Since the founding of the republic in the late eighteenth century, the U.S. experiences with war have crystallized into a distinct logic of what victory is and what its implications for the conduct of war are. From this logic of victory emerges the consistent theme in which U.S. political leaders and the public have a strong if not singular preference for decisive and not absolute outcomes in war. This prevailing “political culture” of expectations for victory, however, establishes a burdensome set of costs and obligations for the United States in terms of both how it conducts war and its overall conduct of policy.

This logic of victory is based on the argument that the preferred outcomes of war for the United States are to achieve those that resolve the underlying problems or conditions that led to war in the first place. This logic rests on two distinct arguments. The first is the practice of unconditional surrender, which holds that the defeated state may be subjected to defeat on a total, comprehensive scale – the most vivid examples being the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II. Although used only rarely, unconditional surrender makes particular sense when the stakes for the state are existential and the state seeks to achieve victory in a decisive sense. Thus, the American “pathology” of unconditional surrender may involve the translation of a standard entirely appropriate for existential threats into a universal conception of what victory must be achieved in all wars.