[Wellsy]

I was recently introduced to the notion that battles and wars aren’t strictly about body count and destruction based on a smashing of military might but about destroying the enemy’s willingness to fight while in pursuit of objectives.

The US most certainly has the most powerful military in the world yet they have lost many wars with insurgencies against clearly less militarily strong enemies. And I think of how one might think to use might to crush an enemies will. But this doesn’t seem a given when I think of the nazi occupation of Greece where many were slaughtered to demoralize the Greeks and it only emboldened resistance.

Many fights don’t end with the death of every single enemy as in a video game but reaching a point in which they feel like they can no longer fight. Many a siege in the past was successful because of demoralizing people within such that a single person opens the gates more so than always a ramp to charge in. It wasn’t enough in itself to beat back Nazis but wasn’t insignificant either and not isolated from broader fighting.

What is the balance between a peoples fighting spirit and objective means of force?

[Igor Antunov]

Achieving your political objectives fully or partially in the face of opposition by means of military force. i.e Forcing a diplomatic outcome favorable to your own terms. That is winning a war. It's so simple.

[froggo]

The one who wages the war is automatically the loser. Even if they annihilate their opponent, the Defender is victorious in our remembrance (at least until all the history books are edited... but at least for the next several hundred, maybe thousand years, I think it will be pretty difficult for any one power to dictate the terms of what is the 'valid history' of any crisis.)