Source: Foreign Policy
by Reza H Akbari
“For much of the 20th and 21st centuries, calls for an enemy’s total capitulation have carried enormous symbolic power in U.S. political culture. ‘Unconditional surrender’ seems to promise a total and morally unambiguous victory. Crucially, the power of the narrative does not end with surrender. In its most compelling form, it extends into a transformative vision of defeated societies not only accepting their losses but being liberated and remade in the American image, emerging as stable, prosperous democracies. In practice, however, even the most decisive military victories seldom translate into anything resembling the absolute defeat of a country’s body politic, its bureaucratic institutions, or its underlying ideological foundations, all of which tend instead to endure, adapt, and reconstitute themselves in ways that complicate the finality promised by the language of unconditional surrender.” (03/30/26)