorio and Upadhyaya—“the weakening of enemy capabilities,” represented by U.S. tactical strikes, and “the achievement of political objectives,” represented by the failure of U.S. coercion and the survival of the Iranian regime—directly collide. In this hybrid landscape, where the decisiveness required to consolidate post-conflict peace and “sustainability” are fundamentally unattainable, both sides are barely maintaining their domestic political legitimacy by fully activating mechanisms of “narrative resilience” and the “manipulation of victory” and distributing only symbolic victories favorable to their own populations. The leaderships of both sides actively employ the performative discourse that each side has won in order to control and manage the cycle of crisis without losing face while avoiding the catastrophic result of full-scale war. Ultimately, neither side has secured the decisiveness necessary to break the other’s will completely and terminate the conflict permanently, and they continue in a permanent stalemate of “Tying” and “Not losing” along a sliding-scale continuum.
Modern Warfare and Missions
As the battlefronts of modern warfare become ambiguous and conflicts become extremely prolonged, the central axis of war is shifting from geographical strategic points to the deeper domain of civilian populations. This change in the operational environment sheds new light on the presence and role of missionaries who share their lives with local people. In the history of missions, war was one of the most unavoidable causes of withdrawal for missionaries. However, as modern warfare takes the form of a prolonged stalemate, unlike the temporary full-scale wars of the past, conditions of war may instead become a new field of missionary ministry. The author personally experienced war in the mission field in Israel and came to realize this directly. Many Jews who ordinarily firmly rejected the gospel and responded negatively to it were seen opening their hearts to the gospel through the 2023 Israel–Hamas War and the 2025 Israel–Iran War. As in the words of the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3), hearts devastated by war have paradoxically become fertile soil in which the seeds of the gospel can take root most deeply.
Moreover, the incarnational practice of missionaries who remain beside local people without withdrawing even during a prolonged war becomes the most decisive factor in psychologically disarming local residents who have ordinarily been cynical toward foreigners and Christianity. For an individual missionary, war is an extreme crisis that threatens life, but from the historical perspective of spreading the gospel, it is a valuable opportunity for tightly closed hearts to be opened. The history of missions in Korea also supports this. During the Korean War, numerous missionaries left Korea in accordance with embassy recommendations to evacuate. Nevertheless, some rejected those recommendations and remained on the Korean Peninsula, devoting their lives to refugee relief, medical ministry, and the spreading of the gospel. In the process, some were detained by North Korean forces, became prisoners, or were martyred. Although many missionaries departed amid the devastation of war, it was because of the incarnational resolve of those who remained, prepared to die and willing to share the suffering of the flock left behind, that the Korean church was able to preserve the continuity of its faith even upon the ruins of war and ultimately bring about a great revival.
Christians and Victory
As the war between the United States and Iran empirically demonstrates, victory in modern warfare is no longer a static physical outcome that ends on the battlefield. It is a multidimensional social and political process that is continuously contested, negotiated, and cognitively redefined. Overwhelming military capability and tactical excellence no longer automatically lead to strategic success that guarantees long-term peace. Although the concept of victory as defined by the world constantly fluctuates according to time and circumstance, the essence of the victory given to Christians never changes. One is suddenly reminded of the countless forebears of faith who sacrificed their lives solely to preserve their faith amid the persecution of the ancient Roman Empire. To the eyes of the world at that time, which was governed by the logic of power, their final moments as they vanished like dew upon the execution ground would have appeared merely as futile deaths and miserable defeats. Yet they were the very ones who overcame death through faith and achieved the most glorious victory. This is the victory of the Christian.
Our lives in the modern age are no different. Although we do not face such persecution, at every moment we live in this harsh world while simultaneously waging an invisible and silent struggle against the values of the world. Although we may appear foolish and defeated according to the standards of the world, because we possess the victory already completed upon the cross, we are those who silently walk the path of victory in our daily lives. Finally, the author wishes to conclude this article by introducing a song of praise that provided deep comfort and courage whenever the author’s heart was shaken in the mission field.
Victory
Kang Myung-sik
Do you know what victory is?
Do you know what victory is?
It is to resolutely cut off
The temptation of better and more comfortable possibilities
And to follow only the Lord.
That is victory.
Do you know what victory is?
Do you know what victory is?
It is to laboriously suppress
All the many, many words one wishes to say
And to allow only the Lord to speak.
That is victory.
Whatever the result may be,
If only the Lord is glorified
And the Lord’s peace is within me,
That is victory.
Oh, to completely subdue
The fierce struggle against oneself,
To follow only the Lord,
To allow only the Lord to speak,
And to allow only the Lord to live within me.
(This is victory.)
That is victory.
References
Bartholomees, J. B. (2008). "Theory of Victory." The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 38(2): 25–36.
Clausewitz, C. V. (1984). “On War”. Princeton University Press.
Fernandez-Osorio, A. E. & Upadhyaya. S. (2025). "The anatomy of victory in irregular warfare: a multidimensional framework for command." Small Wars & Insurgencies.
Singer, P. W. & Brooking, E. T. (2018). “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media” Boston: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Sullivan, P. L. (2007). War Aims and War Outcomes: Why Powerful States Lose Small Wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution 51(3): 496–524.
[1] “LikeWar” is a portmanteau of the social-media term “like” and “war,” referring to information warfare aimed at shaping public opinion.