A decisive victory is a military

victory The term victory (from Latin ''victoria'') originally applied to warfare, and denotes success achieved in personal combat, after military operations in general or, by extension, in any competition. Success in a military campaign constitutes ...

battle A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and for ...

that definitively resolves the objective being fought over, ending one stage of the conflict and beginning another stage. Until a decisive victory is achieved, conflict over the competing objectives will continue.

Definitions

The phrases "decisive battle" and "decisive victory" have evolved over time, as the methods and scope of wars themselves changed. More modernly, as armies, wars and theaters of operation expanded so that the gestalt (''i.e.'', a result which is greater than the sum total see

synergy Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts. The term ''synergy'' comes from the Attic Greek word συνεργία ' from ', , meaning "working together". History In Christian ...

) of the overall venture was more definitive the phrase "lost its meaning." The meaning is ephemeral, like the difference between “strategy” and "tactics”. In ''Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory'', Colin Gray defined an ''operational'' decisive victory as "a victory which decides the outcome to a campaign, though not necessarily to the war as a whole".Gray, p. 11. The

Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under ...

is often cited as a decisive operational victory for the US despite the fact that the

Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vas ...

ended more than three years later with the decisive ''strategic'' victory of the

atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...

, which directly led to the Japanese surrender; this is because the Midway operation represented the destruction of the majority of the IJN's offensive carrier forces, which decisively stopped both the IJN's string of unbroken victories in combat and their plans to expand eastward into Midway Island, Hawaii, the Aleutian Islands and potentially the US mainland. During this period, the US Navy expanded greatly, and the IJN was never able to regain their former strength, making the victory decisive in terms of determining the future operational shape of the battles for the Pacific. On the tactical scale, the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...

is cited as a decisive victory, as it destroyed the entirety of the US Pacific battleship fleet and neutralized Pearl Harbor's ability to retaliate in one fell swoop, thus resolving the issue of whether the

battleship A battleship is a large armour, armored warship with a main artillery battery, battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1 ...

s (which the Japanese inaccurately saw as the greatest threat) would present a threat to Japanese expansion in the West. Of course, this proves that a tactically decisive victory is no substitute for a decisive victory on a larger scale, since the strategic issue of control of the Pacific remained very much in question, and the war was later resolved decisively in the

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

' favor (see above) via

aircraft carriers An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a n ...

and bombers instead of battleships. Writing in ''

Military Review The U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (USACAC) is located at Fort Leavenworth and provides leadership and supervision for leader development and professional military and civilian education; institutional and collective training; functional training; ...

'', Thomas Goss attributes the popularity of the closely related term "decisive battle" to Sir Edward Creasy and his 1851 book, '' The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World''. Goss recounts a variety of different definitions for the term used by historians and military leaders (neither of which typically define the term before using it): a battle that (1) achieves its operational objectives; (2) ends the conflict because one side has achieved its strategic objectives, or; (3) directly ends the conflict and results in a lasting peace between the belligerents. He concludes that "A decisive battle must directly lead to a rapid resolution of the contested political issues because the results on the battlefield caused both sides to agree that a decision had been reached."Goss, pp. 11, 16.

Admiral Mahan Alfred Thayer Mahan (; September 27, 1840 – December 1, 1914) was a United States Navy, United States naval officer and historian, whom John Keegan called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." His book ''The Infl ...

emphasized that naval operations were chiefly to be won by decisive battles and

blockade A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are leg ...

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Goss, Thomas J
"Gettysburg's 'Decisive Battle'."
''Military Review'' (July–August 2004): 11–16. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Decisive Victory Military strategy

Definitions

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Bibliography