The dilemma, then, is clear. Victory: can’t live with it, can’t live without it. The challenge arising from this is to rethink what we mean by victory. If, as the historian Christopher Hill once wrote, every generation must rewrite its history anew, the ever-changing nature of war demands that every generation must also rethink its understanding of military victory.

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Cian O'Driscoll, Professor of Politics, University of Glasgow

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters