1 In an era that is dominated by the global war on terrorism and persistent "post-war" violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no more relevant and pertinent question for scholars and policy makers than what constitutes victory in war. This is the question that William Martel addresses in his thoughtful and highly readable Victory in War. This critically important book deserves wide readership among students and practitioners in the fields of military history and strategy, international relations, governmental decision making, and security studies.

2 Martel starts by reviewing how the term victory has been defined in the past by a wide array of strategists and scholars, ranging from Sun Tzu, to Thucydides, Frederick the Great, Mahan, Tukhachevsky, and Schelling. This review of the literature usefully reminds the reader that the seemingly obvious term "victory" has been reinterpreted over time and not just by political leaders anxious to downplay the apparent military success of an adversary but also by propagandists touting modest results as major accomplishments. A basic reason for these reinterpretations is that the objective conditions in the military arena have changed over time as economic and industrial developments gave great powers in World War Two the physical capability to completely destroy an adversary's armed forces and dismantle its government; then enabled the nuclear arms race, which caused statesmen to realize that World War Two-type victories were no longer possible against a nuclear foe; and, coming full circle, yielded the information revolution and precision-weapon technologies that enabled the United States to achieve a strategic victory with minimal effort in Afghanistan.

3 Like terrorism (although for different reasons), the term victory has resisted a single, common definition as it evolved into a synonym for success. Martel sensibly concludes that rather than attempting to offer yet another all-purpose definition, it makes more analytic sense to articulate the organizing principles that ought to be used for defining victory in the future. The first principle is the level of victory: tactical (e.g., in a single battle), political-military, and strategic. The distinction between the latter two is that strategic victory involves a fundamental and lasting change in the international order. Martel's insight that the war on terrorism, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan may ultimately result in a strategic victory — if the global rise of fundamental, Islamist terrorism is reversed — is balanced by his argument that powerful uncertainties complicate efforts to achieve victory in these ongoing struggles. The second organizing principle is the extent of the change in the status quo that a state wishes to achieve through the use of military power; the third is the level of effort that the state is willing to exert for war; and the fourth is the post-conflict obligations that the victor is willing to assume in the defeated state.

4 These principles are obviously and intimately related. For example, wise statesmen understand that modest goals do not warrant immodest levels of military effort; but their relative importance seems to have shifted in recent decades. Thus, during the first half of the twentieth century, the cost of victory was a measurement of the economic and human resources that were mobilized to fight a war. But judging from developments in Afghanistan and Iraq, the more telling measure of victory in the future may be the economic and human resources required by the victor to discharge its post-conflict obligations.

5 After articulating these organizing principles and reviewing US military actions from the Revolutionary War to World War Two and the Cold War, Martel applies this framework to a series of late twentieth-century case studies: the 1986 raid on Libya, 1989 incursion into Panama, the first Persian Gulf War, military actions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and most interestingly the 2001 war in Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. Each of the case studies reviews the background and the military campaign waged by US forces and concludes with observations about what these organizing principles tell us about the results achieved. All provide excellent summaries of the conflicts and perceptive analyses of their strategic context.

6 Martel concludes this excellent book by noting that his intention is to provoke more rigorous thinking, and hence debates, about what victory means. This book clearly will have important practical consequences for the leaders, American public, and scholars who are wrestling with what is the most pressing problem of our time: the nature and meaning of victory. Improving the discourse about what the United States seeks to achieve when it uses military force is, of course, a worthy objective. For these reasons, Martel's book represents a critical step in the scholarship on the relationship between strategy and victory.

James F. Miskel is a defense policy and homeland security consultant.