How do you win a war in 2026?
The West wins endless battles but never the wars, because we still do not understand what victory looks like. We have to better understand the game before we play it.
Every time a Western-style military campaign stalls, the same complaint resurfaces.
“Israel is not allowed to win.”
“The West has forgotten how to win.”
After twenty years in Afghanistan, after Iraq, and after endless recent arguments over Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, or Russia’s grey-zone war against Europe, these statements are commonly heard but entirely incorrect.
We are not forbidden from winning, and we have not forgotten. The problem is that we lack a serious definition of victory for the kinds of conflicts we are actually fighting.
In some modern wars, victory is legible. The Russia-Ukraine war is the obvious example. The front may be frozen for long stretches, and the war may be in a stalemate for now, but the end states remain recognisable. A Russian victory would mean Kyiv forced into subordination, territorial losses locked in, and Ukraine’s sovereignty broken in practice even if not fully erased on paper. A Ukrainian victory would mean preserving sovereignty, denying Moscow control over the country’s future, and making aggression fail at a cost Russia cannot justify. However difficult the war becomes, the political outcomes remain clear.
That clarity dissolves in the conflicts Western publics most often debate through slogans. What does it mean to “defeat” the Iranian regime? What does it mean to “destroy” Hamas or Hezbollah? What does it mean to defeat the Taliban, an insurgency embedded in society, supported by cross-border sanctuaries, and sustained by ideology rather than battlefield arithmetic? Even if we enable Kyiv to beat Russia on Ukrainian soil, what does victory look like against ongoing Russian subversion, intimidation and information warfare in other Western countries? We, by which I mean what is generally termed “The West”, do not appear to understand the game. Our militaries will offer military solutions, but they are only one part of victory in modern warfare, which is why they ultimately fail to deliver decisive results.
These enemies are not the Nazis in 1945 or Argentina in 1982 or Iraq in 1991, with a clear military force waiting to be smashed in a climactic encounter. There is no decisive military solution for political or religious movements, criminal and other malign international networks, proxy structures, or revanchist states operating below the threshold of conventional war. We are seeing this in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, time and again.
Western political language still defaults to the grammar of decisive battle. We talk as if sufficient firepower will eventually force a clear, positive outcome. When that outcome never arrives, leaders either quietly lower expectations or keep escalating tactically, pretending that strategy will somehow emerge from accumulated strikes. “One more bomb” becomes a substitute for an end state. As we have seen time and time again, you cannot simply bomb your way to victory against enemies of this nature. “If only we had been allowed to bomb them more,” is a complete misdiagnosis of the situation.
A more serious account of “victory” begins with the nature of the threat. A threat has three elements: intent, capability, and opportunity. An enemy is dangerous when it wants to harm you, can harm you, and has opportunities to act. Modern strategy has to address all three.
That framework immediately clarifies why deterrence alone is insufficient against ideological enemies. Deterrence can reduce action, impose costs and alter timing and methods, but it does not erase intent. The Iranian regime still exists, so it will continue to seek regional dominance and Western retreat. Hamas remains in total control of its half of Gaza, even after two years of battering by the IDF, so it will continue to aim to rebuild and one day, try again. Russia may one day be defeated in Ukraine, but Moscow will not abandon revanchism because of sanctions or because they face a military defeat. The Taliban did not become non-hostile simply because they were temporarily kept off balance for twenty years; nor did ISIS in Iraq and Syria, who, when beaten there, simply exported their poisonous ideology to North Africa and the Sahel instead. If intent remains durable, a viable concept of victory cannot rest on the fantasy that the adversary will simply learn its lesson and stop wanting what it wants.
So what does “victory” look like in 2026?
