ABSTRACT
Douglas MacArthur famously remarked that there was no substitute for victory. Victory, however, can be a problematic concept, not least in terms of counterinsurgency, when winning for either side might simply mean not losing. Certainly, expectations at a popular level of victory in counter-insurgency campaigns have been low in the West, given the apparent failure of security forces to overcome insurgent opponents in a whole series of campaigns since 1945. The United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and the French in Algeria all spring readily to mind. Successful insurgent leaders such as Mao Tse-tung, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Fidel Castro, and even unsuccessful ones such as Che Guevara, are rather better known than successful practitioners of counter-insurgency such as Gerald Templer, Ramón Magsaysay or Antonio de Spinola.
